“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:4-7, ESV).
If you’re like me, then you’ve probably heard this verse a lot. Even when the going gets tough, there is a peace that surpasses all understanding that God gives to His children. When you are down and out for the count, or when the world is treating you poorly, our God infuses us with an unexplainable and almost mystical feeling of comfort through Christ which gives us strength.
Perhaps this is the correct understanding of this verse, and I don’t intend to take away from that popular understanding. But I have a more radical interpretation of this verse that I want to share (take it with a grain of salt). Paul here tells us in verse 4 to rejoice. Rejoicing should always be our attitude, and because of that, we should never be anxious and let everything be known to God in prayer. Why? Because the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard us in Jesus. But what exactly is the peace of God that guards us? Is it a mystical feeling, or is it something else? The answer to that, I believe, lies in the phrase “which surpasses all understanding.”
Generally, when something surpasses all understanding, we call it a mystery. According to John MacArthur, in the NT, a mystery denotes “truth previously hidden, but now revealed, including Christ’s incarnation (v. 16), Christ’s indwelling of believers (Col 1:26-7), the unity of the Jews and Gentiles in the church (Eph. 3:4-6), the gospel (Col 4:3), lawlessness (2Th 2:7), and the rapture of the church (1Co 15:51-2)” (MacArthur Commentary note on 1Tim 3:9). Mystery in the Bible, and I submit here in Phil. 4, denotes not so much a strange and unexplainable feeling of peace as it does the awesomeness of redemptive history. That which surpasses all understanding is God’s entrance into history through Christ to redeem His people.
If peace, then, does not mean a mystical feeling of comfort about our situations, then what does it mean? Here, J.I. Packer is helpful. He says, “The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God; it is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us. No account of God’s peace that does not start here can do other than mislead” (Packer, 49)*. The peace of God which surpasses all understanding is the fact that God out of His great love and mercy, has been planning throughout eternity to substitute His Son for your sins, thereby making peace with God for you by making you perfect in His sight. Peace with God is not so much a mysterious feeling as it is the fact that no matter what you are going through, you are still covered in the blood of Christ. This joyous salvation should be enough to keep you content when there is more than enough for you to be anxious about.
What is the practical application? If my view is correct, then when the going gets tough, don’t sit and wait for an almost magical feeling of peace from God. Don’t wait to feel “peace” about a certain circumstance. Instead, when the going gets tough, meditate on the riches of your salvation. If you’ve had a bad day or if you’re anxious about a circumstance, “rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice.” For the Lord has bought you at a price and covered all your sin and constructed a mansion for you in heaven. What more could we ever ask for? We would do well to remember that.
*Packer, JI and Mark Dever. "In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement." Crossway: Wheaton, 2007.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment