Romans 5:1-2
“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.”
The Apostle Paul concludes Romans 4 with the fact that Christ’s resurrection was God’s evidence that Christ’s work was accepted and thus ensures our justification.
The word “therefore” at the beginning of Romans 5 shows that the immediate benefit of justification is that we have peace with God. This is justification by faith’s practical influence on the lives of those justified. Paul says in , “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.”
This plainly states that the sinner is the enemy of God, and the state of a sinner’s mind is far from peace. It is at war, and their sinning proves the warfare, the rebellion in their mind. They are often agitated, alarmed, and trembling and feels alienated from God. God is not in all their thoughts (Psalm 10:4, KJV). Isaiah 57:20-21 explains, “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” “There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”
The sinner trembles when they thinks of God’s law. They fear His judgments and are alarmed when they consider the lake of fire or hell. But as God moves a person toward conversion, He reveals His willingness to be reconciled through His Son’s sacrifice. Through faith and repentance, the obstacles arising from God’s justice and law disappear, and He is willing to pardon and be at peace. When the sinner embraces it, this process produces peace of mind, a peace the world cannot give or take away because the world is powerless over sin. This peace is a work, a product, of the Spirit of God by which the sinner has been called and led to this point.
