The Peace of God

John 14:27
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

This is not a biblical command to have peace but I think if we are not taking advantage of this benefit that Christ has left us then we are being awfully foolish. So recently I've been trying to be at peace and when I'm not I try to figure out why. Here are some notes from my journal about what this peace is that isn't the peace of the world but is rather the peace of God.

Peace is a triune unity of the internal components of a person. The mind, soul and spirit must all be united under a common love for God thus enabling a person to have peace despite their external circumstances. The flesh must be dead, the sin nature must be eradicated so our spirit is made pure and our minds must be purified. If all these things are accomplished a person will be able to rest secure knowing his purpose and his Lord. For this to be accomplished the sinful nature must be killed through a divine act of grace and replaced, again by divine grace, by a "spirit of righteousness". A after our sin nature is dead their is still the problem of our fleshly habits, like a an army without its general these passions and desires wander hither and yon through our parts exciting unnatural emotions, making us long for the impossible and allowing us to assume the absurd as factual. These fleshly habits must be conquered and subdued using every weapon in our hevanly arsenal. Things such as penance, self discipline, friendly counsel and study are what will allow us to wage war against the flesh, which is powerful even without the sin nature inside us. By waging war against the flesh a human subjugate his mind to Gods. By allowing Christ to supplant our sin nature and raise a substitute to take its place a human will subjugate his spirit and will to God. The soul like a weak emperor will merely follow the advice of its counselors the spirit and mind meaning that if the spirit and mind are subjugated to God the soul will quickly follow suit. The mind and the spirit will guide the soul and thus will the whole of a human be subjugated to Gods will allowing for the influx of the peace of Christ. This peace does not come from a connection between the inner parts of a person but a subjugation of each individual part to God which results in all the parts of a person being in unity with each other. In this way may one acquire the peace of God, not the peace of the world but the peace that the Godhead has amongst itself, holy and perfect, simple yet elegant, powerful and attractive. We all long for it but it must be sought out.

I believe this is why the early Christian ascetics went to such extremes to purge their bodies of sin. They didn't think that somehow they could earn their way to heaven rather they had an almost fanatical desire to commune with God and they recognized as we need to recognize in our modern era that the thing separating us from God is the flesh. Now unlike the early ascetics commune with God must not be our top priority because if it was we'd all go become hermits. Communion with God however is an essential part of Christianity and if our flesh has not been purged then we are missing out on the "joy" of knowing Christ. If all we know is that we ought to be serving Christ and can not commune with Him because we remain bound to our flesh then we are living a miserable existence and we seek joy in things of the flesh rather then the spirit which leads to living a double life and ultimately to damnation. True peace of God however is devoid of fear and lives in perfect harmony with our Creator. Let us be encouraged to pursue Him and seek His fellowship

Feel free to comment and point out the flaws of my thinking. I really appreciate it when anyone shares their opinion on what I write.