Peace: What it is

“Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.”—John xiv. 27.

These words were spoken to the Apostles on the night of our Lord’s betrayal. A few hours after they had received this gift of peace, their souls were in more awful disquietude than they had ever been. They saw Him, in Whom they trusted that He should redeem Israel, delivered up to the heathen. Their own rulers condemned Him; no hosts of Angels appeared to rescue Him; presently they themselves forsook Him and fled. That last act must have added to all their other sorrows the sharpest stings of conscience. They had not only lost Him, but themselves. The Cross and the grave did not separate Him from them so much as the recollection that they had proved false to Him.

How strangely must the thought, “He said, I leave you peace, I give you peace,” have mingled with these confusions! What peace had He bequeathed to them? Where was it? How could they claim it? Nothing seemed further from them than this. Nay, there was something yet more fearful in their minds: He Who gave them peace, had seemed Himself to lose it. They had seen Him in the Agony of the Garden; they heard the cry upon the Cross. Was it not one of conflict and anguish? Did it not seem as if the whole world were at war with Him, and as if He were forsaken by His Father?

And yet, brethren, these were the very hours which interpreted to the Disciples the words they had heard, but not understood, at the Last Supper; to these they must have turned in all their after life, when they would consider the nature and reality and fulness of the blessing which our Lord assured to them.

I. “Peace I leave with you.” What! peace with the people about them,—with the rulers of the synagogue, with proconsuls or emperors? He had warned them in this very discourse that all these would carry on with them a continual war. He had come into the world with a sword. His Gospel would divide men asunder, in the same nation, in the same household. He had told them this that they might not be offended. It was strange that when they preached of mercy and goodwill to men, they should stir up rage and hatred. But He said it would be so, and they found it was so. The peace then which He spoke of must be something different from external ease and quietness. “In the world ye shall have tribulation,” was part of His legacy. But did it mean that they should have peace within their own circle, if there was war in the world? For a few months or weeks after the day of Pentecost they might have thought this gift was really theirs. They had all things common; they ate their bread with joy and singleness of heart. But soon there arose in that infant community heartburnings and hypocrisies; widows of Greek proselytes murmuring against the Hebrews, because they were neglected in the daily ministration; men and women seeking to deceive men and God by boasting that they had laid the whole price of their possessions at the Apostles’ feet when they had kept back a part. Speedily there were debatings about circumcision; Apostles separating one from another because the contention was so sharp between them; St. Paul withstanding St. Peter to the face, because he was to be blamed. By giving peace, our Lord could not mean that they would find all quiet within the chosen body, any more than in the outward world.

Did it mean then freedom from internal conflict, from fierce temptations to pride, self-glorification, to lust, to covetousness, to open sin, to unbelief, to apostasy? How little St. Paul took it to signify this, these words from the Epistle to the Ephesians may testify: “We wrestle,” he says, “not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, with the rulers of the darkness of this world, with spiritual wickedness in high places.” What description of a battle could you have more terrible than this? And it is a battle with internal spiritual enemies; and it is a battle which Apostles had to wage as much as their converts. The peace Christ spoke of must be something else than this, or it had not been really left, really given, in spite of the words which seemed to witness that it had.

II. But what wonderful light lay in that clause, “My peace I give unto you”! As if He had said: “You know, for you have seen, that I was not exempt from the contradiction of the world: it hated Me before it hated you. And you know that—for your own hearts tell you—I was not exempt from the hardness and ingratitude of true as well as false disciples. I endured misunderstandings, perverseness, desertion, betrayal, before you did. And you can remember that while you were sleeping, I was wrestling with unseen enemies, with dreadful temptations. Before you had any experience of such warfare, I had resisted unto blood. My peace then is not exemption from any of these trials; and if you wish for one, you cannot have the other. But it is precisely that by which I was enabled to pass through these; to bear the opposition of sinners, not to be crushed by the unkindness of friends, to drink the wine-cup to the dregs. That is My peace, which can live on in an element of strife, sorrow, helplessness, even hopelessness; which can sustain them and rise out of them, proving itself to be mightier. This was My peace, the peace which I had in the Father, My filial union with Him, My filial trust in Him, which the darkness of all things around me, of Nature, of human creatures, of My own senses and understanding which I had given up to death, could not extinguish, which survived when My Will could feel only anguish and desertion, first saying, Not Mine, but Thine; and then giving up the spirit unto the Father’s hands. My peace I give unto you,—this filial union to Him, filial trust in Him Who has revealed Himself to you in Me, Whose love for you is that which I have shown forth in My life and death.”

III. In this way the events that followed the night of the Passover, which seemed to confute the words that were spoken upon it, will at last have made them clear. But not in this way only; the sin of the disciples, on that night which more utterly banished peace from their minds than all which they beheld, must itself have told them what they had need of, and where it must be sought. They had trusted in themselves, and had found themselves fools; they had thought they loved their Master, and when love should have flowed forth, it was dry; then came a bitter sense of shame and separation; they were indeed alone. But the Lord turned and looked upon them; the recollection of His love came upon them as it had never come before; the sense of having slighted it overcame the sense of having dishonoured themselves; the tears of Peter came in place of the remorse of Judas. Then did they know that the peace had been left to them, though till then they had not found it. The love which had been with them so long had not deserted them; though it seemed to be only an image reflected from the past, it was indeed near them. It had crushed them; had broken through their pride; had called out their sorrow; if it was dead, then it had a might even in death. What they had loved was in the grave, but the love was among them more than before, giving them a vision of peace, though all about them and in them seemed at war, a stronger hope than they could realize when He Himself told them He should rise again. This love and peace and hope could not be their own; all that was their own they had cast away. This was their wonderful preparation for that evening when He stood again among them, and said, “Peace be unto you,” and showed them His hands and His side. They were the old words which they had heard often from Him; perhaps the salutation with which He welcomed them each morning; that which they were to bestow upon each house they entered. They were the words which had sounded so solemn and strange on the night before the Crucifixion; they were those of which the savour had been preserved through the hour of their travail; they were those which met them when they felt that a new man was born into the world. He vanished out of their sight; the gift did not depend upon their power of seeing Him. He had left it with them; He had given it to them. It was a store to which they might have recourse, not in sunny hours, not when all was cheerful in the world without or within, but in times of weariness and desolation. It was a store, not for their eyes, but one for their hearts to feed upon; it was not one which they could appropriate, it was His peace, not theirs. Yet, as He had said, “I will be with you,” they knew that this Peace was with them. It might be hidden from them, because He was hidden; but in seeking Him they sought it, in finding Him they found it. Not as the world giveth them had He given to them. Its gifts are palpable, tangible. And yet we cannot bring them near to ourselves; we may have them and yet want them. The heart may not be able to enjoy them, though the hand grasps them. This has been the continual complaint against the world’s gifts. They are good for nothing except as we may make them good.

“Ours is their wedding garment, ours their shroud.”

They are objects of delight or loathing to us according to the state we are in. But they have no power to make that state different. They must have a light from within to show their colours by. The colours do not bring the light, and too generally they find none. Therefore men say, “These things were so different when we were young. How bright they looked once! How they have faded!” We all know that it is the eye which has become dimmer; the things are as they were. Perhaps they never really seemed much brighter; in youth there may have been other shadows which we have now forgotten. Only the heart is certain that it ought to enjoy, that it is meant to enjoy, and therefore will persuade itself that it once did enjoy. It has a witness in itself that there is another kind of gift from these, a gift which is directly to the heart, and not to the heart only through the eye; a gift which does not require a particular condition of mind to receive it, but which makes that condition; a gift that brings the light by which it is contemplated, and then throws light upon all things around; a gift which depends upon no accidents, but which compels accidents to obey it, drawing strength and nourishment from those things which seem most contrary to it. And this gift, which all men know that they want, is that which Christ bestowed upon His disciples. Not one which might be very precious if they had peace of mind to entertain it with, but this peace of mind itself. Not a peace of mind which must be produced or kept up by regulating the atmosphere in which it dwells, but which may safely expose itself to all heats and chills, nay, which makes men most conscious of its power when they are suffering most from either, or from each in succession. Not a peace of mind which we are to keep, but which is to keep us in the knowledge and love of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. Here is the mystery of this gift; here are the tokens that not as the world gives, He gives, Who is the Lord of man’s inner being, not merely of the circumstances which surround men, though He is Lord of these too, and does dispose and govern them in such wise that they shall all be instruments for the manifestation of Himself, and for the redemption of the creature who is formed in His image.

IV. Therefore, brethren, though it was fitting that we should consider these words first in their reference to those who heard them first,—though the history of the Apostles illustrates their meaning and force as no other could,—they must be ours, or they could not have been theirs. All the gifts which were bestowed upon them at the Passover are ours still. If He gave them the bread, and said, “Take, eat: this is My flesh”; if He poured out the wine, and said, “This is the blood of the New Testament,” He imparted these treasures by them to all generations; He endowed us with them in their names. This gift of peace could not, as I have shown you, have any special application to the Apostles, merely because the giver was sitting visibly before them. It was when He became invisible that they knew what had been imparted to them; it was when they received it as an invisible blessing. Nor was it theirs because they were stronger or better than others; only when they knew that they were as weak and evil as any did they enter into possession of it. He chose them to be heralds of His Grace and Peace to mankind; if they claimed these gifts in their own right, and not as stewards, the gifts were not realized. To us, then, as truly as to them,—to us upon the same conditions with them,—does He say, “Peace I leave with you: My peace I give unto you.” Far off as this peace may seem to be from us, it is really nigh at hand to every one of us. We must think we pursue it hither and thither, and it seems always in advance of us, we do not come up with it. But that which we are pursuing is only a shadow; the substance from which it is cast is within. The heart cannot find it abroad; at home the treasure is laid up, though it may be in a chamber we have never visited; in one that we have shunned, because we fancy it to be haunted with strange spectres. Haunted it is with these spectres, and greatly they will scare us, when first we venture in. The Disciples were startled when they found what heartlessness and cowardice were in them, though they had thought themselves ready to die for Him. Such anguish has many a man experienced, when the secret passages of his spirit were suddenly made known to him. He cannot escape the discovery; it often comes to him on a sick-bed, when he is least able to face the terrors. But they may be faced; there is a reward for each one who does not fly from the truth. If he will be humbled by the sight of the dark spectres which dwell in the chambers of his soul’s imagery, he will find in them that which is not dark and spectral. He will find the Love, against which the evil in him has been contending, a perfect form of brightness and purity which the evil spirits are mocking, and which can bid them depart. If he will confess this Presence too; if he will say, not only “I have sinned,” but “Against Thee have I sinned; against Thee, Who hast cared for me, sought for me, striven with me,” then a new light will burst upon him. In renouncing all his own pretensions to be anything or to have anything, he acquires that which is truly his, an inalienable possession, a treasure in Heaven which thief cannot seize nor moth corrupt. If all our evil lies in resistance to a Righteous Being Who is ruling over us, then all good must be a submission to Him. This is Peace,—the peace depending on One Who is worthy of our dependence, the peace of not seeking that from outward things which they cannot give, the peace of not seeking that from our own nature which is not in it. The Peace is there, in our hearts, but it is there while the heart is seeking its delight in another, while it is forgetting itself. When it finds its object, it is at peace: it cannot be till then. Therefore Christ left this dowry to all human hearts, when He revealed Himself to them as their proper and ever-present object; in them, and above them; united with them, yet always distinct from them; blending with them as the sky in the far horizon seems to blend with the sea, as the setting sun seems to share his glory between them. This peace therefore is given to men; yet He ever gives it afresh to them. They have it only while they are content to receive it; the moment they take it as their property, it is gone. Not as the world gives them, He gives. The world teaches us to claim each thing as our own. It says nothing is ours till we can secure it against other men. We hold this peace by the opposite tenure; we have it only while we care to distribute it, while we seek that every one should share it with us. It is theirs, it is ours, because it is His Who died for all and Who lives for all.

And as this peace was first realized as a deliverance from strife, without and within, so it must be held fast in the midst of the same strife. If ease and sunshine come, it is well; but we are not to look for them. If joyful sensations are given, if our spirits have an unwonted buoyancy and freedom, we are to be thankful; but to-morrow all this may be changed. If we are provoking no hostility, let us ask how that happens; for the Author of this Peace was a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence; He was called a friend of publicans and sinners, and a blasphemer.

This Peace was given the night before His crucifixion. When He rose, the pledges of it were His wounded hands and side. They are always the pledges of it. In the communion of His body and blood, we are to learn what it is for ourselves, what it is for mankind. As we partake of that, we confess that it is for the most wretched sons of earth, because it is fixed and eternal in the Heavens.