Discovering Peace

Home » Blog » Discovering Peace

John 14:27 (NASB) – “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.”

Peace (Greek = eirene) means to bind together, to join, to weave together. It means that a person is bound, woven and joined together with himself and with God and others.

The Hebrew word is shalom. It means freedom from trouble and much more. It means experiencing the highest good, enjoying the very best, possessing all the inner good possible. It means wholeness and soundness. It means prosperity in the widest sense, especially prosperity in the spiritual sense of having a soul that blossoms and flourishes.

This is one of the Bible’s greatest verses about inner peace, spoken by our Lord in His upper room discourse (John 13-17) on the night He was betrayed. As the disciples listened to Jesus speaking that night, they must have cringed at the second and third words of the verse: I leave. Throughout the upper room discourse, Jesus sought to prepare His disciples for His death, resurrection, and departure from earth. But as He went to the cross, to the grave, and into the skies, He was planning to leave one aspect of Himself behind: Peace I leave with you.

And it wasn’t just generic or generalized peace. It was His own internal realms of infinite peace: My peace I give to you. He wasn’t bestowing it to them in a temporary, inconsistent, or conditional way: I do not give to you as the world gives. He was giving them a legacy of peace that had the power forever to banish fear and trouble from their hearts: Your heart must not be troubled or fearful.

Notice that this verse falls naturally into four phrases. You can memorize it one small sentence at a time. Realize that Jesus was speaking these words to you and me just as clearly and immediately as they were spoken to the disciples two thousand years ago. Once you memorize this verse, you can close your eyes and listen to Jesus saying it to you at any time.

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Your heart must not be troubled or fearful.

There is the peace of the world. This is a peace of entertainment, of avoiding trouble, of refusing to face things, of unreality. It is a peace that is sought through pleasure, satisfaction, contentment, absence of trouble, positive thinking, or denial of problems.

There is the peace of Christ and of God. This is, first, a special peace, a peace deep within. It is a tranquility of mind, a composure, a peace that is calm in the face of bad circumstances and situations. It is more than feelings—even more than attitude and thought.

This is the peace of conquest. It is the peace independent of conditions and environment; the peace which no sorrow, no danger, no suffering, no experience can take away. It comes from the assurance that you will never die. The death of your body only releases your spirit to live forever. And one day, at the resurrection of the body, both your body and spirit will live forever in the presence of Our Lord.

Living in Peace