The peace of God
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 5:1-5
People have been in pursuit of peace. Even in the beginning, when Cain murdered his brother Abel, living peacefully with one another has been difficult. The reason why such pursuit of peace is difficult is because we try to achieve it in our own terms. From the text, Paul begins to discuss that real peace begins by being reconciled with God. This is achieved when one place his faith in God, experiencing His grace manifested through Christ’s death for sinners. Peace meant much more than the absence of conflict. Paul makes it clear here in today’s passages that it is first of all a restored relationship with God. We should guard against the tendency to conceive of God as a concept or an abstraction. The whole Bible insists that even though God is spirit and holy, He is also personal. In philosophical terms, God is simultaneously transcendent and imminent. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, we see most clearly God’s refusal to be confined in an idea or a ritual or even a book. God’s ultimate self-revelation is as a person. Since this is the case, God’s act of forgiving us sinners had to result in a restoration of the personal relationship for which He created humankind in the first place. The peace in which Adam and Eve walked and talked with God (see Genesis 2:8–25) was turned to fear because of sin (see Genesis 3:8–10), but it has now been restored “through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Not only we received peace with God but also we gained “access by faith into this grace in which we now stand” (v. 2). Because of His grace, we receive the necessities of the Christian life. God’s grace is what makes it possible for the redeemed to serve God and the ongoing blessings of Christ. God’s grace is what makes us stand firm in the security to experience the “hope of the glory of God.” This hope of glory is what enables us to rejoice even in times of “sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
Blessings
