Phil. 4:7:—“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.”
THE exact phrase which we have given as the subject of our reflection this afternoon, though one of the most familiar phrases in our religious speech, has a very slender claim to be looked upon as Biblical. It occurs but once in the Bible (Rom. 5:1), and then, as it seems to me (though on this the commentators differ), not in its fundamental sense, or in the sense in which it is probably most prominent in the minds of most of us here this afternoon, but in its subjective sense of consciousness of peace with God. The thing denoted by the phrase is of course a frequent and basal idea in Scripture, though not expressed by the exact phrase now before us. The correlated terms “enmity,” “reconciliation,” “peace,” occur with sufficient frequency and express what may properly be called a fundamental idea of the Gospel.
We are told that we are naturally “enemies” of God, that God looks upon us as such, and that we cherish the feelings appropriate to that condition—being enemies in our minds by wicked works, and because of a carnal mind necessarily at enmity with the Holy God. This enmity we are told Christ has “abolished,” “slain” on His cross, “reconciling” us with God by His propitiatory work. As a result of this “propitiation,” we are told, He has made “peace” (Eph. 2:18); and, therefore, He is called “our peace,” and His Gospel, “the Gospel of peace” (Rom. 10:15; Eph. 6:15). His whole work was “that we might have peace in Him” (Jno. 16:33), and His gospel consisted in “preaching peace by Jesus” (Acts 10:36). Even in the Old Testament prophecy, He is promised as the “Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6), and it is clearly perceived that He is such because the “chastisement of our peace shall be on Him” (Isa. 53:5); in other words, because that punishment by which our sins are expiated and we are reconciled with God should be borne by Him.
There is no lack, therefore, of the most explicit enunciation in Scripture of the fact which our phrase expresses; it is rather one of the pervading representations of Scripture that we are at enmity with God and can have peace with Him only in the blood of Christ. Only it so happens that the connection in which the word “peace” occurs most frequently in Scripture is one which raises our eyes rather to God as the giver of peace than emphasizes the fact that it is with Him that the peace is established. “Peace from God” happens, therefore, to be a commoner Scriptural locution than “peace with God.” “I will give unto him my covenant of peace” (Numb. 28:12), though not spoken with this broad implication may almost be represented as the primary promise of the Old Covenant, under which the longing of God’s people expressed itself in the assurance that “He would speak peace with His people and to His saints” (Psa. 85:8). Wherefore that Old Covenant saint upon whose glad eyes the dawn of salvation had fallen, expresses his joy that the coming of the Day-spring from on high was a promise that now, at length, the feet of God’s people should be guided in the way of peace (Luke 1:79). Accordingly Jesus represents the result of His work as giving peace to His followers (Jno. 16:33)—“My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you” (Jno. 16:27), and His disciples going everywhere “preached peace by Jesus” (Acts 10:36). It is the “peace of God” that passeth all understanding, that the Apostle would have rule in the hearts of His converts (Phil. 4:7); and the prayer that “peace from God” should be on them became the fixed form of Apostolic benediction (Rom. 1:7).
This pervading longing for peace and promise of it as one of the most precious gifts of God, certainly enhances our sense of its value. Perhaps we may say that the chief difference in the feeling of the two terms “peace from God” and “peace with God” is that the primary emphasis in the former falls naturally on subjective peace— though by no means to the exclusion of objective peace; while, with the latter the reverse is the case. When we speak of “peace from God” coming upon us, of the peace of God that passes all understanding “sentrying” our hearts and thoughts, of the peace of Jesus which He left with us, when He added: “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful,” we necessarily think first of all of the deep sense of inner peace and satisfaction which pervades the hearts of none in the world who have not “found their peace” as we say, in Christ. On the other hand, when we speak of “peace with God” our thoughts go primarily back to that great transaction on Calvary when He who is our peace reconciled us to God by His cross, having slain the enmity thereon; and we who were alienated in our wicked minds from Him were brought nigh in the blood of Christ. We cannot think of the one, indeed, without thinking of the other; nor can one exist apart from the other. We cannot have peace of heart, until our real and actual separation from God is bridged by the blood of Christ. We cannot have the breach between God and us healed without a sense of the new relation of peace stealing into our hearts. And possibly we cannot do better to-day than just to realize how interdependent the two are and how rich the peace is which we obtain in Christ Jesus.