Peace with God

page detail from Romans, 1611 KJV Bible (Replica Edition) photo by jch

Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 63, Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. –Romans 5:1

Today, our journey through the Bible moves to Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Romans has been called Paul’s magnum opus. Paul uses all the brainpower and training he developed as a Pharisee. He sounds like a candidate for ordination, carefully building a multi-step method for understanding God’s system of justification.

For a preacher who, long ago, did something like that, it’s tempting to share a vast amount of information that would be fascinating only to me. The introduction I’ve written for page seven of your bulletin probably is enough. But if you want more, stop by the office, and I’ll loan you a commentary or two.

In the prelude to today’s text, Paul spends a lot of time building a sophisticated theological rationale for his readers in Rome. He was doing this for a church he did not establish, and for Christians he had never met.  Perhaps he intended to lay the foundation for a partnership in further mission work.[1] Perhaps Paul believed it was especially important for the church at the center of the empire to get its theology right.

The opening word of today’s text, “therefore,” is the bridge between all of that work of the head and the state of the heart Paul describes as “peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” I once heard a preacher argue that “peace” is no longer a felt need among our congregations, because guilt and anxiety about sin have faded.

This week, an article in The New York Times made me think “peace” is still a pressing needs to a degree that some of us never would imagine. The article was about the people who appear before the Minnesota Board of Pardons, a three-person panel made up of the governor, the attorney general, and the state’s chief justice. When they convene, each supplicant sits at a small table facing the panel with a tissue box, and a digital clock set at ten minutes, the amount of time they have to make a case that they are worthy of a pardon.

One example is Jim Lorge, son of a father-mother team who had established a thriving small business. Lorge’s journey took a wrong turn when a woman in a bar convinced him to try methamphetamine, which led to cooking it with his father’s lab equipment, and his arrest, trial, and imprisonment. His parents lost their reputation, their standing in the community, their business, their life savings, and their health, as his father succumbed to cancer. Twenty-two years later, Jim is a model in life transformation, a well-respected counselor and program director, and reconciled to his surviving family members. Aside from the practical differences that a pardon might make, his preparation and prayers for the pardon hearing is something his soul needs. He says, ““Do I have to carry this burden for the rest of my life?” “I want to be forgiven. I just want to be forgiven.”[2]

It's a fascinating article. It gives the reader insight into the pardon process, an aspect of the legal justice system about which I know little. I encourage you to read it for what it reveals about the human need for forgiveness of sin,  release of guilt, and peace with self, neighbor, and God.

If we get quiet inside, and look deep within, then I’m sure most of you can tell about an experience that made you aware of that same need.  Somewhere along life’s journey, you made a mistake that hurt someone you love.  Perhaps the One you offended was God.  But you weren’t sure what it would take to be forgiven, perhaps not confident that any expression of forgiveness could be genuine.  Perhaps more to the point, you weren’t sure that you could accept the forgiveness offered.  Your emotions were tortured as a result.

John Calvin, the father of our Presbyterian Reformed theological tradition, once spoke of peace with God this way: “We do not regard the promises of mercy that God offers as true only outside ourselves, but not at all in us; rather we make them ours by inwardly embracing them. Hence, at last is born that confidence that Paul . . . calls ‘peace’.”[3] In other words, an experience of peace-filled Christian living doesn’t come merely from knowing God abstract truth somewhere ‘out there’.  It must also be experienced as a personal reality. 

Paul Tillich was a famous theologian of the last century, known for his work to translate ancient theological ideas into language more familiar to a modern audience. He had some degree of success, appearing in places like the cover of Time magazine. My former preaching professor Tom Long reminds me of Paul Tillich’s famous sermon called “You Are Accepted.” in it, he tried to express what peace with God looked and felt like.  He painted a picture of the average Christian coping with the daily busyness, frantically trying to meet many demands. Tillich writes, “Sometimes . . . a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you …. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”[4]

A story with insight into peace with God once was offered in a sermon by Bruce Wheeler Thielemann, one of my preaching mentors, who served for many years as Pastor of First Presbyterian, Pittsburgh. Bruce recalled viewing a Broadway play entitled “The Desperate Hours,” the story of a criminal who had invaded a home, holding the entire family hostage.  As the story unfolded, the father managed, at two different times, to get hold of one of the criminal’s guns.  He had two guns.  And when he got hold each gun, he took out the live ammunition, and replaced it with blanks.  So the criminal thought he had two loaded guns, as did everyone else in the father’s family. 

The climax of the play comes with the criminal standing at one side of the stage, the father at the other side of the stage, the ten-year old son standing between them.  The criminal says, “Make one move, and I’ll blow your brains out.”  The father says, “Son, you know who I am, and you know that I love you.  Come to me.”  And the young boy, believing in his father’s love, runs away from the criminal, and into the arms of safety. [5]

Peace with God is like recognizing that you are a sinful child, but then feeling the love of the Mother who will not forsake you. It’s like seeing all your errors and faults in bold relief, but then hearing that you are accepted at the table anyway.  The confidence called peace is when you hear the Father say, “Come to me, you won’t be hurt,” and you run into his arms, because you realize that the gun of guilt isn’t loaded anymore.

NOTES

[1] Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament: Revised English Edition, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1975, p. 312.

[2] Dan Barry, “I want to be forgiven. I just want to be forgiven.” The New York Times, 15 Oct. 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/us/minnesota-board-of-pardons.html Accessed 17 Oct. 2023.

[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.16.

[4] Paul Tillich, “You Are Accepted,” as quoted by Thomas G. Long, Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004, p. 85.

[5] Bruce Wheeler Thielemann, sermon entitled “Unashamed,” as recorded by John Zingaro, Thielemann: The Preacher’s Preacher, copyright 1999 by John Zingaro, p. 265.

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