Peace Be With You. Do Not Be Afraid.

When I went to officer training school, we all quickly developed a healthy fear of the MTI’s (Military Training Instructor), commonly referred to as "drill sergeants." They were at every corner, waiting to scream at you when you made the slightest mistake. No one likes getting yelled at, so we quickly learned to do the right things in the correct way… and we STILL found a way to get yelled at! It seemed there was no way to please them—they were always on edge, ready to explode at the slightest mistake (God bless those folks—I will never forget that experience, and the good training that came from it).



Have you ever felt like God is on edge with you, ready to explode at your every mistake? Many people live with this sort of condemnation hanging over their heads, or at least with a subconscious fear that God might have a gigantic temper. I lived many years like that. It's one thing to have a healthy reverence for God, and quite another to live under the bondage of fear. There's some language in the Bible that often leads people to believe God is like a cosmic MTI, ready to explode with anger. But having recently celebrated Easter, there’s a powerful insight for us to notice in the resurrection accounts that addresses this.

In Matthew 28:5-10, the women come to the empty tomb, and the angel tells them, “Do not be afraid.” The women run, both excited and terrified, then Jesus intercepts them and they fall down and worship him. He tells them, “Do not be afraid.” 

In Luke 24:36 Jesus appears and tells the disciples, “Peace be with you.”

In John 20:19-21, Jesus twice tells the disciples, “Peace be with you.”

In Mark 16:6, the angel tells the women, “Don’t be afraid,” and in 16:8, it says the women were terrified and said nothing to anyone, at least initially.

Question: Why were they so terrified? Why do they need to be told several times, “Do not be afraid,” and “Peace be with you?”

There are several reasons for their fear. First, they are afraid of being associated with Jesus, and perhaps receiving the same fate (see John 20:19). Second, an angel appears to them. This is nothing short of terrifying. Forget the images of a chubby baby cherub in a diaper with wings, and replace it with a terrifying, holy creature that you can hardly stand to look at. In Matthew’s account, it says the angel’s appearance was like lightning (28:3).

Plus, they are seeing a man who was clearly dead, and yet is now alive again. They think he’s a ghost (Luke 24:37). But even more terrifying—and this is probably the biggest reason—this was not just any man. It’s God incarnate… and the last thing all of these disciples did was abandon him when he needed them most. They all left him alone to die, stopped believing he was the one, gave in to fear after 3 years of following Jesus and watching him heal the sick and perform miracles. They all swore they would stick with him, yet when it really counted they all abandoned him. Is it possible they are afraid that Jesus might be a bit upset with them? Are they afraid there might be hell to pay for their faithless scattering (see Mark 14:27-31, 50)?

They have every reason to believe they are “on edge” with God at this point. They had basically sided with Jesus’s accusers by running away and hiding.

Yet here are the consistent words from Jesus when he appears to them after he is risen: “Peace be with you. Do not be afraid.”

This is a powerful, crucial moment. That moment when we know we have really blown it, when we have done the unforgivable, Jesus’s word to us is “Peace be with you… Do not be afraid.”

The forgiveness of God is a deep mystery. At our worst, Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34).” Jesus proclaims forgiveness for the things we are not even aware of, the unconscious evil actions we haven’t even begun to repent from because we haven’t discovered that we are even doing these things.

God is not caught off guard by our sin, and therefore “on edge” with us when we blow it. Rather, God sees our whole life and is committed to our redemption. He saw everything we would ever do, and absorbed it into himself on the cross.

So may you hear his words: “Peace be with you... Do not be afraid.”