what all of
us have to do who would give advice that will be worth anything or of
any effect. He does not stand upon a little molehill of superiority,
and look down upon the Roman Christians, and imply that they have
needs that he has not, but he exhorts himself too, saying, 'Let all
of us who have obtained like precious faith, which is alike in an
Apostle and in the humblest believer, have peace with God.'

Now a word, first, about the meaning of this somewhat singular
exhortation.

There is a theory of man and his relation to God underlying it, which
is very unfashionable at present, but which corresponds to the
deepest things in human nature, and the deepest mysteries in human
history, and that is, that something has come in to produce the
totally unnatural and monstrous fact that between God and man there
is not amity or harmony. Men, on their side, are alienated, because
their wills are rebellious and their aims diverse from God's purpose
concerning them. And--although it is an awful thing to have to say,
and one from which the sentimentalism of much modern Christianity
weakly recoils--on God's side, too, the relation has been disturbed,
and 'we are by nature the children of wrath, even as others'; not of
a wrath which is unloving, not of a wrath which is impetuous and
passionate, not of a wrath which seeks the hurt of its objects, but
of a wrath which is the necessary antagonism and recoil of pure love
from such creatures as we have made ourselves to be. To speak as if
the New Testament taught that 'reconciliation' was lop-sided--which
would be a contradiction in terms, for reconciliation needs two to
make it--to talk as if the New Testament taught that reconciliation
was only man's putting away his false relation to God, is, as I
humbly think, to be blind to its plainest teaching. So, there being
this antagonism and separation between God and man, the Gospel comes
to deal with it, and proclaims that Jesus Christ has abolished the
enmity, and by His death on the Cross has become our peace; and that
we, by faith in that Christ, and grasping in faith His death, pass
from out of the condition of hostility into the condition of
reconciliation.

With this by way of basis, let us come back to my text. It sounds
strange; 'Therefore, being justified by faith, let up have peace.'
'Well,' you will say, 'but is not all that you have been saying just
this, that to be justified by faith, to be declared righteous by
reason