XIII - THE PEACE OF CHRIST AND THE PEACE OF THE WORLD

Summary

“These things I have spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace.”

—John xvi. 33.

The last words of the text are those which dwell most in our minds. But if we wish to understand the sense in which the Lord Himself meant them, we must begin at the beginning.

”These things I have spoken unto you,” He said. What then were “these things”? They were His laast discourse on earth, that long conversation, or address (one hardly knows which to call it), occupying four well-known chapters of St. John which followed the Last Supper. In the next chapter, Christ no longer speaks to men, but to God: it is His last prayer and communing with the Father about the work that had been given Him to do. Here in the text we have the close of His teaching to the disciples. He had already been rejected by the world, and ceased to speak to the world. All through that evening thus far He was withdrawn from the crowds in the country or the city, and alone in private with those few who had been following Him as their Master and Lord. What He said on such an occasion could not be quite like His common preachings. There must be words fit to be spoken in the ears of Apostles, which it would have been worse than useless to have proclaimed aloud in the temple or on the mountain. It is to these most sacred outpourings of His heart to those who loved Him best that He refers, when He says they were spoken, in order that peace might be had in Him.