Peace with God...On Both Sides

I was reading John Owen’s Death of Death today when I came across this passage:

Peace, also, and reconciliation with God—that is, actual peace by the removal of enmity on both sides, with all the causes of it, is fully ascribed to [Christ’s] oblation (Book 2, Ch. 3).

It took me back for a second because I don’t think we today think of peace with God just like this.

As evangelicals who believe in penal substitution, we know full and well that God is a God of justice and wrath. Our sins have angered a righteous and just God who cannot stand the sight of sin and sinful creatures. Because of that, God is said to be at enmity with us. We are not at peace with God, since God cannot be at peace with beings that are totally sinful. But the death of Christ appeases, so to speak, that wrath of God. Those found in Christ are seen as perfect in Him, since Christ’s death is a propitiation, sacrifice, and atonement. God then is at peace with us.

This, however, is not all that Owen says here. He notes that peace is the “removal of enmity on both sides.” Sometimes I think we forget (I know that I do) that the unrepentant sinner not only angers God, but that we too are angry at God. The break in the relationship goes both ways. We preach a God of love and peace who will be quick to forgive and save us, and we are good to do so. But we often forget that we as sinners are not always so quick to run to Him. Under the curse of sin, we want to have nothing to do with a holy God. Put quite frankly, we hate God. We are not at peace with him. A sinner’s sin is more than just rebellion against God—it is a sign of his or her inner hatred of God. So in our natural state, not only is God angry at us, but we too are angry at God.

This Biblical truth strikes a crushing blow to the Arminian system. Arminians tend to believe that it is we who choose whether or not to love God. But this obviously cannot be the case. Firstly, we are all in our sinful state hateful and spiteful towards God. How can we love God if we categorically hate Him? Secondly, we would need some form of divine interference in order to change our sinful state. We cannot go from hating God to loving God without the power and regeneration of Christ. It would make no sense. If we could, then we wouldn’t have needed Christ to die for us in the first place. So peace with God, then, is peace on both sides. This is brought about only through the glorious death of Jesus Christ. We would do well to remember that.