Peace, For All Who Want It

When I worked in health care I had a patient who was a member of the Saudi royal family. One day he gave several of us his business card, which had the symbol of the Saudi Arabia on it. It was a palm tree, above a pair of crossed swords. He told us the palm tree symbolized, "Peace, for all who want it." We asked about the swords. The answer was less direct, along the lines of, "The other thing…" The idea, as I recall, was that the nation of Saudi Arabia would live in peace with anyone, but if someone did not want peace with them then they would deal with them directly as their enemy.

That memory came to mind as I was reading Romans 5, where in verse 1 Paul says:

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

According to my patient, peace is the default position of anyone in relation to Saudi Arabia. That is also what we might often assume to be God's default towards people. If, first and foremost, "God is love" then God is a God who is naturally at peace with all peoples of the world. But what Paul points to in that one verse of Romans is that God's "natural" position towards humans is not peace but something quite different.

God certainly is love, but that is not the end of the story. God is many other things as well, such as good, and wise, and strong, and knowledgeable, and just, and merciful, and righteous. All of the characteristics that we might think of to describe God are all present all of the time, and they are all perfect in every way. Which is another way of saying that God is holy.

And the thing that from our side shapes the nature of our relationship with God is our sin. God has given his perfect law, and our default position is to break it continually. As sinners our place before a holy God is not one of peace, but of something far, far different, unless…

Unless we take the path that Paul points his readers towards, the path of peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the one, sent by God, to make right the terrible wrong that happened in the Garden as Adam and Eve committed the first sin. That sin broke the easy fellowship of humans with God, and faith in Jesus and what he accomplished in his death and resurrection is the only path of restoration. That’s what it means to be declared justified. By faith in Jesus our sin has been removed, every bit of it, so that we stand before God cleansed from it. Justification, by faith in Jesus alone, is the path to true and lasting peace with God.

Peace with God is an amazing and wonderful thing. It is a precious treasure, and one of the most wonderful things about it is that we can receive as a free gift of God when we have faith in Jesus as our savior.

May this be the peace that you live in each day, the peace that you can enjoy from now on and forevermore.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.