With this by way of basis, let us come back to my text.  It sounds strange; ‘Therefore, being justified by faith, let up have peace.’  ‘Well,’ you will say, ’but is not all that you have been saying just this, that to be justified by faith, to be declared righteous by reason of faith in Him who makes us righteous, is to have peace with God?  Is not your exhortation an entirely superfluous one?’ No doubt that is what the old scribe thought who originated the reading which has crept into our Authorised Version.  The two things do seem to be entirely parallel.  To be justified by faith is a certain process, to have peace with God is the inseparable and simultaneous result of that process itself.  But that is going rather too fast.  ’Being justified by faith let us have peace with God,’ really is just this—­see that you abide where you are; keep what you have.  The exhortation is not to attain peace, but retain it.  ’Hold fast that thou hast; let no man take thy crown.’  ‘Being justified by faith’ cling to your treasure and let nothing rob you of it—­’let us have peace with God.’

Now a word, in the next place, as to the necessity and importance of this exhortation.

There underlies it, this solemn thought, which Christian people, and especially some types of Christian doctrine, do need to have hammered into them over and over again, that we hold the blessed life itself, and all its blessings, only on condition of our own cooperation in keeping them; and that just as physical life dies, unless by reception of food we nourish and continue it, so a man that is in this condition of being justified by faith, and having peace with God, needs, in order to the permanence of that condition, to give his utmost effort and diligence.  It will all go if he do not.  All the old state will come back again if we are slothful and negligent.  We cannot keep the treasure unless we guard it.  And just because we have it, we need to put all our mind, the earnestness of our will, and the concentration of our efforts, into the specific work of retaining it.

For, consider how manifold and strong are the forces which are always working against our continual possession of this justification by faith, and consequent peace with God.  There are all the ordinary cares and duties and avocations and fortunes of our daily life, which, indeed, may be so hallowed in their motives and in their activities, as that they may be turned into helps instead of hindrances, but which require a great deal of diligence and effort in order that they should not work like grains of dust that come between the parts of some nicely-fitting engine, and so cause friction and disaster.  There are all the daily tasks that tempt us to forget the things that we only know by faith, and to be absorbed in the things that we can touch and taste and handle.  If a man is upon an inclined plane, unless he is straining his muscles to go upwards, gravitation will make short work of him, and bring him down.  And unless Christian