WESTSIDE — How Can We Have Peace with God?

“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Romans 5:1-2 (Read Romans 5:1-11)

A common Biblical greeting is the word “peace” (Shalom in the Hebrew and Eirene in the Greek). But the word as it is commonly used in the Bible does not refer to earthly peace among nations but to peace with God. What does it mean to have peace with God and how can we have that peace?

When we remember that all of us are by nature enemies of God and in rebellion against Him - not loving Him, trusting Him or seeking to honor Him with our lives by obeying His commandments - and that we are, as a result, under the wrath and condemnation of God our Maker, the prospect of having peace with the LORD God restored is indeed inviting, for not to have this peace is to standcondemned to eternal punishment in hell.

To have peace with God is to be pardoned and forgiven. It is to be acquitted by Him for all our transgressions of His perfect and holy law, and it is to be accepted back into fellowship with the LORD God who fashioned and made us in our mothers’ wombs. And that peace was won for us by the holy life and innocent sufferings and death of God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ (cf. v. 5-11; 2 Cor. 5:18-21).

The Bible says: “Now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; forto make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access byone Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:13-18). Whether Jew or Gentile, Jesus won for us peace with God the Father by the shedding of His holy and precious blood in our stead, for all sins.

And that peace of sins forgiven is ours not by anything we do to please God but through faith in what Christ Jesus has done for us when He died upon the cross and rose again in victory over sin, death and the devil. For Christ’s sake, God is gracious to us and has pardoned us, and that grace and pardon - His peace - is ours through faith in Jesus.

Therefore, we “rejoice in hope of the glory of God” and “joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” for we have the certainty that, as Christ was raised up from the dead on the third day, we will be raised up on the Last Day unto life everlasting with our God and Savior!

Dearest Lord Jesus, we thank You for shedding Your blood on the cross and making atonement for all our sins that we might have peace with God and the certain hope of the eternal joys of heaven. Amen.

[Devotion by Randy Moll. Scripture from the King James Version of the Bible.]

Opinion, Pages 6 on 03/30/2011