God's Love on Display

Introduction

If you will, turn with me in your Bible to Romans 5:6-11 where I trust we’ll see God’s love on display.

In 1861, a wild gambler and drinker named Harry Moorhouse rushed into a revival meeting in Manchester, England, looking for a fight. But instead he got saved. Six years later, the famous evangelist, D. L. Moody, was preaching in Dublin when Moorhouse came up and told Moody he would like to come to America and preach the gospel. Moody guessed Moorhouse to be about 17 (although he was older). He didn’t know if Moorhouse could preach, so he brushed him off.

But after Moody got back to Chicago, he got a letter from Moorhouse saying that he had landed in New York and he would come and preach. Moody wrote a cold reply, saying that if he came west to call on him. A few days later, Moody got a letter saying that Moorhouse would be in Chicago the next Thursday. Moody didn’t know what to do with him, so he told his deacons, “There is a man coming from England who wants to preach. I’m going to be gone Thursday and Friday. If you let him preach those days, I’ll be back Saturday and take him off your hands.”

On Saturday Moody returned and asked his wife how the young Englishman had gotten along. Did the people like him? She said they liked him very much. “Did you like him?” “Yes,” she said, “very much. He preached two sermons from John 3:16. I think you’ll like him, but he preaches a little different than you do.”

“How is that?” Moody asked.

“Well, he tells sinners that God loves them,” she replied.

“Well,” Moody said, “he’s wrong.”

Moody went to hear him that night, determined that he would not like him. But that first night as Moorhouse preached again from John 3:16 on God’s great love for sinners, Moody’s heart began to thaw out and he could not hold back the tears. For seven nights, Moorhouse preached to a crowded church on John 3:16.

The final night Moorhouse concluded his sermon by saying, “My friends, for a whole week I have been trying to tell you how much God loves you, but I cannot do it with this poor stammering tongue. If I could borrow Jacob’s ladder, and climb up into Heaven, and ask Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Almighty, if he could tell me how much love the Father has for the world, all he could say would be, ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.’”

READ THE TEXT

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (Chapter 5)

6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.

8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

11 And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

To appreciate God’s great love, we must feel our own great need for the Savior.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones observed (God’s Way of Reconciliation [Ba­ker], Ephesians 2, p. 201), “In order to measure the love of God you have first to go down before you can go up. You do not start on the level and go up. We have to be brought up from a dungeon, from a horrible pit; and unless you know something of the measure of that depth you will only be measuring half the love of God.”

This is illustrated in the story in Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus went to dine at the house of Simon the Pharisee. Picture the scene: You have this very religious man, who took great pride in his religious observance. He never ate unclean food. He tithed meticulously. He kept the commandments of Moses. He kept his distance from notorious sinners. He wanted to find out if this upstart, uneducated rabbi from Galilee was legitimate or not.

As they reclined at dinner, a woman who was known to be a prostitute slipped in with an alabaster vial of perfume. Standing at Jesus’ feet weeping, she wetted His feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, and kissed and anointed them with the perfume. And Jesus seemed to be pleased with her actions! Simon was aghast! He was thinking (Luke 7:39), “If this man were a prophet He would know who and what sort of person this woman is who is touching Him, that she is a sinner.”

Jesus knew what he was thinking, so He told him a story. A lender had two debtors. One owed him 500 denarii; the other owed him 50. When they were unable to repay, he forgave them both. Then Jesus asked (7:42), “So which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.”

Jesus said, “Correct.” Then He drew the lesson. The sinful woman, who had been forgiven much, loved much. But the one who is forgiven little loves little. His point was not that Simon had little to be forgiven of. In fact, Simon had not even shown Jesus common hospitality. He was rude and arrogant. Rather, the point was that Simon did not realize how much he needed God’s forgiveness, and so he did not love Jesus as much as this woman, who knew her great need for the Savior.

If, like me, you grew up in a Christian home and never got into much trouble growing up, you’re more prone to be like Simon than like the prostitute. If you want to know and experience the great love of God in Christ, you have to see more of the awful depths of sin that lurk in your own heart. Again, to cite Lloyd-Jones (Romans: Assurance [Zondervan], p. 114), “It is to the extent to which we realize our inability and incapacity that we realize the love of God.” Paul shows us our inability in these verses:

The very first word in verse 6, “For”, is the word that ties us back to the preceding verses and what Paul said about God’s love being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. That’s the assuring evidence of His love; the apprehension and experience of God’s love in conversion of you and I as sinners. But the next 6 verses represent the concrete demonstration of His love for us.

In Romans 5:6-11, we’ll see Four Display’s of God’s perfect love...

I. His Perfect Timing (5:6)

look with me at v6 again and this interesting idea of “the right time”. What does this mean?

A. It means that Christ died at the right time in terms of God’s plan for the world Galatians 4:4, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,” fulfilling the promises made in the Scriptures (Murray 1959: 167; Cranfield 1975: 264; Matera 2010: 133; S. Porter 2015: 118).

i. Guzik sums up the right time explaining that…The world was prepared spiritually, economically, linguistically, politically, philosophically and geographically for the coming of Jesus and the spread of the Gospel. (quoting Matthew Poole) “The Scripture everywhere speaks of a certain season or hour assigned for the death of Christ"

B. The appropriateness of the time also relates to the weakness of the ungodly, in that he died at the right time to rescue them from their hopelessness.

i. One commentator says "When we were powerless to escape from our sin, powerless to escape death, powerless to resist Satan, and powerless to please Him in any way, God amazingly sent His Son to die on our behalf." (MacArthur)

So God not only planned when Christ would die but also had in mind the people for whom his death would be effective. In any case, the emphasis is on the greatness of God’s love for his people displayed in His perfect timing.

Who did that perfect timing benefit? Paul offers 4 vivid images to describe those of us Christ died for:

Helpless (5:6)

ungodly (5:6; cf. 1:18; 4:5)

sinners (5:8)

enemies of God (5:10; cf. “God-haters” in 1:30).

In this verse, who are these helpless, ungodly, sinners and enemies of God All of humanity. The entire human race.

1. The Helpless; Spurgeon paints the picture of the helpless human race by proclaiming “Our race is like the nation of Israel, its whole head is sick, and its whole heart faint (Isaiah 1:5). Such, unconverted men, are you! Only there in this darker shade in your picture, that your condition is not only your calamity, but your fault. In other diseases men are grieved at their sickness, but this is the worst feature in your case, that you love the evil which is destroying you. In addition to the pity which your case demands, no little blame must be measured out to you: you are without will for that which is good, your “cannot” means “will not,” your inability is not physical but moral, not that of the blind who cannot see for want of eyes, but of the willingly ignorant who refuse to look.”

2. Ungodly: Ungodly describes the man or woman who has no fear, no reverence and no respect for God or the things of God. The ungodly are not necessarily irreligious, but they actively practice the opposite of what the fear of God demands.

II. His Perfect Sacrifice (5:6-8)

A. But God - He is contrasting the love of man and the love of God. A bold contrast! God did much more than men would ever dare to do by laying down His life for His enemies!

B. Demonstrates: Hodge writes that demonstrate in Romans 5:8 means...“proves” or “renders conspicuous”. What renders the love of God so especially conspicuous is his sending His Son to die, not for the good, nor even for the righteous, but for sinners, for those who deserve wrath instead of love

C. Notice Paul's interesting choice of verb tenses in this verse. In the phrase Christ died for us, died is in the past, action completed on the Cross and thus indicating a historical event which is fixed, objective and unchanging. How natural it would have been, then, for Paul to write: In this historical act, God demonstrated his own love toward us. But instead Paul used the present tense which conveys the idea not of a past tense completed event but an ongoing demonstration of God's love. One could paraphrase it "God continually demonstrates (present tense - He keeps on showing) His own love toward us." : In other words God’s love for us is not limited to the past, but has relevance for the present as well

Leon Morris commenting on Paul's use of the present tense writes that..."The Cross is an event of the past but it keeps showing the love of God.

The word die is important in these verses: it occurs once in verse 6, twice in verse 7, and once again in verse 8. Since the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), Christ had to die to pay the penalty for our sins. He was our substitute, bearing the punishment that we deserved. He died as “the Just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). While Jesus is our great example of how to live, His example did not save us. While He is our great teacher, His teaching did not save us. His death as our substitute bore the awful penalty of God’s justice. Jesus alone can save us and He does it through His death. “Christ died for the ungodly.” “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The bottom line is:

These verses do away with all works-based salvation. We were helpless, ungodly sinners, enemies with God. Christ did not come to help us save ourselves. He did not come to die because He saw a spark of potential in us. He didn’t come to die for us because we had some inherent worth in His sight. As Charles Hodge put it (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Eerdmans], pp. 136-137), “Our salvation depends … not on our loveliness, but on the constancy of the love of God.”

This is tremendously good news! It means that our hope of heaven is secure because it doesn’t have anything to do with us. In fact, it’s in spite of us! It has everything to do with God’s gracious love for us “while we were yet sinners.” If you’re not saved, it’s because you have not received the free gift that God offers. Maybe you’re still trying to earn your way to heaven. But if heaven is based on your works, you’ll never be sure of it, because you can never do enough. Trust instead in God’s loving gift of eternal life through Jesus, who died for us when we were yet sinners.

Psalm 31:1–2 “In You, O Lord, I have taken refuge; Let me never be ashamed; In Your righteousness deliver me. Incline Your ear to me, rescue me quickly; Be to me a rock of strength, A stronghold to save me.”

Christ’s atoning sacrifice allows a Just and Holy God to unleash on us a third display of His perfect love...

III. His Perfect Grace (5:9)

A. God’s grace and mercy are always unearned and unmerited

Deuteronomy 7:7–8 (NASB95) — 7“The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lordbrought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

B. Salvation comes by grace alone

Titus 2:11 (NASB95) — 11For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,

Romans 5:15 (NASB95) — 15But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.

Ephesians 2:8 (NASB95) — 8For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

2 Timothy 1:9–10 (NASB95) — 9who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, 10 but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,

C. Justified:

C. Saved from Wrath: God's wrath will result in eternal punishment for every soul of man who rejects Christ's offer of His blood payment in full for their sins past, present and future! Hallelujah, What a Savior!

1. Saved from the wrath - Although God's wrath is continually being revealed (see Ro 1:18+ -- cp the state of deception of the unbelieving word in 2 Pe 3:4, 5, 6+ - witness the global flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc), this wrath is future. Paul's point is that if you have been justified by faith (if you are a genuine believer), there is no wrath to come for the child of God. As an aside this truth would add some support to premise that the rapture will occur before the last 7 year period, the Tribulation, for this period will witness the culmination of God's wrath (Click for discussion of evidence in support of a "Pre-Tribulation Rapture"). (See also Table comparing Rapture vs Second Coming).

Paul writes believers now eagerly "wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come." (1 Th 1:10+).

This is the very truth we believe that provides what we’re ultimately looking for and hopefully living in...

IV. His Perfect Assurance (5:10-11)

A. Reconciled

B. Saved by His Life: Saved (4982) (sozo) has the basic meaning of rescuing one from great peril. Additional nuances include to protect, keep alive, preserve life, deliver, heal, be made whole. Sozo is sometimes used of physical deliverance from danger of perishing (see Mt 8:25; Mt 14:30; Lu 23:35; Acts 27:20 27:31 hold pointer over for popup verse), physical healing from sickness (Mt 9:21 22; Mk 5:23, Acts 4:9), and deliverance from demonic possession (Lk 8:36). More often sozo refers to salvation in a spiritual sense.

Saved by (in) His life is a striking example of Paul's fondness for antithetical constructions. We are reconciled to God by the death of Jesus. That is initial salvation (justification). But the resurrection and the interceding life of Jesus in heaven provide the divine guarantee that we shall continue being saved (sanctification) until that salvation is consummated at the return of Christ (glorification). To state it another way, we have been delivered from sin's penalty; we are being delivered from sin's power; and we will ultimately be delivered from sin's presence.

C. We Rejoice: And not only this but - We not only rejoice in His gifts but in the Giver Himself. Before we were saved we found our joys elsewhere. Now we exult whenever we remember Him, and are sad only when we forget Him. What has produced this marvelous change, so that we can now be glad in God? It is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Like all our other blessings, this joy comes to us through Him.

The present passage indicates a high attainment in spiritual life, when the soul learns not only to rejoice in salvation—which is an early experience, or to rejoice in tribulation—which is a far riper fruit, but advances even beyond that, and learns to make her joy, her glory, and her boast in God, in God alone. “And not only so, but we joy in God.”

1.Exult (2744) (kauchaomai akin to aucheo (boast) + euchomai = to pray to God) means to boast over a privilege or possession. It means to rejoice and so to feel joy or great delight, combining ideas of jubilation and confidence into one word we might describe as "joyful confidence". It expresses an unusually high degree of confidence in God and what He has done for as being exceptionally noteworthy. As used in the positive sense self-confidence is radically excluded and all self-boasting is abandoned. Faith implies the surrender of all self-glorying. Note present tense implies this should be a believer's lifestyle!

In Romans 5:1-11 there are three "tenses" in which we can rejoice:

Future Rejoicing: "we rejoice in hope of the glory of God" (Romans 5:2)Present Rejoicing: "we rejoice in tribulations" (Romans 5:3) (Are you?)Past Rejoicing: "we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the reconciliation" (Romans 5:11).

Rejoice and again I say rejoice for our reconciliation has been accomplished (past), God is now molding and shaping us through tribulations (present) and our glorification is yet to come (future).

Since Christ has shown His love in the past and assures us of His love in the future, we are now free to rejoice in the present, knowing we ourselves are called to live lives that put God’s love on display.

Prayer