Submission to God and Its Peace Through Faith
Submission to God.— To submit is to place ourselves under. James 4: 7 has been freely rendered: “Arrange yourselves under God that you may array yourselves against the devil.” Submission, or yielding to God, means to put ourselves on the Lord’s side. It places us where his grace may be bestowed upon us freely. We are then in harmony with his righteous law, the law of the operation of his grace. It is his will to bestow it; he gave his Son that he might bestow it; and as we have submitted to his will, his grace is freely bestowed upon us. As it is his will that we shall be saved through faith in Christ, we accept, yea, gladly embrace, the gracious Redeemer, our righteousness, our life, our peace. True submission brings peace through faith in Christ as a personal Saviour; for true submission to God always embraces the Gospel—God’s only plan of saving men. True submission not only places a man where he may see Christ as a Saviour, but where he must see him as truly as he with healthful open eye must see the sun when his sight is turned toward that great luminary. He has opened his heart toward God as the flower is opened toward sun and refreshing shower, and God’s grace flows in giving peace and life and power. As Christ is made to us by the will of God “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1: 30), faith embraces him as such to us personally, so that as he was perfect before God in all these qualities, even so are we in God’s sight. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Rom. 5: 1, 2. As before remarked, so this text teaches that submission to God opens to us, gives us access to, his grace—not only grace to forgive or justify, but continuous grace to keep us, to enable us to stand to the end.