There is no such thing as “trying in the right way” to make your peace with God. In the first place you don’t need to if you could; in the second, you couldn’t if you wanted to. To make peace with God about your sins would be to meet His righteous claims about them, to bear His righteous judgment upon them. Who is so bold as to attempt that? Surely no one. Nor, thank God, are they asked to do it. It was the work of Another. Christ “made peace by the blood of His cross,” and by the Holy Ghost, come down from the great Peace-Maker, the God of peace is now “preaching peace by Jesus Christ.” It’s in believing what He has done that peace with God becomes ours. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:11Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: (Romans 5:1)).
What most men mean by “making their peace with God” is appeasing Him by doing something to commend themselves to His favor, as Jacob tried to appease the expected anger of a robbed and disappointed Esau. “I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face; peradventure he will accept of me” (Genesis 32:2020And say ye moreover, Behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face; peradventure he will accept of me. (Genesis 32:20)). They hope that, in consideration of their amended ways, He will pass over the sins of a past lifetime, and take them to heaven. But is sin and its atonement so insignificant a thing as that? They are right in regarding it as an insignificant thing, “if,” as someone has said, “as my breath blows out the candle, or a drop of water extinguishes it, a prayer, a penitent sigh, or a few dropping tears can extinguish the wrath of God.” Such people must know perfectly well that a mere expression of sorrow, a slight repentance, would never be accepted as payment of a debt between man and man; yet they are blind enough to think that such would meet the claims of a holy God against a lifetime of sin! Nor is it merely a question of treating sin as insignificant; it is trivializing what God is, both as “light” and “love.” If sin must be met, according to His righteous demands, all the tears of repentance this world ever knew couldn’t meet it. It must be by blood-shedding, not tear-shedding. For “without the shedding of blood is no remission.” What, then, is the glad tidings of the gospel? It is this, “Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18)). Notice, He “suffered”; for suffering was the righteous reward for our sins. So that instead of our doings commending us to God’s love, “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)). If a debt must be paid, an ocean of tears would not cancel it. Neither regrets for the past, however sincere, nor promises for the future, however honest, would settle this account. But if the debtor knew that a friend had stepped in and paid the debt in full, all thought of “trying to make peace” with the creditor would be at an end.
No doubt every anxious soul begins with the right thought, when he says within himself, “If, considering all my sins, I am ever to be put right with a holy God, something must be done?”
But it is then that Satan finds a fair chance of whispering, Yes, you’ll find God unfeeling and exacting enough, so you had better start and do. The gospel is not enough, something must be done, therefore I must do it. But rather this, The something which was necessary, has been done. Christ has done it; so that God has highly exalted Him in consequence. It is as an enthroned Saviour that the apostle, by the Spirit of God, draws the believer’s attention to and says, “He is our peace.”
Returned soldiers of a victorious army display their bullet-torn, blood-stained flag, with their various trophies and spoils of war, and thereby declare the cost of defeating the enemy, securing peace and establishing their nation. So Jesus, the triumphant, risen One, returning from the place of conflict and death, announces the peace He had secured for His own (John 20:19-2019Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20And when he had so said, he showed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. (John 20:19‑20)); at the same time displaying His wounded hands and side to remind them of the mighty cost of making their peace and silencing Satan forever.
Can we, then, behold that glory-crowned Victor on “the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,” and still talk of making our peace with God? Instead shouldn’t we sing, “The Lord hath triumphed gloriously,” and “hath given us the victory”?
His be the Victors name,
Who fought the fight alone;
Triumphant saints no honor claim —
His conquest was their own.