Romans 5:1-5 *
Dear Friends in Christ,
Each week we’re deploying more troops. Our military is massing in the
Ironically, the real issue on the minds of most people resides at the opposite end of the spectrum. People may debate the means and method to bring it about, but most everyone ultimately wants the same thing: Peace.
Political peace is one of the world’s most cherished commodities. However, if the definition of peace is limited to “the absence of conflict,” it is also one of most elusive. Because somewhere on this planet there is and always will be fighting going on. An ancient sage once remarked – and history would verify – that (sinful) mankind gets tired of peace quicker than it gets tired of war. And Christ Himself told us that the end times would be marked by wars and rumors of wars.
Which makes the noble sounding ideal of a political “world peace” a nice thought – but unachievable.
In our text for today, the Apostle Paul talks about a higher kind of peace. It’s not political, but personal. It’s not physical, but spiritual. And most importantly, it is a peace that is achievable – and in fact has been attained for us as well as conferred on us by none other than God Himself. And God wants us to know it, enjoy it and find strength in it. It’s a peace that transcends all earthly circumstances...
So let’s step outside of world affairs for the next few minutes, work through our text, and talk about
TRUE PEACE
1. Where it comes from
2. What it does
Therefore, since we
have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ, 2 through whom
we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we
rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
At the very outset the Apostle tells us the reason we have “peace with God”: We have been “justified through faith,” which Paul links to “our Lord Jesus Christ.” In other words, at the root of true, personal peace is justification through faith in Christ. This is the cardinal, pre-eminent doctrine of Scripture. Everything in Scripture revolves around this teaching and everything in Scripture eventually comes back to this teaching. And it is a deeply personal doctrine for each one of us, because our eternal life depends on it! As such, it is always worthy of reviewing…
The word “justify” is a courtroom term. It means to “declare righteous.” Justification by faith is God’s declaration of righteousness upon those who believe (have faith) in Jesus Christ and what He did for all mankind through His life, death and resurrection. God declares us totally and completely righteous, or forgiven, for Jesus sake…
Picture the courtroom scene. God is the judge. We are the ones before him. Our crime is sin (which the Apostle John describes as “lawlessness”); that is, we are guilty of not obeying the commands and demands of God.
To be specific, we swear… we cheat… we get angry… we complain… at times we treat God with disrespect, at other times we act as if He doesn’t exist… despite His request that we think of others, we often take our cues from the world and become tremendously self-absorbed… despite His request that we live in purity, our eyes gaze upon things we should not see and our feet take us to places we should not go… We rationalize, minimize, sanitize, trivialize and sometimes even glorify things which God has clearly spoken against…
We could go on. We sin. God has us dead to rights. And He has the right to make us dead. Because “the wages of sin is death.” We stand before this Judge guilty as charged.
But then something remarkable happens. God says, “Yes,
you have sinned against me, often and grievously. Yes, you deserve to be punished to the full
extent of the law. Yes, you deserve the
full wages of sin, which is eternal death in hell. But I love you. And I have come up with a plan to harmonize
my love for you and my righteous justice and hatred toward your sin…”
And we know the plan.
The plan is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He became one of us. He followed perfectly all the commands of God
and did as mankind’s substitute what we could not do. And then He suffered the death we deserve. In our place. As our substitute. Elsewhere the Apostle Paul puts it this
way: “God made Him who had no sin to
be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
The glorious result: Those who trust (have faith) in Jesus are justified. Declared righteous. Redeemed. Restored. Forgiven. At peace with God…
Let me explain it another way. Do you know what Pidgin English is? Years ago when British sailors sailed the
I have been told that the Pidgin English word for “justification” is really a translation of this phrase: “God ‘e say ‘im alright.” It may not be the most erudite or sophisticated way of talking, but it certainly gets the point across, doesn’t it? That’s what justification is: God saying that because of Jesus we are alright in His eyes.
If we misunderstand the doctrine of justification through faith, there is nothing left for us but worry, fear and uncertainty about our eternal salvation. But when we do understand it, there is peace…
And the kind of peace Paul is talking about in our text is
more than an emotional feeling of well-being, although that is certainly
present. The kind of peace that comes to
us via justification through faith is nothing less than a change in
status. It is a new relationship that
God Himself has conferred upon us.
Isaiah says though our sins were like scarlet, we are now white as snow
in His eyes. Or as the hymnist put it: “Through
Jesus blood and merit I am at peace with God.”
Through Jesus Christ we are at peace with God. Through Him, Paul tells us, “we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” And where there is peace there is joy. “And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” – that is, the sure hope of sharing God’s glory in heaven.
Furthermore, when we understand the “peace” of sins forgiven that is ours through “our Lord Jesus Christ” (the past); when we stop to reflect upon the “grace in which we now stand” (the present); and when we “rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (the future), all of this combines to produce a new perspective on life. Paul takes this up next…
3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. Among other things, Paul was a realist. He understood that being a Christian was no guarantee of a trouble-free life. In fact, it will be just the opposite. Jesus told us that in this world we would have trouble, but that we could take heart in Him and His help, because He had overcome the world.
Consequently, when Paul tells us we can rejoice in our
sufferings, he is not suggesting a morbid view of life, but rather a triumphant
one. He reminds us here to view
difficulty and suffering from the perspective of the peace that is ours in
Christ, knowing that whatever God allows into our life leads to blessings and
positive results. Paul reminds us that suffering and hardship are tools the
Lord sometimes uses to produce within us the Godly chain reaction of “perseverance, character, and confident hope.”
Not too long ago I was talking with someone who had suffered a devastating loss. He was not a member of any church, but at one time he was; and he was open to speak with a pastor. In the course of the conversation he remembered his grandmother, a devout Christian woman. What he especially remembered and remarked upon was that, even though she had a rather difficult life, she nonetheless had a certain “tranquility and serenity” about her. Where do you think that came from? How do you think that developed?
Without knowing it, he was giving an example of one whose
suffering led to perseverance, whose perseverance
produced character, and whose character
relied on confident hope.
Paul knew personally what he was talking about. Listen to these autobiographical words found
in 2 Corinthians 1:8-10: 8 “We do not want you to be
uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of
The point once again to be made is that when we understand the peace that is ours, we can see every event in our life, even the difficult times, as part of God’s training process. If we can speak of God having a goal for our lives, it is this: to keep us relying on Him, to keep us hoping on Him, with the promise that, as our text concludes, “hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”
So what have we learned today? While our nation prepares for the possibility of war, we’ve learned about the reality of true peace.
To be specific, we’ve learned that true peace is attainable, comes from Jesus Christ, and is the blessed result of our justification through faith.
We’ve learned that true peace fills us with confidence and joy.
And we’ve learned that true peace gives us a proper perspective on life, allowing us to see difficulties as tools God sometimes uses to make us spiritually strong and steadfast.
Now, may the peace of God that transcends all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.