Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’ If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I.
“And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe.
I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.
But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go from here. (John 14:27–31)
Two painters were once approached and asked to paint a picture that portrayed the idea of peace. The first chose to paint a still, lonely lake without a ripple disturbing the surface, somewhere among far-off mountains.
The second painted a thundering waterfall, with winds whipping the spray about. But protruding from the waterfall was a thin tree branch, and on the branch was a robin sitting on its nest, shielded and protected by the roaring falls. Which one was true peace? The absence of trouble? Or calm within the trouble?
I think most people are chasing some version of the first kind, hoping for a tranquil, problem free life. They want peace on the outside, and then they think they will have peace on the inside. But maybe not. George Simenon, the writer of many detective novels once said, “I have only one ambition left, to be completely at peace with myself. I doubt if I shall ever manage it. I do not think it is possible for anyone. It is not a question of money, for that kind of happiness must come from within yourself. I do not know any man, however successful, who is completely happy. I write because if I did not, I should die.”
Jesus would disagree with George Simenon, and say that He offers, and gives just that: both inner and outer peace. Whether the inner storm is guilt, or discontent, or meaninglessness, or confusion, or loneliness, grief, sorrow, depression, Christ promises peace. Whether the outer storm is sickness, poverty, personal attacks, tragedy, loss, persecution, betrayal, Christ promises peace. He promises it, more than once here in John 14-16.
As we’ve been studying this passage, we know it is a Farewell Address, as Jesus prepares to go to the Cross, and no longer be the rabbi and mentor and full-time present companion of these men. It is a parting moment. Goodbyes are hard, and emotions are strong. Those who know The Return of the King know the scene where the heroes are parting for the last time, and Gandalf says, “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
But this particular parting is filling the hearts of the disciples not only with sorrow, but with worry, fear. They are worried about what life will be like without Jesus, fearful of how anything can succeed without powerful Jesus right there with them. They are now anxious, afraid, nervous.
So the Lord kindly promises them peace, peace of a very particular kind. He is not promising them a trouble-free life, or promising them the absence of things that people worry about. Instead, He promises them a kind of peace that doesn’t make sense to the world, a kind of peace that you cannot get from the world. And if you have tried the world’s methods to get peace, and they have failed you, then you should be interested to hear about the kind of peace that Jesus gives. As Jesus describes this peace, we can see two attributes of this peace: its quality, and its cost. What it is, and what it takes to get it.
I. The Quality of Christian Peace
Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’ If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I.
“And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe.
The first thing you should see here is that Jesus promises to leave with us and give a unique kind of peace. He calls it “my peace”. This is the kind of peace Jesus Himself had and has, and now shares it with us. Later on, He will speak about His joy being in us, and later His love being in us; here it is His peace.
Now what is this peace like? First, notice what it is not like. It is not as the world gives. In other words, this peace is not the kind of peace the world gives you, and it is not achieved the way the world achieves it. Think about the sort of peace the world chases after. For them, peace is a problem-free life. The life with so much money that you can solve every problem by buying a solution. Peace is a life where you get to do your own thing, your own way, without annoying people getting in your way. It’s your dream holiday that doesn’t end, with no worries about money, or health, or danger. Actually, on close inspection, it’s a pretty selfish life, a life with very little courage, or initiative, or work, all of which are good and holy things. In fact, it’s a life with very few people, because people disturb my selfish peace, and if they’d all just go away, until I call them, I’d have plenty of peace. That’s peace as the world imagines it.
So how do they obtain that peace? Well, to get that peace, you must embrace a very stressful life. See, the only way to have the world’s peace is to master your circumstances, to be able to control everything in your environment.
You must push and compete and win the rat race. You must live with a host of stress-induced conditions like panic-attacks, high blood pressure, digestive problems, insomnia, a weakened autoimmune system with more viral and bacterial infections, fungal infections, and allergies. So while you do that, you medicate yourself into a more calm state: you take anti-depressants, tranquilisers, sleeping pills, alcohol, maybe even recreational drugs. You also distract yourself with endless media on screens, you escape into the worlds of sports and games and hobbies. Not all of those things are wrong, but this is how the world obtains its peace.
The funny thing about the world’s peace is that it seems to be quite troubled, and quite afraid. Those are the two words Jesus uses in verse 27: Let not your heart be troubled (‘stirred up, distressed, inner turmoil), neither let it be afraid (cowering away, terrified and shrinking back). In pursuit of the world’s peace, people are very troubled, and very afraid. Tortured by what-if scenarios, racked with uncertainties, afraid of tomorrow, nervous, jittery.
Jesus says, don’t be this way. That’s not my peace. That’s the world’s peace, and you can tell it is pseudo-peace. You’ll gnaw yourself from the inside-out if you go after that kind of peace.
So we’ve seen the negative: what it is not. So what is this peace that Jesus gives, if it is not about controlling my circumstances, winning the rat race? Well, you can see the quality of this peace in the words of Jesus from verse 27 to 29.
The first quality of Christian peace is the presence of a person.
Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you. Now if we just go back to the verses before that, we see that what Jesus is going to leave with His disciples is actually a who.
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. (John 14:26)
The Spirit of God coming to dwell within believers is the true source of Christian peace. Paul tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. “for the kingdom of God is…righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17) To have the Spirit of God within is the very opposite of when people have a demon or an unclean spirit within. Such people are filled with inner restlessness, a raging disquiet, a stormy sea of fear and terror. But the Spirit of God is the very opposite. He is the Spirit of perfect order and decency. Where He comes, chaos turns to order. The Spirit cleans, purifies, beautifies where He goes. To have Him within is to have a Spirit whose urging on you may be strong, but not tormenting, whose desire to clean and purify is a gentle pressure, not a nagging drone.
As we have seen, if you lovingly internalise the Word, and then seek to lovingly externalise the Word, the Spirit of God illuminates that Word. He vocalises the Word of God in your soul, making it live. Why is that peace? Because it is having a companion within, who always knows what the right thing is to do, and who always knows the right thing to say. When you are in a deeply worrisome situation, one of the greatest gifts is a loving spouse, or parent, or friend, who says, “It will be okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
The second quality of Christian peace is proper priorities.
If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I.
Jesus says, right now, worry is consuming you. But if you were controlled by love, then worry would not be consuming you. See, I’m about to complete my work on Earth, and return to my Father. When Jesus says, “My Father is greater than I”, He is referring to His state as the human Messiah, the incarnate Son of God, subject to limitations, experiencing a voluntary humiliation. He is not saying that the eternal Son of God is lesser than the Father. That would destroy the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus means that He is experiencing a temporary inferiority in His mission as the Saviour, and as He is about to go back to the Father, that will soon be over.
The point is, if these men were possessed by love for Christ, instead of selfish concerns, their love for Him would have driven out their worries about themselves. If their priorities were in the right place, it would have made their fears look small, and their God look big.
Have you ever been really worried about something, which might have been pretty small or petty – a bill to pay, an argument you had with someone, something needing fixing, and then suddenly something much bigger comes along: a possible cancer diagnosis, a friend’s marriage is splitting up, your child was victimised by a relative, a business partner is resigning. What happens to that first worry now? You virtually forget about it, because something much more important has taken centre-stage; that previous worry looks trivial and tiny now by comparison.
Do you know that is true of all worries? All the things that disturb our peace are big when viewed on their own, but small when viewed next to bigger problems. That’s why we call people petty when all they’re concerned with are trivial things like TV shows, and the price of their favourite lipstick, or whether the gym was too crowded. Take those people for one day into a slum, into a refugee camp, into a war-zone, and those worries will disappear.
A Christian may be worried about what they will eat, or what they will wear, but then Jesus says – have bigger priorities. Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. Love me, He say to His disciples, so that the thought of Me ascending victoriously to My Father is much bigger, and more consoling to you than your present fears about life without me.
The Christian who tries to think about life’s problems through the lens of Scripture begins to find that a tonne of worries simply shrink and evaporate. Priorities – what you love most – determines what you fear most. There’s a reason both Paul and John connect love and fear. Paul says
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)
John says:
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18)
Fill a man with a big vision: a desire for world missions to succeed, a longing to see the gospel proclaimed, a zeal for truth, a compassion for the lost, and needy and suffering, and that man will not be bothered by a thousand little mosquitoes of worldly worry. Pray for a big heart and a large hope, and you will find many of your worries begin to seem like a child’s fear of the dark.
Christ’s peace is the presence of a person. Christ’s peace is proper priorities.
The third quality is that Christian peace is prior preparedness.
“And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe.
What seems like a throwaway line is an important part of this peace. Jesus says, a big part of your worry is about the future. Most worry is. I am now telling you what is going to happen, so that when it does, your fear, will turn into faith. You will believe. When Jesus is taken from them, instead of them fearing more, they should say, Jesus prepared us for this. We knew this was going to happen.
There’s nothing like preparedness to give you peace. If you board a plane, and the pilot tells you, “Ladies and gentleman, we’re about to take off, About 30 minutes in, we’re going to hit some fairly severe turbulence. Make sure you’re buckled in, but we should be through it after 40 minutes.” Now when the plane starts to shake and rattle, and even do some violent dips, you’re not as worried. You were prepared, you were told what to expect.
Christian peace comes from previous preparedness. The Christian is in this enviable position of having our Lord, who knows the future, give us the basic outline of how life is going to fall out.
Now that doesn’t mean God gives us the dates and times of particular events. That’s not preparedness, that’s occult knowledge; that’s divination.
No, instead, God prepares His children in these kinds of ways. He tells us to expect our flesh to war against our Spirit. He tells us to expect that the world will hate our message and our beliefs. He even tells us how His message will divide up families. He tells us to expect Satan to be like a hungry lion, seeking ways to deceive or intimidate us. He tells us that the godly will suffer persecution for their faith. He tells us to expect some chastening or discipline from Him. He uses books like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes to tell us to expect both the general laws of blessing for good work and cursing for evil, as well as exceptions to that rule, with unfairness, and oppression and corruption. He tells us what to expect from a worldly culture, from evil governments. The book of 1 Peter tells us
Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; (1 Peter 4:12)
We could keep listing out all the ways that Scripture prepares us for what life is going to be like, what people are going to be like, whether there’ll be suffering or problems, and why they happen, and what God promises us in the midst of all of that. In fact, when you start looking at the Bible this way, you’ll see huge proportions of it are God telling His children what to expect life to be like.
And if I were to boil down to the root of lot of counseling problems, especially depression, and worry, and anxiety, and anger, at the root you often find people with wrong expectations. People who thought the ride was going to be different. People who are still thinking, “Why me? Why this way? What I do to deserve this?” But if they’d been immersed in the Word, they would have seen how everywhere you look in the Bible, God is telling you before it comes, so that you can believe when it does.
Here then is the great difference between Christ’s peace and the world’s. Christ’s peace is not a selfish peace, trying to escape, or trying to control circumstances. Christ’s peace is given to you in the middle of a busy, productive life filled with problems to solve and challenges to meet. Christ’s peace is not a pill, or a movie, or a place. Christ’s peace is a person, the Holy Spirit within. Christ’s peace is proper priorities, getting His vision of life, seeking His kingdom first, and letting love control you, not fear. Christ’s peace is preparedness for life, insider knowledge from the Creator in His Word telling you what to expect life will be like.
These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
Now all of this comes to us free in Christ. But because it is free, does not mean it was cheap. Free grace came at a high cost. And it is that high cost of Christian peace that we see in the next verses.
II. The Cost of Christian Peace
I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.
But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go from here.
Here Jesus makes it clear that time is running out for the great confrontation, the great climactic moment of His ministry. He says the ruler of this world is coming. Who is that? That is a title for Satan, the Evil One. Jesus says, He has nothing in Me. That means, Satan has no hold on Jesus, no claim on Him, and nothing in Jesus that He can exploit. They are complete and total enemies, committed to opposite sides.
Jesus says He is not going to talk much longer, because the ruler of this world is coming. What does that mean? How was Satan coming? You might remember something that happened in the Upper Room earlier:
When Jesus had said these things, He was troubled in spirit, and testified and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.”
Then the disciples looked at one another, perplexed about whom He spoke.
Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved.
Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask who it was of whom He spoke.
Then, leaning back on Jesus’ breast, he said to Him, “Lord, who is it?”
Jesus answered, “It is he to whom I shall give a piece of bread when I have dipped it.” And having dipped the bread, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
Now after the piece of bread, Satan entered him. Then Jesus said to him, “What you do, do quickly.”
But no one at the table knew for what reason He said this to him.
For some thought, because Judas had the money box, that Jesus had said to him, “Buy those things we need for the feast,” or that he should give something to the poor.
Having received the piece of bread, he then went out immediately. And it was night. (John 13:21–30)
Judas was possessed by Satan, controlling him to get Jesus betrayed and on a cross. It seems Satan did not fully understand what the cross would achieve, and how it would lead to his own defeat. So Satan was seeking to bring about the execution of Jesus. He possesses Judas to do that.
Now undoubtedly, Judas went to the chief priests, told them to assemble a party of soldiers and servants to arrest Jesus. Judas was going to take them to the Upper Room. Jesus knows that Judas is coming back, and since he is possessed by Satan, it is true to say, the prince of this world is coming.
So Jesus knows He must finish His talk with the disciples, because time is running out. That is why at the end of verse 31, He say, Arise, let us go from here. This signals the moment when Jesus moves His disciples from the Upper Room and begins the walk to Gethsemane. Along the way, He probably passes some vines, which may be why in chapter 15, He speaks of Himself as the true vine and disciples as the branches.
The point is, Jesus wants to buy some time to do extra teaching, and praying, before Judas arrives. So He is going to move the disciples, and by the time Judas arrives and find the room empty, He’ll have to guess where they have gone and proceed there. All of this will give Jesus time to finish this teaching, and pray in the Garden.
Importantly though, Jesus is not running from Satan. Jesus is not afraid. No, He tells us what He is doing in verse 31:
But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do.
What I’m about to do is an act of obedience, which means it is an act of love. Remember, He already told us, if you love me, keep my commandments? Well, He is going to practice what He preaches. To prove His ultimate love for the Father, He is about to do the ultimate act of obedience. He is going to go to the Cross. He is going to take on a cosmos of evil on the Cross. He will be the Light, and all the darkness of the world will be poured on Him and seek to extinguish Him. He will be the Life, and all the Death that sin deserves, all of Sheol, all of Gehenna will be poured on Him and seek to snuff it out. He will be Love, and all the selfishness and hatred of the world will land on Him and seek to choke it out. And if Jesus were a mere man, if Jesus were an angel, then Light, Life, and Love would have been extinguished, killed and destroyed. But three days later, Light, Life and Love will come out of the Tomb, and the only marks on Him, will be the self-chosen scars on his hands, feet, and sides, as permanent reminders of His love.
That’s the cost of sending His Spirit to reside in us as holy temples. That’s the cost of giving us new hearts so we have proper priorities. That’s the cost of preparing us for life, so that all those promises in the Word are sealed with His Yea and Amen, and every Word of God proves true. Christian peace is a high privilege bought at a very high price.
If this peace belongs to Christians then two questions remain. First, are you one?
Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified. (2 Corinthians 13:5)
We are disqualified if we have never called on Messiah Jesus to forgive and cleanse and save us and enter in through His Spirit.
The second question is, Christian, why would you turn to the world’s peace, when you can have this?
“For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, And hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:13)
Why turn to money, and control, and medication, and escapism and distraction, when you can have a Person, who drives out fear with right loving priorities, and who assures us of the future with prior preparedness.
So which is peace? The tranquil mountain lake, or the robin in her nest on a waterfall? You can spend your life chasing that mountain lake, and wear ourself out, or become that robin.