Romans 5:1 …we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Peace…I have peace.” It is hard for me to think back to before April of 1997. April of 1997 is when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior. But before that…it’s hard. To be honest, I really don’t want to. I don’t want to think back to the inner turmoil I was going through. Its like there was this tug-of-war struggle between happiness and pain. I didn’t know how to explain it then, and I still don’t know how to explain it now. Romans 3 does a good job summarizing that struggle.

Romans 3:10-18 (10 )As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 )there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
12 )All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
13 )”Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
14 )”Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 )”Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 )ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 )and the way of peace they do not know.”
18 )”There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Yes I used this passage in my previous post but it does such a good job of saying that which I can’t do to this day. It is a picture of me. A dark picture to be exact! Righteousness only comes through perfection. Hense why at times we talk about self-righteous people. They are acting in a way that they think they are perfect. I didn’t think of my self as self-righteous but I followed my desires. I didn’t seek God. In fact I did turn from Him, and when doing such I became worthless. I didn’t live for anything of value but pleasing myself. Justin was the center, nothing else mattered. No fear of God but all the fear in the world was on my shoulders. Have you ever been in a really dark ally? Freaky, huh? But that was like my life. Full of trash, darkness, cold…

And out of the middle of no where comes Romans 5:1! We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Where does peace come from? Not just from Jesus Christ! That is where I believe so many people think it stops. Yes Jesus is the answer for the world today, but does peace with God stop at Jesus Christ? No! Read it! OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST! He has to be our Lord, our Master, the one who owns us. Now I know these terms are not the most well liked terms in such an independant society as the one in which we live. Slavery is long gone with in sociatal standards but in our daily lives we enslave ourselves to all kinds of things. Whether it’s pornography, gluttany, laziness, using illegal substances, or using “legal” substances that are bad for us, etc. This is living to our own master. This living according to Romans 3. Peace with God, the cessation of conflict with the eternal God, is achieved only through justification by faith. Faith in what? John 1:12-13 says (12 )Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God– (13 )children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. This peace is an objective reality and status and not simply a subjective feeling of the inner man. Did you catch that? The peace that we experience is not simply a feeling. The salvation that we believe in is not simply a feeling of doing good. It is an reality. It is a lifestyle. Romans 6:1-14 talks about living in sin and how once we are saved we know longer are to live in sin but live in Christ. To believe in Jesus Christ is to agree to follow Him! Revelation 14:4-5 says “…They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among men and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb. (5) No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless.” Read Revelation 14 for the context. If you want peace with God, get to know Jesus…personally!