Not as the World Gives

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27 ESV)

These are the words of the incarnate God. This is the uttered mind of God. This is the definition of God’s character straight from the horse’s mouth. “Not as the world gives do I give to you” is God’s message to mankind, and in this one simple passage God says so much. “My beloved, do you want to know how I give my gifts? I shall tell you. I give them not as the world gives them.” If we are to understand the nature of God’s gifting we need merely understand how the world gives and deduce what kind of giving is not of this world.

So how does the world give? The world’s one aim is fairness. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. This world always demands recompense to the penny. You break-ee you pay-ee.  Plain and simple, this world lays down the law and says that for everything I do I must receive something in return and vice versa. For good I receive good and for bad, bad because that alone is fair. This is how the world gives it’s ‘gifts’, as wages.

And what is the opposite of that? If God gives ‘not’ as the world gives, what does that mean? For the longest time I believed (perhaps because I was taught it) that it meant God is not an ‘Indian giver’. He doesn’t take his gifts back. While true, that is not of primary importance in understanding these words of Christ. God gives not as the world gives because He expects nothing we can give in return. His gifts are not wages to be earned as are the world’s gifts. His gifts are actual gifts – free of any requirement for recompense from us. In fact, because we don't have the ability to recompense Him, and He recompensed Himself on our behalf as the ultimate gift.

Many preachers have pointed out from the greeting that Paul used in all of his epistles (“Grace and peace to you”) that grace is the root that produces the fruit of peace in our lives. Grace which is given not as this world gives, but given freely; not as wages, but as a gift. For this reason alone can our hearts have peace – that we are no longer required to give and take as the world does, but we may give and give and give as living sacrifices in this world because we have been recompensed by God. Neither ought we to let our hearts be afraid, because “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” (1 John 4:18 ESV) The perfectly unconditional love of God destroys fear in the hearts of those who truly believe because they have come to understand that God does not give as the world gives, meaning He keeps no account of rights and wrongs with the intent to reward or punish as does the world and its law. All of that has been accounted to Jesus at Calvary; God made complete recompense for us there. Christ became for us ‘the wages of sin’ so that, believing, we might enjoy all that God gives as pure gift. No law and no strings attached. His complete satisfaction of the law means we have no fear of 'double jeopardy'; we will never be tried again for our crimes.

In the end, the goal of all of this is freedom; freedom from anxiety, freedom from the dog eat dog system of this world (attempted adherence to law and sin as its result) freedom from fear of man and punishment, and freedom from ourselves. For it is only as people who are free of the world’s system that we may be ‘the light of the world’, living ‘to the praise of His glory’.

God Bless