Peace without and within.
Peace without and within.
Christ Jesus purchases transcendent peace for us at the cost of his own blood.
As a follow-up to some of my other posts that deal with the peace that God gives us, I felt it worthwhile to share with you yet another excerpt from the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, whose comments on the peace that “passeth all understanding” serve to instill in us a hearty sense of what the “peace of God” actually is (Phil. 4:6–7). Indeed, the peace of God is fundamentally peace “with” God. It comes about through the accomplishments of our Mediator, who puts to rest the enmity that exists between us and the Father by bearing it himself. Christ endures the storm of hostility, purchasing with his own blood transcendent peace for all the saints of God. Maclaren writes:
We have no peace, because we have not found and grasped the truth objects for any of our faculties. God is the only possession that brings quiet. The heart hungers until it feeds upon Him. The mind is satisfied with no truth until behind truth it finds a Person who is true. The will is enslaved and wretched until in God it recognises legitimate and absolute authority, which it is blessing to obey. Love puts out its yearnings like the filaments that gossamer spiders end out into the air, seeking in vain for something to fasten upon until it touches God, and clings there. There is no rest for a man until he rests in God. The reason why this world is so full of excitement is because it is so empty of peace, and the reason why it is so empty of peace is because it is so void of God. The peace of God brings peace with Him, and peace within. It unites our hearts to fear His name, and draws all the else turbulent and confusedly flowing impulses of the great deep of the spirit after itself, in a tidal wave, as the mood draws the waters of the gathered ocean. The peace of God is peace with Him, and peace within. (14:2.42)
May you be filled with a tremendous sense of God’s peace as you come to know, more and more, God’s Person, the Lord Jesus. He is the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6), the ultimate Peace-maker, who gives his peace precisely to those who are troubled (John 14:27). May our minds stay on him and his perfect peace, even in these perplexing days (Isa. 26:3).
Grace and peace, friends.
Works cited:
Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture, Vols. 1–17 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1944).