EPC Australia

Peace sometimes signifies a confluence of temporal good things. This is not the meaning of it here. Our Saviour himself was poor, and a man of sorrows. And he said to his disciples, In the world ye shall have tribulation. Yet at the same time they were to have peace in him. This peace, therefore, must have been something which trouble could not hinder or injure. It must have been a spiritual privilege, composure of mind especially — for here is the source of the greatest perplexity and disquietude — the calm of conscience, arising from a hope of our acceptance in the Beloved. Before it can be enjoyed, the awful breach between God and us must be healed, and the blessed partaker of it be able to say, Thou wast angry with me; but thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me. For there must be a sense of apprehension of God's favour, which is life. I may be pardoned; but if I am ignorant of my forgiveness, my anxieties and uneasinesses will remain. But when He says to my soul, I am thy salvation, then, being justified by faith, I have peace with God; not only peace with him above, but peace with him within, a peace that passeth all understanding.

For who can adequately conceive the value of this donation? We need not descend into the depths of hell, to inquire what the miserable victims of despair would give for a moment's enjoyment of it. Let those speak who have been convinced of sin, who have felt a wounded spirit, and, expecting to fall into the hand of the living God, have exclaimed, What must I do to be saved? What were the feelings of the manslayer, with the avenger of blood urging on at his heels? And what was the change he experienced, as soon as he entered the appointed asylum, and could turn round and face the foe? Say ye - for ye have realized the blessed transition — ye who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before you.

"'Tis a young heav'n on earthly ground.
And glory in the bud."

It is a cluster of the grapes of Eshcol. It weans from the world. It enlivens duty. It smooths the rugged path of adversity. It turns a dying chamber into the house of God and the gate of heaven.

But the Saviour calls it his peace: "My peace I give unto you." It would be a low sense of this, though a true one, that he came and preached it. It was his in an infinitely more expensive way. He procured it for us. He came not to tell us the way to heaven, but to be the way; not to show us how to make our peace with God, but to make it. And he did make it: we were reconciled unto God by the death of his Son. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. He made peace by the blood of his Cross. And he applies it by the agency of his Holy Spirit: enabling us to believe, and enter into rest; and maintaining our hope in all the changes of life, and under a continued sense of our unworthiness and guilt.

Nor is it more his by derivation than distinction. Many have peace; but how unlike his! There is the peace of the sinner. This is of Satanic origin. The strong man armed keepeth his palace and his goods in peace. This peace is worse than war. It is not founded in conviction, but ignorance. It cannot endure thought. It is unworthy of the name of peace. "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." How can a man retire, and go to sleep, when, if he dies before the morning — and how easily may his bed become his grave — God is under an oath to destroy him? He denies it, or forgets. There is the peace of the self-righteous Pharisee, and the peace of the evangelical hypocrite, both of which will prove as the spider's web, and as the giving up of the ghost. There is the peace of the worldling, who, in the calm of his fireside, or evening's walk, musing on his abundance, says, O my soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry. But he may, that very night, have his soul required of him; and then whose are those things which he has provided? What is it to be at ease in our circumstances, and to enjoy peace with our neighbours, and in our families, while we are at war with God, and his wrath abideth on us?

But this man shall be the peace when the Assyrian cometh into the land. Look to him. Repair to him. "He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up all their wounds." While you neglect him, you may seek peace, but you will never find it. But he cries — oh, hear him — "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And is not this the very thing you want? Rest, Rest unto your souls? Believe. Try his word. "Lo this, we have searched it, so it is; hear it, and know thou it for thy good."

Morning Exercises For Everyday In The Year
By Rev. William Jay