Peace With God
Romans 5:1-2
On September 30, 1938 British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Adolph Hitler and requested that he sign a peace treaty called the Munich Agreement, in which Hitler guaranteed he would not go to war with Great Britain. Upon returning to England, Chamberlain gave his famous speech in which he announced that the Munich Agreement guaranteed “Peace for our time”. Well, we all know that this peace was very short lived as Great Britain and Germany were at war in less than a year’s time.
Men cannot make lasting peace, keep it, or guarantee it. Even with the best of intentions and under the best of circumstances we are unable to live at peace with others all the time. Only God can create and keep and guarantee peace with His enemies and the Bible tells us that if we have been justified by faith then we are at peace with God and that this peace is a guaranteed peace that will never cease to be in effect.
Go with me to our text for this morning—Romans 5:1-2 where we will see that if a person has been justified by faith—that is declared righteous by God—that person is transferred from the position of being an enemy of God to a child of God and from a state of being at war with God to being at peace with God.
In Romans 5, Paul really focuses on the assurance of our salvation and he begins by talking about what we possess as those who have been justified by God, such as peace with God, the grace of God, and union with Christ, that all guarantee our salvation and thus our acceptability with God.
I think it is very interesting and important that Paul, in writing this letter to the young Christians in Rome, does not make the jump from justification and salvation in Romans 1-4 to sanctification in Romans 6 without first explaining why the believer can be fully assured of his salvation in Romans 5. You see, before we can truly grow in our Christian Faith we must be secure in it. We must have the assurance that we are OK with God and that in being justified by faith we have been truly reconciled to God.
And so, Paul begins this chapter on assurance by stating that as a result of being justified by faith we have peace with God. Now—if we, upon being justified or saved by God, have peace with God—it must be assumed that prior to our salvation we were not at peace with God. Paul makes this point down in Romans 5:10 where he tells us that before we were reconciled to God we were the enemies of God. Thus, we were in a state of hostility and enmity with God. And as a result of this state of hostility between God and us due to our active rebellion against Him and His authority over our lives—His wrath was being revealed against us. You see, God was angry at us for our sin and our sinfulness and counted us as His enemies. And God's anger toward us and our sin was our main problem in life whether we realized it or not. Furthermore, being the enemy of God and the rightful recipient of His anger and wrath was a terrifying position to be in—yet I’m not sure we all realized it then or even now.
The writer to the Hebrews makes it vividly clear that “it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God”.
Look at Hebrews 10:26-31. The writer is talking about people who had been under the preaching of the Gospel but who have refused to believe it and thus remain the enemies of God. In verse 31, he uses the Greek word, phoberos, which means: that which is horrifying and dreadful and which results in terror. In other words, what Hebrews 10:31 is saying is that to fall into the hands of the living God as His enemy will be far worse than anything you can ever imagine—it would completely horrify and terrify you. And unless we understand what it means to be the enemy of God we will not appreciate what it means to be at peace with God.
Have you ever considered the awesome power and might of God that is at His disposal to use in wrath against those who remain His enemies? Go with me to Psalm 33:6.
“By the Word of the LORD the heavens were made and by the breadth of His mouth all their host.” God’s power is absolutely greater than anything we can even begin to imagine. I mean, He didn’t have to lift a finger to create the heavens and all the stars they contain. And when you consider some of these stars and the galaxies in which they exist—you will be awed by His power and specifically the power of His Word and the power of his wrath. We also, just like Psalm 8 says, see how absolutely puny and small we are.
We are all familiar with our very own star the Sun, which is 93 million miles away from us and about a million times larger than earth. That is impressive to us but is relatively a minor thing in comparison to the rest of the universe God has created.
You see, the Sun is but a small star in a small solar system of our Milky Way Galaxy. In fact, if our solar system which contained our sun and the planets orbiting it were the size of a quarter—the Milky Way Galaxy would be the size of the whole North American continent and the sun and all its planets would be but a speck of microscopic dust on that quarter.
There is actually another star in our galaxy that is 427 light years away from the earth, which is so big it could easily fit 262 trillion earths inside of it. To give you some idea of its size in comparison to earth—if the earth were a golf ball—this star would be the size of six empire state buildings stacked up on top of each other, which would be a little over a mile high. Thus, if I took this golf ball and put it on the road outside the gate of the school and said it represented earth—Betelguese would extend from the gate all the way to my house.
And to give you some idea of how far 427 light years is—a light year is simply how far light travels in a year. So, since the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second—a light year is 5.88 trillion miles. And since Beetleguese is 427 light years from the earth that means if you were to multiply 5.88 trillion by 427 you’d find out how many miles from earth it is. My calculator doesn’t go that high. And by the way, please don't think I am smart enough to come up with all this stuff. I got this information originally from Louie Giglio and then confirmed it on NASA's official website.
But even greater than that is considered by many to be the largest star known to man—its called Canus Majores (Big Dog??). It is so big you could put seven quadrillion earths inside of it. That is the number seven with 15 zeros behind it. If the earth were the size of a golf ball—that would be enough golf balls to cover the entire State of Texas twenty-two inches deep. To take it a step further, if the earth were the size of a golf ball, this star would be the size of Mt. Everest, which is 29,002 ft. or about 5 and ¾ miles high. To help you envision this—if you set this golf ball down on the highway outside the gate to the school—Canus Majores would cover the distance from the gate to Dairy Queen on I-40.
This was all created by the Word of God. In other words, all of this was simply spoken by God into existence according to Psalm 33:6. And if such a great God, with all this and in fact infinitely more power that this was angry at us--Nothing could be worse!
I mean the prophet Isaiah quotes God as saying that He has measured the entire universe with His hand—thus, the very hands that the enemies of God will fall into are the hands that can span this universe we have been talking about.
Do you not see why it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God?
And that was our situation before we were saved.
But because of our justification—our salvation—we who were in this terrible position have been placed in a position of being at peace with God. God is no longer angry with us. We are reconciled and as a result we are at peace with God.
You know, I have always wondered why God created the universe so that it appears infinite in size. I mean just to give you an example, the Whirlpool Galaxy is 31 million light years away from where you are sitting right now. That means, in the simplest terms possible, that it is so far away, that if there was a space ship that could travel at a speed of 186,000 miles per second—it would take you 31 million years to get there.
And the universe is bigger than that. So again, why such a huge, astronomical, incomprehensible, and infinitely appearing universe that just goes on and on and on?
Turn to Psalm 103:11. Now try Psalm 57:10. And finally, Psalm 36:5. The size of the universe is the illustration of the size of God’s heart of mercy and grace toward those who come to Him for salvation. In other words—as those who have been justified by faith--we have an infinite and eternal peace with God that is illustrated by the infinite appearance of the universe.
And it gets better than that.
You see, all the power that once potentially could have been used to demonstrate God's anger against us now is used by God to demonstrate His love and grace toward us—so that we will always be at peace with God. Look at Romans 5:2.
Our peace with God is a guaranteed peace that will last forever because we through Jesus Christ have entered into a sphere of grace which ensures and guarantees that this state of peace with God never fails. As those who have been justified by faith and as those who are at peace with God we have also entered into a new kind of life, which is characterized by grace. And the best way to describe this new kind of life and living that is characterized by grace is that as those who are justified by faith and at peace with God and are standing in grace, we do not and will never experience God’s great power toward us negatively as His adversaries.
Rather, we who are justified and at peace with God and standing in grace will always and forever experience His great power positively as His children. In fact, this is what Paul has in mind when he writes in Ephesians 3:20, Now to Him Who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us.
This living in grace as the positive recipients of God’s omnipotent sovereign grace is to live in the mighty sphere and influence and dominion of transforming, empowering, preserving grace in which God's infinite power is working in us and for us to accomplish what He has determined to accomplish in us. Thus, grace is a sphere and reign of God's infinite power working for us and not against us. Thus, the greatness of God’s power that set the universe in motion and keeps it in place is the same power that set us in motion as God’s children and which sustains us as God’s children in a continual state of peace with Him. And this grace is the guarantee of our future.
It's God's sovereign grace that guarantees our future glorification when we will be presented blameless before the throne of God. That is what we have entered into, according to Romans 5:2. That is where the justified people of God live. We live in the sphere and reign and power of omnipotent sovereign grace working on our behalf for our joy and God’s glory. That is where we stand. This is the sphere that we live in. We are completely enveloped by the grace of God so that we cannot fail to become who and what God has sovereignly determined we will be and that is “conformed to the image of Christ” (Romans 8:28). And if you’ll go to Romans 8:28-30, you’ll see the ultimate goal of this sovereign grace in which we are standing and living right now and that is our future glorification.
And this is why we are really commanded to rejoice and exult in the expectation of the glory of God at the end of verse 2. We who have come to God through Christ Jesus for salvation from our sins and His wrath have every reason to rejoice in our future expectation of heaven and seeing the glory of God because we are at peace with God and will always be at peace with God as those who are living and standing in the grace of God. A grace that is not only bigger than our sin but bigger than the universe itself because it is not the creation of God but rather an attribute of God and thus it is as infinite and eternal as God. Thus, your salvation and your peace with God is as infinite as God’s grace—in which you as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ are standing and will always stand.
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