The Antidote for our Doubt Romans 5:9-11

Doubt is a plague in the Christian soul. It is fed by our fear, and grows and spreads until we feel as though our faith is totally evaporated. When Paul starts Romans 5, after four chapters of helping us understand the human predicament, under the wrath and judgment of God, and the divine solution, faith in Jesus Christ, we now get to the point where Paul wants us to really grab hold of our faith, and march confidently with assurance! But we find ourselves constantly riddled by doubt. Doubt was the first bait of the enemy in the garden, when the serpent looked at Eve and said, “did God really say?”

I don’t think there is a better passage in the Bible to come to when we want to know what to do with doubt. For four weeks now, we have walked through these 11 verses, so that we will be thoroughly equipped with an understanding of exactly what the justification of Christ has done for us. Today, in these last three verses of this section, Paul is answering the question that we would normally phrase this way:

“how do I know that I am saved?”

Paul moves through four important statements, that summarize the work of the Gospel for us, to show us that our certainty in salvation is in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s move through this a little at a time and see what Paul has to say for us as we wrestle with our doubts.

Romans 5:9 ESV

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Romans 5:10 ESV

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.

Romans 5:11 ESV

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

1. We were justified by blood (Verse 9a)

Romans 5:9 “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood.”

We were saved!

It is right to speak of salvation in the past tense because of what God has done for us by declaring us righteous. Paul wants us to stare at this truth once again, because it is of such depth that there is no way that we can begin to truly plumb the depths of the cross of Christ. We simply must keep coming back to this truth, over and over again! This is especially true in times of doubt.

In many ways, we can say that the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, is the skeletal structure of the Christian life. It is the essential doctrine from which all other doctrines flow, and a great many of the ways we are prone to deviate from the true Christian faith are derived from a failure to truly grasp the doctrine of justification. Our security in Christ is no different. Fundamentally, you can only believe that you lose your salvation if you believe something fundamentally different about the work of salvation than the historic Christian faith teaches.

Let’s just take for a second the word we use to describe our salvation: “saved.” When we use this term, we typically mean “justified.” We have been drilling this term at home.

To be justified means to be declared righteous.

It means that a righteousness that didn’t belong to you, has now been given to you, and God sees that righteousness and so declares you righteous.

According to last week’s passage, when did this happen? “While we were sinners.” And not just sinners; weak, ungodly sinners! What happened to these weak, ungodly sinners? They were declared righteous. How did this happen? Well, he says here, we were declared righteous “By His Blood.” What does it mean that we were justified by His blood?

By His Blood

he was the sacrifice to propitiate the wrath of God (have everyone say the word propitiation) - a new phrase about salvation, introduced here, so we should pay attention! What is Paul saying? He is explaining the “how” of justification. We know it is only by grace, we see that it comes through faith in Christ as the means, but how is justification accomplished? Through His blood - the cross was the means by which we were justified, as our guilt was applied to His body. Remember Romans 3:25?

Romans 3:25 ESV

whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Now, how does this reality help give us assurance? It is a simple question, my friend:

how effective is the blood of Christ?

Is it effective to save a person? If we believe the Gospel to be true, we must absolutely say yes. Now, the next question that follows is this: does God go back on His declaration of our righteousness? If salvation is justification, where God makes a certain, forensic declaration, and so we are given a declared righteousness that is given through the work of Christ, is there some condition under which that status can change? My hope for you, friend, is that the answer that sits just behind your lips is “of course not.” But just to be sure, Paul says more. He goes on to explain what we were saved from:

2. We are rescued from wrath (9b-10a)

“much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 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.”

Now we can read on. If this is the case, if we have been justified by the blood of Jesus, and Jesus’ blood speaks the final word about our justification, then Paul can give us the ultimate thing we have been saved from: the wrath of God.

Now, before we move on from this, remember Paul isn’t trying to drop little hints here and there in Romans 5; he is dropping truth bombs, that are intended to drop right into our soul and explode in grace all over us, and so create change. So, he cuts to the chase here by helping us to understand what we were saved from: the wrath of God!

We spend an awful lot of time trying to dance around this subject, because it quite frankly can make us uncomfortable to think about being saved from the wrath of God. Ultimately, this means that our salvation is God saving us from God! But work with me here, and let’s really think about this:

If I am “saved” from something, I am rescued from some great calamity, right? If I am drowning and someone saves me, they have rescued me from the great calamity of death by water. Every instance of the word “saved” in the New Testament carries this meaning with it: to be rescued from calamity.

So it is with our salvation. We don’t normally question that, but we have often shied away from helping others to understand the real nature of their calamity. You see, when we are “saved,” we are not primarily saved from earthly problems. We are not even primarily saved from the brokenness we experience in the world, or even primarily the earthly effects of that brokenness. Paul describes for us the great calamity from which we are saved, right here in verse 9: “the wrath of God.”

RC Sproul was once asked to speak at a booksellers convention on the topic “saved from what?” In his address he said it this way: “do you want to know what you are saved from? In a word, you are saved from God.” The greatest of all calamities is the wrath of God, which is being revealed from heaven! All of us deserve this wrath. By grace, God justifies His people by the blood of Christ, and declares us righteous, thus sparing us from the wrath of God that we deserved!

The wrath of God is satisfied on my behalf by Christ’s work! It was Christ’s blood that led to me being declared righteous. This may sound like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but it is essential to understand: I am saved by the work of Christ, and faith is the way that I receive that work.

Now, listen to his connection here: if Christ has died as the acceptable sacrifice on my behalf, and God has accepted that sacrifice and declared me righteous, doesn’t it follow that I should never, ever have to worry about the wrath of God again? Yes! Here is the truth bomb from Paul: if Christ died so that through His blood the sinner would be made righteous, then doesn’t it follow that the blood of Christ would be completely effective to save?

The writer of Hebrews wrote to a people who had this same fear, to help them to see that the sacrifice of Jesus was a once for all sort of thing. Listen to what is written in Hebrews 10:11-14

Hebrews 10:11–14 ESV

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Once for all! That last sentence is the kicker: For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. The work of justification is a finished work! This doesn’t mean that we are perfect, in that we are sinless, it means that the perfect work of Jesus has been perfectly applied to our lives, so that we are declared righteous!

But watch this: Paul is very carefully connecting a past action to a future reality, and he is using greek tenses to do it. Let me explain. The wording here is incredibly precise: “we have been justified” is written to show completed, once for all action. It is literally like me saying “I am 46, having been born on March 2.” The action is complete. Christ died, at just the right time, for His people. And while His people were still sinners, weak and ungodly, His blood was applied to our lives, and we were declared righteous, through repentance and faith!

While we were enemies - He made peace with God for us, and now we are declared righteous, and adopted as sons! The declaration of righteousness was THE BIG THING that needed to happen in order for us to have peace with God, and if you are a Christian, this is already done, in the past, and finished! This is why the phrase “born again” was so important for Jesus to use in John 3! Your second birth is just as certain as the first one!

So, my hope in being saved is in the consistency of God. If God has already done this great work of justification, if He has already sent His Son as an atonement for sin, and He has by His grace declared me righteous, and God is a God who cannot change, then God cannot, and will not, go back on this declaration, because to do so would be to say that we are no longer justified, and God will not go back on a declaration that He has made!

This is why it was such a big deal for Luther to rediscover that the just shall live by faith. The work of the reformation meant that for the follower of Jesus, salvation was no longer uncertain! It was not dependant on our work, but on Christ’s finished work.

Jones: “When God justifies a man, He makes a final pronouncement about Him.” This is why we are so cautious with our children! We want to do everything we can, as much as depends on us, to be sure that they are truly justified, and not give them a false hope because they have jumped through a couple of spiritual hoops. That is why fruit is so important! If you are unsure of what to look for, let’s talk about it!

But how did this happen? Again, Paul wants us to go back to the basics of the faith here: this happened through the death of His Son. We were spared because Christ was not. We were given life through His death.

But, and this is an important thing to note: we are not saved by a dead Christ. We are saved through the death of Christ, who then defeated death, and so, Paul introduces this fantastic little phrase that we haven’t read yet in Romans.

3. We will be saved by His life (10b)

and now we get another one of those “but wait, there’s more” statements! So, now, we are justified by the blood of Christ, we are saved from the wrath of God. But wait, there’s more, Paul says! Since this is true, and God showed His love by sending Christ to die for His enemies, and we are no longer enemies, but friends and sons, well how, even more shall we be saved by His life! I mean, what does this even mean? OK, this is super loaded, but there are two incredible realities that Paul is teaching us in this passage:

First, how was the righteousness of Christ achieved? Through Christ living a sinless, perfect life! His life leads to our righteousness, because He fulfilled the law and all its demands, and so the righteousness He accomplished is given to us! This is totally true, and completely incredible. It means that, in a real way, we owe our justification not only to the death of Christ, but also to His life.

But, there is something else at play here. Christ died, but He didn’t stay dead! And when He was risen, He ascended into heaven, where He is still alive! And what does He do now? He intercedes for us; He didn’t just give us access to the Father through His death, He mediates for us now, so that we have constant access to the Father! And this is true of every single person for whom Christ died, who has been declared righteous! He is still mediating! When we pray, we pray in Jesus name; why? Because we know that God hears us through the intercessory work of Jesus!

And so, we get yet another reality, in another greek tense: we WILL be saved by His life. This is a sense of absolute certainty. This is a thing that absolutely is going to happen. As certain as my being born is the reality that I will be saved by His life! Because of the intercessory work of Jesus now, there are three tenses to our salvation:

I was saved: I was declared righteous by God through the blood of Christ.

I am saved: I am reconciled to the Father through the death of the Son

I will be saved: I will be ushered into glory, and recieved by the Father because of the work of the Son.

All these benefits come from the living Christ! And so Paul says we “will be saved by His life.” A better translation: we shall be saved “in His life.” Paul is also firing a warning shot, preparing for us to change the subject ever so slightly as he teaches us a bit about what it means to be “in Christ,” and how being in Christ is such a blessing and benefit for the Christian. But for now, he wants us to understand that because we are currently in Christ, and Christ is reigning forever, we are saved! And that salvation makes a difference in the here and now!

A word here about security - being in Christ will not simply grant us security, it will keep us from sin. Our keeping from sin is a direct benefit to our security in Christ. We will spend a whole lot more time here in Romans 6, but let me just say this: there is a reality that preaching the incredible grace of God always raises questions about those who might sin so grace may abound. Based on what I’ve read and studied in Romans, and in the life of Paul, if that’s the case for you as well, we may be on the right track to actually understanding grace. It’s too wonderful to be true!

So, what is the answer to our doubts? Going back to the very basics of what we believe about the Gospel, just as Paul did here:

we have been justified by the blood of Christ, and the blood of Christ never fails.

We have been saved from the wrath of God, and reconciled to God by the death of Christ, and so are no longer enemies, but sons. And God loves and keeps His sons.

We are currently in a state of reconciliation with God, because of the work of Christ, and Christ is still working on our behalf through His life, interceding on our behalf. And God will not reject His Son, which means that God will not reject us!

4. What Romans 5:1-11 is telling us to do: rejoice!

So, as we finish this incredible section of Romans 5, we should take a look at everything that we have been shown about the Gospel and the work of Jesus in 11 verses:

We have peace with God!

We have access to the Father!

We have hope and a future!

We have meaning for suffering!

We have the demonstration of God’s love, and so have God’s love!

We have certainty that He keeps us!

In light of this, there really is only one thing Christians can do with these 11 verses: rejoice! Rejoicing is the antidote to doubt. But remember what we said rejoice means, right? To return to our source of joy: the Gospel! In other words, in those moments, days, weeks or months of doubt, you simply must go back and preach the Gospel to yourself! Remind yourself of this glorious, life-transforming truth: You are saved by grace! And it is His grace that saved you, His grace that saves you, and His grace will save you! The work of Christ alters our past, our present, and our future!

What more can God do to show us the certainty of our salvation? H.A. Ironside, a great pastor from long ago, told a story once of an older man who wrestled his whole life with doubt. Dr. Ironside asked him what it would take for him to be certain of his salvation. He asked “if an angel from heaven were to come and talk to you and tell you that God had said you were saved, would you feel certain then?” The old man said “yes, I suppose so.” Then, Dr. Ironside continued “but what if that angel was actually Satan, who disguises Himself as an angel of light, who desired to deceive you?” The old man had no response.

As long as we fail to see what we have, we will never feel certain about our position in Christ. My friend, God Himself has penned a letter, to His church, of whom you are a part, to describe to you in great detail the depths of His love, the extent of His mercy, and the work of His Son. He has given this to you, passed down through every generation, so that you would be certain of His work for you! He has written in His Word His mercy, He has poured His love into our hearts, and He has granted us a community and household of faith so that we would know, objectively know, the truth of the Gospel and the certainty of our salvation. Our job is to doubt our doubt, to look at our feelings with a bit of healthy skepticism and to always take those feelings to the truth of the Gospel. May we be a people who run to truth, and trust in the truth of God’s Word as sufficient for us.

But what if I am not sure that I am declared righteous? We can fix that right here, right now. Here is all you must do (Gospel)

Conclusion: Christian, will you rejoice with me this morning at the great salvation accomplished by the God who promises to keep us? Will you rejoice that the blood of Christ has washed away our sin? Will you rejoice that the Father’s wrath has been satisfied? If so, then sing with me today, as we sing Jesus Thank You. And then, take that rejoicing and go to war against your doubt. Let’s pray.

romans 8:38-39

Romans 8:38–39 ESV

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.