What does Jesus mean when He says, "Peace I leave with you" (John 14:27)?

In comparing different aspects of peace it is helpful to note that in John 14:27, the Lord distinguishes between peace left to us and peace given to us. "Peace I leave with you" is peace with God as to every question of sin. He has made it by the blood of His cross, and brought the tidings of it on the evening of the day of His resurrection, when He stood in the midst of His own and greeted them with "Peace be unto you." He showed them, too, His hands and side as the witness of the work in which it had been accomplished, and commissioned them to go forth with it to others. (John 20:19-21) It was the precious legacy of His death. We have it (Rom. 5:1) as we believe the testimony of God to the facts of His having been delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification. It is peace of conscience. He could not speak of it as His. He never needed it: we did, and He made it and left it to us.

But the Lord goes on to speak of a deeper character of peace "My peace I give unto you." It is the peace in which He ever walked with the Father, the calm unruffled peace which resting in His love and submitting Himself absolutely to all His ways afforded. He characterises it as His, and has given it absolutely to be ours — not as the world gives indeed, for though it may give largely and generously it gives away; but He gives as bringing us into the possession of it with Himself. It is here applied to His peace, but the principle is true of all He gives — as His joy (John 15:11),

We had previously noted that the coming of the Comforter furnished the sixth item in the comfort which Jesus was ministering to His disciples. We now find the seventh and last in this chapter; namely, peace. In departing He left peace with them, bequeathed as the result of His atoning work. Further, He gave them that peace which He called peculiarly His own — the peace of perfect confidence in the Father, as the result of knowing Him, and of submission to His will. And all that He gives is out of His own fulness and linking them with Himself, and not according to the poor standards of this world.

Having thus unfolded to the disciples all these great items of encouragement the Lord ended on the same note as He began — "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." Exactly the same word comes to us as we face the great difficulties of our day.

Now the Lord leaves a legacy of peace to His disciples in a world of seething unrest (v. 27). “Peace I leave with you” is the peace with God that results from His accomplished redemption, peace left for every redeemed soul. “My peace I give unto you” refers rather to the calm tranquility with which He faced all the contrary circumstances of distress, sorrow, hatred and persecution in the world. The contemplation of this will preserve our hearts from being troubled and afraid. While the first peace here is ours at all times, the second is “the peace of God,” only known as we are in practical communion with the thoughts of the Lord Jesus (Cf. Phil. 4:6-7).

Peace. — But yet another proof would He furnish, as He spake next of something which He would leave with them, and of something which He would give to them. "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you: not as the world gives, give I to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye have heard how I said to you, I go away, and I come to you. If ye loved Me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father: for the Father is greater than I" (27-28). We follow the Revised Version in the translation of verse 28. "Peace," He says, and then with emphasis, "My peace." Are these the same? We think not. Peace He could leave with them as the fruit of His atoning sacrifice, having made propitiation by His blood, which, when believed, and the individual justified by faith, gives peace with God, the whole question of acceptance on the ground of that sacrifice being acknowledged as settled, and settled for ever. But Christ's peace is a different matter. He never needed peace of conscience, based on the Divine acceptance of an atoning sacrifice. His peace is that which He enjoyed on earth as subject to His Father's will. This He gives His people to enjoy. He knew the value of it; He would have them prove it. So in Col. 3:15, when rightly read, we have the wish of the Apostle, as indeed we may say of the Spirit of God, thus expressed: "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful." Now that peace — peace in circumstances — is given to us to prove and to enjoy. It is ours. We have not to ask for it, and then wait for the answer. It is ours, a gift from Christ, to be known at the moment that it is needed. We see in Matt. 11:25-26, how perfectly satisfied the Lord could be, that His Father should work as He pleased. In proportion as we enter into that spirit shall we enjoy this gift. The peace of Christ! What can equal this? The world may offer much, and hold out a promise of peace. But in vain. Christ gives what is real and what is abiding. Pointed, then, is the exhortation, "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (27).

But there is more than doctrine. "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you, not as the world giveth give I to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (verse 27). Throughout the Lord supposes His death. This was necessary to peace; His own peace goes farther still. It was the peace He enjoyed while here — a peace unruffled by circumstances, and in unbroken communion with His Father; a peace as far as possible from man's heart, in such a world as this, ignorant of the Father, and on all points at issue with Him. But it characterised the second Man Who gives it to us. In the faith of Him Who loves us perfectly and to the end, Who has accomplished all to God's glory and for us, we are entitled to it; and the Holy Ghost would have us enjoy it according to His word. He Who gives it gave it not away, and had it not the less because we were to receive it. Like all else that He gives, it is enjoyed unimpaired in its own Divine fulness, every one that shares rather adding to it than taking from it. The question is not merely of reality, but of its course and character. "Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." Why, indeed, with His peace, should the heart be confounded or fearful?

Then He says, "My peace I leave with you" — peace made by the blood of His Cross; peace won on the battlefield of Golgotha; peace, the result of His own glorious victory; "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you," MY PEACE, the peace of Christ, the peace that kept Him in the midst of the contradiction of sinners, and all the malice of Satan; the peace that enabled Him to sleep in the storm — the peace that was the result of His Father's presence with Him — He says, "MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU" you have to be here in My name, and I give you My peace, MY PEACE; "Not as the world gives, give I to you." The world is oftentimes very benevolent, very generous; the rich man stands at the door of his mansion and gives freely to the poor who gather about him; but that is not the way the Lord gives — He throws open His doors, and says, "Come in and share all that I have got; there is nothing I have got I will not share with you; I want you inside My home; I want you to share with Me everything that the Father has given Me."

Finally, the Lord, in the midst of this world, left peace to His disciples, giving them His own peace. It is when going away, and in the full revelation of God, that He could say this to them; so that He possessed it in spite of the world. He had gone through death and the drinking of the cup, put away sin for them, destroyed the power of the enemy in death, made propitiation by fully glorifying God. Peace was made, and made for them before God, and all that they were brought into — the light as He was, so that this peace was perfect in the light; and it was perfect in the world, because it brought them so into connection with God that the world could not even touch or reach their source of joy. Moreover Jesus had so accomplished this for them, and He bestowed it on them in such a way, that He gave them the peace which He Himself had with the Father, and in which, consequently, He walked in this world. The world gives a part of its goods while not relinquishing the mass; but what it gives, it gives away and has no longer. Christ introduces into the enjoyment of that which is His own — of His own position before the Father. The world does not and cannot give in this manner. How perfect must that peace have been which He enjoyed with the Father — that peace He gives to us — His own!

Finally, if the Lord leaves His own, He leaves them peace, which He could not have done had He remained with them, for peace would not have been made; but He defines this peace in a way that gives it a perfection which the fact of the purifying of the conscience would not have procured for them. That indeed took place by His blood: the disciples would be perfect as to the conscience. His conscience was always perfect; ours is made perfect by His blood. But, with the exception of the cross, and the anticipation of the cross, the heart of Jesus was ever with God. Feeling everything in love, nothing distracted Him, nor weakened His communion with His Father. Perfect obedience and confidence maintained in Him a peace which flowed from a walk with God, and from communion with His Father that never belied itself. The current of the life that He lived on the part of the Father was uninterrupted: there were no breakers in the life of Jesus. The difficulties He met with were but the occasion of the shewing forth of divine life in the heart of a man, of the peace which the consciousness of being always with God gave Him. Thus His words and actions were words and actions that came directly from God, in the circumstances in which He found Himself as man. A perfect sensibility, a perfect measure and characterising in His mind of all that acted upon Him, gave occasion to the answer, to that which the presence of God and the divine impulse produced in man. What could trouble the peace of Jesus? When it was a question of being made sin, and of bearing our sins before God, it was another thing; because that was taking place, the answer of God in His soul was not the effect of His perfect and blessed presence, but the being forsaken, according to the perfect opposition of His nature to sin. But here we approach sufferings that no one can fathom.

We cannot know Him as our Shepherd if it is an unsettled matter about sin being forgiven. God cannot let sin into His presence. There must be a conscience purged. Christ has been accepted, and He puts us into His place, having made peace through the blood of His cross. "He has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified" — "entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." God does not see sin in Jesus, and we are in Him: therefore He sees no sin in us. The comfort and peace Christ had as a man walking on the earth, He gives us. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." Now I have come to put you in the place of unhindered confidence with the Father, and that is what you could never have, if the least sense of sin were upon you. The peace is made; therefore He can not only say, "Peace I leave," etc.; but "my peace I give unto you." These were not idle words; and we can see how He can give it us, having brought us to God and put away everything against us.

There must be a conscience purged. Christ has been accepted, and He puts us into His place, having made peace through the blood of His cross. "He has put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." He has "entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption." God does not see sin in Jesus; indeed in Him was no sin: and we who believe are in Him; therefore He sees no sin in us. The comfort and peace Christ had, as a man walking on the earth, He gives us. "My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." Now I have come to put you in the place of unhindered confidence with the Father; and that is, what you could never have, if the least sense of sin were upon you. The peace is made: therefore He can not only say, "Peace I leave with you," but "My peace I give unto you." These were not idle words, and we can see how He could give it to us, having brought us to God and put away everything against us.