Shalom. Nothing Missing. Nothing Broken.

First, the Word Itself

There is a word I want to hand back to the whole Church. It has been borrowed by one culture in most people's minds, and that is understandable, because that is where God first spoke it. But it was never meant to stay there. It runs from the first pages of Scripture to the last. It crosses from Hebrew into Greek without losing a thing. It is spoken over Gentiles more often in the New Testament than over anybody else. It belongs to every believer on earth. The word is shalom.

Shalom comes from a root that means to be complete, to be finished, to be whole, to be made sound. That same root gives us the word for to repay or to restore — because when you make somebody whole for what they lost, you have shalomed the account. It gives us the word for to complete a building. When Solomon finished the temple, the word used is from this same family.

So the root idea is not quiet. The root idea is nothing missing and nothing broken. That is why the Hebrew Scriptures can use this word for a wall that has no gaps in it, for a stone that has not been cut, for a payment that leaves no debt, for a body that has no wound, and for a relationship that has no rupture. Every one of those is the same idea: it is complete. Nothing has been taken out of it. Nothing in it is fractured.

Where It Begins: Creation

The word itself does not appear in Genesis 1. But the condition does. Look at Eden and count what is missing. Nothing. There is no shame, because they were naked and unashamed. There is no fracture between the man and the woman. There is no fracture between them and God, who walks in the garden. There is no fracture between them and the ground, which gives without fighting them. There is no death. That is shalom. Everything in right relationship with everything else.

And then read Genesis 3 and watch each relationship break, one at a time. With God — they hide. With each other — he blames her. With themselves — they cover up. With the ground — it will now grow thorns. Sin is not merely rule-breaking. Sin is the shattering of shalom. Which tells you what salvation has to be. Not merely forgiveness of an offense. The putting back together of everything that broke.

Shalom in the Prophets: A Word With Teeth

The prophets got angry about shalom. Jeremiah says of the false prophets: They offer superficial treatments for my people's mortal wound. They give assurances of peace when there is no peace. Ezekiel says the same — men whitewashing a wall that is about to fall and calling it shalom.

What were they condemning? They were condemning people who used this word to mean calm down, nothing is wrong when something was deeply wrong. That is a warning for us. Shalom is not the suppression of a problem. It is not telling somebody to stop being upset. It is not smoothing a thing over so the room gets quiet. Real shalom deals with the wound. A false shalom bandages over it and hopes nobody looks. If you are going to speak this word over people, speak the real one.

Then Isaiah calls the coming One Sar Shalom — the Prince of Peace. And then tells us what it will cost: But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. Read that middle line in Hebrew and it says the chastisement of our shalom was upon Him. Our wholeness cost Him His. He was broken so that nothing in us would have to stay broken. He was pierced — something was taken out of Him — so that in us, nothing would be missing. That is the gospel in one word.