“Set at one again!”
- Jan 2
- 6 min read
Happy New Year!
We pray that our Father God will bless the start of this New Year with a renewed heart and focus on Him, the author and pioneer of our faith.
We wish you a very happy and blessed New Year.
Alice and Harry
Our text for today is Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Peace is a heavenly word. “Peace”, shalom, is a state of wholeness that is intended to resonate in all relationships. It starts in heaven with God’s perfect plan, and it arrives on earth where peace comes - “on earth peace to men on whom His favour rests” (Luke 2:14).
We continue with our study that we started in 2025 - knowing God better!
I want to ask at the start of this new year, are you and I at ‘peace with God’ today?
Peace is first and foremost an attribute of God. He is the "God of Peace” (Heb 13:20) and the source of ultimate peace. Peace is the fruit of His Spirit’s presence, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…” (Gal 5:22). And peace is supremely personified in the person of the Lord Jesus, the One the Prophets foretold would be the “Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6). Jesus is the One who promised “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you” (John 14:27).
Alistair Begg states, "Until we discover what it is to have peace with God, we're not going to discover the peace of God."
The Bible describes at least three spheres of peace:
Peace with God – that’s the vertical dimension;
Peace of God – this takes place internally;
Peace with others – when we have peace with God and we experience the peace of God, we can then extend peace horizontally to others.
Thomas Merton once said, “We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.”
Peace is one way to describe our new relation with God. We have peace with Him. But there’s something greater that this peace leads to, namely, an experience of the omnipotent God acting not against us but for us, and us being brought into His sovereign grace (it's where we stand today!).
You and I at the start of this New Year can have peace with God. It is through Jesus Christ. He keeps it and He maintains it; He is it!
So, peace with God is understanding your standing in Him!
Our text states “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Peace with God is foundational to all other peace. All peace inwardly, and peace outwardly, is based on this vertical relationship and experience.
Ask yourself, 'Do I have peace with God today?' This is foundational and fundamental to who we are as Christians.
It’s a peace that gives confidence and brings His assurance, enabling us to stand in a place of peace because we know that everything is in His hands. We have an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God. God is our peace!
This is the peace which Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego knew; with which they stood their ground in the face of Nebuchadnezzar’s ultimatum (Dan 3:15-18). They knew their God and were at peace with and in Him. They knew that their God would be forever for them and not against them. Peace that doesn’t start here must be questioned!
John MacArthur states, “If you are truly saved, if you have been declared righteous by putting your faith in Jesus Christ, you have laid the appropriate and necessary foundation and you are held in that relationship eternally.”
Which must mean the relationship of peace that Jesus has secured for us with God never changes and is also and always secure! Peace becomes the new definition of our life with God that flows out of being reconciled.
Romans 5:1-2 focuses on the a past, present and a future reality. Because we believe in Jesus and trusted Him with our lives, Paul says, we have been ‘justified’ (v1) and the result of this is ‘peace with God’ (v1), and therefore the privilege of ‘grace’ in which we now stand (v2).
Faith in Jesus has secured peace with God, and that same faith allows us to literally stand in grace. Don’t you find this stunning?
As Christians going into a New Year, this is our position. Wow!
The Greek translation of ‘peace’ is eiréné which means “to bind together that which has been separated.” The root meaning can also mean, “to set at one again.” Therefore, peace with God is a fact not a feeling.
Listen to how Colossians 1:20-22 describes Jesus’ amazing work of reconciliation: “And through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”
Our relationship with God is declared as ‘justified’, which must mean our position with God is described as PEACE!
John Owen said, “Nothing can give perfect peace of conscience with God but that which can make atonement for sin.”
We must always remember that "peace with God" is a gift of grace. God has made peace with us by means of the blood of Christ.
I’ve just been reminded of an old song –
Something beautiful, something good
All my confusion He understood
All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife
But he made something beautiful of my life
John Stott states, “It's peace with God that leads to the peace of God that passes all understanding. And our judge becomes our father when our creator becomes our friend. And we lift our eyes to him and seek his face.”
Just imagine for a moment those things in your life that were once broken, scattered, or pulled apart by chaos and confusion now being gathered back into wholeness - Shalom. Peace with God means that whatever has been fragmented in our lives has been ‘set at one again.’
Notice how Isaiah 32:17 describes it: “The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever.”
Isn’t this a beautiful and amazing way to describe our relationship with God, one of restoration and spiritual harmony?
In seeking to know God better, I truly hope it confirms your position at the start of 2026!
To have peace with God means that there is nothing, no sin, no guilt, no condemnation that separates us from Him.
Jonathan Aitken on 12th June 1999 wrote, "I was in Chelsea police station being charged with perjury and conspiracy to pervert public justice. I spent the next five hours alone in a police cell while waiting for the various formalities such as finger-printing and photographs. I prayed, meditated and read all 16 chapters of Mark's Gospel. This should have been a time of deep despair. The worst day of my life. Not so. For I had such an overwhelming sense of God's presence in the cell with me that I was at peace."
Peace with God, in Romans 5:1, is not just a state of mind or heart. It is an established condition between two who were once alienated. Sin had disturbed and caused a breach that we could not mend. But peace has been made by the blood of Christ and there is no longer a barrier.
Peace with God is now the unshakable state in which we stand at the start of 2026.
You see, it’s possible to go throughout the whole of our lives so engrossed and captivated by our own agendas and schedules, that we are basically strangers to His PRESENCE, unaware of His PROMISE, devoid of His PEACE.
It was DL Moody that said, "A great many people are trying to make peace, but that has already been done. God has not left it for us to do; all we have to do is to enter into it."
Oh, in seeking to know God better, may we be ‘set at one again’ with Father God at the start of the New Year, knowing we're at peace with Him!
May it be so for His glory!
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