By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The peace which passeth understanding’ has become a well-known biblical phrase, and it originates in a couple of verses found in St. Paul’s epistle to the Philippians. In Philippians 4:6-7, we read:
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
These quotations are from the Authorised King James Version of the Bible, first published in 1611. But what do these two verses mean?
About Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians
Philippi was a Roman colony in part of what was then known as Macedonia; indeed, this port-city was named after the father of the most famous Macedonian of them all, Alexander the Great. Philip of Macedon (382-336 BC) had rebuilt the city and fortified it, and this city – once known as Crenides (from the ancient Greek for ‘fountains’) – was renamed in his honour.
St. Paul visited Philippi on his second missionary journey, having supposedly received a vision commanding him to visit Macedonia. It was at Philippi that Paul founded his first Church in Europe.
Paul is believed to have written his epistle to the Philippians while he was in prison in Rome: he refers to being in ‘bonds’ in the ‘palace’ at 1:13, with ‘palace’ sometimes rendered (such as in the Revised Standard Version) as ‘praetorian guard’.
Acts 28:16, and later verses 20 and 30 in the same chapter, refer to this imprisonment, while the references to ‘Caesar’s household’ suggest imprisonment in Rome rather than Ephesus or Caesarea (in Palestine), which are the two alternative candidates which have been proposed.
Philippians 1:25 suggests that Paul had some confidence that he would soon be released from prison and allowed to continue spreading the gospel, although as the verses of Philippians 1:19-30 also reveal, the threat of martyrdom was also present (1:20 sees Paul state that Christ will be ‘magnified’ in his body, whether by life or by death: whichever was necessary).
We can date the composition of Philippians to some time between 62 and 64 AD, when Nero was emperor of Rome (the ‘Caesar’ referred to at Philippians 4:22): Nero would later persecute Christians following the fire of Rome in 64 AD (during which he didn’t ‘fiddle while Rome burned’), so Paul’s reference to ‘saints’ within ‘Caesar’s household’ indicates that he was writing before Nero would have banished any Christian converts.
Paul appears to have had a good relationship with the Philippian church, and his epistle to the Philippians is friendly, without evincing any obvious signs of conflict with the elders of the Church – although Philippians 4 reveals that there has been some quarrel between two women of the Church, Euodias and Syntyche, whom he beseeches in Philippians 4:2 to mend their differences.
The meaning of Philippians 4:6-7
Now we’ve explored the historical context for St. Paul’s comments, let’s consider the meaning of these two verses, which see Paul advising the Philippians not to fret or worry but to pray to God so that he will know their requests.
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
Here the word ‘careful’, used in the King James Version, means ‘anxious’ or ‘full of care’ (i.e., full of worry). In the original Greek, it carried the additional sense of being pulled in different directions.
Paul cautions his followers not to worry over anything and not to allow themselves to be compromised or conflicted. Prayer and ‘supplication’, and giving thanks to God, will let God know what their requests to him are. In other words, one’s priorities should be praying to God, submitting to him (hence ‘supplication’), and showing one’s appreciation (hence ‘thanksgiving’) for God.
Paul is emphasising unity over division, and in the context of Philippians – where, in this fourth chapter, he is attempting to reconcile several members of the church who have disagreed with each other – this has a special urgency as well as a personal significance.
It is this kind of ‘peace’ – a unity within oneself, as well as with the world and with other people – which St. Paul has in mind, and which he describes in the next verse:
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
When St. Paul, or rather the English translators of the King James Version, write ‘peace … which passeth all understanding’, ‘passeth’ means ‘surpasseth’: this peace exceeds human understanding because it is not created solely within ourselves, but is, so Paul says, a gift from God.
Such intense peace – unity, calm, and sense of all being well – is made possible, Paul suggests, only through God. But one has to meet God halfway and come to him with prayer, submission, and appreciation in order to find this inner peace.