It’s not that we cannot know peace. It’s not that God does not want us to be at peace. Far from it. It’s that we must only find peace on God’s terms. He is the offended party, he is the Sovereign, and so he must take the lead. It is the right of God, not man, to declare the terms of peace and to declare the existence of peace.

We all long for peace. We all want to be at peace with God and men. The problem is that we usually want that peace to be on our terms. So we strive against men and battle against God until we feel that we have achieved what feels to us like peace.

John Owen knows this temptation and in his great book Overcoming Sin and Temptation he includes an entire chapter on the theme. He gives his reader this charge: “Do not speak peace to yourself before God speaks it, but hearken to what God says to your soul.” For many pages and through many chapters he has been instructing the reader on battling against sin. He has given specific instructions on how to put sin to death. And he concludes with care: Expect to hear God speak peace to your soul, but be very careful you do not speak that peace to yourself until he does.

Here is the slow march of his argument:

1. God reserves the privilege to speak peace to whom, and in what degree, he pleases
2. It is the prerogative of Christ to speak peace to the conscience
   • Men speak peace to themselves without the detestation of sin and the abhorrence of themselves for it
   • Men speak false peace to themselves when they rely upon convictions and rational principles to carry them
3. We speak peace to ourselves when we do it slightly
4. If one speaks peace to himself upon any one account of sin, and at the same time has another evil of no less importance lying upon his spirit, without dealing with God, that man cries “Peace” when there is none
5. When men of themselves speak peace to their consciences, it is seldom that God speaks humiliation to their souls

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