Peace With God

I'm currently reading Don Carson's book How Long, O Lord? It is an excellent book on the subject of suffering and evil, and what our response should be. I was reading it for itself, then found that I could use the chapter on Job for my Old Testament essay, so my reading has become a little fractured. Anyway, I have found a great summary of the gospel, explaining the first four chapters of Romans in a couple of sentences. Here they are:

Such peace with God is to be desired above all things. As Paul has taken pains to prove at the beginning of the book, we are all by nature and choice under the wrath of God, and the drama of the Epistle to the Romans, like the drama of the Bible as a whole, is how rebels who attract only the wrath of God can be reconciled to him. The answer is in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of his coming, death, and resurrection. God sent him to die in our place, "so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). Because of what Christ has borne, those who trust in him are "justified" : they are declared just by the holy God himself, not because they are, or because their sins do not matter, but because Christ has stood in their place. And the consequence of having been "justified through faith", Paul writes, is that "we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

All glory to the God of the Gospel, and Christ Jesus, who died for me!