Verse explainer

What does Luke 2:14 really mean?

The famous Christmas verse says more than 'peace and goodwill' — it turns on whose goodwill it is, and who receives the peace.

KJV

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

BSB

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests!

The plain meaning

The angels aren't offering a general wish for human harmony. The hymn has a tight structure: God receives glory in the highest heavens, and the fruit of that — peace — comes down to earth. But peace for whom? The KJV's 'good will toward men' can sound like a broad warmth toward all humanity equally, but the older manuscripts read 'peace to men of his good will' or 'men on whom his favor rests' — meaning the peace announced is grounded in God's prior, freely given favor, not in human deserving. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown note the hymn is a Hebrew parallelism: God's glory and earth's peace answer each other, and the 'good will' clause explains the basis of the peace, not a second separate gift. Adam Clarke presses the same point: the incarnation is the supreme display of divine attributes — mercy, justice, faithfulness — and the reconciliation it brings flows entirely from God's initiative. The verse is not a vague seasonal sentiment; it's a compressed theological claim that the birth of this child is the hinge on which heaven's favor and earth's peace turn.

The common misreading

"Good will toward men" means God and the angels are wishing everyone a happy, peaceful life. This is probably the most widely softened verse in the Christmas canon. Heard every December, it gets flattened into a warm benediction — a wish for human beings to be nice to one another, or a declaration that God simply likes everyone very much. But the Greek word behind 'good will' is eudokia, which in its genitive form (as the better-attested manuscripts have it) means men who are the objects of God's favor, not men who themselves possess goodwill. The peace the angels announce isn't ambient holiday cheer; it's a specific theological claim — that this child's birth enacts the reconciliation God purposed. Adam Clarke, John Gill, and Jamieson-Fausset-Brown all read it the same way: the 'good will' belongs to God, the 'peace' flows from it, and the ground of both is the free, prior favor of God rather than anything in the recipients. The KJV rendering is not wrong — it captures something real — but read in isolation it opens the door to a reading the angels' hymn won't support: that the birth of Jesus is a general, unconditional declaration that everything will be fine for everyone. The verse is sharper and more particular than that, and also — because it is about grace rather than human effort — more genuinely good news.

What the commentators say

Adam Clarkeearly 19th c. · PD

Clarke reads the verse as the angels declaring what the incarnation actually accomplishes: the hidden glories of God — wisdom, love, justice, power — are now displayed in a degree impossible any other way, and the peace announced is real reconciliation between God and sinners, then between sinners with one another, all flowing from God's sovereign initiative rather than from human merit.

John Gill18th c. · PD

Gill argues 'peace on earth' refers not to outward political calm but to Christ himself as the peacemaker — God and humanity, Jew and Gentile — and that 'good will toward men' points to God's electing, covenant love as the ground of the whole. The peace is not general goodwill floating in the air; it is specific, costly, and rooted in God's free favor toward chosen men in Christ.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown19th c. · PD

JFB highlight the hymn's three-part Hebrew parallelism: glory to God answers peace on earth, and 'good will to men' is the explanatory echo — Heaven's divine complacency resting on a new footing, descending to men as it rests on the Son himself (echoing the 'well-pleased' of Matthew 3:17). The peace is not earned; it arrives on the same terms God declared at the Jordan.

The word behind it

εὐδοκία eudokia

'Good will,' 'favor,' or 'good pleasure.' The word describes not a warm feeling directed outward by humans toward each other, but God's own sovereign delight and favor directed toward recipients of his choosing. The textual tradition behind most modern translations reads 'men of eudokia' — men on whom this favor rests — rather than eudokia as a free-floating gift to all. Strong's and Thayer both confirm the term regularly signals divine, not merely human, goodwill. That single word explains why the BSB and KJV diverge, and why the verse is about grace, not seasonal sentiment.

Related verses