What does "Peace" Mean?

Read Romans 5.1-11

So as I've mentioned before, I took a class on Romans a while back and for the final assignment I had to write a research paper. I chose this passage as my text. I thought about just throwing that paper on here, but it's 14 pages long. I'm not that mean. But this is a great passage, one of my favorites. So let's get into it.

The very first verse we see that we have peace with God through Jesus. A lot of people that I talk to think of that word "peace" as relaxing, chill, pacific, clam. While all of these may be true, the true intention behind the word is like that of peace after a war. In sin we were at war with God, but through Jesus we are no longer in open rebellion, we are at peace.

Not only do we have peace with God through Jesus, but through faith in him we also stand in God's grace as well. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Grace if preached properly sounds like heresy. Though one trespass, one sin condemns us, by being at peace with God and by standing in his grace, our sin is forgotten before we even finish doing it (we'll get more into this later). And because we stand in the amazing grace we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. In chapter 8 we see that God's glory is our inheritance, and that we are heirs of it because of Jesus.

What does it mean to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God though? Well looking at verses 3-5 helps us understand it even more. But overall this phrase means that we have faith that we shall receive the glory of God, and in the following verses we see that because we hope we receive. That is because not only do we rejoice in hope, but we also rejoice in suffering because suffering leads to endurance of hard times, and endurance leads to the building of character, and character produces hope. And this hope doesn't disappoint us, it doesn't put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into us through the Holy Spirit which was given to us.

Now if we connect a few things, we see that in the Old Testament, when God was on Mt. Sinai, and in the Tabernacle, and when he passed in front of Moses, and in the Most Holy Place, it was always referred to as his glory entering into that particular place. This is still understood as God entering that particular location. Now we see in the New Testament that we are the Tabernacle, the Temple, the dwelling place of God. We know that the Holy Spirit is God, and we see here that it is poured out into us because of God's love and our hope. So connecting all of this we can see that our hope gives us the Holy Spirit, God himself, God's glory. Because of this, our hope is not disappointed.

What is even more amazing about God's love which was poured out for us, and because of his dedication to having peace with us, while we were still weak in the flesh, at the absolutely perfect time he sent his son to die for us, the ungodly. Now someone may die for a righteous person, and for a good person someone might die for them. But an ungodly person? No one would die for them. But God, in showing his great love, died for us in the form of his son while we were still sinners. While we were still in open rebellion against him, he died for us.

And because of this we are justified by his blood. And because of being justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from his wrath? While we were still enemies, we were reconciled by the death of Jesus. And because we were reconciled we are also saved.

What Paul is getting at here is this: We stood before a firing squad condemned to death. They had us dead to rights. God took aim, he fired at us which was just of him to do. Yet after he fired that bullet to kill us, he jumped in front of it to take it for us, because of his great love.

And because of this we are able to have peace with God, be reconciled to him, and stand in his grace. So we rejoice in God and his works, which is only possible for us to do through Jesus, because through him we have been reconciled with God.