Peace with God

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1). Paul has spent four chapters showing that no one earns God's verdict — not the religious, not the pagan, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23) — and now he draws the line to its end. The one who is justified, declared righteous by faith, is no longer at war with God. And the white flag is not ours; it is God's. He has made the peace.

Notice what kind of peace it is. Not a truce that holds only as long as we behave, not a ceasefire we must keep renewing, but "peace with God" — the end of the enmity itself. Through Christ "we have also obtained access... into this grace in which we stand" (Romans 5:2). The word is a standing, not a slipping — a settled place, a door held open, a room we live in rather than a ledge we cling to.

Paul knows the thought that follows this news. If this peace depends on how well we hold up our end, it will be gone by noon. So he anchors it entirely on the other end: "While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6). He presses further — one might barely die for a good person — "but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). The love that made the peace did not wait for us to become lovable; it moved at our worst.

And then the word that reaches past forgiveness: "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son... shall we be saved by his life" (Romans 5:10). We were not neutral parties needing an introduction; we were enemies needing to be reconciled — and the reconciling was already done, at the cross, before we knew to ask. This is the grace in which we now stand: not a favor coaxed out of God, but a gift he freely gave to enemies who never asked for it and could not have earned it.

Here is the logic Paul wants to rest our hearts on. If God did the hard thing — reconcile us while we were enemies, at the cost of his Son — the easier thing surely follows: he will save to the end those who are now his friends. The death of Christ was the mountain; keeping us is the foothill. A peace bought that dearly cannot be undone by a bad week, a cold prayer, a return of an old sin; it was never resting on us to begin with.

So we do more than sigh with relief; we "rejoice in hope of the glory of God" (Romans 5:2), and even "rejoice in our sufferings" (Romans 5:3), because a love that reached us as enemies will not lose us as children. The Hebrew singers longed for it under one word — peace, shalom, not merely the absence of war but wholeness, everything set right. At the cross it arrived, and its name is Jesus, "through whom we have now received reconciliation" (Romans 5:11).