...God's peace brings us two things: both power to face and live with our own badness and failings, and also contentment under 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' (for which the Christian name is God's wise providence)...the basic ingredient, without which the rest cannot be, is pardon and acceptance into covenant - that is adoption into God's family. But where this change of relationship with God - out of hostility into friendship out of wrath into the fullness of love, out of condemnation into justification - is not set forth, the gospel of peace is not truly set forth either.
The peace of God is first and foremost peace with God; it is the state of affairs in which God, instead of being against us, is for us. No account of God's peace that does not start here can do other than mislead....
The peace of God, then, primarily and fundamentally, is a new relationship of forgiveness and acceptance - and the source from which it flows is propitiation. When Jesus came to His disciples in the upper room on his resurrection day, he said, "Peace be with you"; and when he had said that, "he showed unto them his hands and side" (John 20:18-20 Phillips)...
In My Place Condemned He Stood, p48-49
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