“I WOULD give all the world, if I possessed it, to be able to say that I enjoyed
PEACE WITH GOD.”
Such was the exclamation of one well known to the writer, and it is expressive of the desire, we believe, of many sincere souls. If they do not utter it in words, God sees it is the deep yearning of their hearts.
Many have I met who sincerely believe in Jesus, but do not enjoy settled, abiding peace―peace that knows no change, peace without a ripple. It is most important to get hold of the simple fact that God is pleased to call Himself THE JUSTIFIER of those who believe in Jesus. He could not be known in this character if He had not justified those who believe.
What is it, then, to be justified? Is not a justified person, according to Scripture, one who is made righteous, as well as cleared from all charge of past guilt? If we are made righteous before God by God Himself, then we must be right with Him. If we are right with any person, or with any government, we have no dread of that person or of that government. If God has made us right with Himself, what is there ever to disturb us, or hinder us from enjoying His blessed love, which is the source of our justification? Everyone who believes the testimony of God’s Word concerning the death and resurrection of Christ, whom He in love delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification, is a justified person in the eight of God. “Whom he called,
THEM HE ALSO JUSTIFIED.”
“By him all that believe ARE JUSTIFIED.” What is the ground on which we are justified? Clearly the death of Christ for our offenses, which were against the righteous throne of God. It has been shown in the suffering and death of Jesus what a very serious thing it is to offend against God.
Instead of God hating me for my offenses, they were the occasion on His part to show His love to me, which is beyond all human idea or expression. The gift of His infinite Son proved His love for me was infinite.
Why was all this love expressed to me? What need for all the suffering and agony of One who was equal with God? It was because He was holy and righteous, and therefore hated my sins (not me) and must express that hatred before all the universe, in the forsaking of the very One in whom all His love was expressed to me.
Because He is righteous, and could by no means clear the guilty, He put to death and punished the very One He loved so much, and in whose death all His love was told out. The ground, then, of our justification is the death and blood-shedding of Christ. That met all God’s holy and righteous claims on us as sinners, so that now before heaven and earth the justice of His throne is maintained in His justification of all who believe in Jesus. So the apostle argues, “Being now
JUSTIFIED BY HIS BLOOD.”
When this simple truth is pressed home on souls, a common expression from some is, “Oh, but I cannot feel it!” Where in all Scripture does God say that you must feel it? Believe first, and feeling will follow. God presents it, not to your feelings, but to your faith.
Let me illustrate. Some time ago I was preaching in a town in Scotland. As I was speaking on faith, honoring God in spite of feelings, and God honoring the faith that trusted Him in spite of seeing any sign, or feeling any inward emotion, a woman arose in the meeting and said before all the people, “I take God at His word, and I take Him at His word now.” She believed God that she was justified, because God said so of all who believe in Jesus.
Her bold testimony sent a thrill through my heart, and through many another heart in that meeting. Amongst those present who had been deeply affected was a young person, brought there by two earnest Christian ladies. After the meeting this person said to me, “Oh, I wish I could say that!”
“You wish you could say what?” I said, rather abruptly. “Do you mean you wish you could believe God?”
“Yes,” was her reply.
“Think of what you are saying,” said I. “You WISH YOU COULD BELIEVE GOD. Has God not given the greatest proof of His love to you, and what occasion has He ever given you to cause you to doubt Him?”
“None; but oh, I wish I could believe His word.”
“Suppose when you get home tonight your mother said to you, ‘M―, I want you to go with me to North A―tomorrow, that I may purchase you a new dress,’ and you looked up into your mother’s face and said to her, ‘Oh, mother, I wish I could believe your word,’ what would your mother think? How would she feel about you? Would you dare to treat your mother like that?”
With this simple illustration the light of God broke in upon the girl as we walked along, and she gave a great sigh, and said, “Oh, I see it! Oh, I see it! I am saved, I am saved now.”
Peace flowed into that dear girl’s heart like a river, and she lived several years to enjoy it, and adorn the doctrine of her precious Saviour-God. A little time since I heard she had passed in triumph to be forever with the Lord.
READER, HAVE YOU PEACE?
The fact that Christ is risen shows God’s acceptance of the blessed work He gave His Son to accomplish. The fact of Christ’s resurrection proves that my peace is now made, and that I am eternally cleared from every charge, and in resurrection life He has become my righteousness, and is also my life.
“He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21). That is, He displaces me in the eye of God, and when I learn that, He will then displace me in my own eyes. As light accompanies the sunrise, so will peace follow as the result of my faith resting in Him, and seeing that He has displaced me before God. Before God Christ is everything and I am nothing.
PEACE OF COMMUNION is next in order to peace of conscience. It could not be entered upon until peace of conscience is known, as the result of seeing God as my justifier, and myself justified by God in the risen Christ. I cannot constantly enjoy the peace of communion unless I walk with a good conscience before the One who justified me. It is in the Holy Spirit’s power I enjoy this peace of communion. He dwells within each believer, to maintain us in the constant enjoyment of the love that is the source of our justification― “the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Apart from His indwelling we could not have any experimental knowledge of God’s unchanging love to us, which casts out all fear. It is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us (Rom. 5:5). Peace is said to be one of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 6). If we are always to be maintained in the enjoyment of this peace, we have to be most careful to walk in the Spirit. This involves exercise, and prayer, and the judgment of every outside influence which would grieve the Spirit in us. Hence it says in Romans 8, “To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is
LIFE AND PEACE.”
Carnality or fleshliness is the allowance of what is contrary to the Spirit, and that state is death, and hence misery. Spiritual death and unhappiness go hand in hand: spiritual life and peace go hand in hand.
As we cannot enjoy natural life apart from the sunshine, neither can we enjoy spiritual life and peace apart from living habitually in the sunshine of God’s deep unchanging love to us in Christ.
What perfect peace flows from knowing His love to us, as that love is known now to Christ as man at God’s right hand. “That the love wherewith thou hast loved me might be in them and I in them.” As we in the power of the Spirit drink daily into that love that always thinks the best about us, so will our souls respond to that love, and so will our peace abide, amid all the vicissitudes of changing time and circumstances.
But suppose we grieve the Spirit, and lose this peace, what then? Do we cease to become objects of God’s wonderful love? Never: if we grieve the Spirit, He, in faithfulness to Christ, our ever-living advocate at the Fathers right hand, will grieve us and make us so miserable that we shall be glad to go right down on our faces in the dust of self-judgment, repentance, and confession, and own our sin to the Father. Then we get the sense that we are forgiven, as His children, and the consequence is the peace we had been in the enjoyment of, but had lost through unwatchfulness, and perhaps prayerlessness and carelessness, is once more restored to us. “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). Satan can never bring a charge against that righteous One, though he might at times have good reason to accuse us. “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).
P. W.