Daily Devotional

January 20

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

O wonderful, wonderful peace,
Sweet peace—the gift of God's love

What shall we say of this phrase: "The peace of God that passeth all understanding"? (Philippians 4:7). You cannot understand this peace, you cannot imagine it, you cannot even believe it in a sense, and yet it is happening and you are experiencing it and enjoying it. It is God's peace that is in Christ Jesus.


What does he mean by that? He is telling us that this peace of God works by presenting the Lord Jesus Christ to us and reminding us about Him. To put it in terms of the argument of the Epistle to the Romans: "If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life" (Romans 5:10). [See also Romans 8:28, 32.] "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans, 8:38-9).

The argument is that if God has done that supreme thing for us in the death of His Son upon the Cross, He cannot forsake us now; He cannot leave us half way, as it were. So the peace of God that passeth all understanding keeps our hearts and minds through, or in, Christ Jesus. In that way God guarantees our peace and our freedom from anxiety.
Spiritual Depression, pp. 270-1

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“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”