20th August 2025

We’ve been hearing a lot about ‘doing a deal’ these past few days. Donald Trump claimed he could ‘fix’ the war on Ukraine by getting both Vladimir Putin and President Zelenksy to accept a deal that would basically involve a swapping of land, some economic rearrangements, and a cessation of military action on both sides, to everyone’s satisfaction. That hasn’t worked, and I for one am glad. I hope and pray for peace. But such a transactional fix has little to do with peace. It leaves all those involved unchanged. It does not engage with their actual relationships to one another.

The heart of the gospel is the offer of peace for a world in rebellion against God. ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Corinthians 5:19). Nothing here about simply rearranging the world, a land-swap here, an economic package there, and leaving relationships and ambitions essentially as they were. Rather, God’s peace comes about through the infinite and costly love of God’s incarnate Son. In the words of the great second century teacher Irenaeus ‘He became what we are, that we might become what he is’. That signals the great transaction, a basic transformation in relationships. It doesn’t happen externally to us. It draws us into the adventure of sharing in God’s costly ministry of reconciliation, beginning with our own repentance and our forgiveness of wrongs done to us.

Yes, it’s often hard to translate anything of this gospel into the nitty-gritty of peacemaking on the political and international sphere. But at least we can pray to be spared the superficiality of ‘deals’ and ‘fixes’.

Keith Clements