© 2014 by Tom Boynton (editing by Kathy Boynton)
“Rest in Peace” is a phrase sometimes seen on gravestones. As we race through time, most of us fill our waking hours with frantic activity. Some may even do this intentionally to avoid thinking about life’s end. Unfortunately, we are all born to trouble and death due to Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden and evidenced by our own personal sins. Job of old expressed it this way: “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). When occasional thoughts of eternity invade our distracted lives, we put them aside with the wishful hope that our days will eventually end in an eternal “rest in peace.”
However, peace will not be the destiny of most. The prophet Isaiah declares, “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked” (Isaiah 57:20-21). Only God the Son can provide eternal peace for His people. He came to lay down His life in a dreadful and bloody sacrificial crucifixion. This was the redemption price required to satisfy God’s righteous wrath over sin, and to establish repentant sinners in a peaceful relationship with the absolutely Holy God of creation. Yet the same passage which presents the good news of salvation continues with chilling words of wrath upon the unrepentant. God declares, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). God also makes it clear that most will go to their graves without obtaining this peace with Himself, for He says, “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 713-14).
Will you continue your frantic march down the heavily travelled road to eternal torment, anguish, and never ending unrest, or will you be one of the few to cry out in repentance to the loving Savior, Jesus Christ, who will forgive you and secure your eternal “rest in peace” as He changes your heart to serve and praise Him forever?
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