RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE
In the passage I have read you will find four or five distinct blessings which I desire to bring before you. My thought is to speak to the youngest here; and what will suit the youngest, if clothed with the power of the Spirit, will be a blessing to the oldest.
The first thing I desire to speak of is what is found in the first verse, an expression very often used but little understood, “Peace with God”, the first great positive blessing you receive as Christians. It is not a thing you ripen into; it is not a thing you attain to after a certain amount of experience: but it is what you get at the start, and if not established in that you will make no progress at all in Christian life.
The second verse sets before us two points: our place with God, “By whom also we have access by faith into this favour wherein we stand”. That is our present place with God. The last clause of the verse sets before us our future Prospect.
Then in verse 3 we have our Path and all that we find in the Path; and in verse 5 our present and future Portion, the love of God.
Now let us come to the first point, Peace with God. I do not think this is understood by a great many. I do not take it for granted that because you are in a certain position, because you have made a profession, or because you partake of the Lord's supper, that you have got hold of this, or that you are established in it. Do not think to yourself, Oh! that is a thing I know. A number of Christians confound two things, “peace with God” and “the peace of God” (Phil 4: 7), but they are very distinct. I need peace with God as a guilty sinner; I need the peace of God as a tried saint. Peace with God depends upon Another; the enjoyment of the peace of God depends upon myself. “The peace of God” is spoken of in Philippians 4: 6, 7, a very beautiful passage, well known to many of us, but little known experimentally. You see at once, as you read the passage, that the possession of this wonderful blessing depends on ourselves - that is, that you and I as Christians are exhorted to bring all our cares to God and to cast them all on Him; and then, as another has said, ‘If we roll our cares on God, He will roll His peace into our hearts’. Think of God's repose! What a proposal for us! That is the way to meet our cares and difficulties. You get the idea in Psalm 3: “Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah. But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head … I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me”, vv 2-5. If they say, “There is no help for him in God”, he says, “Thou, O Lord, art a shield for me”. That is what Stephen had in his heart, the unruffled peace of the place where Christ is. “I laid me down and slept”. Not a poor storm-tossed creature. May we know the peace of God keeping our hearts. But when we speak of peace with God, we are on a quite different line. As a guilty sinner I need peace with God. There are two things that are linked together in scripture: righteousness and peace.
I have often told the story of the dear old soul who, when visited by a clergyman and asked in what she was trusting, replied, ‘I am trusting in the righteousness of God’. At which the clergyman said, ‘You must be making a mistake: you mean you are trusting in the mercy of God’. ‘No’, said she, ‘I am trusting in the righteousness of God’. I think that old lady knew what peace with God was. Perhaps she could not have explained it, but she knew the nature of the blessing the gospel of God is. It is very interesting to me to notice that in the last few verses of Acts we get the preacher preaching the gospel, and in the beginning of Romans the gospel he preached; you go from the preacher to the subject of his preaching. The gospel of God, he tells us, is concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and he is careful to link it up with what had gone before. I beg you to note that. “Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures” (Rom 1: 2), as he says in writing to the Corinthians, “How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures”, 1 Cor 15: 3. It is concerning His Son Jesus Christ. His eye is at once fixed on this blessed Person.
Then in verse 17 he says, “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed”. I think if you had written it you would have said, ‘Therein the love of God is revealed’: but it does not say so, but that the righteousness of God is revealed. People do not see this, and that is the reason they have not peace. There is no mention of love till you get to chapter 5. The love of God is the known and enjoyed portion of the children of God.
Let us look at it carefully and simply. What does it mean? The righteousness of God - what does that convey to your mind? Let me explain it to you. The righteousness of God is God's consistency with Himself; it is God being true to Himself. In the gospel God tells us that He will be true to what He is. He will not give that up. He will not move from what He is. If He be God and if He act, it must be according to what He is. “Therein is the righteousness of God revealed”.
Then immediately the apostle breaks off and goes back to the testimony God had rendered to man in times past. It is very important, because all these things are being called in question. I am afraid we have been damaged by not beginning with chapters 1, 2, 3 of Romans. You must begin at the beginning. The apostle takes us back and shows us how God had spoken to man in days that are past. People are constantly asking, ‘What about the heathen?’ I say, God has spoken to them; He has given them a testimony. Psalm 19 tells you creation is God's witness to man: “There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard”. God has spoken through creation. And what did men do when they knew God? “Glorified him not as God, neither were thankful”, v 3. They turned to their own imaginations. They “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four footed beasts, and creeping things”, Rom 1: 21. Mark that! They began with man, and went down to serpents. Think of it, man come down to worship a serpent. And why? Because he gave up God. Why does the Spirit of God tell us all this? The Spirit of God proves how we needed the righteousness of God.
God had taken up the Jew, had given him the law. What happened? “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles” (v 24) through him. If God gives a testimony, it is that He may be glorified. He gave the Gentile a testimony in creation. What is man's answer to it? They glorified Him not as God. He gave the Jews a testimony in the law. What is the result? God's name blasphemed among the Gentiles through them. What is the Spirit of God proving? The utter unrighteousness of man and his need of the righteousness of God.
This is something like John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord. He came in the way of righteousness. He came preaching repentance. If we are to get blessing, we must see that we need righteousness; we have none of our own. In the middle of chapter 3 the apostle brings in all men guilty, and then resumes the subject of the righteousness of God.
Having said this, in order to bring my subject before you in a practical way, I take you back to two men in the Old Testament. You will remember David, and how his son Absalom slew his brother and had to fly from his father, and how David yearned over Absalom. There was affection in his heart; but then he was the king, and he had to maintain the righteousness of the throne. How could he bring these two things together? If he gratifies the affection of his heart, he shatters his throne. The commonest criminal in Israel would be able to reproach him with it. He would be able to say, You have put me in prison for my crime, but your son you have taken back to yourself to gratify your affection, and at the expense of the righteousness of your throne. Well, you know that is what David did; he sacrificed righteousness for love.
Take another illustration, Darius the king. His princes hate Daniel, and they get the king to make a decree by which they intended to entrap and ruin him. Daniel opens his window and prays to God three times a day just as before. He prays in the presence of God, and not in the presence of men. Here is a man who is with God in the secret of his heart. Well, the princes go to the king and tell him that Daniel has broken the law, and so must suffer. I think I can see the king pacing his palace, with his hand on his head, as he laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him. He says to himself, I am king, I want to maintain my place as king, and I want to gratify my heart. But he could not solve that problem, and Daniel had to be cast into the den of lions.
What man cannot do, God can. He can maintain what is due to Himself, and also gratify the love of His heart. Where the righteousness of God came out in all its fulness was on the cross. Christ was “delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification”, v 25. There are two statements here: He “was delivered for our offences”. That is one; it is easy enough to read it, it is another thing to see what it involves. Paul says to Philemon, speaking of Onesimus, “If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine account”, Philem 18. He “was delivered for our offences”; they were laid upon Him there in that awful hour that never can be fathomed. Who can fathom those depths? None but God. And what did Christ say - that One who had said, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?”, John 8: 46. What did he say? “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, Matt 27: 46. Why did God forsake Him? Because He would be true to Himself. Look at the righteousness of God. He would not spare that blessed One, although loved by Him beyond compare, because He was the sin-bearer. Who can fathom it? Jesus the sin-bearer, and God so true to Himself that He forsook Him.
But it is not at the foot of the cross that your burden rolls away; you do not get peace there. On the cross the Lord said, “It is finished!” But how do I know that that is true? I have it from God. My eternal destiny hangs on the verity of His word. Now mark the other statement: “Was raised again for our justification”. God raised Him up out of death. We are responsible creatures - responsible to God. I can never know peace until I know that righteousness has been met; I must know it if I am to have peace. But people can never know peace unless they have known trouble - soul trouble. They do not know their need of it until they have a sense of guilt. There is a moral work in the soul in keeping with all this of which I am speaking. It is not by an effort of the mind, but by God making the soul to feel its need, and then showing it how that need is met.
As I go about and meet Christians, I say, How do you know you are saved? And their minds revert to something that happened twenty years ago. I do not deny that something did happen twenty years ago, but that is no ground to stand upon. I asked a woman one day, ‘When did you get peace?’ and she said, ‘If you would come with me to get it’. You say, Do you deny that something happened there? I do not. But if you ask me if I have peace with God, the question is not what happened twenty years ago, but am I in the faith of God's testimony now? I do not deny the fact of the start, or that you may be conscious of the start. Many are troubled because they cannot look back at a start. Do not be troubled about that. You have been brought up in a Christian household perhaps, and your heart has been gradually opened to the things of the Lord, like Lydia of old, of whom it was said, “whose heart the Lord opened”, Acts 16: 14. But you would have a jailer-like conversion. Do not wish for it. Thank God, He gives us specimen conversions. I do not think all of us come in on the jailer's lines. Do not be troubled. The point is, Are you in the faith of God's testimony now?
You say, I am a needy soul; I feel my responsibility to God. How can it be met? Now, God renders a testimony and you believe it. It is an old-fashioned way of getting blessing; it is as old as Abraham. Abraham believed God. Against hope he believed in hope. He had not a single experience. Why did he believe? Because God had spoken. God had said, “So shall thy seed be” (Gen 15: 15), and Abraham believed Him.
Besides the story of the old lady who trusted in the righteousness of God, I will give you a companion story of an old man who was sitting at his cottage door with his Bible on his knees and his finger on the page he was reading, who was heard to say as he read, ‘I think Thy thoughts after Thee, O God’. There is a moral grandeur about that. It glorifies God. Faith glorifies God apart from one single experience. “Who against hope believed in hope”, Rom 4: 18. Not a hope as far as he was concerned. Like Paul in the storm (Acts 27), “when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, ... all hope that we should be saved was then taken away”. Then comes out the man of faith in moral grandeur; it is very simple, but very grand. “Be of good cheer: for I believe God”, that it shall be even as it was told me. What? Get to shore? Can you not hear the billows roar and see the waves? Yes. “Who against hope believed in hope”. “I believe God”. It is not what I feel.
Now I come to the point, What does God say to you? Where does He point us? To ourselves? To the work of the Spirit of God in me? No; the gospel of God is concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. God points you to Him and tells you two things about Him. He “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification”. What answer do you give to His testimony? Abraham believed God. Do you? If you do, what happens? The righteousness that forsook Jesus is the righteousness that clears you. It is only one righteousness. God is true to Himself. Do you think it is too great a thing for me to say, I am a person against whom God cannot bring a charge? I do not say, Will not, but Cannot. Why? Because He would not be righteous if He did. Are you there? Do you answer, I was there twenty years ago? Are you there now? God is perfectly satisfied with what Christ has done. God grant that this may be better known and enjoyed.
Now I come to the second blessing - Access. Mark you, it is, “By whom”. The eye is still fixed on Jesus Christ our Lord. By Him we have access into this grace wherein we stand. We stand in the favour of God. One is charmed with the thought, the favour of God. How do you measure the favour of God? If you had asked a Jew, Where do you see the favour of God? he would have said: Come out here. Do you see those fields of corn, this beautiful fruit, and those herds and flocks? These are the marks of God's favour. Beloved Christians, you must not look that way. I do not mean that we are not to be grateful for mercies here; do not misunderstand me: but that is not the mark of God's favour. Where do we look? At Christ. I measure God's favour by Christ. I am in it now, and never out of it. May we know thus how to measure His favour.
Now what is the prospect? The expression is very familiar to us. We “rejoice in hope of the glory of God”. Here we get hope, and it is connected with the glory of God. If you turn to Romans 8: 24, you find the passage, “We are saved by hope”. But this is a deeper thing. I am so put with God through redemption, so on God's side, that I can rejoice as I think of His glory; not my new body, but God's glory; the scene where everything will be suitable to Him, where God can say, Everything My eye rests upon suits Me. And it suits you because you have been brought to be with Him. It is not that you will be relieved of all your troubles, have a new body, and so on; all quite true, but you rejoice in hope of God's glory.
Another thing: The eye of Christ will rest upon it, and He will be able to say, I sorrowed and suffered to bring it all about. Do you like to think of the joy of Christ in that day? His joy is that God is glorified, and that everything is suitable to the nature and character of God. We belong to that scene. What I mourn over is my insensibility to it. If I lived more in that scene, I should be more sensitive to the character of things here. I think of the blessed Lord down here. Who can tell what He suffered to live down here and see the things that we see? We get hardened. If we lived with God more, we should feel it more. We cannot see the glory of God here. I see man, a vessel marred by sin; and is it not terrible that when out of the presence of God we can laugh at sin! If I were with God I could not do that, but should mourn over it, over all that is inconsistent with His glory. Thank God we belong to the scene that is suitable to Him.
Now I come to the path. “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also”. What comes upon us in the path in tribulation. Look at the sharp turn the scripture takes. When with God we can even glory in tribulation. We can view it in this light - it works out good for us. The path of a Christian is not a path of prosperity. No; the blessed Lord said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation”, John 16: 33. It is well for us to face it: but before we embrace the path we are set in God's favour. Tribulation does not mean what we so often talk about - the trouble that is common to man. “Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5: 7), but it is not that. It is the consequence of being brought to God. We are brought home to God, blessed in His favour, and because we are, this world is turned into a wilderness; it is redemption that has done it. And now we glory in tribulation. Why? Because it breaks your will, and the effect of that is patience, and then patience works experience. There is a certain school always occupied with experience. Perhaps we go to the other extreme. I would go a long way to hear a person speak of how he went through a strait with God. Some people can tell you much about the theory, but they have no experience of what God has been to them in a strait. We learn God, not a mere truth. We learn Christ. If you have Christ, you have the truth, but you may have the truth in a certain way without having Christ. What we need is the practical experience of what God is.
“And experience, hope”. Now we are turned back to hope. We began with hope. The hope is enlarged because we are with the God of hope, and the love of God, which is the spring of all, is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. Now we have reached the love of God. There is nothing about the love of God in the previous chapters. The love of God is the enjoyed portion of the one who has the Spirit. May the Lord bless these few remarks to you, and may that first great blessing, “peace with God”, be yours, and then may you know your place with God, and your Prospect, that you may be braced up for your path; and may you know that blessed portion, the love of God, ours now, ours for eternity; and to be more fully realised when with Christ.
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