“I AM trying to make my peace with God,” was the answer we received to the question, “Have you peace with God?” The speaker was a young man, religiously inclined, as people would say.
More sorrowful, however, were the word; of an aged woman on her dying bed. Her answer to our question, whether she was ready to meet God, she replied, “I am making my peace with God.” We answered “Making it! Poor soul! but you are now over seventy years of age, and have not many years longer to live. Making your peace with God! You will never be able to do it.” And then we told her that there was not in Scripture so much as the faintest thought to be found of a sinner making his peace with God.
Then the aged woman was angry, and turning on her bed, declared again, “I am making my peace with God before I leave this world.”
What a doleful story of trusting in self is this! Yet how many thousands of sinner; are thus trusting in themselves, and denying the work of Christ! They do not heed the word of God Himself upon the matter, and so pass out of time into eternity without having peace with God. No one who is trying to make his peace with God has peace and until the sinner gives up trying to make it he never will have it. God never gives any one peace who does not believe His word.
What saith the Scripture? “Having made peace through the blood of His cross.” (Col. 1:2020And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. (Colossians 1:20)). The peace is made. It was made by the blood of Jesus, and it was made nearly two thousand years ago, when He shed His blood on the cross. Thus man is completely set aside by the gracious act of God, who gave His Son to die, and by that Son, who made the peace.
Peace, then, is not to be made, for it is made. Peace could not be made by human hands, but it has been made by the Son of God. Peace could not be made by works of living men, but it has been made by the blood of Jesus, who died for sinners.
Never, never breathe again the unbelieving wish to make your peace with God.