Blessings of Justification Part 3 - Reconciliation
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Pastoral Reminder: Head Heart Hands
16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
There is much in our world today that looks hopeless. The news is filled with hate, arguments, loss, death, anger, malice, contempt, accusations, betrayals, and things like this. It flows into our phones, computers, families, and our own hearts. A constant bombardment of the negative things of this world.
But it cannot be all that bad right? I did some digging and found a couple of websites that were dedicated to positive and good news stories.
The top stories for this week were about a collection of teddy bears, a new bridge that will let you walk or bike to Canada, 100 miles of fencing removed in Montana, shootings are down to 688 last year in New York, the release of animals from a zoo into the wild, female hiker finishes the Appalachian trail, rescue dog leads Buddhist Monks on 2,300 mile peace walk, and confetti in times square that had positive messages on them.
I am not dismissing these, as they are good in their own right for those that participated in them and benefited them but as a nation is this the best we have to offer the first week of 2026.
What we experience is an economy that is kicking everyone in the shins, the world looks like it is falling apart, the church is in an identity crisis while the wolves run amuck devouring the flock, families continue to fall apart everywhere we look, and many times our own lives are a disaster.
Where do we turn for good news?
The good news that God saves sinners.
It is the good news of hope. The good news of love. The good news of salvation. The good news of eternal life. The good news that dominates and dwarfs all bad news that we see in the headlines and our social media feeds. For it is the power of salvation to everyone who believes in its message.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.
The righteous God, the father who has given the moral law that defines what is good. Man who has rejected this law in all aspects of his heart, mind, and soul. The sinless son of God, Jesus Christ who is the just one and the justifier. Who fulfills the father’s plan to redeem for himself a people by dying at the right time to pay the sin debt and wages that man has earned against God. Taking on himself the wrath of God in his own person so that those who believe and have been given God’s righteousness will stand before the judgment of God and escape the punishment they deserve. That God justifies those that believe.
We turn again today to Paul’s development of the great blessings that God bestows on those that are justification by faith. He presents to his readers this great encouragement of the graces that are recieved each person who believes in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, 4 endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. 5 This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. 6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. 8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The proof of the love that God has for each of us is the fact and truth that Christ died for us even as we were helpless, ungodly, and dead in our sins. He richly poured out his own love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
And this is where start today.
9 How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath. 10 For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. 11 And not only that, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.
Justified and Saved
Justified and Saved
9 How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath.
Paul uses a comparison of two ideas in this verse and the next. The phrase “much more then” emphasizes that if one thing that is much much greater than another then the lessor can be even more trusted.
It would be something like. Since, you have completed a marathon, how much more, will you walk from the couch to the refrigerator. If you have done such a great feat of strength and endurance then why would we question something that would be easier to accomplish.
Here Paul starts with the greater truth, that the saints have been justified by Jesus’s blood, when he proved his love and died as the mercy seat to save them.
25 God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.
The greater truth is that Jesus died as the propitiation and place of atonement. The place and person that was given to appease the wrath of God.
The truth that we have been justified by his blood. To be found in compliance with regards to the moral law.
The form of this word is that when a person is justified it is a completed act. It is finished. It is a adjective that has been passively applied to the person. The person is right before the law, as they receive it from the person giving it.
If a person is justified, if you and I are justified before God, it is not because of any thing that we have done. And it is not something that is continually happening over and over again. When you believed and your faith was credited as righteousness, you were justified once for all time.
This is the greater truth that he is presenting. If this is true. If God literally emptied himself and took the nature of humanity, if he lived a perfect, righteous, sinless life, as part of God’s eternal plan. If he willingly endured the cross to save you and me and to give his righteousness to those that believe as an act of his love for sinners.
If this is true how much more than will we be saved through him from wrath.
3 We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.
10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
Saved, to be rescued or delivered from something, here it is to be saved from God’s wrath. His punishment for sin. Justified was completed and finished and recieved by the person. Here saved is completed in the future and also applied to the person. Both the justification and the saving are not dependent on the actions of the one receiving them but on the one giving them.
If Jesus blood can make a wicked sinner righteous before the law, then how much more can we trust that we will be saved from God’s wrath in the future for any sins we may commit.
Paul is encouraging them to have confidence in the future. That you don’t have to worry about receiving the wrath of God because Jesus has already taken care of that for you.
9 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Do you remember Paul’s theme?
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.
He is not ashamed of the good news of Jesus because in it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. The power of God for salvation. Paul has not mentioned salvation since this verse until our verse today. We have spent 30 weeks talking about the Gospel and now he talks about being saved.
For 30 weeks we have talked about God’s judgement, condemnation, wrath, and anger against man’s unrighteousness, ungodliness, disobedience, and rebellion. We have talked Jesus’s righteousness life is credited to those that believe and the atonement that Jesus makes on our behalf through his shed blood on the cross.
The entire time we have been talking about justification, for without being justified, there is no salvation. There is no eternal life, there is no hope for mankind. It is common for people to want to be saved from other things in this world and in their lives but salvation to the believer is through the power of the gospel. To save sinners before the Holy, Holy, Holy God almighty.
This should be an encouragement as he continues with
Reconciliation
Reconciliation
10 For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.
We see the second of Paul’s comparisons here. The greater importance is the fact that through the death of Jesus he reconciled enemies to God.
To be reconciled is to have your position exchanged from unfavorable to favorable. When we speak of reconciling between two people we usually speak of people that have found themselves in a conflict or dispute. A discord of one type or another. Though in human terms we don’t think of it this way but is it is the result of conflicting desires and sins against each other.
1 What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you?
Human selfishness, sinfulness, wrecks havoc on our lives and causes conflict and estrangement. Disunity.
With God, it is our sin that separates us and puts us into the position of enemies of God.
2 But your iniquities are separating you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not listen.
18 They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts.
4 You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.
Sin leads man into hostility with God and are his enemies.
21 Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in your evil actions.
Usually a person would have to perform some type of penance or act of fealty or surrender wealth to go from being an enemy of a king. But here once again Paul uses a word that’s for is complete and accomplished and recieved by the enemy. It was God himself that performs the required act to be reconciled into a favorable position with God.
The work was the death of God’s Son. It was this act that God required for reconciliation.
If the great truth that God sent his own Son to be the atoning requirement so that you can be reconciled to then how much more will you be saved by his life.
25 Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them.
Saved is once again future tense and passively applied to the person. If his death brought you out of the position of being God’s enemy then how much more assurance can we have that Jesus will keep us in that place because he continues to live.
If God can make a man destined for eternal condemnation right with God in his death, then how much more can he keep a man who is right before God destined for eternal life.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.
God takes the man from the opposing battle field and brings him into his own home, under his own watch, under his own power. What is the greater challenge to make an enemy a son or to keep a son in the family. To seat us in heaven or to keep us there.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, 5 made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! 6 He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—
The act of seating us in heaven with Jesus is another accomplished action that has been recieved by the believer at the moment of justification.
So We Boast
So We Boast
11 And not only that, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.
And if that was not enough then he says we boast in God. We glory, exalt, rejoice in God through our Lord. Our Lord Jesus though whom it is all possible.
3 Proclaim the Lord’s greatness with me; let us exalt his name together.
21 For our hearts rejoice in him because we trust in his holy name.
We stand in the public square, the market place, our own homes and we rejoice that we are no longer enemies of God. That he has done all of the work for us. So we exalt.
Men and women try so hard to save themselves by doing and doing. But here is what Paul has said man accomplishes by his own effort.
He suppressed the truth (1:18)
He does not honor God (1:21)
He is futile in his thinking (1:21)
He has exchanged God’s Glory for idols (1:23)
He worships and serves created things instead of the creator (1:25)
He practices unrighteousness (1:29-31)
He hypocrite judges other as he does the same (2:1)
He disobeys the law of God (2:23)
He joins all of humanity as he falls into the All have Sinned Category (3:23)
They create their own religious ideas about how they can save themselves. It is always a works based attempt to earn his way into heaven. The constant futile attempts to do it yourself.
The only thing man is to do is to believe in the work of God (4:3)
For God
Justifies the ungodly (3:24, 4:5)
Redeems men in Christ (3:24)
Presents Christ as the mercy seat (3:25)
Credits righteousness to those who believe (4:3-8)
Raised Jesus from the dead (4:24)
Pours out his love into the hears of believers (5:5)
Demonstrates his love through Christ's death (5:10-11)
Reconciles us completely to himself (5:10-11)
Saves us from God’s wrath (5:9)
In Response to the work of God
The justified trust God’s promise (4:18-21) and boast and rejoice in the work of reconciliation through Jesus our savior. (5:2, 5:11)
This boasting is the message that he has given to us to take into the world.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! 18 Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. 19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.” 21 He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Through Jesus’ death you are brought from the enemy lines out side the walls fighting against God to sit at the King of Kings table as adopted sons and daughters. Receiving the inheritance of eternal life. Jesus then tell you to go out into the battle field and to plead with those that are outside that you too can be reconciled to God. You too can be forgiven of your lawlessness. Your sins against humanity and God.
Jesus died to take away the punishment for your sin. You too can become reconciled to the good God. For he made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that you too can become the righteousness of God. We work with Christ.
1 Working together with him, we also appeal to you, “Don’t receive the grace of God in vain.” 2 For he says: At an acceptable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I helped you. See, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation!
Today is the acceptable time. Today is the day of salvation. If you still stand as an enemy of God. If your life is categorized by the daily practice of sin. If your life is filled with all that God hates, then the message to you today is, humble yourself before the Lord and hear his voice believe and receive all that God will give those that are justified by faith.
If this is you today please seek out anyone here or myself to guide you as you are a new creation in Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
Conclusion
When we look at the headlines of today we don’t see much that is worthy to be called good news but for the church, for God’s people we see the greatest news happening everyday. We see the work of God as people believe and receive justification by faith and the many blessings that have been given with is.
We see God take enemies and make them his children to bring them into his own presence and to dwell in their hearts through the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit.
We see men and women rejoicing and boasting in what God has done in their hearts and minds.
For us the question is for us, is “Do we have a proper understanding of our salvation?”
Do you still believe that you are working for your salvation? Trying to get into God’s good graces. Just believe and receive the blessings, trust in his word.
Do you sit in the house of God act, behave, and speak in ways that God redeemed you from? Do you act out in rebellion by going out and consorting with the enemies of God. Participating in the acts that have alienated them from God?
Are you so comfortable that you have been reconciled that you sit in the home and let the world burn around you?
Or are you flattened to you face by the fact that God would save you. That all you did was believe and God poured out his love, mercy, and grace into your life. That he died to reconcile you to God. Does this lead you to rejoice in the house of the Lord. To be so overjoyed with the love that saves you, that justified you, that reconciled you that you can do nothing but sing and praise the name of the one who has reconciled you to God.
13 In him you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed.
Let us pray.
Let us pray.
Prayer
Blessing/Benediction
16 May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal encouragement and good hope by grace, 17 encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good work and word.
