Peace with God

The Creator God is angry with every one of us in our natural unregenerate state, because we are sinful, and we are at odds with God because He is Holy, and we are not.  God cannot agree or fellowship with us while we remain lost in our sins - "Can two walk together except they be agreed? The carnal mind is enmity against God:  for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." There is an infinite separation between the rebellious creature and the righteous Creator.  By nature we love that which is evil, and within us there is an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.

We have broken God's law, and we are lost. The only way in which we can get forgiveness is through the merits of Jesus, and that He must freely give us if you simply come and confess your sinfulness, and take Jesus to be your all in all. Yield to the working of his Holy Spirit, and trust to Jesus' person and blood, and you are saved instantly and forever.  Simply become an empty vessel beneath the flowing fountain of water of life that comes from Christ Jesus. Do not try to be a full vessel, or a half full one; but be an empty vessel, and Christ will fill you up. He will not miss one empty soul, for His desire is to save and bless you. He delights in being merciful to the guilty: He longs for it.  Simply be dead, and let Christ Jesus be your Life; become the beggar, and let Jesus be your Riches; be sick, and let Him be your soul's Health; be lost, and let Him be your Savior and Guide; be nothing, and let Him be your All in All. This is faith indeed; to sink self into the Savior; to be lost in yourself, and to be saved in Christ's Blood and Righteousness.

Human nature is dead set against the God of the Bible; it kicks against God's authority, it rebels against His commands, it resists His Holy Spirit, it rejects His bleeding love that was shown through the death of Christ Jesus.  The lost man lives in hostility towards God every day. Before we can enjoy peace of God within our hearts, there must be a state of peace established between us and God, and that can only be accomplished through faith in the Blood of His Son's Cross.  We must submit and yield ourselves to the Lord, and He must forgive our sins freely for Jesus' sake, or else there will be no peace for us; for "there is no peace, saith my God, unto the wicked."

Here is how a sinner possesses peace with the Holy Creator God.  We are criminals condemned in God's sight, but we do not consider ourselves to be in such a critical condition until the work of the Holy Spirit begins in our hearts. We persist that we are righteous by our own accomplishments, we refuse to acknowledge the jurisdiction of God's divine Law, we refuse to acknowledge and own the Justice of the Law's sentence. Before we can have peace with God, we must be brought into God's Court by the Holy Spirit, hear the divine Indictment pronounced against us, and be put on trial. When we are arraigned, we must put in our plea.  Do you say "Not guilty"?  If so, then you are challenging your Accuser to bring forward the evidence which will soon expose your conceit and condemn you forever.

Before there can be peace between us and God, we must with all our hearts plead "Guilty." We must confess the truth of our guilt, for God will never agree with liars, or with those who indulge in self-deception.  He is a God of truth, and dissemblers (insincere hypocrites) can have no communion with the God of the Bible. Being guilty, we must take the place of the guilty: it is our proper position, and it is due to the Judge of all the Earth that we take it; to refuse to do so is to be held in contempt of Court.

There is Mercy only for a sinner, but there will be no mercy for the man who will not own himself to be a sinner. "If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins"; but if any man say that he has no sin, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him, and there can be no peace between him and God while he is in that state of mind.  This is a stern demand, and it is very vexing to our pride, to have to stand in the dock, and answer to the indictment , "Guilty, or not guilty?" and to reply, "Guilty, O LORD, Guilty! Whatever the consequences may be LORD, I am as Guilty as sin."

The sins of our past and the ones we commit daily haunt us.  "If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shall God plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me." We cannot look upon a single day without being convinced of our sin; and in reviewing our past lives from our childhood until now, we are over and over constrained to be ashamed at the memory of our waywardness and willfulness to sin, and of our perverseness and provocation towards God.

To plead Guilty is the ending of a vain show which we find hard to keep up; the admission of guilt is getting to the bottom of the matter, and acknowledging the worst of our case.  Before we can have peace with the God of Heaven, we must confess and admit our true condition, and plead Guilty.  Only the Holy Spirit can persuade you to do so.  It is the Holy Spirit's work to convince us of sin, and when He begins His divine work upon any of us, we shall no longer profess like the self-righteous Pharisee and say we are not as other men, but we will profess clearly like the publican and heartily pray, "God be merciful to me a sinner."

First, with contrition of heart and convicted conscience, we must own and acknowledge our inexcusable guilt. The next thing required for our peace with God is for us to admit the Justice of the divine sentence pronounced against us, and reverence the Judge of all the Earth instead of reviling Him and revolting against Him.

There are some men who will say, "Yes, I will admit that I am guilty and sinful, but the penalty for my sins (the Lake of Fire) is out of proportion to my criminality; I cannot believe that a loving God will deal with my offenses towards Him so severely."

If the Holy Spirit ever shows you your sins in their natural vileness and hideousness, you will think no punishment is too bad for them. You will cry from the depths of your soul, "Let my sins be condemned, let them be punished forever." Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap: the consequences of sin must follow its commission.  If there were no laws in our communities, or if laws were violated with impunity, the foundations of society would be undermined, and there would be no peaceful living here in this world. The great Judge of all the Earth must do right; and if He does right, He must punish our sins, for they ought to be punished.

If I was the Judge of quick and dead, the first thing I would do would be to condemn myself, for my sins justly deserve condemnation and punishment. Only the Spirit of God can bring you to be convinced of sin, and of righteousness, and the judgment to come. God is Righteous in fixing a day in which He will judge the world by the man Christ Jesus.  For the self-righteous man, it is a painful process to renounce his goodness and confess his guilt, and bare his neck to God's sword of divine vengeance, and say, "O LORD thou wilt be justified when Thou judgest, and wilt be clear when Thou condemnest me; for against Thee, and Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight;" yet, there cannot be any peace with God till we come to that place: because there can be no peace with the God of truth where there is any deceit or hypocrisy present.  Divine peace must be founded upon everlasting truth and the Blood of God manifest in the flesh.  The fact is, we are guilty, and we deserve the punishment which God issues to our guilt, and we must agree with that truth, as bad as it looks, or else we can never be friends with God.

The next essential thing to our receiving peace with God and His justification is this:  the prisoner is guilty, his sentence is pronounced, and he admits the righteousness of that sentence.  He is then asked if he has anything to say why the sentence should not he executed, and he stands speechless: and now comes the abounding Mercy of God, who, in order to provide us His peace, finds a sinless Substitute to bear our penalty and lay down His life for us, and the Holy Spirit reveals to us these gracious Gospel facts:  The Creator God became a human being; His name was Jesus of Nazareth.  The Lord Jesus Christ, the divine Savior of the whole world, voluntarily took upon Himself our nature, and came under the Law, and by a divine act JEHOVAH laid upon Jesus the iniquity of us all.  God Almighty puts His sinless Son into the sinner's place. Our sins having been laid on Christ, He has taken them away. In Jesus' own body He bore our sins on the tree. His five bleeding wounds spoke clearly what He suffered; His marred countenance revealed His inward grief, and His cry, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" shows us what He endured when He stood and died in the sinner's place, as our Sin-bearer and our Atoning Sacrifice.

When the LORD through the work of the Holy Spirit enables our soul to perceive our guilt, and that Christ stood in our place, that is when the work of Salvation is beginning. Christ died "the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God;" for God the Father "made Jesus to be Sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the Righteousness of God in Jesus." Christ Jesus was "made a Curse for us: as it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." Christ hath once suffered for sin, and His Blood is the sole foundation of our peace with God.

The point where faith comes into contact with God's divine pardon is when faith trusts to the Precious Blood and believes and receives that the Son of God did come and stand in the sinner's place.  When faith receives Christ's Substitution for itself, and rests in what Jesus has done, and says, "Now I see how God is just, and how he smote Christ for my sins instead of me.  I have personally sinned against God, and I have no righteousness at all. But  I now trust Christ's Righteousness, and I am now be Justified freely in God's sight for Jesus' sake."

Now, there stands the guilty one who has owned his guilty sentence, and he has seen his sentence of capital punishment executed upon Another, even Christ Jesus the Lord. What now?  He takes his place as no longer liable to that sentence. The penalty cannot be exacted twice.  It is neither in accord with human or divine justice that two individuals should be punished for the same offense unless both were guilty. When God devised the plan of Substitution, the full penalty executed upon the guiltless Substitute was clearly intended to bring free forgiveness and pardon to guilty sinners.

So there stands the man who was once guilty.  He is no longer condemned, because Another has taken upon Himself the condemnation to which He was exposed.  The Lord Jesus Christ came voluntarily under the Law, He obeyed and fulfilled the law, and according to the infinite purpose and will of God the Righteousness of Christ is freely imputed to the believer. Christ Jesus stands in the sinner's place, the believing sinner stands in Christ's place.  As the LORD GOD punished Christ as though he had been a sinner, though He was no sinner, and dealt with Him severely as a sinner, so now the LORD looks upon the believing sinner as though he were righteous as Christ Himself, though indeed he has no righteousness of his own; yet God loves him, and delights in him, because he is covered with the robe of his Redeemer's Righteousness, that has no spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

This is the wonderful message of the Gospel from the word of God. It is this Gospel where genuine faith can feed and rest peacefully.  The faith that trusts to Jesus's Blood and receives Him is free from sin's condemnation, for Christ has paid for our sins in His own body on the tree. That believing soul is now righteous before God, for the righteousness of Christ is his by the divine miracle called Imputation. Without any works of your own you can be justified freely by faith in Jesus' Blood according to the Righteousness of faith.  This is the wonderful exchange:  the putting of Christ where the sinner was, and the putting of the sinner where Christ was. And, now, what does the Heavenly Court say to the once condemned criminal? The Court says, "That sinner who believed on Jesus is no longer guilty; he is eternally absolved and acquitted for Jesus' sake, and all charges against him have been dropped, he is free to go."