We read the word of God from Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. And that word access means an introduction. It's as though Christ takes you by the hand and introduces you into the gracious presence of God. Not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience and experience hope. And hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. Not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who was the figure of him that was to come. But not as the offense, so also is the free gift. For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift. For the judgment was by one to condemnation. But the free gift is of many offenses unto justification. For if by one man's offense death reign by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ. Therefore, as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, that is, constituted sinners, judged sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous, that is, judged righteous. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus far, the reading of the Holy and Divine Scripture we consider as our text tonight, verse 1. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul begins a new section in his epistle to the Romans. In that new section, he is going to develop the second part of his theme. His theme, he took from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, he who is righteous by faith shall live. And that theme the apostle was developing in the first four chapters. But that theme he developed in that first four chapters only in its first part. He who by faith is righteous. The apostle is establishing that righteousness comes by faith. He established the need for that righteousness in the universal offense of man. To the ungodly who have never heard the gospel, God makes known his eternal power and Godhead by means of the created thing. And man takes that truth of God that he sees and he holds it down in unrighteousness whereby he becomes guilty before God. So that apart now from the law, that is the revelation of the will of God given by Moses, apart from now the law, man is a law unto himself. He knows basically good and evil. He has seen God in creation and he hates God and he holds that down in unrighteousness. But the situation fundamentally is no better for the Jew. The Jew received the very oracles of God. And that law that God gave to the Jew revealed the standard of good and evil in a very minute fashion. But what that law did is that law made the Jew, as it were, more guilty. By that law was the knowledge of sin. so that the apostle concludes that all are unrighteous. There is none righteous, no not one. That's the need for a righteousness that is without the law. And it's that righteousness that he establishes too. What is that righteousness? That righteousness is the very righteousness of God. that God worked out in Jesus Christ, his son, who was delivered over for our offenses, who was raised again because of our justification. And the apostle established, especially through Abraham, that the one who is righteous is righteous by faith. He who is righteous by faith, what distinguished Abraham And what made Abraham unique was not Abraham's obedience. It wasn't Abraham's genealogy. It wasn't Abraham's ethnicity. It was Abraham's faith. Abraham believed God and yet Abraham's faith was imputed to him for righteousness. He who is righteous by faith. And that wasn't written about Abraham for Abraham's sake. That was written about Abraham for our sake. If we believe in the Lord, in God, who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, we too are righteous. Righteous by faith, a faith that is the very same as Abraham's faith. That's the first part of the apostle's theme. He who is righteous by faith. And now the apostle takes up the second part of his theme. He who is righteous by faith shall live. Only the righteous live. You are only righteous by faith and he who is righteous by faith shall live. And the apostle now takes up that promise of the gospel about life. and he's going to explain what life is. What does it mean that the one who is righteous by faith shall live? And the apostle's going to be developing that all the way through chapter eight. And we can say fundamentally that he who is righteous by faith shall live, that means his freedom. Christ sets us free, that's life. And the apostle unfolds that liberty in the subsequent chapters in our chapter. The apostles teaches that we are free from wrath through Jesus Christ. In chapter six, he says we're free from the dominion of sin. In chapter seven, he says we're free from the dominion and curse of the law. We're free of that demand of the law. You must do this to live. No, we live. We live out of an entirely different reality. We live out of Jesus Christ. He was righteous by faith, shall live. And in chapter eight, he teaches that we are free from death. And it's that first part of the life that we have in Christ that he takes up in our chapter. We are free from wrath through Jesus Christ. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. That revelation of the wrath of God, that's an active revelation of God. That's an act of God. God comes and maintains himself over against the sinner who holds his truth down in unrighteousness. are free from wrath in Jesus Christ. And positively stated, that means we have peace with God. And that's the theme of this verse, peace with God. Notice, first of all, what this means. Notice, secondly, why we have this. And notice through whom we have this. When we hear the word peace, then it is easy for us to think first about the subjective state of the mind or the soul. To have peace then is that state of the soul in which the soul is free from all disturbance and that soul is at rest. And so when we think about peace, we say, oh, that soul is at peace. But the subjective state of the soul is not the first and primary sense in which the apostle uses the word peace here. The apostle does not, first of all, say in the text, being justified by faith, you have peace in your soul with God. The apostle is, in fact, concerned with the relationship between God and his elect people. That relationship, the apostle says, is of peace. There is peace with God. There is peace between you and God. The relationship that you have between God and you is characterized by peace. The result of the announcement of that fact is the ground to bring peace into your soul so that your soul then is at peace with the living God. And that contrasts that announcement. You have peace with God. That announcement contrasts with the natural state of man. Man outside of and man apart from Christ has no peace. He has no peace because there is no peace between him and the living God. Man in Adam became hostile toward God. Man in Adam became an enemy of God so that the relationship between man and God is one of enmity, one of hostility, and one of warfare. That's what the apostle was talking about in the whole first part of the book of Romans. Man by nature stands exposed in his sin to the wrath of God. The wrath of God that is a consuming fire. The wrath of God that takes everything in that man's life and takes all of creation and it turns it against that man and brings that man down into hell. Wrath is man's natural state. Now the apostle comes through the gospel and the apostle says, no, the state, the relationship between you and God is one of peace. You have peace with God. That's simply a fact. You have it. There is an argument in the text about that form of the word, have peace you have peace with God and in the Greek there's two forms of the word O that word has an O in it one form means you have peace the other form means let us have peace and I don't think those are incompatible but first of all You have to understand that the apostle's emphasis here, the apostle's point here is on the objective fact and reality. God is at peace with his church. The church has peace with the living God. That's the state of the church's relationship with God. We have peace with him, and only in that sense Only understanding that fact in reality that I also say to you, let us have peace with God. Really the text could be understood as being very similar to what the apostle teaches in 2 Corinthians chapter five. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. Jesus Christ was made sin who knew no sin that you might be made the righteousness of God in him And then the apostle exhorts us, be ye reconciled to God. And he's saying there the state of the believer's soul in which the believer lives in his reconciliation with God is based on the objective fact that God accomplished in the cross of Jesus Christ. He reconciled you to himself. So here, it is the objective fact, the reality. God is at peace with you. God has nothing against you. God has no charge against you. Let us have peace. And that peace, then too, is absolutely of God. First of all, that peace that we have with God is absolutely of God because it's the peace that characterizes God's own being. Repeatedly throughout the scripture, God says He's the God of peace. And that does not mean, first of all, that God creates peace between Himself and His people. That's a statement about the being of God. God in His own being is at peace. There is in God no disharmony. There is in God no warfare. There is in God no arguments and no strife. And we can say positively that God is the God of peace means that God is a simple God. And what that means is that God as a simple God, all his perfections are fundamentally one in him. And all of those perfections are in absolute harmony God in His justice is not at warfare with God in His mercy. God in His grace is not at war with God in His holiness. God in His sovereignty is not at war with God in His omnipotence. God is absolutely the God of peace in His own being. There's perfect harmony and oneness in God. And then too, you have to apply that to the triune nature of God. There are in God three persons, and those persons exist in absolute peace and harmony. They are of one mind, they are of one will, they are of one decree. He is the God of peace, and that's simply to say, He's the covenant God. His life is the life of the covenant, in which the three persons live in absolute harmony. one with the other. And that God of peace, who is peace in himself, that God creates peace. The peace that we have with God is absolutely God's creation. So that God established that peace, and God gives that peace, and God assures of that peace. We have it. You have to understand, too, that that peace with God means enmity with the world. It means enmity with your flesh. It means enmity with all that is not of God. It means enmity with all that opposes God. If you have peace with God, you have enmity with the world, with your flesh, with the kingdom of darkness. And you have it, that's the apostle's announcement. You have peace with the living God. And that peace is fundamental to your life. He who is righteous by faith shall live. And basic to that life that God gives us is peace with Him. Think of the opposite. War with the living God. There are men who are afraid to be at war with men. They won't live at enmity with the world. They won't live at enmity with their flesh. They won't live at enmity with their unbelieving family. They won't live at enmity with the false church. They won't live at enmity with worldly organizations. They will have peace with men, but peace with men, peace with men means you have war with the living God. War with the living God is terrible. If you have war with men, you have war with men, you can arm yourself against a man. If you're weak, you can become strong. If you cannot become strong, you can get yourself a weapon. You can always arm yourself against man, but you cannot arm yourself against the living God. To have war with God means that God in his whole being stands against you. It means God with all his holiness and with all his sovereignty and with all his power is going to bring you down to destruction. It means that God who controls all things takes all things in your life, good or evil, and he turns all those things against you. War with the living God is terrible. Better to have war with the whole world and peace with God than peace with the world and war with the living God. And the Apostle says you have peace with God. And that means that God is in a relationship of friendship toward you. God has nothing against you. God beholds you in His favor. And that sovereign God who is at peace with you, that sovereign and omnipotent God, He takes All things, all things in all the creation, all things in all time in history, he takes all things and he causes them to serve you and your salvation. That's the announcement of the gospel. He who is righteous by faith, he has peace with God. And he has that peace also in his soul. I don't want to leave that out. There's an objective fact and reality of our relationship. And when the gospel comes and announces that fact or reality, the power of the gospel is to bring that peace into your own soul. And the gospel does that precisely in its proclamation of justification by faith alone. Understand that. If you are not hearing justification by faith alone, there can be no peace. If you are not hearing justification by faith alone, too, there will be no warfare with the world. Justification by faith alone is a key. And when the gospel comes and the gospel proclaims justification by faith alone, then the power of that gospel is to bring the reality of the relationship that you have with God into your own conscious possession, that you understand it and that you know it. That's what the Apostle means when the Apostle says, therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God. He is saying there, why do you have peace with God? What is the objective ground of this fact and reality that you have peace with God? And he says it's because you are justified by faith. That justification by faith takes us all the way back, or rather back to Romans chapter four, verse 25, where the apostle says, who was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification. And referring to that, he says, you are justified. Again. He's referring to the fact. the reality of your justification. He's not saying you will be justified. He's not saying you can be justified. He's saying you are justified. You were justified at the cross of Jesus Christ. God gave a testimony of that justification when God raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. and that justification then is God's act to declare the ungodly sinner not guilty and to declare that that ungodly sinner has perfectly fulfilled the law justification always has two parts to it justification always involves God's act to forgive the sinner's sins. He declares the sinner not guilty. He declares the debt remitted. He declares that we have never broken His law. And the other side of the justification is that God declares that we have completely and perfectly kept the law. And that justification then too is what God does in the courtroom of God to judge the sinner. God looks that sinner up and down. God turns that sinner inside and out. God doesn't miss anything. God doesn't overlook anything in his justification of the sinner. He justifies truly and really an ungodly person. He says about the ungodly person, you're righteous in my sight. never broken my law you're worthy of eternal life really that's for God to say when God holds the law up against you and he holds you alongside that law and that law says thou shalt not and thou shalt not and thou shalt not and thou shalt and thou shalt God holds you up against that law and God says they're in perfect harmony with my law all they've done is obey me all they've done is love me And that justification, says the apostle, is by faith. And you have to understand that. That has a two-fold meaning. First of all, when he says by faith, he means that that reality of the justification of the elect church at the cross of Jesus Christ, God brings that into the consciousness of the sinner by faith. You were justified at the cross, and God brings His verdict. that he sounded at the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, justifying the whole church. He sounds that now in the conscience of the believer by faith. And when he says by faith in the second place, he means not that faith as a work, but he means that faith as that faith brings you into connection with Jesus Christ. Faith of itself is nothing. Faith of itself is a bond that unites you to Jesus Christ. Faith of itself, you might say, has no value for your justification. Faith isn't a substitute for obedience or a substitute for some other act that God demands of the sinner. Faith is a union that puts you in connection with Jesus Christ so that you're part of the righteous corporation that is Jesus Christ. And through faith, God justifies. He brings home to the sinner's conscience the fact and reality of that sinner's perfect salvation and righteousness at the cross of Jesus Christ. That you're righteous by faith intends to stand in contrast to being righteous by works there is no peace there is no peace and let me say it again there is no peace in your work if a Christian does not have peace they're not living by faith in the reality of their perfect salvation in Christ. They're looking somewhere else. They're not standing before the presence of God in Christ. They're standing on some other basis. That's why they don't have peace. And there is nothing that's easier for us to do than to turn away from the perfect righteousness of Christ and to turn to something else. We rest in what we do. It's because I went to church, and it's because I listened to some good sermon, and it's because I'm baptized, and it's because I pray, and it's because I read the Bible, and it's because I lived a good life with my wife this week, and because I lived a good life with my children this week. It's because I put money in the collection plane. It's because I sacrificed of my time and energy for the church, and the home, and school. It's everything but being justified by faith. And if a man for one second stands on anything but the righteousness that is by faith, he destroys his own peace. There's no peace with God because we have peace being justified by faith. And the question is, why? Why does justification by faith bring peace? First of all, justification by faith brings peace because justification by faith brings to us a sure certain righteousness. The righteousness that must be the basis of an unshakable peace. That righteousness must be a sure and certain righteousness. Think about that in terms of a relationship with another human being. You have a relationship with that other human being and a surprise comes up. I didn't know you believed that. I didn't know you liked that. I didn't know that you acted that way. I didn't know you talked that way. And there's a surprise in the relationship. And that relationship then breaks down and that relationship falls apart because that surprise brought disharmony into that relationship. There can be no surprises in our relationship with God The righteousness that we have that is the basis of that relationship, that righteousness must be a sure and certain righteousness that covers all sin. And that righteousness is sure. That righteousness is sure in the cross of Jesus Christ. Do you want to see that? Look that God raised Christ from the dead. That's how sure that righteousness is. That's how certain that righteousness is. You can't say that about your works. Only a lunatic, if he was asked about his works in light of the judgment of God, only a lunatic would say those works are good enough to pass in the judgment of God. Those works are not sure. Those works are not certain. Those works are full of unrighteousness, They're spotted with sin and stains. In the end, if they have to be the ground of our standing before God, those works are to be characterized only as filthy rags who are worthless to secure peace in the conscience with the living God. The righteousness of Christ is a sure righteousness. And that righteousness of Christ is a sure righteousness because that righteousness of Christ is a perfect righteousness. It's a righteousness that's so perfect that God calls it His own. It is the righteousness of God. It's a righteousness that involves the perfect obedience and all the lifelong suffering, and all the zeal, and all the holiness, and all the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It's a righteousness about which God gave testimony to its perfection, and that He raised Christ from the dead. That resurrection means that God didn't overlook any sin in His people. God didn't overlook any stray thought. God didn't overlook any evil word. God didn't overlook any wicked deed. He didn't miss one. And He took all the sin of His people and He heaped it on Jesus Christ. He took all of their obligation to love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and He heaped it on Jesus Christ. And there Christ fulfilled the whole law. And there Jesus Christ paid the debt for our sins. And God raised him from the dead. And the thought is something like this. If there was one sin that God missed, one stray thought that you have, one time that you forget God, there's one thing God missed, Jesus Christ would never be raised, but He was delivered for our offenses. He was raised again because of our justification, and His righteousness is perfect. You can't add to it by your good works, and you can't take away from it by your sin. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. But you also have to say something else about that righteousness, as that righteousness forms the basis of your peace. It's an unchangeable righteousness. God never changes. You might have entered into warfare with God in Adam. You might have lived that warfare with God in your life, but God's thoughts toward you were always of peace. And He justified you already in eternity, so that He saw you from all eternity as you are in Jesus Christ His Son. And as you are a partaker of the righteousness of Christ and an heir of eternal life, the righteousness that you have is an eternal, unchangeable righteousness. That righteousness God manifested, the cross of Jesus Christ. That righteousness God brings into your possession through the preaching of the gospel and by faith and being justified by faith. We have peace with God. And we have that peace through our Lord Jesus Christ. Again and again and again, in the book of Romans, the apostle says, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through our Lord. What he says about this peace in which you are acceptable to God and you've been received into his covenant and God is at peace with you what he says about this peace is true only in Christ and when Christ makes himself the Lord of a human being then all other lordships must cease the dominion the reign of righteousness. That brings to an end the reign, the tyrannical reign of the law. It brings to an end the tyranny of sin. It brings to end the tyranny of death and of the grave. In our Lord, as he has made himself Lord of us, As He imputes to us His righteousness, as He testifies to us of the peace that we have, we have that through our Lord Jesus Christ. We don't have it in ourselves. There's no peace in you. There's no ground for peace in you. There's no hope for peace in you. There can never be any peace if we stand before God on the basis of who we are or what we have done, or if we fear before God on the basis of what we have not or have done. There's no peace. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The whole text, as it were, turns on that hinge. of that one righteous man who was of the seed of David according to the flesh and to be declared to be the son of God by the resurrection of the dead. In him God accomplished the righteousness that's the basis of that peace. And through him God testifies to us of that righteousness. And by him God brings that righteousness and that peace. Through him God works the faith. Through him God assures our souls we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And the apostle speaks beautifully of that. By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. This Lord Jesus Christ, who went to the cross for you, who established righteousness for you, who speaks peace unto you, he also takes you by your hand and he brings you into the very presence of God. Having peace with God, let us have peace. Amen. Our Father in heaven, we thank Thee for our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank Thee for His cross, for His obedience, for His holiness, for His righteousness, which is given to us by faith, as that faith makes us a member of His righteous corporation. And Lord, speak peace to our hearts, that we might be at peace with Thee in all our life and in every circumstance. We ask this all with the pardon of our sin for Jesus' sake. Amen.