IN a quiet parlor in the south of England two persons I might have been seen one afternoon this year in close conversation. One of them was a servant of the Lord, the other a youth not twenty years of age, but as anxious about his soul as he well could be. He had just dropped in for a little conversation about the one absorbing theme, viz. “peace with God, and how to get it.” After a quiet talk, and before separating, both knelt down together, and both spoke to God audibly. The youth said at the close of his prayer, “O God, don’t stop working in me till I get peace.” The Lord’s servant immediately followed by saying, “And, O God, don’t let him think that any amount of working in him will give him peace.”
It seemed very evident that, like thousands of others in similar anxiety, this dear youth was expecting that the longed-for blessing, “peace with God,” would in some way be produced by the work of God’s Spirit within him, instead of seeing that it depended entirely upon the finished and accepted work of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross. It is through faith in Him, whom God raised from the dead after He had been “delivered for our offenses,” that we have peace with God― “PEACE WITH GOD THROUGH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.” It is through Him who bore sin’s judgment for us, and not directly through Him who produces conviction within us, that our souls find solid peace. The latter creates soul-thirst, the former quenches it.