Romans – A Treatise
Chapter Five
PEACE WITH GOD
Scripture Reading: verses 1, 2
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.
The conclusion set forth in these verses is largely based on the last verse of chapter 4 – Jesus our Lord, delivered for our offences and raised for our justification. Throughout the previous chapter Paul, by the Spirit of God, has been devising a means whereby the criminal who stands before the bar of God’s justice might be cleared of the offence of which he has been proven guilty. The offence of the Gentile? He had the testimony of God in creation, refused it, and went into idolatry. The offence of the Jew? He had the Law of Moses and all the guidance God had given him under the old covenant, but he too failed to respond to the goodness of God and also went into idolatry. Thus the criminals, Jew and Gentile, stand together as representative of all mankind condemned in the presence of God. Since the wages of sin is death, the criminal must pay with his life for the offence he has committed. Then the substitutionary work of the Lord Jesus on the Cross comes into view, for “He was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification.”
He who knew no sin was made sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. He took our place on Calvary's tree. There
He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Thus the Lord Jesus died. He suffered under the stroke of God’s judgment because of what each of us have done. His death was a penal death, because there He paid our debt, the debt of a broken law on the part of the Jew, the debt of disobedience to give honor to the God of creation on the part of the Gentile.
But the Lord Jesus is no longer in the tomb. On Calvary’s Cross he exhausted the judgment of God against sin. He said, “It is finished,” before He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. The significance of that is this: the full penalty has been paid.
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe,
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.
Then He went into the tomb; then He rose triumphant over death and the grave; and now He sits on the highest pinnacle of glory in the universe. His high station declares to all that the One upon whose shoulders our sins were laid has atoned for them completely, and He is now free from them. He has entered into heaven itself. So Paul says: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The peace has been made. The declaration of peace between God and men has been written in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the power of His risen life. Those who at one time were afar off from God are now made nigh through the blood of the Cross of the Lord Jesus. We who were enemies in our minds by wicked works have been brought nigh through the work of Calvary and peace has been established. This is not a question of making our peace with God, for peace has already been made for us by the work of the Lord Jesus. There are some today who wake up every morning feeling guilty, thinking how they can make their own peace with God by doing things. While we should all seek to live in obedience to God, we need to remember that all the obedience we may render cannot possibly blot out the sins, iniquities, and transgressions of our past life. The distance between God and the creature has been occasioned by past offences, by various activities of sin in our lives. Atonement has been made and the Gospel of God to the Christian is this: if we are converted, i.e., repentant (contrite in heart), obedient to the Gospel message as revealed by Peter on the Day of Pentecost in the second chapter of Acts, then our sins will be blotted out. It is equally true “except we repent we shall all likewise perish.”
In the illustration given by the Lord Jesus Himself in Luke’s Gospel, we are the debtors, God is the creditor, and when we have nothing to pay – He frankly forgives us. The peace has been made by the Lord Jesus on our behalf, and now we can stand in His presence, forgiven, unashamed, our debts cancelled because Another has paid them. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This Scripture goes on: “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace [or place of favor] wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” What a transition from standing in the dock as a criminal before the bar of God’s justice, condemned, our mouths stopped; unable to pay the debt we had incurred. Instead we are transferred by the work of the Lord Jesus on the Cross to stand in this place of favor before God, and how did this happen? Certainly not on the basis of works. We have access to the place of favor by faith – faith in the faith of Jesus Christ. We accept it because God declares it in the Gospel.
Be it known unto you, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.
God declares that justification in the Gospel by saying, “Be it known unto you.” It is not a proposal we bring to God; it is a proclamation presented for our hearing and acceptation. In Timothy’s Epistle, Paul puts it in his own unique way: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” To believe that Gospel message is to be brought into this place of favor by faith. How can any Christian go around feeling uncertain about salvation or fearing God will go back on His Word? How can any child of God feel that the peace established with the throne of God by the Lord Jesus might be abrogated or set aside, and war declared by God on His forgiven creature? No, the opposite is true. Listen to Paul, who says we “rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Not only has God put all of a Christian’s past, present, and future sins under the blood of Christ, blotting them out completely, but He has also given us a new hope. He has “begotten us again,” as Simon Peter says,
. . . unto a lively hope, by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. (1 Pet. 1:3-5)
