Anxiety vs. Peace: Walking by Faith; Philippians
4:6-7
In the previous verses we
have looked at the rationale that undergirded each of those promises was a
rationale related to the essence of God. We could almost say that every promise
in the Word of God is based on the essence of God but there are other
rationales in these verses and in Philippians 4:6, 7 we will see that there is
another rationale.
Philippians 4:6 NASB
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. [7] And the peace of God,
which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in
Christ Jesus.”
When we look at these two
verses we have to realise that grabbing the rationales in them is a little more
difficult and a little less obvious than the rationale that supports the other
verses we have seen. It is not so obvious, not so clear. The two rationales that
are embedded here, first of all, are the essence of God—“the peace of God which
surpasses all comprehension,” so this relates to the incomprehensibility of
God. That is something that undergirds this promise. The
second rationale that undergirds this promise is the
plan of God, and that is not so easily seen, especially if we are just familiar
with the English text.
If we go back to verse
five we notice that Paul says, “The Lord is near.” The word in the Greek used
for “near” is the word engus [e)gguj], a word
that is used in reference to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the immanency
of His return. So what is behind this from the context is that Paul is
reminding the Philippians that the Lord’s coming is near. There is a reason for
this, Don’t put off living the Christian life, the
Lord may come back at any moment. We need
to be trusting in Him and advancing in our spiritual life, not getting caught
up in anxiety and worry over the circumstances of life but realising that the
Lord is coming back and we need to press on to spiritual maturity and not get
distracted by the cares and anxieties and day-to-day details of life.
The problem that Paul is addressing, and the problem that all of these promises
address, is fear. Fear is the core emotional sin that goes hand in hand with
the mental attitude sin of worry. Fear breeds worry, anxiety and all other
types of emotional sins. It is always related to arrogance. When we are afraid
we are also operating on arrogance.
The doctrine of arrogance
1. Arrogance is defined as an orientation of the mind or
thought that puts man or self as the ultimate reference point in the universe.
In arrogance we are saying that we are what matters, we are the ultimate
determiner of truth, of right and wrong; that man determines what he should do
and what he can do, and that there is no one that we are answerable to.
2. Arrogance always replaces the creator with the
creature. In arrogance you matter, not God; you are the ultimate determiner of
right and wrong, not God.
3. Arrogance thinks that man has a way that is better
than God’s way. Proverbs says that there is a way that seems right to a man but
the end thereof is death.
4. Arrogance is the mental attitude that corresponds to
the sin nature. Whenever we are in sin nature control we are arrogant. The sin
nature is always oriented to independence from God, autonomy with God, and
living apart from God.
5. Arrogance is the orientation of every person from
birth—every unbeliever and every believer who is out of fellowship. From birth
a person is under sin nature control, there is no other option. Romans 3:23: “All
have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” therefore from the instant of
birth the soul is under the domination of the sin nature. There is no other
option but to function in terms of our area of weakness and produce personal
sins or area of strength and produce human good.
6. Arrogance, then, is the orientation of all human viewpoint. All human viewpoint is
based on arrogance because it excludes God from the picture. There is no
orientation to divine thought. Therefore all human viewpoint, no matter how
true it may be, is going to leave something out.
7. Arrogance was the sin of Lucifer as expressed in the
five “I wills” in Isaiah
8. Arrogance is the idea that the creature knows more
than the creator and can sit in judgment on the creator and His revelation.
Based on Genesis chapter
three the basic orientation of the fallen creature is fear because he knows inherently
at the core of his soul that he is a dependent creature cast adrift in the
creator’s domain. He is totally insecure and fear, then, becomes the basic orientation
for every human being. In arrogance what we try to do is control our
circumstances—the events, the people, the things around us—in order to suppress
that fear, and that fear is a recognition of our own finiteness, our own
dependency and our own inability to make life work. Fear also is the conversion
of the outside pressure of adversity into stress in the soul. So that whenever
we are afraid what we are doing is converting outside pressure of adversity,
whatever the source may be, into stress in the soul.
When fear takes over
1. When fear takes over it shuts down thinking. Emotion
reigns rather than objective thought.
2. Stress makes us forgetful and impairs memory. The more
intense the stress, the more it can cause a breakdown in our cognition, in our
concentration, and we can become forgetful and impair memory.
3. As stress increases it will impair our ability to
learn. When we are operating on fear we are dominated by emotion and it shuts
down our thought processes.
4. Stress will affect our perception of reality. We will
begin to interpret the events that are going on around us in terms of
insecurity and in terms of inability and fear.
5. The long term effect of stress is that our cognitive
ability may be permanently impaired.
What we have in
Philippians 4:6, 7 is a promise that we can have peace instead of worry. The
idea of peace here is the idea of tranquillity in the storm. We can be content
despite the circumstances. It is not the idea that there are no external
circumstances of adversity. It is the idea that even in the midst of crisis and
the chaos that may be whirling around us we can be relaxed, have a mental
attitude of contentment, knowing that God is in control and relaxing in His
control. There is a contrast in this verse, it is either/or. We are either
going to have peace or we are going to have anxiety, one or the other.
There is always embedded
in these promises the idea that there is a human viewpoint contrast, a human
viewpoint solution as opposed to a divine viewpoint solution. The human
viewpoint solution is that we can achieve peace through control. We get worried
or concerned at some threat out there that is challenging some detail of life. As
soon as one of these details is threatened then we begin to be fearful and
anxious. That is related to the fact that there are a thousand different things
out there that can challenge the security of any detail in our life and we
think that somehow if we can just control this or that then we will have
security and stability. The human viewpoint contrast is that man, the creature,
on his own can achieve some sort of peace and tranquillity and stability apart
from absolute and complete dependence upon God.
This human viewpoint contrast
is based on several lies. The first lie is that the creature can control the
events in life to such a degree that he can find peace and stability. The second
human viewpoint lie is that trust in God is defined as an irrational leap of faith.
Note the words “irrational” and “leap of faith.” Faith is not a leap, neither
is biblical faith irrational. First of all, in human viewpoint faith is defined
up front as something that is non-rational. There us a juxtaposition of faith
and reason—it is either a matter of faith or it is a matter of reason,
therefore faith by definition become irrational. But the Bible never views
faith in God as irrational; it never juxtaposes faith and reason.
Faith itself is
non-meritorious. When we have faith, that faith which is an act of belief has
no merit or value in and of itself. It is the object of faith that has the
value; it is what you believe that has the value. So faith by definition is a
non-meritorious act and the merit is always in the object of faith. We may
believe something that is irrational. For example, we can actually believe that
we can control our life so that we can have peace and stability without depending
upon God. That would be an irrational belief, but the act of faith itself is
not in and of itself irrational. Second, we see that the method by which faith
operates may be irrational. So we may have a rational method with an irrational
object; we may have an irrational method with an irrational object. Only when
it is biblical can we have a true rational method with a true rational object.
What makes the difference
is the object of faith, not the kind of faith. Faith in rationalism and faith
in God are the same thing, but the difference is their
object. Under divine viewpoint there is a dependent use of logic and reason.
Dependent relates to humility, the creature putting himself under the authority
of the creator. Faith under the revelation of God is neither irrational nor a
leap. Augustine, in one of his better statements, said: “I believe in order
that I may understand.” That is the biblical position. When Adam failed to
believe God about the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he no
longer understood it, he tried to figure it out under his own empiricism, and
look at what that did.
When we say that we have a
peace that passes all comprehension we are not talking about an irrational
peace, it is talking about an irrational comprehensible peace. To some degree
we can comprehend the method, what Scripture says about it, but we can’t
comprehend the totality of it because it comes from an incomprehensible God.
This is the divine viewpoint promise of Philippians 4:6, 7, that we can have
peace and stability no matter what the consequences. That seems to run counter
to what autonomous reason tells us, that when we submit our reason to the
authority of Scripture we know that because God is omnipotent and He controls
all the details, that God is in control of our life and therefore we can relax
in His control. So when we are dependent upon God we can relax and let God
handle the situation.
The phrase, “the peace of
God, which surpasses all comprehension,” is actually a participial phrase which
focuses on the noun nous [nouj] which is the word for thinking or the mind. It is a
peace that goes beyond thought, beyond what is natural to human thought. This
is based on the character of God as incomprehensible, as per Isaiah 55:8, 9 NASB
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your
ways My ways,” declares the LORD.
The second rationale is
the plan of God rationale. The term “plan of God” can refer to two distinct
plans. The first is the plan of God for human history. God has a plan for
history which he is working out. He is going to bring the church age to
conclusion with the Rapture. Following the Rapture of the church there is going
to be a seven-year period for
Philippians 4:4 NASB
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” That is our first
mention of joy. We need to look at the surrounding context. As we look at these
verses in Philippians chapter four we can’t just jerk them out of context. Twice
in v. 4 Paul mentions rejoice. Look at verse 10, “But I rejoiced in the Lord
greatly…” So in vv. 4-9 Paul is giving the principle of rejoicing—a mental
attitude state, and then in v.10ff he gives an illustration from his own
personal life. The promise of vv. 6, 7 is embedded within a discussion of
mental attitude dynamics for the Christian in vv. 4-18.
Philippians
Philippians 4:8 NASB
“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good
repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on
these things.” This is focusing on the content of thought as opposed to focusing
on the things we can’t control, the things that
threaten security, the things that cause worry and be anxious. Verse 8 is a
focus on doctrine, on objective truth.
So the promises of vv. 6,
7 fit in a context of vv. 4-9 that lays down the objective principles of
thought, and then vv. 10-20 give an illustration of Paul’s experience. All of
this concludes in v. 19 NASB “And my God will supply all your needs
according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” This means we can never
cause God to go bankrupt. He has an infinite supply to provide whatever our
need is so that there is nothing that should cause us to cave in to worry, anxiety,
fear, and all the other things which plague us in life when things don’t go
well. We are instead to recognise that worry, fear and anxiety are sins and
they always show up when we are arrogant, being self-reliant, and when there is
sin nature control. The solution is confession of sin and then focusing on the
objective truths of God’s Word, going to the Lord in prayer, and gratitude for
the situation—we are to be thankful in all things and for all things—and then
to claim these promises, thinking through the rationales, both the character of
God and the plan of God.