Romans 5

In any kind of relationship between a superior and an inferior there may be at least two kinds of peace, and they should be related. The first is that peace which is a fact. The second is the peace which is a feeling. In our relationship with God we have peace through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a fact based upon the satisfaction of God's demands of justice through the work of our Mediator and Substitute. Our careful consideration of this fact should help us to experience the feeling of peace and communion with God that is so helpful to our sense of well-being. This awareness of the fact of peace should include our recognition that we access to God by faith. As we take advantage of the access that has come to us through God's plan of grace, we should find that we are able to walk in that grace that is ours in Christ. This should yield some measure of rejoicing, which most certainly involves our feelings. We have many reasons to rejoice in God, including His own excellence, His love for us, His covenant faithfulness, and His great power over both the present and the future. This all helps us to experience a measure of soul pleasure, even after a time of great suffering.

The God who sent His own Son to die for our sins does not give His beloved children meaningless suffering. Because we know of His power and His love, it is possible to rejoice in suffering, expecting that much good will come from this suffering, even if we are never able to entirely connect the good with the suffering that helped to produce the good. The particular facts of any one life are so numerous and complex that we would only be guessing about why things happen to a person. At best we are suggesting our theories in such a situation. We do know certain general principles because they have been revealed to us in God's Word. We know that God uses suffering to produce a greater endurance within His loved ones, and we know that endurance is a good thing for someone who wants to be a person of character. And we know that the right kind of character involves true expectations of what a good, loving, and powerful God would do on behalf of His loved ones. We have these true and confident expectations that there must be something much better ahead in the hand of Almighty God, and knowing this to be a certain truth, because of His Word, we have hope, a hope that we need not be ashamed of. It may seem foolish to some to see God's worshipers living in hope when so much has gone wrong in their lives, but this hope is a gift of the Holy Spirit to His afflicted children who continue to know the fact of the love of God, and maybe even to experience something of the feeling of that love.

When we would doubt the love of God, when we would struggle in our souls because we do not have an answer to the specific "why" questions of our afflictions, we come back to the one answer to our deepest need that makes all the difference: "While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." This is how God has shown His love for us. We, who were once at war against Him in our sin, have received the objective promised blessing of eternal life in perfect communion with Him through the death of His Son. We have already been saved from the wrath of God. God will not cast us into the lake of fire after His Son faced our punishment on the cross. This Jesus who died for His suffering church now lives for His beloved bride. He who saved us by His death will surely save us with His resurrection life at the right hand of the Father. We are enabled not only to endure, but to rejoice, in due time, in the reconciliation with God through Christ that is ours as an established gospel fact.

Our reconciliation with God is not a fact of nature, but a fact of divine rescue. By nature we were born as descendants of Adam. He was our covenant head. He sinned for us. The clear evidence that all of us have sinned proves well the accuracy of Adam's representation of us in his one world-changing offense. Even before the Law came through Moses, the curse of our disobedience against God was upon all of mankind, so that death reigned as an undefeated champion, a brutal enemy that was far too strong for us.

This fact of nature after the fall of Adam is a fact, but it is not the only fact. We now have heard and received a new fact, the fact of divine rescue through a better Mediator. Where Adam sinned for us, Jesus obeyed for us, and then died for our sins, overwhelming the ugly enemy of death with the far greater weapon of the gift of God's grace. Judgment has been forced to give way to a declaration of righteousness that has been entered upon our accounts in the presence of the Almighty. This can only mean the overturning of death for the redeemed in the gift of life from on high. All who were covered by the covenant mediator Adam were under the condemnation he won for them, but now all who are covered by the covenant representation of a better Mediator, Jesus, have justification and eternal life. We are no longer counted according to the status of sinners as we deserved through Adam's works and our own. Now our status is that of righteous men and women in the one righteous Man, Jesus Christ.

The covenant system of the Law of Moses, a later works-like arrangement for the nation of Israel, should have thoroughly convinced all of us of our need for some other way to approach God that could bring peace. That new way has come, through the long-expected Word of the gospel. Through Jesus Christ our Lord we now have the solid fact of true reconciliation and peace with God, and we are made partakers of the feeling of peace as the Lord sees fit, even for those who also feel the grief of some measure of suffering that they cannot understand. We know that our Redeemer lives, and that His life from the dead can only mean life for those who have been united with Him in His representative obedience and suffering. This is the ground for rejoicing for those who believe. Do not abandon such a solid and secure hope, for the Christ who has suffered for you will never abandon the bride for which He gave His life. As God enables you, partake of some measure of the experience of peace that he has for your soul, for your reconciliation with God is a settled fact that will never change.