WEDNESDAY January 17th
Philippians 4:7
‘And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’
In today’s devotion we continue with one of the verses from yesterday, which Paul writes to the Philippian believers to remind them of the peace of God.
Prior to going to the Cross, Jesus told the disciples that he would give them peace, and it wasn’t any old peace, it was going to be a particular peace that could not and still cannot be found anywhere else, it was going to be the peace that Paul speaks of here, ‘the peace of God’. This is what Jesus had said ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.’ (John 14:27) You will remember that this chapter starts off with Jesus saying ‘Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me’, our believing in Jesus is the means by which we receive the peace of God, and as Paul says, it transcends all understanding, we cannot understand it, in fact we could also say we do not deserve it, but we know we have received it.
Firstly, through reason of the new birth, we have peace with God—our sin which had separated us from God has been dealt with, blotted out and therefore we are reconciled into a position of harmony, peace with God—and as a result we also come to know what it is to have peace from God.
Going back to the dialogue that Jesus had with his disciples, he also said to them ‘In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world’, this is good news for us, especially in the troubling times in which we find ourselves living, but what makes this even better news is that Jesus immediately prior to making this statement also said ‘I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.’ (John 16:33)
Now we know that the disciples faced tribulation through the various trials and the intense suffering many of them had to undergo for the sake of the gospel, and they persevered and one of the reasons they persevered would have been as a result of the peace that they had found in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We may not undergo such severe trails and tribulation as the disciples did, but with whatever we do go through, the peace of God which transcends all understanding is available to each one of us, to enable our hearts and our minds to be guarded, to be kept safe in and through Christ Jesus.