"Identifying False Peace"

What are the characteristics of false peace? It generally results from thinking that faith simply means believing and giving an intellectual assent to certain propositions and truths. That was the essence of the heresy known as Sandemanianism…It is based, as the Sandemanians based it, on Romans 10:9: “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus.” They taught, and teach, that any man who says, “I believe Jesus is Lord; I believe He is the Son of God,” is thereby saved and that all is well with his soul. But all may not be well. You can subscribe to the truth and give an intellectual assent to it, and yet not really be saved by it. There are men who have “a form of godliness but deny the power thereof” (see 2Ti 3:5)… Secondly, the person with a false peace is generally found to be resting on his or her faith rather than on Christ and His work. They really look at their own believing rather than at Christ and what He has done. They say, “I now believe; therefore, I must be all right.” They persuade themselves…They are not looking to Christ; they are looking to their own faith, and they turn faith into a kind of work on which they rest.

Another characteristic of false peace is somewhat surprising and unexpected. The man who has a false peace is never troubled by doubts. But that is where the devil makes a mistake. The counterfeit is always too wonderful, the counterfeit always goes much further than the true experience. When the devil gives a man a false peace counterfeiting the true peace, he creates a condition in which the man is never troubled at all. He is in a psychological state. He does not truly face the truth, so there is nothing to make him unhappy. Let me put this in the form of a practical question. Can you sit in an evangelistic service without being made to feel uncomfortable at all? If you can, you had better examine yourself seriously. I am assuming, of course, that the gospel is being preached truly, that it is the true evangel which starts with the wrath of God and man’s helplessness. It matters not how long you may have been saved, if you are truly justified you will be made to feel unhappy, you may even be made to feel miserable temporarily, and you will thank God again for justification by faith and have to apply it to yourself. But the intellectual believers are never troubled at all, they are always perfectly at ease, without a doubt or any trouble. They say, “Ever since I made my decision, I have never had a moment’s trouble.” Such talk is always indicative of a very dangerous condition, is always very suspicious because it is too good to be true.

To put it in another way, I say that this kind of person is always much too “healthy.” The people who have this false, counterfeit peace are much too glib, much too light-hearted. Compare them with the New Testament picture of the Christian. The New Testament Christian is “grave,” “sober,” and he approaches God with “reverence and godly fear.” But the people with the false peace know nothing of that. They are perfectly healthy; all is well; and they are supremely happy. Nothing like that is to be found in the Scriptures. Can you imagine the Apostle Paul speaking in that manner, with such glib clichés falling from his lips? His speech is, “Knowing…the terror of the Lord we persuade men,” and, “I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling,” and, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (2Co 5:11; 1Co 2:3; Phi 2:12).

Another invariable characteristic of the man with the false peace is that it is only interested in forgiveness and not in righteousness. The man who has the false peace is only interested in forgiveness. He does not want to go to Hell, and he wants to be forgiven. He has not stopped to think about being positively righteous, he is not concerned about being holy and walking in holiness before God, so he is negligent about his life, and does not pursue holiness. He does not heed that exhortation in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb 12:14). He is an Antinomian, only interested in forgiveness, and negligent with regard to living the Christian life.

Another invariable characteristic of the man with the false peace is that when this man falls again into sin he takes it much too lightly. He is not like the person I have just been describing whose faith is shaken by Satan when he falls into sin. This man says almost as soon as he has fallen, “It is all right, the blood of Christ covers me.” And up he gets and on he goes as if nothing had happened. You cannot do that if you have any true conception of what sin means, and what the holiness of God really is. This man with a false peace heals himself much too quickly, much too easily, much too lightly. It is because he takes sin as a whole too lightly.

- David Martyn Lloyd-Jones
From Romans, An Exposition of Chapter 5: Assurance