Through the angel, God tells the shepherds the meaning of this most significant event in all of history: Peace.  

Jesus’ birth is to bring peace, shalom, blessedness, and fullness. 

The message from the angels to the shepherds is this:

Christ’s coming means Peace.  

A different kind of peace. Not the end of war or conflict type of peace. 

Jews in Israel still greet each other by saying “Shalom” (peace). You can wish nothing better for anyone than shalom, blessedness, fullness.

The best translation the Greek scholars have come up with for this message of Peace is:

“Peace among all who are the recipients of God’s good pleasure.” 

If you can receive what God wants to give,

the message of Peace is for you.

It is available for all, and when and if we accept what God wants to provide us with, we have Peace. 

The angel told the shepherds this peace was to come by a Savior who is Jesus Christ. The Babe they found was to be named Jesus, a common name in that time, meaning “The Lord Is Salvation.” 

The angel used three names to identify the one who would bring this Peace. 

• First was “Savior,” a Hebrew word meaning rescuer;

• The second was “Christ,” a Greek word for “the anointed one, the chosen one.”

• The third was "LORD" a word used by Greek-speaking Hebrews to refer to God Himself.

So Jesus was to be the Rescuer, the Anointed One, God Himself,

and the Bearer of this Peace.

This Peace does not come when a general mood of goodwill wells up inside, and we do some kind act. 

The angels give us the precondition for Peace—

that we give glory to God in the highest.

It is a gift only God can provide us with,

and it is the one thing for which our hearts yearn. 

This Peace was surprisingly entrusted to shepherds, a disliked and disrespected group of people, outcasts from all respectable society. Shepherds were not allowed to testify in a court of law because their honesty and integrity were so questionable.  

The lesson God has for us here is that we need to make Peace,

first of all, with God. 

That’s where Peace begins. We may be running because we are afraid of God. “Fear not,” the angel says. We need only stand still and let Him catch us.  

The next step is to make peace with our neighbors. We need reconciliation between the up and outers and the down and outers in our society.

We are called to reconciliation in families, between husbands and wives, between parents and children.

We are called to effect political reconciliation between right and left, radical and conservative, the minority and the majority, between people who are different than us.  

Finally, we need to find the inner peace that comes

from knowing who we are in Christ.

No longer are we like the demoniac who said, “My name is Legion,” because so many different selves possessed him. Jesus brought clarity to a man who was described as “beside himself,” and that man became whole. One aspect of Peace is that head and heart and all our conflicting emotions come together. 

That last verse of our Scripture says that after the shepherds had seen such wondrous things, they went back to the routine of their lives. That’s true for us each year at Christmas as we celebrate these events. 

The question is, what happens after the celebration,

do we have a peace that the world does not understand,

and are we the peacemakers?