Christ’s Gift of Peace

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.—John 14:27.

Christ is making His parting bequest to His disciples. He would fain leave them free from care and distress; but He has none of those worldly possessions which men usually lay up for their children and those dependent on them. Houses, lands, clothes, money—He has none. He cannot even secure for those who are to carry on His work an exemption from persecution. He does not leave them, as some initiators have done, stable though new institutions, an empire of recent origin but already firmly established. “Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” But He does give them that which all other bequests aim at producing: “Peace I leave with you.”

These words, touching at all times, were unspeakably affecting in the circumstances of the Speaker and hearers. We know not but they did more to comfort the dispirited “little ones” than all that had been said before. There is a pathos and a music in the very sound of them, apart from their sense, which are wonderfully soothing. We can imagine, indeed, that as they were spoken, the poor disciples were overtaken with a fit of tenderness, and burst into tears. That, however, would do them good. Sorrow is healed by weeping; the sympathy which melts the heart at the same time comforts it. This touching sympathetic farewell is more than a good wish; it is a promise—a promise made by One who knows that the blessing promised is within reach. It is like the cheering word spoken by David to brothers in affliction: “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”1 [Note: A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, 396.]

I

The Source of Peace

Here we are directed to the true Source of peace. Jesus claims that He is the real fountainhead, the author and depositary, of peace.

1. Jesus defines the peace which He was leaving to the disciples as that peace which He had Himself enjoyed: “My peace I give unto you,”—as one hands over a possession he has himself tested, the shield or helmet that has served him in battle. “That which has protected Me in a thousand fights I make over to you.” The peace which Christ desires His disciples to enjoy is that which characterized Himself; the same serenity in danger, the same equanimity in troublous circumstances, the same freedom from anxiety about results, the same speedy recovery of composure after something had for a moment ruffled the calm surface of His demeanour. This is what He makes over to His people; this is what He makes possible to all who serve Him.

One can give to another only what one has owned oneself, and as soon as Jesus makes His will and leaves peace to the Twelve, it comes to our mind that He has endowed them with the chiefest good, and has given what, beyond all men that ever lived, He Himself enjoyed. He had neither houses nor lands. One other thing He did not have, unrest. He had shame and suffering. One other thing He did have—rest. With evident fitness and intense conviction He could face a crowd of harassed, overdriven, hopeless people, heavy laden in soul and body, and offer them rest. Never had any one seen Jesus disturbed in soul, save in grief for a friend’s death, or in pity for a doomed city, or for some other reason outside Himself. If a multitude would make Him a King, He was not exalted; if they cried, “Crucify him,” He was not cast down. It mattered nothing to Him what was said of Him, or done with Him; and through accumulated hardships, disappointments, injustices, cruelties, Jesus preserved His high serenity. Whatever storms beat on the outer coast of His life, His soul was anchored in the fair haven of peace.1 [Note: J. Watson, The Upper Room, 96.]

Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate his conception of rest. The first chose for his scene a still lone lake among the far-off mountains. The second threw on his canvas a thundering waterfall, with a fragile birch tree bending over the foam; at the fork of a branch, almost wet with the cataract’s spray, a robin sat on its nest. The first was only stagnation; the last was rest. For in rest there are always two elements—tranquillity and energy; silence and turbulence; creation and destruction; fearlessness and fearfulness. Thus it was in Christ.1 [Note: Henry Drummond, Pax Vobiscum, 263.]

2. How did Jesus come by this peace? By unfaltering obedience to the Father’s will, and by utter self-sacrifice. His peace was the fruit of a hard-won victory.

Whatever were His peculiar natural aids of spiritual genius and sensibility, Christ attained His greatness by His own faithfulness to the occasions and intimations which the Father gave Him. If we lose hold of this, we lose the whole value of the Christian life and doctrine. The secret means by which the Almighty Spirit prepares His instruments, the mode and the extent of His intercourse with the soul of Christ—of these we offer no explanation or theory; but the character that grew up under this culture can never by a healthy religion be separated from the personal will of Christ, or be otherwise regarded than as the result of a voluntary faithfulness to the grace of God. Even when a forced flower is made to exhibit summer’s bloom on winter’s bosom, the blossoming is due not to culture only but to the nature on which it was exerted, which here offers no resistance but yields up all its hidden glories to the hand that tends it; surrounded with a special atmosphere, and in special circumstances, the fitness within, the genial nature, repaid the care and burst into beauty. And so with Christ,—if the Father was the Husbandman the Son was the spiritual Vine; if the culture was of God, the harmonious development of all that was in that rich and blessed nature was through the willing obedience that offered no resistance to the heavenly tending; if the influences were of God’s holy grace, the answering faithfulness was of God’s holy Child. And the true distinction of Him who, by reason of a perfect obedience, is as the only Son of God, was that through a holy will the spiritual influences of the Father did produce their righteous fruit; that no Divine soliciting was rejected because it involved Him in awful duties; that to Him the only true life, life eternal, was life in and with God.1 [Note: J. H. Thom, Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ, 175.]

Lord, I had chosen another lot,

But then I had not chosen well;

Thy choice and only Thine is good:

No different lot, search heaven or hell,

Had blessed me, fully understood;

None other, which Thou orderest not.2 [Note: C. G. Rossetti, Poems, 123.]

II

The Bestowal of Peace

Christ here shares with His people His peculiar secret. He makes a bequest, He bestows a gift.

1. “Not as the world giveth”—not the peace of ease, but of struggle; not of self-content, but of self-sacrifice; not of yielding to evil, but of conflict with it; not of accommodation to the world, but by the subjugation of it. And so He adds, “I have overcome the world.” It is a strange paradox, this peace of conflict; it is the peace of an Imperial Spirit which by its own victory rises above human circumstances.

In one of her shorter poems Mrs. Browning asks the question, “What is the best thing in the world?” Various answers are suggested, but the only one which the poetess regards as final and conclusive is this: “Something out of it, I think.” Yes, the best thing in the world is something outside the world, something which the world does not contain, and which it cannot give.3 [Note: J. Law Wilson, Helpful Words for Daily Life, 62.]

When we look abroad upon the sea, or the silent hills as they sleep in the tranquil folds of the evening light, and say, How peaceful they are! we mean not merely that the wind is down or the air is still, but that Nature rests in her inner central depths. It is such an inward reality—quiet within the soul, a restful life beneath all other life—that Christ gives to them that are His. It is something deeper than sense, or intellect, or passion, or all the shows of that life which we can see, or hear, or touch. It is no mere harmony of natural powers—although it is also this; but it is a positive spiritual endowment—a gift from the Divine—something which at once settles and stays the spirit on a foundation that cannot be moved, though the earth be removed, and the waters roar and be troubled.1 [Note: J. Tulloch, Some Facts of Religion and of Life, 56.]

2. Christ gives His peace by bringing us to the same source whence He had it Himself—by bringing us to God, by making us one with God, and so bringing us into harmony with the true law of the Spirit’s life, which is to live, not by the perishing things of earth, but by the unseen and the eternal. As the physician brings peace to the body by bringing it into harmony with the law of its life, with the conditions of health; as the teacher gives intellectual peace by revealing to the mind the truth that it seeks after, so that it can apprehend it and rest upon it—so Christ gives us peace of spirit by bringing us into harmony with God’s will.

We are purposed for union with our Lord. The Scriptures resound with this teaching from end to end. Every call in its pages is a call to a rectified communion with our Maker. That union has been broken, and broken by nothing but sin. And if peace is to be regained, the union must be restored. But that union must not be a mere cuticle relationship; not one of words or of ritual, or created by the flimsy ligaments of sects. It must be the union of mind with mind, God’s thought rising into our thought as the sap of the vine into the receptive branch. It must be the union of conscience with conscience, our moral sense scrupulously reflecting the judgments of the Lord, as a clock in direct connexion with Greenwich registers the royal time. It must be the union of will with will, my will lifted like a sail while the breath of the Lord blows upon it, moving my life in the appointed way. It must be the union of heart with heart, God and man Bharing common sorrows and common joys. This is peace: man’s life moving in God’s life in frictionless communion.2 [Note: J. H. Jowett, in the British Congregationalist, Aug. 6, 1908, p. 122.]

3. Christ’s peace reaches the heart and conscience. There is only one way for a man to be at peace with himself through and through, and that is that he should put the guidance of his life into the hands of Jesus Christ, and let Him do with it as He will. There is one power, and only one, that can draw after it all the multitudinous heaped waters of the weltering ocean, and that is the quiet, silver moon in the heavens that pulls the tidal wave, into which melt and merge all currents and small breakers, and rolls it round the whole earth. And so Christ, shining down, lambent and gentle, but changeless, from the darkest of our skies, will draw, in one great surge of harmonized motion, all the otherwise contradictory currents of our stormy souls. “My peace I give unto you.”

The peace of a quiet conscience, as the great dramatist has told us, is far above all earthly dignities. For the honours of earth may be thick upon a man, and yet he may never know one hour’s happiness. But with the conscience at rest, and its light shining like a very candle of the Lord, the believer’s life is well balanced. He knows no fear of God save filial and holy fear, no fear of man, no fear of the future, and no fear of hell. Where it dwells, the peace of God shuts out all fear.1 [Note: W. J. Armitage, The Fruit of the Spirit, 32.]

It is told of Dante that after many wanderings he reached a monastery and stood before the door. Thrice they asked him, “What wouldest thou?” and he broke the silence at last with the one word, “Peace.”2 [Note: F. E. Ridgeway, Calls to Service, 220.]

In the inn of Bethlehem there were many going to and fro, and much hurry and disquietude, while caravans were unlading or making up their complement of passengers, and the divan presented a spectacle of many costumes, and resounded with wrangling, and barter, and merriment. But in a stable hard by there was a tender joy too deep for words, and a stillness of adoration which seemed to shut out the outer world.… The soul of man is a noisy hostelry, full of turmoil and disquietude, and giving entertainment to every vain and passing thought which seeks admittance there. But when Christ comes, and takes up His abode in the heart, He reduces it to order and peace; and though it may move amid the excitements and confusions of life, yet hath it an inner stillness which they cannot disturb or destroy; for the King of Peace is there, and peace is the purchase of His cross, and the last legacy of His love, and His ancient promise to His people.3 [Note: E. M. Goulburn.]

How shall I quiet my heart? How shall I keep it still?

How shall I hush its tremulous start at tidings of good or ill?

How shall I gather and hold contentment and peace and rest,

Wrapping their sweetness, fold on fold, over my troubled breast?

The Spirit of God is still, and gentle and mild and sweet,

What time His omnipotent, glorious will guideth the worlds at His feet;

Controlling all lesser things, this turbulent heart of mine,

He keepeth us under His folded wings in a peace serene—divine.

So shall I quiet my heart, so shall I keep it still,

So shall I hush its tremulous start at tidings of good or ill;

So shall I silence my soul with a peacefulness deep and broad,

So shall I gather Divine control in the infinite quiet of God.

4. Christ’s peace reconciles us to our brother man. Man will not be at peace with man because he is ready to drift with every stream. That is the false peace, the peace of the Vicar of Bray! Peace can never be gained by the surrender of sacred conviction. But a man has gone a long way towards the attainment of peace with his brother when he is willing to think of himself as only a part, and not the whole, of the human race. He has gone a long way towards union when he consistently thinks of himself as a soloist, and not a chorus. There will then be in his life a delicate considerateness, and he will be willing to fit in with other people with courtesy and grace.

Peace, then, was made. “I bury the hatchet,” said Callières, “in a deep hole, and over the hole I place a great rock, and over the rock I turn a river, that the hatchet may never be dug up again.”1 [Note: F. Parkman, “Count Frontenac,” Works, viii. 465.]

III

The Potency of Peace

Christ bids His disciples realize the potency of their new possession. The citadel of their soul is now invulnerable. “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.”

1. This peace becomes the antidote to all dismay and despondency.—In the slow sad experience of life a Christian is in no wise exempt from losses and failures. It may be that he will realize that the argosy of his earthly hopes and plans has suffered shipwreck: yet the Lord is faithful who has promised, not “I will give thee success,” but “I will give thee rest.” Or he may find himself bereft and desolate and haunted with the dread of bleak, solitary years to come. Time, the subtle thief of youth, will rob him of most treasures at last, except that peace which the world can neither give nor take away. As we gaze down the shadowy avenue of our own future, who would not quail to think of those dark possibilities which it conceals, if he could not hear the Voice which says, “My peace I give unto you: let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid”?

One of the greatest proofs of the blessed and eternal character of Christianity is that it applies to, and satisfies, the very deepest want and craving of our nature. The deepest want of man is not a desire for happiness, but a craving for peace; not a wish for the gratification of every desire, but a craving for the repose of acquiescence in the will of God; and it is this that Christianity promises.1 [Note: F. W. Robertson, Sermons, iii. 138.]

What rest is to the body, peace is to the mind. Peace internal, peace external, peace eternal, peace with men, peace with God, peace with oneself. “Seek God,” says Fénelon, “within yourself, and you will assuredly find Him, and with Him peace and joy. One word from Christ calmed the troubled sea. One glance from Him to us can do the same within us now.”2 [Note: Lord Avebury, Peace and Happiness, 356.]

Peace is what all desire, but all do not care for the things that pertain unto true peace.

My peace is with the humble and gentle of heart; in much patience shall thy peace be.

If thou wilt hear me and follow my voice, thou shalt be able to enjoy much peace.

What then shall I do, Lord?

In every matter look to thyself, as to what thou sayest; and direct thy whole attention unto this, to please me alone, and neither to desire nor to seek any thing besides me.

But of the words or deeds of others, judge nothing rashly; neither do thou entangle thyself with things not entrusted unto thee. Thus it may come to pass that thou mayest be little or seldom disturbed.

But never to feel any disturbance at all, nor to suffer any trouble of mind or body, belongs not to this life, but to the state of eternal rest.1 [Note: Thomas à Kempis, Of the Imitation of Christ, bk. iii. ch. xxv.]

2. It is a peace superior to outward circumstances.—The world has tried hard to put an end to the Christian’s peace, and it has never been able to accomplish that. The whole might of our enemies cannot take it away. Poverty cannot destroy it; the Christian in his rags can have peace with God. Sickness cannot mar it; lying on his bed, the saint is joyful in the midst of the fires. Persecution cannot ruin it, for persecution cannot separate the believer from Christ, and while he is one with Christ his soul is full of peace. “Put your hand here,” said the martyr to his executioner, when he was led to the stake, “put your hand here, and now put your hand on your own heart, and feel which beats the hardest, and which is the most troubled.” The executioner was struck with awe, when he found the Christian man as calm as though he were going to a wedding feast, while he himself was all agitation at having to perform so desperate a deed.

No harm can come to the least of the little ones who believe in Christ, and are faithful and true to Him. At the centre of the wild cyclone, which bears devastation and ruin in its awful sweep, there is a spot which is so quiet that a leaf is scarcely stirred, where a little child might sleep undisturbed. So in the heart of this world’s most terrific storms and convulsions there is a place of perfect security. It is the place of duty and trust. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.”2 [Note: J. R. Miller, Glimpses through Life’s Windows, 132.]

When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean,

And billows wild contend with angry roar,

’Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion,

That perfect stillness reigneth evermore.

Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,

And silver waves chime ever peacefully;

And no rude storm, how fierce soe’er it flieth,

Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.

So, in the heart that knows Thy love, O Saviour,

There is a temple, sacred evermore,

And all the tumult of life’s angry voices

Dies in hushed silence at its peaceful door.

Far, far away, the roar of passion dieth,

And loving thoughts rise calm and peacefully;

And no rude storm, how fierce soe’er it flieth,

Disturbs the soul that dwells, O Lord, in Thee.

O rest of rests! O peace serene, eternal!

Thou ever livest, and Thou changest never;

And in the secret of Thy presence dwelleth

Fulness of joy, for ever and for ever!1 [Note: Harriet Beecher Stowe.]

3. It is a peace that keeps the heart pure and fresh.

A tourist writes of a spring as sweet as any that ever gushed from sunny hillside, which one day he found by the sea, when the tides had ebbed away. Taking the cup, he tasted the water, and it was sweet. Soon the sea came again, and poured its bitter surf over the little spring, hiding it out of sight.

Like a fair star, thick buried in a cloud,

Or life in the grave’s gloom,

The well, enwrapped in a deep watery shroud,

Sank to its tomb.

When the tide ebbed away, the tourist stood once more by the spring to see if the brackish waves had left their bitterness in its waters; but they were sweet as ever.

While waves of bitterness rolled o’er its head,

Its heart had folded deep

Within itself, and quiet fancies led,

As in a sleep;

Till, when the ocean loosed his heavy chain

And gave it back to-day,

Calmly it turned to its own life again,

And gentle way.

So does Christ’s peace refresh the poisoned heart and jaded spirit.

If sin be in the heart,

The fairest sky is foul, and sad the summer weather,

The eye no longer sees the lambs at play together,

The dull ear cannot hear the birds that sing so sweetly,

And all the joy of God’s good earth is gone completely,

If sin be in the heart.

If peace be in the heart,

The wildest winter storm is full of solemn beauty,

The midnight lightning flash but shows the path of duty,

Each living creature tells some new and joyous story,

The very trees and stones all catch a ray of glory,

If peace be in the heart.1 [Note: Charles Francis Richardson.]

Christ’s Gift of Peace

Literature

Aitchison (J.), The Children’s Own, 37.

Armitage (W. J.), The Fruit of the Spirit, 29.

Benson (R. M.), The Final Passover, ii. (pt. i.) 418.

Bernard (T. D.), The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ, 184.

Darlow (T. H.), The Upward Calling, 49

Knight (G. H.), Divine Upliftings, 51.

Landels (W.), Until the Day Break, 93.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: John ix.–xiv., 372.

Meyer (F. B.), Present Tenses, 9.

Nicoll (W. R.), Sunday Evening, 249.

Parker (J.), City Temple Pulpit, iii. 2.

Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 128.

Smith (G. S.), Victory over Sin and Death, 65.

Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, vi., No. 300.

Thom (J. H.), Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ, ii. 172.

Thomas (J.), Sermons: Myrtle Street Pulpit, iv. 221.

Tulloch (J.), Some Facts of Religion and of Life, 48.

Vaughan (J. S.), Earth to Heaven, 94.

Watson (J.), The Upper Room, 92.

British Congregationalist, Aug. 6, 1908, p. 122 (Jowett).

Christian World Pulpit, xlvii. 94 (Cameron Lees); lxxix. 76 (Macfarland).

Homiletic Review, i. 305 (Metcalf).