Part Two covered another kind of peace. It is related, but not the same. This kind of peace is the one Christ gives to believers through the Holy Spirit, which He promised to His disciples who had made the New Covenant. He said very clearly there in John 14 that He left His peace with them. I give you My peace, He says, and so there is a certain kind of peace that comes from Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit and it, along with grace, should be the reigning condition of our lives so we can grow in righteousness. Remember Paul starting off his epistles with grace and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ. Those things, that grace that the Father gives and the peace that the Son gives, makes the perfect environment for us to begin growing after our justification, our sanctification process, as we call it. Now this sermon, Part Three, will deal with a third facet of peace that arises from one's perception of wholeness or completeness. This is an internal mindset. We could call it even a state of being that is inextricably linked to God's gift of peace. We have peace. We have this feeling of completeness, of wholeness, of contentment because of what Christ does for us and how He leads us through our lives. Another way to look at it is that we can think of it as our proper reaction or response to the peace He gives. When Christ gives us His peace and we are under the state of peace with God, then it falls on us to do something with that peace, with that environment, with the other gifts that He gives us. And if we do it right, we live in a state of peace, in a state of contentment, in a state of, you could even call it shalom, of well-being. So with this kind of peace working within us, we feel the proper kind of satisfaction and contentment. We look at our lives and can smile and say things are well. Things are going as they should go. We are content with our lot and we need nothing further to make our life joyful and full of purpose and achievement. Now this is not like the Laodicean, who said he had need of nothing. He was saying that he did not need Christ. But I am saying that once we have Christ and we are reacting and responding to Him in the proper way, we truly do not need anything more. When we have this peace, because we are responding to the Father's and the Son's peace given to us, we are also content because we know we are going somewhere special. That it is not just our life today that is good because of Christ being in it and working with us, but He has also got us on a trajectory for the ultimate in achievements, if you want to put it that way, the eternal life in the Kingdom of God. So we can have a proper sense of satisfaction with our lives because of all those things put together. Acknowledging, of course, that it is only through Christ and what God does that these things have come upon us and helped us and are providing for us in every way. This term, this phrase, the God of peace is a fairly telltale sign that it was written by the apostle Paul. At least he was the mind behind it, that God was inspiring to write these words. Paul uses this term, this phrase, the God of peace, and he is the only one who does in the Bible, in benedictions at the conclusions of his epistles, particularly in Romans, II Corinthians, Philippians, and I Thessalonians. This tells us something because he is also the same one who uses peace at the beginning, in a salutation of his epistles, and so his epistles, especially these ones, Romans, II Corinthians, Philippians, and I Thessalonians, are bookended by the concept of peace. So it makes this title, the God of Peace, quite significant. We have to think about it. We have to study it a little bit. What is he trying to tell us in saying that God gives us peace at the beginning of an epistle as he begins his teaching and at the end when he concludes his teaching and then hands it off to the people who he taught? Peace is a very important part of this process. He gives ne

Jesus promises His disciples peace in concert with receiving God's Spirit. Peace is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. In most of the epistles, there is a verse either at the beginning or the end that says, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. True peace, the peace that He leaves with His people or He gives to His people, comes from the same place grace originates. Peace and grace come from the Father and from the Son through Their Spirit in us. Peace is a gift from God that we need all the time. Jesus says, Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Jesus' peace is divine, transcendent, and totally unlike human peace. It is a secure peace, backed by the power of a holy and sovereign God. It is a peace made possible by the dominion of the Kingdom of God. Jesus gives us actual peace that is real and present, not a mere hope for peace. The peace He gives allows us to be steady and courageous no matter what the outward circumstances. The peace of God does not consist in absolute freedom from turmoil or suffering. As a human being, Jesus had to grapple with worry, fear, and uncertainty, including the foreknowledge of pain and suffering. He took His problems to the Father in prayer, aligned Himself to God's will, continued praying even more earnestly, and accepted what was in store for Him and went forward. He found tranquility in adherence to the will of God, even to the brink of death and beyond. We can have that same peace when facing any kind of distressing trial.