Two Aspects of Peace

In the fourteenth chapter of John, we learn that our blessed Lord, before He left this earth, said to His disciples: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” Here we have two very distinct aspects of peace. One is that which He left as a settled thing when He went back to the Father’s right hand, and is the result of His sacrificial work upon the cross, while the other is that which He imparts from day to day to those believers who live in fellowship with Him.
Sometimes people use expressions that will not always bear the test of Scripture. Let me give an instance of this: A number of years ago an earnest young Christian and I went to a mission in San Francisco. At the close of the meeting, a kind, motherly woman came to me, and asked: “Are you a Christian, sir?”
I replied immediately, “Yes, I am.”
“Thank God,” she said, and then turning to my friend, she asked: “And have you made your ‘peace with God,’ sir?”
Rather to my astonishment, he answered, “No, madam, I have not.”
I knew he was a Christian, and I wondered at his replying in that way.
She said to him rather severely, “Well, if you don’t make your ‘peace with God,’ you will be lost forever.”
With a bright, happy smile on his face, he replied, “Madam, I can never make my ‘peace with God,’ and I never expect to try; but I am thankful that the Lord Jesus Christ has settled that for me, and through what He did for rue I shall be in heaven for all eternity.” He then put the question to her, “Have you never read that remarkable passage: ‘Having made peace by the blood of his cross’?”
As he went on to explain it to her, the truth gripped my own soul. I saw then, and have realized it ever since, that sinners are saved through the “peace” which He made at the cross. And so we read in Romans 5:1, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This peace is not of our making, and is not of our keeping either. We enjoy the peace He made as we accept by faith the testimony of His Word.