John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
As I considered this morning what exactly the “Peace” that Jesus gives is, I noticed a few things:
First, His discussion of giving peace comes directly after talking about the Spirit who will bring His words (His self-revealing words) to mind. Second, He says that the peace He is going to give us is HIS OWN peace….Hmmm…
So, what is the peace of God the Son? It seems to me that it is His joyful communion of love with the Father, mediated eternally in the Spirit. The invincible steadiness of God’s love for God within the Trinity is the most perfect peace that can be known. This, in conjunction with the teaching on the Spirit in v.26 makes me thing that the Peace Jesus gives must be–or be intimately associated with–the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit makes the words of Christ known to us (v.26) and it is in His words (and works, which I think are included), that we know the Son and thus know the Father. And it is in knowing Son and Father (by the Spirit) that we enter into the fellowship that IS eternal life (John 17:3). I think it is this word-recalling, Christ-communicating, God-revealing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives that is the Peace Jesus is talking about here in verse 27.
As the Spirit of God–who is Himself the love/joy/peace of the Trinity–as the Spirit of God makes God known to us in the person and work of the Son, we are established in the same unshakable peace that held steady the heart of our Lord and God as He walked this earth.
