James B. Ramsey

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord (2 Pet. 1:2).

All the blessings that come down from heaven to guilty and helpless man, laboring under the fearful burden of unforgiven sin and the dread of impending wrath and the misery of conflicting passions, unsatisfied desires, and earthly woes, are forcibly and touchingly included in this one word, ‘peace,’ the peace that is from God and that reconciles to God. Without it you may gather to yourself all that earth calls good, all that for which men put forth their mightiest energies, and the eager strife for which fills the earth with “the waves of human agitation billowed high,” and you have gained only dust and ashes.

Without it, the more you have gained of the world’s honours, pleasures and wealth, the greater the vexatious burden of vanity you have to bear, and the bitterer the cup of sorrow mingled for you at last. The want of it turns the best of earthly blessings into poison, and makes them only smooth your downward way to a deeper perdition.

The possession of it, on the other hand, gives to all earthly good its only real value, and transmutes its sorrows, pains, and tears into healing medicines for the soul, and preparatives for eternal joy. It cannot do less; for it is called “the peace of God which passeth understanding,”³—the peace which God gives, and by which God is reconciled. What more than this can a creature want? It brings him into loving communion with God, his maker; it secures sweet serenity and harmony in the soul itself; it satisfies every desire.

Nature, in all her thousand processes, Providence, in all its minutest, vastest and most complicated movements, and even the unseen hosts of angels, all range themselves as the ministering servants of the soul at peace with God.

“Grace” is its only source. Hence this message of the kingdom is grace and peace.” No true peace can come into any soul except through grace. Let not the frequency and flippancy with which this word is repeated make you insensible to the force and glory of its blessed meaning. It is the gratuitous, undeserved, and sovereign favor of God, springing out of the depths of His own nature and with all the gushing force of divinity, exhaustless as His own fullness, either by the creature’s wants or the lapse of ages, and finding its true symbol in that river of the waters of life that John saw bursting out from beneath the throne of God and the Lamb.

Such is the glad news the gospel brings to you and to me, oh helpless sinner! Such the nature of the blessings which the whole resources of this spiritual kingdom of God are employed in bestowing. Mark well the two great truths taught by these words, “grace and peace,” in regard to your native character and condition in the sight of God.

The very words that come to you laden with heaven’s richest mercies, to gladden and to save you soul, imply that God regards you as by nature at enmity with Him, and under the penalty of His holy law; and that deliverance from this state of sin and misery cannot be procured by any works or merits of yours or of any creature, but must be His perfectly gratuitous gift.

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3. Philippians 4:7

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