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I. WHY MEN HAVE NOT PEACE.

1. One reason is a want of knowledge about ourselves. We do not see that peace is the thing we want. We sigh for it now and again, but we do not pursue it. Gold, pleasure, power, fame, we pursue with all our might; we do not covet peace except when we are weary, and want to sleep and dream.

(1) Look at yon solitary man watching the stream flow. He is saying, "I would this restless bosom were like yon tranquil river." But he has not the courage to ask what is at the bottom of this discontent. He lets another sigh escape him, which goes to swell that great wind of unrest which goes moaning about the world, and hurries back to some scene of distraction, where he may get rid, for a time, of that burden of himself which he cannot bear. Men's feeling about peace is often, then, no more than a fleeting sentiment, and where peace is actually enjoyed, men do not take pains to secure it.

(2) What a misery is a home without peace! How is it that it does not deeply impress itself, that any sacrifice of personal opinion and feeling is to be made rather than this blessing of peace should be forfeited?

(3) And so in the Church. Peace is its bond of union. We cannot worship in truth, we can neither edify nor be edified, with divided hearts. Yet here, again, there has been constant strife between the carnal and the spiritual. And again and again the carnal prevails. Christians do not guard and fence about the sacred enclosure of heaven's peace, and yet they are dismayed when it is broken into and trampled upon!

(4) Look again at the case of nations. Is there anything more wicked than needless wars? And how few wars there are which are not needless! See what a weight of pure feeling there is in the scale against war. All the most intelligent and best members of society are against it. And yet war still goes on. Men love to listen to the hymn of the angels, "Peace on earth," and go to raise the yell of demons on the battlefield.

2. The explanation is that which the gospel gives. Tracing the deep inconsistencies of human nature down to their root, it tells us the carnal mind is enmity against God. Here is the secret of our discords. Man has a spiritual part which would lead him to peaceable ways, and he has a passionate part which leads him to hate, and to the destruction of himself and of his brethren. While this strife goes on there cannot be peace. This is the secret of the deep unrest in men's souls. Ever yearning and dreaming of a blissful quiet that is so foreign to their actual condition. This is why the calm of a starlight night softens us; why the sight of a sleeping babe sometimes moves us to tears; or a strain of soft music quells some angry mood; or the face of one we love sleeping placidly in death. These sights, these sounds, speak to us of a state where the unholy war of passion has ceased, of that peace which ought to be ours, and which would be ours, were it not for this terrible foe in our own bosom, in the mind at enmity with God. This is why thousands of persons love to listen to the gospel who are far from living evangelical lives.

II. THE WAY OF PEACE POINTED OUT BY THE GOSPEL. Evidently, if we are to come to peace, two things are necessary; first, the spiritual part of our nature must be strengthened, and, second, the carnal or passionate part of our nature must be reduced and mortified.

1. Now the law, as St. Paul shows, was unequal to this work. The law did much to strengthen and to educate the spiritual feeling of man. It taught as the first principle of all religion — love to God and to man. But when the law came to oppose the carnal nature of man, it was found to be weak. It set up a great frowning barrier against man's unholy passions, and sin acquires greater energy when resisted, like pent-up waters behind a dam. The law, then, failed to bring us to peace with God, because it could not extinguish, though it could restrain, passion; because it could punish sin, but could not make the love of sin to cease.

2. But what the law could not do, God could do by a special act of His grace. He sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.

(1) The life of our Lord was throughout an invitation to man to peace and rest in God. His own character was a revelation of the peacefulness of the Divine nature; and His teaching sets before us the gentle and unselfish life, we must live to be in harmony with the life of our father in heaven. But this is not enough. It is like telling a man in a fever to be cool by thinking of the frosty Caucasus, or a man at sea to be calm by thinking of a quiet harbour. It is mockery to tell a man in the midst of the commotions of his conscience that he can be at peace by looking at Jesus Christ, and following His example. It is like telling him to turn himself into a white marble statue. What the man needs is some influence that can quell the rebellion of his flesh, and allow his spirit free action.

(2) And therefore the gospel points to the death of Christ as the means of our reconciliation to God. Our Lord was put to death in an outbreak of Jewish passion which was typical of the sin of man. In the Cross the gospel teaches us to see the last most dreadful proof of what sin is, and whither it tends. And the point before us is that it produces a profound reaction upon the feelings of the sinner. When a man who has long given way to evil passions at last strikes down his friend, his passion dies with its victim. We cannot doubt that sin dies out of the heart of some men when its last fatal fruit has ripened and fallen. And something like this occurs with the man who is led to see in the death of the Lord Jesus the awful witness and fruit of his aim(3) But is he not an object of God's vengeance? No; the blood of Christ not only cleanses from sin, but it is the last language of God to the sinner, beseeching him to be reconciled to Him. It is the accepted compensation for sin. It does not cry cut for vengeance like that of Abel, but it has the pleading tongue of eternal mercy and love. Conclusion: It is for us to believe with all our hearts that this is the relation in which God stands to us and our sin through our Lord Jesus Christ. To have faith in this is the ground of our justification and the beginning of a peaceful and a holy life.

(Prof. E. Johnson, M. A.)

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KJV: Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

WEB: Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;