Introduction
The world hankers after peace but there will be
none until He who is its rightful Prince reigns as King in
righteousness. Men build peace on international agreements and
treaties and there is peace—for a time—but history proves again and
again that it never lasts. The ancient Greeks and Romans had gods of
war but no gods of peace (although Dionysus was said to love peace).
By contrast, the Bible describes God several times as the God of
peace (see Rom. 15: 33 etc.)—but never as the God of war.
While international peace is important, there
is a peace that is of paramount importance and which transcends all
others. That peace is an individual’s peace with God. Peace between
nations is an external condition but peace with God is an internal
matter—a condition of soul, an inner feeling.
Peace with God
To know whether or not I possess something, I
must be clear first as to what it is. So what is peace? Men would
say it is the absence of war, of conflict and of strife. All very
true. It is also a condition of calm and tranquillity, of quiet and
rest, and a state in which anxiety, concern and worry have no place.
But what of “peace with God” (Rom. 5: 1, AV)? These words are better
translated as “peace towards God” for the Greek pronoun
pros (towards) involves direction—that is if I look up to God, then there
is nothing to disturb, nothing to cause anxiety or fear but that all
is restful. I know that any question that might be raised against me
to create doubt has been settled and settled for ever to God’s
satisfaction. That is peace with God. So have
you got this peace?
Now this peace is not about the absence of
cares and worries, perplexities and uncertainties
in my pathway here.
These I can take to my Father in prayer and enjoy peace about them,
a peace that God Himself gives—what Scripture calls the “peace
of God” (Phil. 4: 7,
my emphasis). This is distinct from peace
with God. The latter
assumes that there has been conflict and strife between God and me,
but that now there is peace because what caused the enmity and made
me an enemy has been removed.
False Ideas
The Apostle, quoting from Is. 59: 8, says of
unbelievers that the “way of peace they have not known” (Rom. 3:
17). Sadly, this is also true of many who
do believe and who
should know. Several
times in the NT we read the clause ‘that ye may know’ and this is
the reason why I write—that
you may know. Yet
commonly, a dying man is asked if he has made his peace with God.
This question assumes two things—both of them false. Firstly, it
assumes that a man can make this peace—that it is within his power
to do so. The Bible nowhere tells me to even attempt this. It is the
assumption of all false religions that man can do something to
placate God and to secure peace with Him. Secondly, the question
also assumes that such a peace has not already been made. What
Scripture says is that
Christ has made peace
“by the blood of His cross” (see Col. 1: 20)—thus the work has
already been done by the only One who could do it. If I owe a sum of
money, a righteous creditor cannot accept payment from me if another
has already paid my debt!
False
Foundations
A building is only as stable as the foundation on
which it is built. Too many build their peace with God on false
foundations. When the tremors of life come, Satan’s voice is heard,
their faith is challenged, and their peace collapses because it
rested on the wrong foundation. One such false foundation is the
love of God, the sense in the soul that God loves me. Yes, “God so
loved … that he gave” (John 3: 16), but the Bible never makes that
the basis of peace. The Gospel is called “the glad tidings of peace”
(Eph. 2: 17; 6: 15) and “the glad tidings of the grace of God” (Acts
20: 24) but never ‘the glad tidings of the love of God’. We are
“saved by grace” (Eph. 2: 8), not love—for grace is not just love,
but involves what love has done. Love is never the basis of peace.
As regards the Gospel, God’s love is its source, grace is its
characteristic and peace is its end result. While a mother would do
anything to save her drowning child, her love in itself will not
save it. It needs someone to go into the water to do that. Thus
making God’s love for me the grounds of my peace with God is a
blunder, the result of defective present–day preaching that
downgrades sin and stresses God’s love at the expense of His
righteousness.
As peace is an emotion, an internal feeling,
another mistake is to make my peace with God rest on His work in me.
Now God’s work
within me is just as
important as His work
for me, but peace is based on the latter, not the former. “The
Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of
God” (Rom. 8: 16) but He does not testify that we have peace. Again,
I am born again by the work of the Spirit of God
in me, not the work of
Christ
for me. We are
children of God because of new birth, but birth gives life not
peace. If I am looking within to find peace, I am looking in the
wrong place. It’s like looking for a bed in the kitchen—it is not
the right room. As another has wisely said, thirst is the result of
something that is produced
inside of us but what
allays it is something provided
outside. When this outside
provision is applied to the inside need then the thirst is quenched.
The desire for peace within is likewise satisfied by what God has
provided for us outside of ourselves in the work of Christ, not in
the work of the Holy Spirit—vital though that is in its own sphere.
Apart from the introduction, there is not a word about either the
Holy Spirit or the love of God in the Roman epistle until the
grounds of peace with God have been firmly established. Then, and
then only, do we read about the Holy Spirit and God’s love (see Rom.
5: 5).
The Way of
Peace
Throughout the Bible peace is rooted in
righteousness: “And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and
the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever” (Is.
32: 17; see also Ps. 72: 3; Rom. 14: 17; James 3: 18). The way of
peace is set out in Rom. 4 culminating in the grand conclusion at
the beginning of chapter 5: “Therefore having been justified on the
principle of faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus
Christ” (v 1). Let us examine these words in detail.
Firstly, it is peace towards
God. It is God Himself
as God that is in
view. It is not the Father as such, but God as God. Why? Because it
is God that has been offended by sin. Whenever we read about
justification or reconciliation in the NT, it is always God and not
the Father, the name of relationship. Thus “[It is] God who
justifies” (Rom. 8: 33), Why? Because justification is a judicial
matter and the Father does not judge any one (see John 5: 22). It is
as “the Judge of all the earth” (Gen. 18: 25), creation’s supreme
Justice, that God “justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4: 5).
Again, there is only
one way of peace. It
is not through the Holy Spirit, nor through the Father but “through
our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5: 1). There is no other means. The
work is His alone. It is a work done
for me but entirely
independent
of me. Indeed, it was
done before I was born. Note the title: the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
His full title
as Man, the One of
whom Peter declares that “God has made him, this Jesus … both Lord
and Christ” (Acts 2: 36). It is that Man who is now in the very
presence of God, testimony not only to the completeness of the work
but God’s satisfaction with it.
He is the One “who has
been delivered for our offences and has been raised for our
justification” (Rom. 4: 25). Note too that our sins are described as
offences—the setting is judicial, stressing God’s attitude towards
sin.
Justification
The word is “having been justified … we have
peace” (Rom. 5: 1). It is not love, forgiveness, redemption or
anything else that is the basis of peace, but justification. But why
is redemption not the basis? Because redemption has a future element
to it (see Rom. 8: 23) while there is no future element to
justification. It is set in the past and is complete
now (see Rom. 5: 9; 8:
30). However, justification does not just involve the discharge of
all that is against me (as in Acts 13: 39) but is the declaration of
positive righteousness by God on my behalf. This is the
righteousness that was reckoned to Abraham (see Rom. 4: 3, 5, 22)
and which is reckoned to every believer (see Rom. 4: 23–25). This
righteousness is not inherent in me, for it is reckoned to me. What
does that mean exactly? Well the same phraseology used for
righteousness in chapter 4 is used regarding circumcision in chapter
2 where the sense is indisputable. There Paul says of the Gentile
“If therefore the uncircumcision keep the requirements of the law,
shall not his uncircumcision be reckoned for circumcision …?” (Rom.
2: 26). The preposition eis
is translated for in Rom. 2: 26 and as
in Rom. 4: 3, 22 and in each case takes the accusative case. The
word reckoned is the same
in all three cases. Clearly, the sense in Rom. 2 is that if the
Gentile kept the law, then although still actually uncircumcised, he
would be reckoned, accounted, viewed and treated as circumcised. He
was physically not circumcised, nor would he now feel circumcised
but
was judged as such. In
exactly the same way, believers, are reckoned, accounted, viewed and
treated as righteous by God. Practically the believer is still
unrighteous, but judicially he is accounted righteous. If I
was righteous, then
there would be no need to
reckon me to be so! It is simply a judicial decision on the part
of God. The righteousness is judicial not practical. I am justified,
declared right and that by God Himself. No other can make that
declaration, it comes from God alone: “[It is] God who justifies”
(Rom. 8: 33).
The Principle
of Faith
“Therefore having been justified on the principle
of faith, we have peace …” (Rom. 5: 1). While justification is God’s
basis for peace, on our side there must be faith. But what is faith?
There must be absolute certainty in the answer for everything hinges
on it. It is seen distinctively in Abraham who is “[the] father of
all them that believe” (Rom. 4: 11). Faith is independent of
feelings within and circumstances and events without. It looks in
one direction only—to God. Feelings are always within, they may be
right, they may be wrong and they may vary. Feelings are not faith.
To look within to see if I have faith is a mistake because I am
really trying to have faith in faith. Faith has only one
direction—outward. It always looks outward, otherwise it is not
faith. Looking within to see if I have believed is really exchanging
faith for feelings. “He that confideth in his own heart is a fool”
(Prov. 28: 26). Hence Paul does not say a word about Abraham’s
feelings in Romans 4!
Now faith always rests on what is external. In
Heb. 6: 19 Paul uses the figure of an anchor saying “which we have
as anchor of the soul, both secure and firm”. When the anchor
remains in the ship it effects nothing. It is only when the anchor
is dropped outside the ship that it is of any use. The stability of
the ship is determined by what the anchor is attached to. Faith is
the soul’s anchor. Events are immaterial to faith irrespective of
whether or not they agree with what is believed. When Christians
speak of archaeological discoveries or historical events confirming
the word of God they are on the line of unbelief, although they may
not know it. Man’s supposed confirmation of what God has said is
nothing more than an insult to Him.
What then is faith? It is
believing God. It is believing what God has said for no other reason than that God
has said it. What God has said cannot change for He is the
God “who cannot lie (Tit. 1: 2). On the other hand if I do not
believe God, then I make Him a liar as John reasons in 1 John 5: 10.
As has already been said, faith looks in one direction only—to God.
It rests on His Word and nothing else. A hospital patient naturally
has great anxiety about his visit to the consultant. On the latter’s
assurance that all is now well, anxieties give way to peace. On what
does the inward peace rest? On the patient’s trust in the word of
the doctor. The peace is internal; what creates the peace is, as
ever, external. To base the peace on what I hope or what I think the
consultant will say is no ground for peace. Nor does it rest on my
feelings about my health. Again, the views of others on my medical
condition are irrelevant, only the doctor’s word carries authority
in the matter. Likewise true peace rests on faith in the external
word and work of another.
See how faith was independent of circumstances
in the case of Abraham. Everything militated against what God had
told him concerning his having a son in his old age yet he “against
hope believed in hope” (Rom. 4: 18). What account did faith take of
his natural condition? It says “he considered not” (v19). Yet in
regard to what God had said he “hesitated not” (v20). Hesitation is
the child of unbelief but “being fully persuaded” (v21) is the
offspring of faith. His faith had nothing to go on but God’s Word.
That is exactly where all believers stand.
For Abraham, the testimony was spoken (see
v18); for us, it is written (see v23). For Abraham, the spoken
testimony was to him alone; for us, it is there for all to see in
the Scriptures. For Abraham, it was a promise of what God would do
in the future (see v13); for us, it is the testimony of what God has
done in the past. Unlike Abraham, we are not waiting for God to act,
for He has already acted in grace and the work is done. He “has
raised from among [the] dead Jesus our Lord, who has been delivered
for our offences and has been raised for our justification” (vs. 24,
25). If Abraham’s
faith is ours then his
reckoned
righteousness is ours
also and we are justified by faith—and it is on that basis that we
have
peace towards God.
Conclusions
There are many and various pathways in life but
the “way of peace” (Rom. 3: 17) is a singular way. God Himself has
paved that road. It is a road without restrictions so that all may
tread its path. From God’s side all is complete and the way is open
so that “being enemies, we have been reconciled to God through the
death of his Son” (Rom. 5: 10). This is only made good on our side
by the exercise of faith—by believing God. May each reader form the
same conclusion as the Apostle: “Therefore having been justified on
the principle of faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord
Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5: 1)—and add his amen.
