Bible Commentaries

PEACE ON EARTH A GIFT FROM HEAVEN

‘He maketh peace in His high places.’

Job 25:2

A great truth lies deep in these words, that peace is a creation; and all creation is an attribute of God. ‘He maketh peace in His high places.’

The most beautiful word that ever hung upon the mouth of man is peace, because it is sweetness to his fellow-men, and it makes sacrifice to God. Many summers and many winters of life go to ripen that fruit. And of that beautiful fruit of the lips hear what God says, ‘I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace, to him that is far off and to him that is near, saith the Lord; I will heal him.’

I. The words are meant to teach us that up in His high places God is ever devising and carrying on processes which are to produce peace for men in this lower state.—In mystery, in solitude, and in largeness, before the foundations of the earth were laid, God began to make peace in His high places. He willed that great scheme whereby Christ should come in the fullness of time to make redemption for a yet unformed and yet uncreated world. The ruin of Eden was prepared for in the high places of the Eternal Mind; and at once, at the moment of the Fall, the promise came that peace should be restored on earth.

II. The far end of Christ’s work was to give peace on earth.—When He ascended from His Cross and grave to more than His former greatness, and when from His eternal throne He began to offer up His mediatorial intercession and pour down upon His Church the Holy Spirit, then was the fabric of man’s peace complete, those words established to the very letter, ‘He maketh peace in His high places.’

—Rev. James Vaughan.