Gal. 1:3 ¶ Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
Two of the most influential voices in the development of Western Civilization is the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther. Actually, Luther was a preacher of the Apostolic message of the Apostle Paul, “the just shall live by faith”. Luther’s story is quite classic. He was an Augustinian monk who desperately wanted to please God. He spent years in strict adherence to the teachings of the Catholic Church in his day that required an austere system of works that left Luther frustrated. He said that he hammered on the teachings of Paul and hated the concept of the righteousness of God. No matter how hard Luther persisted in his self denial and rigid practice of the requirements of the church he felt condemned by his own conscience and failure to attain to the righteousness of God. In a moment of time Luther saw it. It was righteousness that comes by faith in Christ. Righteousness was a gift of grace, not something anyone could earn. Finally he was at peace, he had found peace with God by grace through faith. Here are some of Luther’s thoughts on today’s verse.
“Grace remits sin, and peace quiets the conscience. Sin and conscience torment us, but Christ has overcome these fiends now and forever. Only Christians possess this victorious knowledge given from above. These two terms, grace and peace, constitute Christianity. Grace involves the remission of sins, peace, and a happy conscience. Sin is not canceled by lawful living, for no person is able to live up to the Law. The Law reveals guilt, fills the conscience with terror, and drives men to despair. Much less is sin taken away by man-invented endeavors. The fact is, the more a person seeks credit for himself by his own efforts, the deeper he goes into debt. Nothing can take away sin except the grace of God. In actual living, however, it is not so easy to persuade oneself that by grace alone, in opposition to every other means, we obtain the forgiveness of our sins and peace with God.”
I can remember the horrible torment of my guilty conscience. One of the proofs to me of the reality of my Christian faith was the incredible peace that came in me and upon me after I believed in Jesus Christ. No longer was shame and guilt hammering away at me, I had found acceptance with God; for me, nothing else could ever matter.
1 thought on “GRACE AND PEACE”
It came upon me suddenly and by total surprise. I described it as the “peace of a child”. That seemed to not just have filled me, but it filled the entire atmosphere around me. I am marveled by it twelve years later!
\o/