Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
—Romans 5:1
Chapter five of Romans is one of the mountain-peak passages in all of Scripture. Having spent four chapters establishing that we are justified by faith, Paul now turns to the benefits, the blessings that belong to everyone who has been saved. And the very first one is staggering: “we have peace with God.”
To feel the weight of that, you have to understand what we were before. The world is at war with God. Every person born comes into a cosmic conflict between light and darkness, heaven and hell, and we arrive on the wrong side of it. We are born little rebels, with the writing of judgment already on the wall. Sin is not a small misstep; it is rebellion against a holy God.
So, peace with God is not a mood or a feeling. It is the end of a war. When we come to faith in Christ, we lay down our weapons, we stop the resistance, we surrender. And the war is over. We are reconciled to God.
When Jesus hung on the cross and cried out, “It is finished,” He meant more than that the plan of salvation was complete. He meant the war was over, that God had won the victory and was offering peace to every rebel who would lay down his arms.
Now, here is where we have to be careful, because there are two kinds of peace and people confuse them. This verse is about peace with God: the objective, settled fact that the hostility is gone, that you are no longer God’s enemy but His child. That peace never wavers, because it doesn’t depend on your feelings. It depends on what Christ accomplished.
There is also the peace of God, that inner tranquility Paul describes in Philippians, the peace that surpasses understanding and guards your heart. That’s real and precious too. But it flows out of the first. You can only enjoy the peace of God once you have peace with God.
And so many people are chasing peace in all the wrong places. They think it’s found in a process, an achievement, a product, even a pill. “If I could just get the dream house, the dream job, the dream vacation, then I could finally take a deep breath.” But peace was never in a place or a possession. Peace is in a Person, and His name is Jesus.
So, let me ask you plainly: do you have peace with God? Not religion, not church attendance, not good intentions, peace. Has the war ended in your life? It can, today. Lay down your weapons. Surrender to Christ. And the moment you do, the conflict that has defined your whole existence is over, and you are at peace with God forever.
PEACE IS NOT IN A PLACE OR A POSSESSION. PEACE IS IN A PERSON, AND HIS NAME IS JESUS.
