The Benefits of Justification pt 1

Introduction

Well, we are finally starting chapter 5. In chapter 5, the focus shifts as we enter the second major section of the book chapters 5-8, but it is tied to the previous four chapters by those words Therefore having been justified by faith. Paul is still focus on his main premise. If you remember my first sermon on Romans we said that Paul’s purpose is to promote unity between the Jews and the Gentiles in the church around the gospel and what the gospel means in our daily lives. Paul’s shift here reminds us of that truth. In Chapters 1-4, Paul primarily addressed the lost who were condemned by their sin. But chapter 5, Paul changes to use the pronoun We. This speaks of all believers. Whatever Paul is going to talk about in the following chapters, it belongs to all believers: Jew and Gentile alike.

You remember a couple weeks ago when I preached on the benefits of Abraham’s relationship with God by faith; Paul is going to take that theme and apply it to us as believers. Notice the phrase we have. In one form or another vs 1-11 are going to focus on six different benefits of our justification. Today, I am only going to deal with three.

Have you ever flown across country or overseas? In many of our major airports, you will see these secret rooms with a hostess standing outside the front door. Over the top it will say something like United Club. These rooms are for an elite group of flyers who have a membership. This membership includes certain benefits like points on their air-miles, free checked baggage, TSA pre check so you can skip the line, early boarding and access to the lounges. The lounges provide comfortable seating, free food and wifi access in the airport. So by being part of this group of elite members you enjoy all these benefits.

In verses 1-11, we see that we receive certain benefits because we are in an elite group. Being in this group has nothing to do with my goodness, talents, looks etc. Rather we are reminded throughout the passage that it is only through our Lord Jesus Christ. The centrality of Jesus is essential. It is only because of our relationship and standing in Christ that we enjoy these benefits. We are reminded of this in vs 2 by whom vs 6 Christ died for the ungodly, vs9 saved through him vs10 reconciled by his death vs 10 saved by his life vs 11 though out Lord Jesus Christ, by whom. I want us to look today at what those benefits are.

Peace with God

The first benefit of our justification is peace with God. Notice the phrase does not say the peace of God like it does in Philippians 4:7 “And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” This may seem like a minute detail the word with vs of, but there is a lot of meaning packed into those two small words. The peace of God is that subjective feeling of calm that we have because of God’s work of grace in our lives. It is a feeling that can come and it can go. It is also subjective; how it is experienced is going to be different for different people. But what we are talking about here is not a subjective experience. This is peace with God. Peace with God is the objective cessation of conflict between us and God, the reconciliation of a relationship with Him. That word reconciliation really encompasses the meaning of peace with God and it will show up again in vs 10-11.

Let me give you two illustrations of the meaning of peace with God:

Imagine Russia and America have been fighting a war for the past two years. Such a war would be devastating to both countries. There is hostility, pain, and death involved as we drop bombs on one another, shoot each others soldiers, and run through the streets in out tanks. We are enemies. But eventually we tire of the fighting, and a peace treaty is signed promising certain benefits to both countries. We have made peace with Russia.

Here is another illustration of the meaning. Imagine a couple have been fighting. It seems like every conversation they have ends up in a screaming match and one day, the husband has had it. He checks into a hotel. He refuses to call, to see her or be around her. But after a week, he starts missing her and she starts missing him. He picks up the phone and apologizes and they both agree to get counseling. That night he returns home to work on their marriage. In that apology, their marriage has been reconciled. Peace has been restored between two warring parties.

We were enemies of God.

1 Timothy 5:14–15 “I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. For some are already turned aside after Satan.” Scripture clearly names Satan as the enemy of God, but, in aligning with Satan through our sin, we have become enemy armies against God. Colossians 1:21 “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled” In this verse, we see two ways in which we were enemies:

in our minds- our thoughts were opposed to God. We didn’t desire to do what God wanted to do. We wanted to do what we wanted to do. Our thoughts run here and there only focused on what we want. How often could we say that our thoughts were about God.

by wicked works- the sins we committed aligned us with Satan. You can have a politician who says he loves the everyday ordinary men and women of his city, but if constantly raises taxes on them and gives benefits to the rich; he is not really for the people.

God did everything he could to reconcile his enemies to Himself

Romans 5:8 “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:10 “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”

God loved us enough that he took the first steps to reconcile. Someone has to take those first steps. That means often times giving up something for the benefit of the other person. Our sin had to be paid for because God’s justice demanded it, but God was so eager to reconcile with us, that Jesus died in our place. It is because of this great love that we as believers today can enjoy peace with God.

Application: So what does this mean for the believer? In Jeremiah 23:32 “Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them: therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the Lord.” But this is not true of the believer. Paul will later show us that we are not condemned. I believe we can confidently say as David did in Psalm 56:9 “When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: This I know; for God is for me.”

I can rest secure knowing God is on my side because I am on God’s side. Peace with God should lead to the Peace of God. Many of us have been taught to live in fear that God is going to crush the believer under his fist and we have this image of God as a foe. But Christ was the one who was crushed under the fist of God, Christ was the one who bore the pain and death; so we don’t have to. God chastens today, but out of love and for our training; not out of a desire to destroy.

As I said in the beginning, this is true of all believers. Every one of us has this. We don’t have to work for it, activate it or dream it up. It is ours already.

Access to God

The second thing we have as believers is access to God. The verse says we have access by faith. It is because of our faith in Jesus Christ that we have this privilege.

We all have access

Again reminding us that this is not because of what we have done. I cannot gain God’s ear by being a better Christian than you. That privilege is my birthright as his child. We all have the right of access to God.

Think of like this. Let’s say that you’re a teenage girl who has just had a fight with her dad. You march up to your room and slam the door. Later that day, you are attacked by a thug who steels you purse and punches you in the face. Do you imagine when you walk in the door that your dad is going to refuse to talk to you and take care of you because you had an argument earlier? In our humanity many of us run to this false conclusion, but a loving father is going to put all that aside for his child. If this is true of human fathers, how much more ought it to be true of our heavenly father.

Prior to Jesus, only one man, the high priest, once a year could go into the presence of God. And even for him it was a terrifying thing. Priests would tied a rope to the high priest’s ankle and but bells on his robe. If the bells stopped, they assumed God had killed him and they would pull the body out. It is possible that this is how Nadab and Abihu died though we are not directly told they were in the Holy of Holies. Jewish tradition speaks of a Sadducee who was killed by an angel in the Holy of Holies. I say all that to say this: People did not have access to God prior to the death of Jesus.

But in Hebrews 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” We are told to come boldly where the priests came trembling. Because of Jesus Christ, we don’t have to fear coming to God. How many times did Jesus say Come? This past week I have meditated on two promises of God and the only condition for receiving them is coming. In Revelation 22:17 “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”

The verse tells us what we have access to Into this grace- We have talked a lot about the meaning of grace over the past year. Here in this passage it most likely refers to being in a favored state or a position of receiving God’s grace. What this means is that I have the privilege of being favored by God and receiving his grace at any moment.

This access cannot be revoked

When I worked for CFA, I had access to all the systems including Hiring, financial, inventory etc. Not everyone is given access to those things. But in order to get into the website, you have to have a username and password along with permissions set. When I left CFA, it wasn’t very long before my passwords and permissions were revoked. I was no longer an employee of the company.

There are two reasons to believe I cannot lose this access to God in the passage:

The word have is in the perfect tense- Here I must give a little grammar lesson again. In English we have what we call a perfect tense and it is similar to the Greek perfect but not the same. According to Google, this is the definition of an English perfect tense verb- used to describe an action that started in the past and is continuing into the present. The difference between English and Greek is that the Greek refers to something that continues on into the future. So it is presently true, but will always be true. This is the normal meaning of the verb. So we have access to God now and we will always have access to God.

The word stand implies a continual confidence in our position- This verb is also in the perfect tense, but means to continue to stand in a certain position or place.

Application: Brothers and sister, you and I can come to God whenever we want without fear of being cast out. People may not accept us, but God will not cast us away. Again this is a permanent truth about who I am as a believer. But if we have the privilege of access, why don’t we take advantage of it. How many of our struggles are we shouldering alone? How many are we afraid to talk to God about because we are ashamed of how we feel? This is our right as children of God.

The Hope of Glory

The third benefit is a larger theme in this passage. As believers, we have a right to hope. We can rejoice because we know what is coming. We can maintain hope. Next week we will see how this hope thrives even when our circumstances aren’t too hopeful, but we have something to hope for. Hope in the bible is a confident expectation. It is not a “well we will see if this happens or not” It isn’t I hope this comes true but it might not. Living in hope is not easy, but I want to remind you of what you have the right to hope for today.

The passage tells us what our hope is: the hope of the Glory of God. What does that mean? At the very least it means we look forward to the glorious appearing of Jesus some day. Titus 2:13 “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” But why is the second coming of Christ glorious? What so good about it?

Growing up it was easy to hear about the rapture and end times and wish it would delay a little longer. After all, we had all our dreams and visions ahead of us for life. We wanted to get married, we wanted to have a job, start a family. Make something of ourselves. So why should I long for the second coming?

Jesus deserves to be adored for his glorious beauty. 2 Thessalonians 1:10 “When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.” This past week, I was singing the chorus “ Lord you are more precious than silver, Lord you are more costly than gold, Lord you are more beautiful than diamond…” Is Jesus truly beautiful to you? I talked a little about that in our family devotions that night. What is it that truly makes a person beautiful? If you had a gorgeous woman who was always screaming at people and rude would you say she is a beautiful person? No, because beauty is more about who we are than how we look. Think of this truth that Jesus loves us even when we treat him like trash. Who does that? That is just one example of the beauty of Christ. With someone as beautiful as that wouldn’t you want to see him, be with him, enjoy his presence fully?

We will be changed to be like Christ Colossians 3:4 “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” It is at that moment that I will become glorious as well. 1 John 3:2 “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” Let me tell you what one of the biggest disappointments of my life is: how often I fail him and sin. There is coming a day when I won’t have to deal with that any more. The fight against the flesh will be over. I long for that day.

All the suffering and sin in the world will go away. Romans 8:19–21 “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” In the New Heaven and the New Earth, death will be gone, disease will be gone, all the natural catastrophe’s that cause suffering will be rendered powerless. Revelation 21:4 “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Every reason for crying will be gone. The weight of life and its suffering will be ended.

As believers, we have hope. We will experience all these glories some day. The world does not have this hope. There lot is death, destruction, tribulation and an eternity in the lake of fire. But we are not those who sorrow without hope. Paul will come back to this theme in Romans 8.

Conclusion

The benefits of this salvation that we share are past tense, peace with God; present tense, standing in access to God’s grace; and future, the hope of glory. If these are your inheritance, the benefits of your justification; then we ought to be living in light of them.

Peace- I am made right with God. I can live in peace because of that fact.

Access- I have the privilege of coming to God; so let’s do it

Hope- we have something to long for to believe in and look forward to. Are you?