Peace with God
In the Garden God instructed Adam what to eat. We find this in Genesis 2: 16 - 17
Genesis 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
Genesis 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
God was very concise and precise. He told Adam, "When you eat of the forbidden tree you will die". So, when God came to see Adam and Eve after they ate out of the forbidden tree they ran away. Have you ever asked yourself why? Could it be that they thought God was coming to kill them? The spirit of self-preservation, which did not exist before the fall, now had risen. They probably ran to save themselves from the punishment of their actions. God, however, surprised them. Yes, He was displeased with them. Yes, they would suffer consequences for their actions. But, God let them know He had no intentions of killing them. Instead, He extended grace in the form of a promise (Genesis 3:15). Should they believe the promise they would live eternally. The promise involved the killing of the Son of God to pay for the wages of Sin (John 3:16; Romans 6:23). Since the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 3:18), grace could be extended. God showed to Adam and Eve that He was at peace with them, although not with Sin.
This same promise was to Abraham. Paul explains this clearly in Romans 4. "… Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness" (Romans 4:3). Circumcision represented the removal of unrighteousness from Abraham's heart. Before the actual circumcision, Abraham's heart had been circumcised because of his faith. How much did Abraham believe? Paul elaborates on this,
Romans 4:19 And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb:
Romans 4:20 He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;
Romans 4:21 And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.
Romans 4:22 And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness.
So God performed this great work in and through Abraham, because Abraham believed. God proved that it was not His intention to destroy but to give life. God was at peace with Abraham. The issue was that Abraham believed it, so God worked mightily through him. Paul then says, that this promise is to all of us,
Romans 4:23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him;
Romans 4:24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;
Romans 4:25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
Christ death makes it all possible. It is in His death that the promise is fulfilled. It is because of His death that God is at peace with us. That is why Romans 5:1 starts with the word: therefore. Chapter 5 of Romans is tied to Romans 4. Let us read Romans 5: 1,
Romans 5:1 NKJV 1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Once we were at war with God, but by His death on the cross, Jesus has made it possible for the hostilities to cease and for us to be God's friends and not His enemies. This peace is not something we grow in, as in starting out with just a little bit of peace. Rather, we are reconciled to God, once and for all, by the Cross of Christ. It is an accomplished historical fact.
When we continually believe that Christ's sacrifice, brought about our reconciliation with God we will be at peace with God, ourselves and those around us. We're not at peace with ourselves or with others because we're not at peace with God. The good news (or gospel) is that because of what happened 2,000 years, God has been, is, and will be at peace with us. All we need to do is recognize it and believe it. It will then be imputed to us for righteousness.
