²⁵ “All this I have spoken while still with you. ²⁶ But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. ²⁷ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. ²⁸ “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. · ²⁹ I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. ³⁰ I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, ³¹ but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. “Come now; let us leave.”
Christ died to give us the peace that passes all understanding.
Thoughts
- That We Need Peace (25-27) Jesus offers peace to deeply fearful men. Judas has already gone off into the night, Peter’s denial prophesied, and in hours, the rest will scatter. Peace is what each needs most, and the one thing they cannot gin up for themselves. In our day peace means a mood, an outward quiet, the absence of conflict, but Scripture means something much bigger. Shalom means wholeness and flourishing, the safety of a person who goes to sleep absolutely unafraid: I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid (Lev 26:6). It’s not the world’s aloha, and it’s not a polite wish for an easy life. And Jesus gives them his very own peace, eirēnēn (εἰρήνην). Beneath the fears we name—status, approval, comfort, control—lurks the one fear that swallows all others. It’s the fear of death. Peace that can’t reach all the way to the bottom is no shalom at all. ➤ Our deepest fear is death: Jesus gives a peace that stands even when the danger doesn’t go away.
- What Peace Is Like (27-28) Jesus calls out the difference: not as the world gives do I give to you. The world’s peace is a result of temporary circumstances, and it lasts for as long as they hold. Jesus’ peace comes from his very presence, so it stands firm in disaster. It grows gradually within believers, the way a sunrise makes visible what was always true. And it is personal before it is outward calm, since what quiets a churning heart is a Person in it, and not the flattening of the waves (John 6:16-24; 20:19-20). It is also costly. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father (14:28). Their grief focuses on loss, while his love looks to their good and will cost him everything. The word for troubled, tarassō (ταράσσω), is the one John uses of Jesus’ own churned up spirit at Lazarus’s tomb and toward the cross. He doesn’t ask them to feel what he himself hasn’t felt.➤ The world’s peace waits for the trouble to pass. The peace Christ gives is his own, and it stands firm in disaster.
- How We Receive Peace (29-31) How does Jesus give his gift? Not by power, but by sacrifice. Rome kept its famous peace (pax romana) by subjugation and the sword. But Christ makes peace by submitting to that sword: the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed (Isa 53:5). Jesus says the prince of this world is coming, and he has nothing over me: no debt, no leverage, nothing to grab on to. But the enemy has got plenty on us. Our debt is real, and there is no way out. So the free man walks into the trap that binds us. He’s not cornered: Jesus goes willingly, so the world may know he loves the Father, and he does exactly what the Father tasked him to do. The obedience of (31) is first his own, the sinless Son going freely to the cross, and there the accuser is crushed at the very hour he was quite sure he’d won. Peace I leave with you is the language of a will, and it pays out only after the will-maker dies. Jesus signs this one in his own blood, so the death each of us fears is swallowed up in his (1 Cor 15:54-56, Rom 5:1). ➤ Christ makes peace not by force but by sacrifice: he went under death in our place, so the thing we most fear can no longer own us.
Reflection
- What are you most afraid of losing, and what would change this week if you received Christ’s peace as a gift he already bought, rather than a calm you have to produce?
