“Peace with God.” How much is wrapped up in those three words! What a wondrous tale of love and grace is unfolded here!
Should you, my reader, be a stranger to this peace, let me beseech you not to rest till you obtain it. You will be troubled and anxious some day. Every sinner must, sooner or later, wake up to the realities of eternity. Wake up in eternity and all hope is gone; the great gulf is fixed; the eternal destiny—spite of the cavils of men—is irrevocably sealed.
It is, then, of the utmost importance, for us to be on reliable ground in considering this momentous question of peace with God. When your eternal weal or woe is at stake, no “perhaps” or “hope” or “maybe” will do. We must go to God’s word to learn about God’s peace.
That word speaks of
FALSE PEACE.
We can conceive of nothing more terrible than that you should have a false peace—false as Satan himself. You fancy you are on the narrow road, whilst your feet are religiously treading the broad road. You think you are bound for heaven, whilst you are travelling to hell. You believe you have peace with God, whilst you are embracing a cruel phantom.
And if you are undoubtedly sincere on this point, how terrible will be the awakening! Sincerity will not save you. The sincerity of the ship-captain out of his reckonings on a wild stormy night, who puts his vessel’s head straight for the rock-bound, surf-swept shore under the delusion that he is steering for the open sea, will not save him.
Jeremiah of old bitterly complained: “They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is NO PEACE” (Jer. 8:11).
Satan is not dead yet, nor has he forgotten his wiles since that day. If prophet and priest dealt falsely then, can you wonder that the same strategem succeeds today? Scripture says: “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.” Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness.
So, friend, take care now and see that your peace is founded on God’s word, not upon man’s.
If you are resting on your best endeavours—your reading of the Bible, your visiting of the poor, your earnest prayers, your penitential tears—your peace is built upon a sandy foundation. It is false—a peace of Satan’s making.
Nicodemus could have answered to the above description, yet he it was who heard those words, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).
Cornelius was a devout man, who feared God with all his house, gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway—yet he had to hear words whereby he should be saved (Acts 11:14).
Job, whom God described as “My servant Job,” “a perfect and an upright man, one that fears God and eschews evil,” asks the question, “How should man be just with God?” and cannot find an answer.
All you can do in the future cannot obliterate the past. “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). “God requires that which is PAST” (Ecc. 3:15).
But
PEACE WITH GOD
is fully revealed in the Scriptures. We can never make our peace with God, but Christ made peace “through the blood of His cross” (Col. 1:20).
There is one thing God never has done, and never will do. He can never pass over one sin. His holiness demands satisfaction for every sin. Either Christ at the cross, or you in the lake of fire, must suffer the judgment your sins deserve. God will not punish twice. In the love of His heart He gave His only begotten Son. Christ died upon the cross and finished the work of salvation. He satisfied—nay, glorified God about the whole question of sins. And now God can come out in the riches of His love and offer you, a poor unworthy sinner, a full, present, and eternal salvation, and that on a righteous basis. “Whosoever believes in Him [Jesus] shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).
Now, if you simply take God at His word, and receive Christ as your Saviour, you can by faith look back to the cross of Calvary, and see Christ there delivered for your offences.
You can hear that awful cry of tribulation, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Bow in wonder and worship as you by faith see Him bearing your sins in His own body on the tree. Mark well those three thrilling words of triumph, “It is finished,” and know that your sins are for ever borne away by Jesus—the Son of God.
He was laid in a borrowed grave. His body lay in the tomb the whole of the Sabbath—the day appointed for rest, but how broken in upon by sin! Then comes that glorious morn, the first day of the week, and He is raised by the glory of the Father.
A scriptural illustration may help us to gather the wondrous force and meaning of Christ’s resurrection.
The adversary brings his debtor to the judge, the judge delivers him to the officer, and the officer casts him into prison. There he lies till the uttermost farthing is paid.
So the blessed Lord goes into the prison house of the grave, and the very fact that the One who put Him there, has raised Him by His glory is proof positive that the sins of every believer in Jesus are eternally gone. Christ has paid the uttermost farthing of our debt to God—He is our Substitute and God is our Justifier.
So the scripture runs: “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. Therefore being justified by faith, we have PEACE WITH GOD through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 4:25-5:1).
And now a word for those who have peace with God, and know it on the authority of God’s word.
Do not confound peace with God with the
PEACE OF GOD.
When once people are converted they often think they will never sin again, but will always be happy and in communion with God. They have to learn—and, alas! often by sad, personal experience—that the evil nature remains within them, and that the world, the flesh, and the devil are for ever tempting them. And what makes the believer, who falls into sin, unhappy is, that he has the divine nature within, and the Holy Ghost, too indwelling him. Uninstructed in the word of God, when he falls out of communion with God, he often thinks peace with God is gone, and that he must have a reapplication of the blood.
Ah no. The precious blood cleanses from all sin; and such is the value of Christ’s work that no sin is imputed to the believer in Jesus. Peace is for ever made with God for him by the finished work of Jesus.
But the believer does lose happy communion with God; and when he seeks to regain it, finds that the sin has to be judged and confessed. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). We do not approach God as sinners, but the Father as children. Thank God our Father is not careless of our ways. We must be pleasing to Him to enjoy the sweetness of His smile.
But Christians may be walking uprightly before God, and yet not know the peace of God, though knowing peace with God.
They may be worried and perplexed, and seek to carry their own burdens in their own strength. Their faces may be marked by lines of care and anxiety. Stephen’s face shone; theirs does not even wear a stray smile.
What, then, is the sovereign remedy for this sad state of affairs—the divine panacea?
Read Philippians 4:6-7.
“Be careful for nothing.” That does not mean careless about anything; but knowing God as your Father, who cares about the smallest details of your everyday life, you can afford to leave the cares and troubles, and thus your heart has the peace of God in place of the carking care. Peter says, “Casting all your care upon Him; for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). Many bring their cares to God in prayer, but receive little or no benefit, because they carry them away again instead of leaving them in His presence.
The exhortation runs on: “In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” This is so simple it needs no comment. It involves every circumstance of the pilgrim journey, it involves confidence in God, else how can thanksgiving attend your earnest supplication about what may seem to you very untoward circumstances.
Then “the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
What a wondrous climax to arrive at by such a simple means. To enjoy the very peace that God Himself dwells in! What can ruffle that peace or disturb it? What care can intrude upon the throne of God? What, then, can disturb the peace of God in the believer’s heart, who thus connects God with his every-day life? Nothing. That peace will garrison his heart and mind more than an army of soldiers would a beleaguered city.
Can we explain the fulness of that peace? It “passes all understanding” is the Holy Ghosts comment on it. You can enjoy it, but not explain it. It is wonderful! “Enoch walked with God,” we read. No ups and downs mark his history; at any rate they are not recorded of him. His is a brief, blessed biography. “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.”
Yet our scripture goes on and unfolds fresh blessings. Do you want not only the peace of God to garrison your heart, but the very
GOD OF PEACE
Himself to be with you?
How is this to come about? By two simple processes: right thinking and right doing!
Let us follow the scripture: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
What room for heavenly meditation! What room for studying whatever of Christ is seen in our fellow-believers!
If you are continually thinking of the evil and the shortcomings of others your own mind must be defiled, and thus render you an unfitting companion for the God of peace. If you listen to an address to criticise its weak points—the poor delivery of the speaker—and if this be your habit, you will infallibly degenerate into a chronic grumbler, and more, you will lose your power of perceiving the good. On the other hand, if you are on the look-out for the good—if that which is of Christ be prized, you will be surprised how much enjoyment and profit you will get out of the simplest discourse.
Now, no thinking is right if it lead not to right doing. If you contemplate virtue, and seek not to walk in her paths, how much is your heart affected?
So the apostle Paul proceeds: “Those things which ye have both learned and received, and heard, and seen in me, do.” Look at the immense practical power of that little word of two letters. Take a very simple application of the word “no.” The apostle Paul in another place exhorts us to “owe no man anything, but to love one another” (Rom. 13:8). Unpaid debts and the God of peace go not well together. Do you desire His blessed company above all else? Then set your mind on right objects, and seek to carry out the word of God, “and the God of peace shall be with you.”
What a climax of blessing down here for the weary pilgrim! But think not that this is a mere matter of head and hand work. The heart must be right, the affections centred on Christ, faith in God’s word in exercise, faith in God Himself at the throne of grace.