Week 04 · Being a peacemaker, not a peacekeeper

Peace in the House

Read together: Colossians 3:12-17

Also read: Matthew 5:9 · Romans 12:17-21

Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the presence of Christ ruling as umpire in a house where two people forgive quickly.

The heart of it

Paul dresses the believer: mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another, forgiving one another as Christ forgave you. Every one of those is relational. None of them can be practiced alone in a quiet room.

Then: let the peace of God rule in your hearts. The word means to act as umpire, to settle the call. In a home, someone has to decide when the argument stops, and Paul says let Christ's peace make that call rather than whoever is angrier or more articulate.

A peacekeeper avoids the conflict and lets the wound close over dirt. A peacemaker walks into it in order to end it properly. The second one is what Jesus blesses, and it is harder and costs more.

What to notice

Forgiving as Christ forgave you removes the option of a partial forgiveness with conditions.
Love is called the bond of perfectness — the belt that holds all the other clothes on.
Be thankful appears right in the middle of the instructions about peace.
The word of Christ dwelling richly comes before teaching and admonishing one another, so we speak from Scripture, not from our mood.

Talk together

1Are we peacemakers or peacekeepers in this marriage? Give an example.
2What is currently unresolved between us that we have quietly agreed not to mention?
3In our arguments, who usually decides it is over, and how? Is that working?
4What does forgiving as Christ forgave us mean for the thing you are still holding?
5Agree on one signal either of us can use to pause an argument before it does damage.

Your own journal

Answer these on your own during the week. They are yours; you are never required to read them out loud.

1. What am I still holding against my spouse? Write it out, then write what forgiving it would cost me.

2. When conflict starts, what is my instinct — attack, withdraw, joke, go cold?

3. Where am I keeping the peace at the expense of the truth?

4. Which garment from verse 12 is most missing from how I treat my spouse?

5. Write a prayer asking God to make Christ's peace the umpire in your home.

This week's challenge

Bring up one unresolved thing this week on purpose, at a good hour, calmly, and stay with it until you have prayed about it together.

"And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful."

Colossians 3:15

Pray together

Ask God to end anything still festering between you and to make your home a place of real peace.

Next week: Longsuffering