_THE BEQUEST OF PEACE._
"Judas (not Iscariot) saith unto Him, Lord, what is come to pass
that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?
Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me, he will keep My
word: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and
make our abode with him. He that loveth Me not keepeth not My words:
and the word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent
Me. These things have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you.
But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send
in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance all that I said unto you. Peace I leave with you; My
peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let
not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful. Ye heard how
I said to you, I go away, and I come unto you. If ye loved Me, ye
would have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father: for the Father is
greater than I. And now I have told you before it come to pass,
that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe. I will no more speak
much with you, for the prince of the world cometh: and he hath
nothing in Me; but that the world may know that I love the Father,
and as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us
go hence."--JOHN xiv. 22-31.
The encouraging assurances of our Lord are interrupted by Judas
Thaddeus. As Peter, Thomas, and Philip had availed themselves of their
Master's readiness to solve their difficulties, so now Judas utters his
perplexity. He perceives that the manifestation of which Jesus has
spoken is not public and general, but special and private; and he says,
"Lord, what has happened, that Thou art to manifest Thyself to us, and
not to the world?" It would seem as if Judas had been greatly impressed
by the public demonstration in favour of Jesus a day or two previously,
and supposed that something must have occurred to cause Him now to wish
to manifest Himself only to a select few.
Apparently Judas' construction of the future was still entangled with
the ordinary Messianic expectation. He thought Jesus, although departing
for a little, would return speedily in outward Messianic glory, and
would triumphantly enter Jerusalem and establish Himself there. But how
this could be done privately he could not understand. And if Jesus had
entirely altered His plan, and did not mean immediately to claim
Messianic supremacy, but only to manifest Himself to a few, was this
possible?
By His reply our Lord shows for the hundredth time that outward
proclamation and external acknowledgment were not in His thoughts. It is
to the individual and in response to individual love He will manifest
Himself. It is therefore a spiritual manifestation He has in view.
Moreover, it was not to a specially privileged few, whose number was
already complete, that He would manifest Himself. Judas supposed that to
him and his fellow-Apostles, "us," Jesus would manifest Himself, and
over against this select company he set "the world." But this mechanical
line of demarcation our Lord obliterates in His reply, "If _any man_
loveth Me, ... We will come to him." He enounces the great spiritual law
that they who seek to have Christ's presence manifested to them must
love and obey Him. He that longs for more satisfying knowledge of
spiritual realities, he that thirsts for certainty and to see God as if
face to face, must expect no sudden or magical revelation, but must be
content with the true spiritual education which proceeds by loving and
living. To the disciples the method might seem slow--to us also it often
seems slow; but it is the method which nature requires. Our knowledge of
God, our belief that in Christ we have a hold of ultimate truth and are
living among eternal verities, grow with our love and service of Christ.
It may take us a lifetime--it will take us a lifetime--to learn to love
Him as we ought, but others have learned and we also may learn, and
there is no possible experience so precious to us.
It is, then, to those who serve Him that Christ manifests Himself, and
manifests Himself in an abiding, spiritual, influential manner. That
those who do not serve Him do not believe in His presence and power is
to be expected. But were those who have served Him asked if they had
become more convinced of His spiritual and effectual presence, their
voice would be that this promise had been fulfilled. And this is the
very citadel of the religion of Christ. If Christ does not now abide
with and energetically aid those who serve Him, then their faith is
vain. If His spiritual presence with them is not manifested in spiritual
results, if they have no evidence that He is personally and actively
employed in and with them, their faith is vain. To believe in a Christ
long since removed from earth and whose present life cannot now
influence or touch mankind is not the faith which Christ Himself
invites. And if His promise to abide with those who love and serve Him
is not actually performed, Christendom has been produced by a mistake
and has lived on a delusion.
At this point (ver. 25) Jesus pauses; and feeling how little He had time
to say of what was needful, and how much better they would understand
their relation to Him after He had finally passed from their bodily
sight, He says: "These things I have spoken to you, while yet I remain
with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, which the Father will send
in My name, He will teach you all things, and will remind you of all
that I have said to you." Jesus cannot tell them all He would wish them
to know; but the same Helper whom He has already promised will
especially help them by giving them understanding of what has already
been told them, and by leading them into further knowledge. He is to
come "in the name" of Jesus--that is to say, as His representative--and
to carry on His work in the world.[16]
Here, then, the Lord predicts that one day His disciples will know more
than He has taught them. They were to advance in knowledge beyond the
point to which He had brought them. His teaching would necessarily be
the foundation of all future attainment, and whatever would not square
with that they must necessarily reject; but they were to add much to the
foundation He had laid. We cannot therefore expect to find in the
teaching of Jesus all that His followers ought to know regarding Himself
and His connection with them. All that is absolutely necessary we shall
find there; but if we wish to know all that He would have us know, we
must look beyond. The teaching which we receive from the Apostles is the
requisite and promised complement of the teaching which Christ Himself
delivered. He being the subject taught as much as the teacher, and His
whole experience as living, dying, rising, and ascending, constituting
the facts which Christian teaching was to explain, it was impossible
that He Himself should be the final teacher. He could not at once be
text and exposition. He lived among men, and by His teaching shed much
light on the significance of His life; He died, and was not altogether
silent regarding the meaning of His death, but it was enough that He
furnished matter for His Apostles to explain, and confined Himself to
sketching the mere outline of Christian truth.
Again and again throughout this last conversation Jesus tries to break
off, but finds it impossible. Here (ver. 27), when He has assured them
that, although He Himself leaves them in ignorance of many things, the
Spirit will lead them into all truth, He proceeds to make His parting
bequest. He would fain leave them what will enable them to be free from
care and distress; but He has none of those worldly possessions which
men usually lay up for their children and those dependent on them.
House, lands, clothes, money, He had none. He could not even secure for
those who were to carry on His work an exemption from persecution which
He Himself had not enjoyed. He did not leave them, as some initiators
have done, stable though new institutions, an empire of recent origin
but already firmly established. "Not as the world giveth, give I unto
you."
But He does give them that which all other bequests aim at producing:
"Peace I leave with you." Men may differ as to the best means of
attaining peace, or even as to the kind of peace that is desirable, but
all agree in seeking an untroubled state. We seek a condition in which
we shall have no unsatisfied desires gnawing at our heart and making
peace impossible, no stings of conscience, dipped in the poison of past
wrong-doing, torturing us hour by hour, no foreboding anxiety darkening
and disturbing a present which might otherwise be peaceful. The
comprehensive nature of this possession is shown by the fact that peace
can be produced only by the contribution of past, present, and future.
As health implies that all the laws which regulate bodily life are being
observed, and as it is disturbed by the infringement of any one of
these, so peace of mind implies that in the spiritual life all is as it
should be. Introduce remorse or an evil conscience, and you destroy
peace; introduce fear or anxiety, and peace is impossible. Introduce
anything discordant, ambition alongside of indolence, a sensitive
conscience alongside of strong passions, and peace takes flight. He,
therefore, who promises to give peace promises to give unassailable
security, inward integrity and perfectness, all which goes to make up
that perfect condition in which we shall be for ever content to abide.
Jesus further defines the peace which He was leaving to the disciples as
that peace which He had Himself enjoyed: "_My_ peace I give unto
you,"--as one hands over a possession he has himself tested, the shield
or helmet that has served him in battle. "That which has protected Me in
a thousand fights I make over to you." The peace which Christ desires
His disciples to enjoy is that which characterised Himself; the same
serenity in danger, the same equanimity in troublous circumstances, the
same freedom from anxiety about results, the same speedy recovery of
composure after anything which for a moment ruffled the calm surface of
His demeanour. This is what He makes over to His people; this is what He
makes possible to all who serve Him.
There is nothing which more markedly distinguishes Jesus and proves His
superiority than His calm peace in all circumstances. He was poor, and
might have resented the incapacitating straitness of poverty. He was
driven from place to place, His purpose and motives were suspected, His
action and teaching resisted, the good He strove to do continually
marred; but He carried Himself through all with serenity. It is said
that nothing shakes the nerve of brave men so much as fear of
assassination: our Lord lived among bitterly hostile men, and was again
and again on the brink of being made away with; but He was imperturbably
resolute to do the work given Him to do. Take Him at an unguarded
moment, tell Him the boat is sinking underneath Him, and you find the
same undisturbed composure. He was never troubled at the results of His
work or about His own reputation; when He was reviled, He reviled not
again.
This unruffled serenity was so obvious a characteristic of the demeanour
of Jesus, that as it was familiar to His friends, so it was perplexing
to His judges. The Roman governor saw in His bearing an equanimity so
different from the callousness of the hardened criminal and from the
agitation of the self-condemned, that he could not help exclaiming in
astonishment, "Dost Thou not know that I have power over Thee?"
Therefore without egotism our Lord could speak of "My peace." The world
had come to Him in various shapes, and He had conquered it. No
allurement of pleasure, no opening to ambition had distracted Him and
broken up His serene contentment; no danger had filled His spirit with
anxiety and fear. On one occasion only could He say, "Now is My soul
troubled." Out of all that life had presented to Him He had wrought out
for Himself and for us peace.
By calling it specifically "My peace" our Lord distinguishes it from the
peace which men ordinarily pursue. Some seek it by accommodating
themselves to the world, by fixing for themselves a low standard and
disbelieving in the possibility of living up to any high standard in
this world. Some seek peace by giving the fullest possible gratification
to all their desires; they seek peace in external things--comfort, ease,
plenty, pleasant connections. Some stifle anxiety about worldly things
by impressing on themselves that fretting does no good, and that what
cannot be cured must be endured; and any anxiety that might arise about
their spiritual condition they stifle by the imagination that God is too
great or too good to deal strictly with their shortcomings. Such kinds
of peace, our Lord implies, are delusive. It is not outward things which
can give peace of mind, no more than it is a soft couch which can give
rest to a fevered body. Restfulness must be produced from within.
There are, in fact, two roads to peace--we may conquer or we may be
conquered. A country may always enjoy peace, if it is prepared always to
submit to indignities, to accommodate itself to the demands of stronger
parties, and absolutely to dismiss from its mind all ideas of honour or
self-respect. This mode of obtaining peace has the advantages of easy
and speedy attainment--advantages to which every man naturally attaches
too high a value. For in the individual life we are daily choosing
either the one peace or the other; the unrighteous desires which
distract us we are either conquering or being conquered by. We are
either accepting the cheap peace that lies on this side of conflict, or
we are attaining or striving towards the peace that lies on the other
side of conflict. But the peace we gain by submission is both
short-lived and delusive. It is short-lived, for a gratified desire is
like a relieved beggar, who will quickly find his way back to you with
his request rather enlarged than curtailed; and it is delusive, because
it is a peace which is the beginning of bondage of the worst kind. Any
peace that is worth the having or worth the speaking about lies beyond,
at the other side of conflict. We cannot long veil this from ourselves:
we may decline the conflict and put off the evil day; but still we are
conscious that we have not the peace our natures crave until we subdue
the evil that is in us. We look and look for peace to distil upon us
from without, to rise and shine upon us as to-morrow's sun, without
effort of our own, and yet we know that such expectation is the merest
delusion, and that peace must begin within, must be found in ourselves
and not in our circumstances. We know that until our truest purposes are
in thorough harmony with our conscientious convictions we have no right
to peace. We know that we can have no deep and lasting peace until we
are satisfied with our own inward state, or are at least definitely on
the road to satisfaction.
Again, the peace of which Christ here speaks may be called His, as being
wrought out by Him, and as being only attainable by others through His
communication of it to them. We do at first inquire with surprise how it
is possible that any one can bequeath to us his own moral qualities.
This, in fact, is what one often wishes were possible--that the father
who by long discipline, by many painful experiences, has at last become
meek and wise, could transmit these qualities to his son who has life
all before him. As we read the notices of those who pass away from among
us, it is the loss of so much moral force we mourn; it may be, for all
we know, as indispensable elsewhere, but nevertheless it is our loss, a
loss for which no work done by the man, nor any works left behind him,
compensate; for the man is always, or generally, greater than his works,
and what he has done only shows us the power and possibilities that are
in him. Each generation needs to raise its own good men, not
independent, certainly, of the past, but not altogether inheriting what
past generations have done; just as each new year must raise its own
crops, and only gets the benefit of past toil in the shape of improved
land, good seed, better implements and methods of agriculture. Still,
there is a transmission from father to son of moral qualities. What the
father has painfully acquired may be found in the son by inheritance.
And this is _analogous_ to the transfusion of moral qualities from
Christ to His people. For it is true of all the graces of the Christian,
that they are first acquired by Christ, and only from Him derived to the
Christian. It is of His fulness we all receive, and grace for grace. He
is the Light at whom we must all kindle, the Source from whom all flows.
How, then, does Christ communicate to us His peace or any of His own
qualities--qualities in some instances acquired by personal experience
and personal effort? He gives us peace, first, by reconciling us to God
by removing the burden of our past guilt and giving us access to God's
favour. His work sheds quite a new light upon God; reveals the fatherly
love of God following us into our wandering and misery, and claiming us
in our worst estate as His, acknowledging us and bidding us hope.
Through Him we are brought back to the Father. He comes with this
message from God, that He loves us. Am I, then, troubled about the past,
about what I have done? As life goes on, do I only see more and more
clearly how thoroughly I have been a wrong-doer? Does the present, as I
live through it, only shed a brighter and brighter light on the evil of
the past? Do I fear the future as that which can only more and more
painfully evolve the consequences of my past wrong-doing? Am I gradually
awaking to the full and awful import of being a sinner? After many
years of a Christian profession, am I coming at last to see that above
all else my life has been a life of sin, of shortcoming or evasion of
duty, of deep consideration for my own pleasure or my own purpose, and
utter or comparative regardlessness of God? Are the slowly evolving
circumstances of my life at length effecting what no preaching has ever
effected? are they making me understand that sin is the real evil, and
that I am beset by it and my destiny entangled and ruled by it? To me,
then, what offer could be more appropriate than the offer of peace? From
all fear of God and of myself I am called to peace in Christ.
Reconcilement with God is the foundation, manifestly and of course, of
all peace; and this we have as Christ's direct gift to us. But this
fundamental peace, though it will eventually pervade the whole man, does
in point of fact only slowly develop into a peace such as our Lord
Himself possessed. The peace which our Lord spoke of to His disciples,
peace amidst all the ills of life, can only be attained by a real
following of Christ, and a hearty and profound acceptance of His
principles and spirit. And it is not the less His gift because we have
thus to work for it, to alter or be altered wholly in our own inward
being. It is not therefore a deceptive bequest. When the father gives
his son a good education, he cannot do so irrespective of the hard work
of the son himself. When the general promises victory to his men, they
do not expect to have it without fighting. And our Lord does not upset
or supersede the fundamental laws of our nature and of our spiritual
growth. He does not make effort of our own unnecessary; He does not give
us a ready-made character irrespective of the laws by which character
grows, irrespective of deep-seated thirst for holiness in ourselves and
long-sustained conflict with outward obstacles and internal weaknesses
and infidelities.
But He helps us to peace, not only though primarily by bringing us back
to God's favour, but also by showing us in His own person and life how
peace is attained and preserved, and by communicating to us His Spirit
to aid us in our efforts to attain it. He found out more perfectly than
any one else the secret of peace; and we are stirred by His example and
success, not only as we are stirred by the example of any dead saint or
sage with whom we have no present personal living fellowship, but as we
are stirred by the example of a living Father who is always with us to
infuse new heart into us, and to give us effectual counsel and aid.
While we put forth our own efforts to win this self-conquest, and so
school all within us as to enter into peace, Christ is with us securing
that our efforts shall not be in vain, giving us the fixed and clear
idea of peace as our eternal condition, and giving us also whatever we
need to win it.
These words our Lord uttered at a time when, if ever, He was not likely
to use words of course, to adopt traditional and misleading phrases. He
loved the men He was speaking to, He knew He was after this to have few
more opportunities of speaking with them, His love interpreted to Him
the difficulties and troubles which would fall upon them, and this was
the armour which He knew would bear them scathless through all. That His
promise was fulfilled we know. We do not know what became of the
majority of the Apostles, whether they did much or little; but if we
look at the men who stood out prominently in the early history of the
Church, we see how much they stood in need of this peace and how truly
they received it. Look at Stephen, sinking bruised and bleeding under
the stones of a cursing mob, and say what characterises him--what makes
his face shine and his lips open in prayer for his murderers? Look at
Paul, driven out of one city, dragged lifeless out of another, clinging
to a spar on a wild sea, stripped by robbers, arraigned before
magistrate after magistrate--what keeps his spirit serene, his purpose
unshaken through a life such as this? What put into his lips these
valued words and taught him to say to others, "Rejoice evermore, and let
the peace of God which passeth understanding keep your heart and mind"?
It was the fulfilment of this promise--a promise which is meant for us
as for them. It will be fulfilled in us as in these men, not by a mere
verbal petition, not by a craving however strong, or a prayer however
sincere, but by a true and profound acceptance of Christ, by a
conscientious following of Him as our real leader, as that One from whom
we take our ideas of life, of what is worthy and what is unworthy.