John 20:21 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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John 20:21

Comments

He has declared ‘peace’, and he has declared it twice, and it is more than a greeting. Everything the Lord Jesus Christ did was in accordance with glorious prophecy. This is the perfect peace of Isaiah 26, ‘Peace, peace,’ and of course it means first and foremost reconciliation with God. It was certain now that the disciples whom he addressed had peace with God, they were born again men. They were reconciled. The hostility was over, the enmity was over, and now they had full and blessed communion with God through Jesus Christ. In the high priestly prayer in John 17, Christ has spoken of the Father sending him into the world, but now he can say it directly to the disciples themselves – ‘As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.’ In the high priestly prayer, he thanks God that he is going to pass the mantle on to his disciples to preach reconciliation and peace. But he does not actually give them the commission until he has paid the price, until he has atoned for sin and offered up his righteousness. Having done it, he appears and now directly he commissions them. He has, as the God-Man, become qualified to give this commission by suffering and dying on Calvary’s cross. We are sent on this mission in the world for souls, to represent Christ and to make known the Gospel. The risen Christ brings peace for the conscience - the guilty conscience is at peace because we believe in Christ who came and made an atonement for us and can present us before God. Peace in the sense that we have new life – no longer anxiety, no longer that fear of death, that purposelessness, that void within. Now we have peace in life. Peace for the future, the glorious heavenly future, we are certain of it. ‘Peace,’ he says. It is the peace that, almost like a will (in John 14), Christ had made to the disciples and said he would leave them. So here in this 21st verse we are reminded of this.

Application

The implications of that are enormous. So we have a supreme task. My supreme task is not to earn my living, or bring up the family. Those of course are vital and important. But even before that, my supreme task is to make Christ known. His chief task was the mission of redemption, to sacrifice himself to purchase lost souls. And as the Father sent him and he stuck to his brief perfectly, carried out the plan to the letter, to the second and minute, so we must be fully given to Christ as saved people, serving him for the blessing of lost souls, the work of redemption. That is our highest aim. It is a terrible thing when as Christian people we say to ourselves, ‘I must put my career and my business and my family (that is all very good and well-intended) and then after that I want to serve the Lord and do something for him. No, it is the other way round.

Leave your rights and your privileges behind and serve Christ. Leave your preferences – Oh, I’d rather do this than that – and put him first in all things. Suffer rejection, misrepresentation, make sacrifices for Christ and that is what is included in these words – ‘As my Father hath sent me,’ they are powerful, they are convicting, they are commanding, ‘even so send I you.’

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John 20:21 Commentary and Bible Study