Romans 5:1 (NIV)
"Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
From Spurgeon~~
BEING justified by faith, we have peace with
God. Conscience accuses no longer. Judgment now decides for the sinner instead
of against him.
If God be just, I, a sinner, alone and without a substitute, must be punished;
but Jesus stands in my stead and is punished for me; and now, if God be just, I,
a sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished. God must change His nature
before one soul, for whom Jesus was a substitute, can ever by any possibility
suffer the lash of the law. Therefore, Jesus having taken the place of the
believer—having rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that His
people ought to have suffered as the result of sin, the believer can shout with
glorious triumph, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Not
God, for He hath justified; not Christ, for He hath died, "yea rather hath risen
again." My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner
for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy,
He is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall be,
or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is
now doing for me.