(Verse 27) - "Peace I leave with you ..." was a common form of Jewish salutation in that day.  But it is far more than that for these disciples.  He is not just leaving common peace; He is leaving His peace with them.  Nor is this just an empty wish on His part.  Remember who it is that is speaking.  It is He Who has the capability of conferring the peace of God on his people.  It comes from the One who was about to go to the cross and do what was necessary to establish peace between God and man.  It refers here, in particular, to the troubling things that He had just told the disciples.  They were to keep two things in mind.  First, they were to remember Who He was.  Second, they were to remember Whom He served.  Actually, we can add a third thing.  They were to remember all that He had just told them.  He had just been given them a number of reasons why they should not be troubled.  They would need to remember these things as He underwent what was coming.

The mind of a human being is like a troubled sea that is forever tossed and is never truly a rest.  We do not have complete control over our thought processes as Christ did.  There times when our minds trouble us and when fear and doubt intrude unbidden.  It is those times when we need this council most desperately.  It is then when we need the peace that Christ offers to those who know him and love Him.  It is then that we need to remember the things that Christ has told us in this chapter.  It is then that we most need a comfort of the promised Holy Spirit of God to come and sooth us.

This is another reason why Christ waited until Judas Iscariot had left the gathering.  The unredeemed have no such resource available to them. Many have often wondered how the unredeemed deal with the issues of life. Without the resources that are available in Christ it is often the case that life deals harsh blows to the unsaved. The saved, on the other hand, have a resource more than sufficient to meet any need. These resources were unavailable to Judas, but were available to the rest of the disciples.

My peace - Such as I only can impart. The special peace that genuine salvation is fitted to impart. This, too, is a matter of the special work Christ did on Calvary. The unredeemed have not this peace nor can they manage anything like it. This is not a human peace at all. It is a supernatural peace that is available nowhere but as a function of being rightly related to Christ. It is a unique peace, that is a function of this relationship and this relationship only. This is borne out by the next phrase.

Not as the world-

1. Not as the objects which men commonly pursue-pleasure, fame, wealth. They leave care, anxiety, remorse. They do not meet the desires of the immortal mind, and they are incapable of affording that peace which the soul needs.

2. Not as the men of the world give. They salute you with empty and flattering words, but their professed friendship is often reigned and has no sincerity. You cannot be sure that they are sincere, but I am.

3. Not as systems of philosophy and false religion give. They profess to give peace, but it is not real. It does not still the voice of conscience; it does not take away sin; it does not reconcile the soul to God.

4. My peace is such as meets all the wants of the soul, silences the alarms of conscience, is fixed and sure amid all external changes, and will abide in the hour of death and forever. How desirable, in a world of anxiety and care, to possess this peace! and how should all who have it not, seek that which the world can neither give nor take away!

"Neither let it be afraid" - This phrase is set in opposition to what is the normal human reaction to so many things. Many of the unexpecteds of life are well able to produce fear. The coming of the unknown is one of the most powerful of these forces. The disciples were about to be stripped of their leader. They were about to launched into the unknown in a big way. The church was a new thing, never before seen or enacted. All that Christ had just finished saying and all that He had implied would have naturally given them cause to fear. And so, He reassures them.

Note that we must conclude that fear is a choice for us.  Believers can choose to not be afraid.  Note the use of the word "Let" in this phrase. This is a choice that lies before believers when they are faced with unknown and unpredictable situations. The unredeemed have no such choice. They are at the mercy of the interchange of their nature and the circumstances. Believers are not. We can choose to surrender to the fear, or we can choose not to do so.

"It" refers to the beginning of the verse, to the heart.  It is from that of the heart of the issues of life emerge.  The heart can have a tremendous effect on the fears that affect the mind.

How do those facts apply to my life?:

It is interesting that most people say that you cannot help the way you feel. It may be true that you are unable to prevent an emotional response from occurring. However, the occurance is not the end of the story for the believer. We can change the way we feel. We do this by the aid if the Holy Spirit to submit to the Word of God.