Peace of God

We may have a great deal of trial (we know we shall), trial from circumstances around, trial from within, exercise of conscience, and the like, but still we have the perfect certainty of God's favor. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" With Paul we may reckon, because of His having given Jesus for us, along with Jesus upon everything. This is the true way to reckon upon His kindness—"Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." Observe, he says, "the peace of God.”
Again, the word is "be careful for nothing"; if one single thing were excepted, God would not be God. Well, if exercised, and troubled in spirit, tempted to be "careful", let us go to God about it. Our wishes may possibly be foolish wishes; still, let us go and present them to God; if they are so, we shall very soon be ashamed of them.
We have need of this "counsel of peace," because all that we are in ourselves is enmity against God. I cannot go out of this "counsel" to look at my own heart for a moment: it is "between them both." Is the Christian to make Christ's cross less complete? On that alone his peace can rest. The moment we come to establish its perfectness, the moment we seek to add a single thing, we are adding to, or rather taking away something from, the perfectness of "counsel of peace.”
Who or what shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, these things shall, as means for mortifying the flesh, only minister to Christ's glory. Shall death? It will only bring us into His presence. Shall life? It is that by which we enjoy His favor. Nothing shall separate! He is "on the throne" as the eternal witness of peace accomplished, and thence He ministers it to us.
The Lord give us grace to look at Him alone!
J. N. Darby
Questions and Answers
QUESTION: Please explain why it was necessary that the spear should be thrust into the side of Christ, seeing He was already dead. Was His death not full payment to God for sin? Why is it said, "It is the blood [not the death] that maketh an atonement for the soul"?
ANSWER: The spear thrust into the side (the heart) of Christ showed to all that His death was real, and moreover drew out those tokens of atonement and purification (blood and water) on which we rest, and by which we are cleansed. The death of Christ was a full atonement for sin, but blood out of the body, apart from it, is a proof of death (in the body, it is the life of it), and hence the blood is everywhere used for the atoning value of the death of Christ; not that blood is different from death, but because it is a proof of it. The blood making atonement is a more beautiful thought than the death, because it means the perfect life given up in death. The blood which was the life, now poured forth in death, is that which is so precious in God's sight. You will observe that when the death is spoken of, it is more often in connection with resurrection, presenting the truth of deliverance from sin (Rom. 3).