Dear Friends,

Do people wonder why you are so full of joy? Do they ever marvel that you are full of peace? You may say, “Not really.” Today’s devotional will show you what creates these glorious emotions in a believer. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Romans 5:1 (ESV)

  Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

“A lady called upon me, last Monday, with this trouble upon her. She said she had not heard me preach, but she had been reading my sermons, and God had been pleased to bless them to her, not only to her conviction, but to her conversion. She went to the clergyman of the parish, full of joy at having found the Savior. She began to tell him of her gladness, and how she rejoiced that all her sins were blotted out. He stopped her, and said, ‘My good woman, that is all a delusion. You have no right to believe that your sins are pardoned, till you have led several years of piety and devotion.’ She went away sad, and she came to ask me if what the clergyman said was true; and when I quoted that verse,

—‘The moment a sinner believes,
And trusts in his crucified God,
His pardon at once he receives,
Redemption in full through his blood;’ ―

‘Oh!’ she said, ‘I see it clearly now;’ and when I went on to tell her that many, who had believed in Christ, had been black sinners one moment, and white as snow the next, had cast themselves simply on Christ, and had instantly found peace, she could not but take to her heart the precious promises of Christ, and, believing in Jesus, being justified by faith, she had the peace of God that passeth all understanding.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLV, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1899), p. 323]