NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — “Then being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have had access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we glory on the hope of the glory of God.” Rom. 5:1-2 (Read Rom. 5)
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 stand condemned 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: “But now, in Christ Jesus you who then were afar off came to be near by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, He making us both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, in His flesh causing to cease the enmity, the Law of the commandments in decrees, that He might in Himself create the two into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile both in one body to God through the cross, slaying the enmity in Himself. And coming, He proclaimed ‘peace to you, the ones afar off, and to the ones near.’ (Isa. 57:19) For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to 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 our through faith in Jesus.
Therefore, “we glory on the hope of the glory of God” and are “glorying 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 quotations from Green’s Literal Translation (LITV). Scripture quoted by permission. Copyright 1993 by Jay P. Green Sr., All rights reserved. Jay P. Green Sr., Lafayette, IN. U.S.A. 47903.]
News, Pages 7 on 08/08/2012