- 38. Perfect Peace
Isaiah 26:3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
This is a conditional promise of perfect peace: if your mind is stayed on God, then He will keep you in perfect peace. Peace, perfect peace, comes to those who trust in the Lord. When we fear, love, and trust in God above all things we will be in peace. This we innately know to be true. We have learned that keeping the First Commandment perfectly results in very likely keeping all the Commandments. Keeping all the commandments brings many blessings and wonderful consequences. One of those blessings is peace. We would be at peace with God, with others in our life, and within our own heart. This kind of peace would probably be so strong that it would be palpable. God’s peace can be a powerful feeling that we may experience but can’t really explain. However, whether we feel it or not, the peace of God is still real and deep and permanent.
The problem is that sinners cannot actually trust in God above all things. We believe in God; we even believe God; we also trust in God for forgiveness and salvation; but our faith is mixed: we mix faith in God with faith in self, other people, and other things; we have “other gods.” Sinners cannot believe purely or have an unmixed trust in God alone. If we could completely love the Lord with all our heart and soul and mind and strength then we would love our neighbor as ourselves and obey all the commands of God perfectly. But we are unable to keep God first and only in our hearts and minds. Who actually does the will of God all the time?
Only Jesus Christ came to do the will of the Father and actually do it perfectly. He did it even when it meant suffering and death. And the Good News is that He did the will of God for us, in our place, and then offered His innocent life unto unjust death for our sake. Therefore, by our faith in Christ we have “trusted in the Lord,” since He did it for us. So we may claim this conditional promise as our own for Jesus kept the condition. By the work of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel we “trust in Him.” The Spirit brings us to faith in Christ, and that is enough for perfect peace. But still, to the degree that our “mind is stayed” on the Lord is the degree of peace. The more we are in the Word and hear the Gospel the more peace God will keep us in.