Justification removes sins, debts, enmity with God and punishments away from the justified ones. Only then can peace dwell in our hearts. If peace of conscience is not built on justification, it is only a perilous dream. It is a hollow, deceptive, and unhealthy thing. Its end is death. Any likeness of peace built on fantasy not on justification is a senseless, baseless thing. It has neither root nor life.
First, Christ is the rock from which justification and peace with God flow. The true Christian is not justified because of any goodness of his own. His peace is not to be traced up to any work he has done in the first place. No amount of prayers, regrets, amendments of conducts, improvements of morality, and even deeds of charity can buy “justification.” In themselves they are defective in many things. Tried by the perfect standard of God’s law the best of Christians is nothing better than a justified sinner, a pardoned criminal. As to merit, worthiness, desert, or claim upon God’s mercy, he has none. Peace built on any such foundations as these is utterly worthless. The man who rests upon them is miserably deceived.
Richard Hooker, an English clergyman, more than three centuries ago, said, “If God would make us an offer thus large, Search all the generation of men since the fall of your father Adam, and find one man, that hath done any one action, which hath past from him pure, without any stain or blemish at all; - and for that one man, one only action, neither man nor angel shall find the torments which are prepared for both: - do you think this ransom, to deliver man and angles, would be found among the sons of men? The best things we do have somewhat in them to be pardoned. How then can we do anything meritorious and worthy to be rewarded?” No man can be justified by his works before God in the slightest possible degree. Before man he may be justified. His works may evidence his Christianity. Before God he cannot be justified by anything that he can do. He will be always defective, always imperfect, always shortcoming, always far below the mark, so long as he lives. It is not by works of his own that anyone ever has peace and is a justified man.
The true Christian is counted righteous for the sake of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He is justified because of the death and atonement of Christ. He has peace because Christ died for his sins according to the Scripture. The life and death of the Lord Jeus explain all. “He is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14).
Second, Christ has suffered for sins, the just for the unjust. He has endured our punishment in His own body on the cross. He has allowed the wrath of God, which we deserved, to fall on His own head. Hence the true Christian is a justified man.
Third, Christ has paid the debt the Christian owed, by His own blood. He has reckoned for it and discharged it to the uttermost farthing by his own death. God is a just God and will not require His debts to be paid twice over. Hence the true Christian is a justified man.
Fourth, Christ has obeyed the law of God perfectly. The prince of this world could find no fault in Him. By so fulfilling it, He bought in an everlasting righteousness, in which all His people are clothed in the sight of God. Hence the true Christian is a justified man. Christ, in a word, has lived for the true Chrisitan. Christ has died for him. Christ has gone to the grave for him. Christ has risen again for him. Christ has ascended on high for him, and gone into heaven to intercede for his soul. Christ has done all, paid all, suffered all that was needful for his redemption. Hence arises the true Christian’s justification and his peace. In himself there is nothing, but in Christ, he has all things that his soul can require.
Christ’s righteousness is placed upon him and his sins are placed upon Christ. Christ has been reckoned a sinner for his sake, and now he is reckoned innocent for Christ’s sake. Christ has been condemned for his sake, though there was no fault in Him, and now he is acquitted for Christ’s sake. Though he is covered with sins, faults, and shortcomings. Here is the wisdom of God. God can now and yet pardon the ungodly. Man can feel that he is a sinner and yet have a good hope of heaven and feel peace within.
Fifth, Christ has met the wants and requirements of human nature. There is a conscience left in man, although it is a fallen being. There is a dim sense of his own need, which in his better moments will make itself heard, and which nothing but Christ can satisfy. There is something within a man, when his conscience is really awake, which intensifies the sense of emptiness and dissatisfaction with himself. It is the time when the Gospel meets him with Christ. He has brought in an everlasting righteousness. God made Christ to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 10:4; Jeremiah 23:6). When a man’s conscience is really awake, which even whispers to him, “there must be punishment and suffering because of my sins, or no peace.” At once the Gospel meets him with Christ. Christ has suffered for sin, the just for the unjust, to bring him to God. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree. By His stripes we are healed (1 Peter 2:24).
A man testifies of his conversion as following: “I saw an immense mountain, with precipitous sides, up which I endeavoured to climb, but when I had attained a considerable height, I lost my hold and fell to the bottom. Exhausted with perplexity and fatigue, I went to a distance and sat down to weep, and while weeping, I saw a drop of blood fall upon that mountain, and in a moment it was dissolved.” He was asked to explain what all this meant. He said, “That mountain was my sins, and that drop which fell upon it, was one drop of the precious blood of Jesus, by which the mountain of my guilt must be melted away” (Williams’ South Sea Missions).
There is no mediator but one, Jesus Christ. There is no purgatory for sinners but one, the blood of Christ. There is no sacrifice for sin but one, the sacrifice made on the cross. There is no works that can merit anything but the work of Christ. There is no priest that can truly absolve but Christ.
There is no peace with God excepting through Christ. Peace is His peculiar gift. Peace is that legacy which He alone had power to leave behind Him when He left the world. When hunger can be relieved without food, and thirst quenched without drink, and weariness removed without rest, then, and not till then, will men find peace without Christ.
Is this peace yours?
Lovingly,
Pastor Emeritus Rev Okman Ki

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