Romans 5:1-2 “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by
faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of
God.”
I
remember people saying that one of their loved ones, after living their entire
life in unbelief and absent of God, “made peace with God” just before they
passed away. I often thought how someone living entirely in a godless
self-actualization life, neither knowing could or obeying the Lord, their
Maker, could all of a sudden and complete change their heart belief and where
their faith lays in the last moments to have peace with God. Yet, we rejoice
that the Lord makes his offer and people accept the gift of God for their
redemption by “saving” faith in loving “true’ conversion of the soul,
regeneration of the spirit and transformation of the heart.
John
3:16-19, 36 “For God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him
should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into
the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is
condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the
world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were
evil. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not
believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
The
late Pastor Dr. D. James Kennedy says that many people mistake two things for
saving faith: (1) Saving faith is not mere head knowledge, like believing
certain historical facts. The Bible says that the devil believes there is one
God, so believing that there is one God is not saving faith. (2) Saving faith
is also not mere temporal faith, that is, trusting God for temporary crises
such as financial, family, or physical needs. Now these are good, and you
should trust Christ for these, but they are not saving faith! But, true
“saving” faith is trusting in Jesus Christ alone for eternal life. It means
resting upon Christ alone and what He has done rather than in what you or I
have done to get us into Heaven. American Theologian & Pastor R.C. Sproul
explains that we are not saved from sin when we accept Christ by saving faith;
we are saved by the grace of God from God and His righteous wrath against us,
as Jesus explained in John 3 (above). Everyone focuses on “salvation unto Heaven”, but, my late
Christian mentor Bill Stiles always said that you have to know what you have
been saved “from”, in order to know and appreciate what you have been saved
“to”. You, I and everyone else, because of our sin, was going to receive the
wrath of God and go to Hell. There is no peace of mind in that knowledge. It
takes the Prince of Peace Jesus Christ to redeem and change us.
Luke
2:14 “Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
The
late Pastor Dr. J. Vernon McGee states it this way: The peace that Paul is
talking about in Romans 5:1-2, which he lists as the first benefit of
salvation, is “peace with God though our
Lord Jesus Christ.” This is the
peace that comes to the soul of the one who has trusted Christ as savior and
knows that God no longer has any charge against them; that they are no longer
guilty. They know that God, who had to be against them in the past for all the
sins that they committed against Him, is now for them They know that they have
a salvation that is permanent and eternal. This is the peace that comes because
of sins forgiven and because everything is right between us and God, through
the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. At peace with God, that is a wonderful
peace!
In
Christ, Brian
No comments:
Post a Comment