Romans 5:1-11
Romans • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Intro
Intro
Romans is a heavy theological book.
Little Bible scholars or mini theologians
Last week we talked about how we were all lost and broken because of sin.
That mankind had traded the glory of the Immortal God for the image of man.
We talked about how this trade caused us to be desperately hopeless and lost and brought the wrath of God against our sin.
How being wise in our own eyes we made this exchange of God’s glory for our own.
This is the concept of Total Depravity
That we are all inherently sinful and there is no way we are able to pay for the sins we have commited against a Holy and Righteous God.
We ended however by talking about how the Holy and Righteous God made another great exchange for us by trading our filth our garbage our sin for His righteousness when Jesus died on the cross.
When Jesus died He took upon himself our sin and traded us the righteousness of God.
That is our Assurance of Hope and tonight we are going to unpack that idea a little bit more.
The idea of how we have been justified by faith and the assurance of hope we have in Jesus
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Pray
Pray
Therefore
Anytime we see the word therefore at the beginning of a sentence in the Bible we always have to ask what is it there for
22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
The man Paul is referring to is Abraham and he is referring to the idea that just as Abraham placed his faith in God in a completely hopeless situation.
Abraham was told he would have a child and that he would be the father of a great nation
Abraham was an old man by this time and his wife was not only past the age of having kids but also she had not been able to have kids her entire life.
Both of these things could have caused incredible doubt in Abrahams heart regarding God’s promise.
But he had faith that God would accomplish what He promised and because of this faith God counts Abraham as righteous.
In the same way just as Abraham had faith in the promises of God we too have faith that same God that raised Jesus Christ from the dead and because of that faith we have been counted righteous.
Therefore we are made justified through our faith IN JESUS.
Justified is defined like this
Having, or marked by a good legitimate reason.
It would be used like this
If I went to court for the crime of beating someone up.
And in court I show video evidence that in fact I was defending myself against someone who attacked me first that video evidence would then justify my actions.
Now I no longer face the penalty for the actions I took because I was justified in my actions.
Here’s the problem with this example.
We as humans have no ability to justify ourselves before God.
We learned last week that it was us who traded the Glory of the Immortal God so that we could glorify ourselves.
So we were unable to justify ourselves before God.
We were completely and utterly deserving of our punishment which is death.
In fact we will see in a few verses Romans says that we were not just unjustified but we were enemies of God.
We had already been dealt a guilty verdict and were no enemies of the immortal God.
But Romans 5:1 tells us that it is through faith we have peace with God through our mediator Lord Jesus Christ.
This means that because we have faith in what Jesus has done on the cross, because we have faith that God rose Him from the dead we are now not only justified before God but we are no longer considered enemies of God but we have peace with Him.
This peace is not the kind of peace that you feel this peace means that the wrath of God that upheaved the foundations of the earth to destroy sin in the great flood.
The wrath that has leveled entire cities and nations because of their wickedness
The wrath that will one day consume the earth because of the wicked evil it has done.
We no longer live in fear of this wrath but instead we live in peace with God.
This is all possible through our faith in Christ
2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Through our faith in Jesus we have gained access to His grace
Without Jesus we would all still be dead in our sins and subjected to God’s wrath
But now because of Jesus we can place our faith in Him no longer under God’s wrath but instead under God’s grace.
And this is good news because it means that from here on out this is the worst our lives will ever be.
WHY? because we now can look forward to the day that God promises that all the pain of this earth will disappear, all the sin, all the death.
We look forward to and place our hope in the day as believers that we will be with God and each other eternally free from sin and death.
That means that no matter what happens here, whether good or bad we are constantly looking to our hope in Jesus.
Nothing on this earth can take that away because that hope isn’t founded here on earth its in heaven.
It’s like if you were to walk into my house and try to steal all my money.
You know what I would tell you...
My money is not here it’s in the bank
Our hope is not tied to earthly things its anchored in heaven by Jesus Christ. and it’s our faith in Him that allows us access to that hope.
In the letter to the Romans at this time they are experiencing some of the worst earthly pain that you can experience.
Persecution
They are being hunted down and persecuted for their faith
They are suffering greatly and Paul is encouraging them that even in suffering there is hope.
3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Paul here is saying that when you suffer when you go through something that attacks your faith or that breaks you down, it produces in you a transformation.
First your suffering produces endurance.
Suffering is not easy, it isn’t easy to be made fun of for being a believer but OVER TIME you learn to deal with it.
This is endurance
If I was to run a marathon right now I would probably die because I don’t have the endurance to run a marathon.
But if I spent the next 6 months training my body to run longer and longer distances I could run a marathon.
I would have to suffer a little bit while I trained my body to endure these longer runs but I could eventually train my body to survive this extreme feat of endurance.
So suffering produces endurance
Endurance produces character
Character is defined as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual
So as you suffer you begin to endure, as you endure you begin to learn the kind of mentality you need to have.
The mentality that my hope is not placed in this world but in Jesus Christ who is seated at the right hand of God the Father in Heaven.
From this character, from this mentality you find hope and that hope does not put us to shame.
When the world is trying to shame you for what you believe, for who you believe in Jesus is telling you you do not need to be ashamed because ultimately your hope is not tied to this world but it is tied to who you are as a citizen of heaven.
And if you ever begin to doubt this Romans 5:5 tells us that God has poured his love out into our hearts through His Spirit.
direct access to God every time we need him.
This is the assurance of hope, that no matter what we’re going through, whether its suffering or joy, mountains or valleys He is there with us because the Holy Spirit dwells inside of the hearts of every believer
Through our suffering God teaches us to hope in Him and in the eternal life He has promised us.
In Romans 5:6 Paul pivots to explain how this assurance of hope was made possible.
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
While we were still weak
Other translations say while we were powerless Christ died for the ungodly.
Once again, before we placed our faith in the death and resurrection of Christ there was nothing we could do to save ourselves.
We were godless wicked people who traded God to glorify ourselves.
Paul next tells us that you may trade your life for someone who you think is good.
But would you trade your life for someone who you think is bad?
Probably not right.
Here Paul tells us that while we were still sinners, while we were actively rebelling against the Lord He came and died for us.
This is that second great exchange in history that I talked about last week.
Remember the first was that we as humanity exchanged the glory of God so that we could glorify ourselves
The second is that God graciously exchanged our sin for Christ’s righteousness and now we no longer live in fear of God’s wrath but we call Him Father and Friend.
9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
So while we were enemies of God we were reconciled (our relationship with God has been restored) by the death of Jesus.
But not only have we been saved by Jesus death...
We know that because He was raised from the dead and lives in Heaven and now the Spirit of God has been sent to this Earth to daily dwell within us.
We not only have salvation but relationship with God and one day just as Jesus went to be with God in Heaven we will too.
And this is why we as believers can have assurance of hope.
It’s all because of what Jesus did on the cross.
11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Because we have recieved salvation from our sins this is why we rejoice, because we once were without hope, we once were lost, we once had traded everything to glorify ourselves and because of that the wrath of God should have destroyed us but instead God chose you and he chose me and He saved us by Jesus death on the cross.
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
