The Gift of His Peace

 

“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” John 14:27.

 

In 14:1 Jesus says, “Do not let your heart be troubled,” then in 16:33, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace.” In the Upper Room Jesus speaks of giving us His peace, His joy (15:11; 17:13), and His glory (17:22). Note that peace, joy, and glory are not things in and of themselves that we receive or consume or pass along or (sadly) merchandise. They are rather the peace of Jesus, the joy of Jesus, and the glory of Jesus – they are found in Him and in Him alone as we live in Him and He lives within us.

 

Consider that Jesus is about to pray in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, that He will soon be betrayed and subjected to the mockery and torture of the high priest and Roman authorities. The shadow of crucifixion looms over the Upper Room as Jesus speaks of His peace, His joy, and His glory – tomorrow He will hang on a cross on Golgotha.  How can Jesus speak of peace, joy, and glory knowing what soon awaits Him?

 

How can we speak of peace, joy, and glory when we are called to experience what Paul terms, “the fellowship of His sufferings,” and are “conformed to His death”? (Phil. 3:10).

 

The Upper Room passage in the Gospel of John begins in 13:1:

 

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”

 

Throughout the Upper Room Jesus speaks of going to the Father, of preparing a place for us, of doing the Father’s will and commandments, of His love for the Father, of the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit living in us and us living in God.

 

Jesus is loving the Father and Jesus is loving us. Jesus is loving us more, and then more, and then even more. When Jesus prays in agony in Gethsemane He is loving us. When He is before the high priest He is loving us. When Jesus is brought before Pilate and Herod and then sent back to Pilate, Jesus is loving us. When Jesus is being mocked and tortured, He is loving us – when the flesh is being torn from His back, when the crown of thorns is pushed down onto His head…Jesus is loving us.

 

Along the Via Dolorosa Jesus is loving us. On the Cross, in those hours in which the holy Lamb of God presents Himself as the one and only offering on our behalf – Jesus is loving us.

 

Can we see that while betrayal and torture and crucifixion are overshadowing the Upper Room, that these things – as real and as dark and as hideous as they are – are themselves overwhelmed and engulfed and obliterated by the glory of the Father, by Jesus seeing the “joy that is set before Him” and Jesus despising the shame associated with the crucifixion (Hebrews 12:1 – 3)?

 

And so Jesus says to the Father, “But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.” (John 17:13).

 

If Jesus so loved us, and if Jesus so passed His peace and joy to us, ought not we to learn, in Him, to love others and give His peace and His joy to them? Ought we not, no matter our personal circumstances, to behold the joy set before us in Jesus Christ, to despise any shame the world may heap upon us, and to share the love and grace and joy and peace and glory of Jesus Christ with others?

 

Is this not, with Paul, desiring “to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His sufferings, being made conformed to His death”? (Phil. 3:10).

 

Jesus gives us His peace that we might be safe places of peace for others, that we might share His peace with others, that in a world gone insane, in a world committing collective suicide in myriad ways - there might be a People who will lay their lives down so that others may come to know the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

 

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Matthew 5:9).

 

Are we giving the gift of the peace of Jesus Christ to others?

 

Are we living as His sons and daughters today?