THE GLORIOUS NAMES OF JESUS
REPRINT OF AMOS R. WELLS 1926
chapter 3 – The Prince Of Peace
Something To Consider:
In Isaiah’s magnificent picture of the coming Messiah, with its heaping up of titles, the conclusion and the climax of the list is “Prince of Peace.” Yes, surpassing even “Mighty God” and “Everlasting Father,” Jesus was to be called the “Prince of Peace.”
It is hard for us to realize how strange the title must have sounded to the people of the prophet’s time. Christ has made the idea familiar and natural to us, but to them the combination of words must have seemed nothing short of grotesque, “Prince,” and “Peace”!
In those days, and for many long centuries after, a princely man was a fighting man. The king was the can man, and the thing he could do preeminently was to lead his armies in battle. But Isaiah set up a far different standard of manhood and of kinghood, or, rather, God set up this standard through the prophet. A prince is a leader, and Christ is the Leader in the winning of peace. A prince is a ruler, and Christ is the Sovereign of the realm of peace.
A prince if the first, is preeminent, and no one stands ahead of Christ in the matter of peace. He is the Prince of Peace and all peaceful people are glad to be His subjects and welcome Him as their Sovereign.
Something Else To Consider:
Seven times in the New Testament the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is called the “God of Peace”. It is the most common of the New Testament titles of God. Indeed, the entire New Testament is an exposition of the concept, for the Father sent His Son into the world to make peace between men, women, and young people, and Himself, bringing their hearts into accord with His heart, and destroying the old enmity of sin. Thus, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.
This is the fundamental peace spoken of by the prophets! When it is accomplished in a person’s life, peace flows from it, peace among us, peace among other people, peace among classes of people, and peace among other nations. There is no need of seeking additional or a different peace elsewhere. Christ is the Prince of Peace of the atonement, and when all men, women, and young people admit His rule here in their lives, God’s peace will cover the earth.
It is foolish and useless to look for any other kind of peace but Jesus Christ’s kind of peace. Jesus said, “My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives do I give to you.” The world’s peace would be freedom from care; Christ’s peace may bring with it many cares. The world’s false concept of peace would be without struggle; Christ’s peace may be with much conflict.
The world’s peace is wrongly linked with plenty, Christ’s peace dwells often in the hut of poverty. The world’s peace rests on secular power; Christ’s peace is made strong in weakness. Much of humanity’s search for peace is fruitless because it is in the wrong direction and has an impossible end goal.
Something More To Consider:
Christ’s peace is the peace that passes all human understanding. Those who do not know Jesus cannot comprehend how it can be possessed in this earthly life. Sometimes in their dull unbelief they fancy peace to be hypocritical. But it is the most substantial thing on earth, and it is the very best advertisement and evidence of true biblical religion and right relationship with Jesus Christ, our true Prince of Peace.
Christianity needs no stronger recommendation than the shining faces of true born-again believers who fully understand the meaning of Jesus being the here and now and everlasting Prince of Peace. We make a great mistake if we think that Christ’s peace is merely weak complaisance. Jesus proclaimed in Matthew 10.34, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.”
It is a common mistake, “A person thinks so much of peace that he or she will fight for it”, but a mighty truth underlies this wrongful thinking. There is no real peace that is obtained through physical battle. The truce of iniquity may be soon broken.
Wrongful brutality and oppression may for a time bury the sword beneath their thrones, but it is Christ’s sword, the Word of God, that will come forth and spiritually slay them. Nothing is really peacefully settled until it has been settled in the right and biblical way.
But Christ, the Prince of Peace, bears not the sword in vain. It is as unsparing in its merciful directness as a surgeon’s scalpel. It pierces to the root of all baseness man or society. It does its work so thoroughly that it ends in the true peace of God being attainable.
A Few Final Words:
Who is there of us who does not long for true peace? Our spirits are anxious and troubled about many things. We know we have not always made the better spiritual choices in life and the results of our foolishness has filled us with fret and forebodings. But we may end all that. We may drive out of our lives every fear, every worry, every doubt, and every perplexity.
We may live in calmness of mind, and joyful in heart, year after year from the shadow created by any dark cloud of past, present, or future despair. All this is not in ourselves, it is not in our friends, it is not in books, or teachers, it is not in human institutions rather religious or secular, nor is it in the finest of human associations.
All this, fully and freely and perfectly, is obtainable just for the asking and the taking, if it is received from Jesus Christ, the only true Prince of Peace. Therefore, why wait another single day to receive the peace that passes all human understanding?
Prayer:
Our Father in heaven, let us truly understand what it means to allow Jesus to be our personal Prince of Peace. Teach us to be free of all strife and earthly struggle when so much eternal peace is made so readily available to us here on earth in and through Jesus, our very own Prince of Peace. In Him Always, Amen!
According to Jesus 