Romans 5:3-5 (2)

I. Opening

As a child, I never felt that I was perfect enough. I felt that I had to match up to my mom’s dreams. My parents were immigrants who came into this country to make a better life. In the 1990s there was a film, The Joy Luck Club, which starts off with a feather gently floating across a white screen. A gentle voice in the background says, “When my parents came to this country, they came to find a better life. They transplanted all of their hopes and dreams to me.” I felt like I needed to make their sacrifices and pain in coming to this country worth it. But, I was never good enough. I was never popular enough.

It was in this place of desperation, that I came to know the Lord in my freshman year at UT Austin. It was God’s gentle presence, inviting me to come to Him—-a place of perfect acceptance. A place where He loved me not for where I thought I should be or who I thought I should be, but just for who I am.

“This weekend is an invitation—not to try harder, but to breathe. To bring the parts of ourselves that are tired, disappointed, or unsure into God’s presence.”

“Romans 5 reminds us that God doesn’t wait for us to be put together before He invites us in. He meets us where we are.”

II. The position of our faith: Justification by faith.

We start off Romans 5 with seeing that we are justified by faith. What does that mean? Our God who is perfect and glorious cannot possibly take us as we are. We are wretched. We are broken. We have sin. How can perfection and beauty live together? It can’t. But, that’s where justification comes in. Jesus takes us as we are. In the New Living Translation, it says, “we are made right in God’s sight.”

It reminds me of the hymn, Just as I am.

Just as I am, without one plea,But that Thy blood was shed for me,And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, and waiting not To rid my soul of one dark blot,To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,O Lamb of God, I come, I come. The first two verses, just as His blood was shed for me, I can come to Jesus because He has justified me. He has taken me and said that I am clean and righteous and I can enter into His presence just as I am.

Just as I am, though tossed about With many a conflict, many a doubt,Fightings and fears within, without,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;Sight, riches, healing of the mind,Yea, all I need in Thee to find,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, Thou wilt receive,Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;Because Thy promise I believe,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, Thy love unknownHath broken every barrier down;Now, to be Thine, yea, Thine alone,O Lamb of God, I come, I come. The next few verses, because He has taken me as I am, I can come with all of my fears, for healing of my soul. We have this peace with God through Jesus Christ (seen in second half of verse 1). This is reconciliation. The idea of reconciliation sandwiches this passage in verse 11. Reconciliation is both the beginning and the end of the passage Romans 5:1-11. He not only takes us as we are, but He restores this broken relationship with HIm.

Adam and Eve were created to have this perfect glorious relationship with God in the perfect beautiful place called the Garden of Eden. But, it was spoiled when Adam and Eve tried to do things their own way. The snake, which many scholars recognize as the Devil, led Eve to the tree in the Middle of the Garden. The snake deceived her by telling her contrary to God’s words. She ate from the only tree that God told them not to and handed the fruit to her husband to eat as well. This perfect relationship was broken. This first man and woman were banned from this place of paradise. But God through Jesus brought us back to Him.

in Romans 5:2 it says,

Romans 5:2 ESV

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand,

Now we can know Him! God promises abundant life .

Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Through Him we can obtain access to not just salvation, but we can have a close intimate relationship with our Savior. God calls us His friend.

We can cry out to Him as our Father. We can go to Him with our most intimate needs, worries, our hurts, our disappointments and desires and He grieves with us and is present with us.

He wants to have that kind of relationship with us where He calls us friend. And can speak into these places and seasons of our lives, pain and joy.

Romans 5:2 ESV

and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Our confidence; our boast; our rejoicing is centered on God and what He has done.

Indeed we have a new life, so this new life is one we can rejoice, that we have been called out of darkness, out of a place of being abandoned by God to a great place of belonging. In this place, we can boast about all that God has done.

When my older son Josh was a child, we went away from China to the beach in Thailand for a short get away. Thailand was a place where we could enjoy the small indulgences in life that we could not enjoy in China. One of those was the joy of eating good ice cream. So, as were in the famous ice cream shop Swenson’s, we were completely amazed and enthralled by all the different flavors of amazing ice cream. In this moment, we had Jonathan our youngest in the stroller and thought that Josh was still close by. But he was curious about something else (I don’t remember what) and he walked away. By the time we realized we were missing our oldest child, fear gripped us that he was lost. We searched and searched for him with desperation. Of all the awful things we could think about, Never mind that Thailand was known for trafficking young cute boys. Of course we thought about that! We eventually found him , holding the hand of a local Thai lady, with a with a big smile on his face and eating some kind of Thai sweet. We were so worried, but he never once felt abandoned. He knew that we would come looking for him. How much more is God’s love for us. When we were lost, he searched for us. We have some disappointment happen in our life and were not sure if God was there for us. We question His faithfulness. But, He is there. We can boast and rejoice because of who He is. We can be proud of what He is to us—-because Scripture is reliable and what it says to us is truth and life giving. We can celebrate and delight in the fact that we have this new life!

III. The journey of our faith: Transformation

So, Jesus is our confidence, our boast in our salvation. But, Paul takes this confidence and this boasting to the next level. He says in verse 3, “NOt only that…”

But, what about in our sufferings?

Sufferings here can be translated into: distress, oppression, tribulation, anguish, persecution, burdened. Or in the verb form, to suffer, “What are we troubled by?” It is essentially anything that burdens your spirit. It can be the hard stuff of life-singleness, infertility, marriage trouble or death of a friend or loved one,…but it can also be a conflict with a friend or someone at your work. It makes coming in to work difficult so much so that you dread it. It can be a difficult break up. It can be finance issues, leaving you wondering how will God provide? Or it can simply be a disappointment—-something you feel like God promised, but it doesn’t come to pass.

It says here in verse 3, that suffering brings about endurance. Endurance brings about character. And character produces hope.

Suffering is the cause, but the effect is hope. It is a journey of transfomation.

A journey has many twists and turns. When we lived in China and worked among a remote peoples. Because it is a Communist country, we were not allowed to live near the people. we would often take trips in to visit the people in their villages. The road to where they lived was mountainous. It was very treacherous. A journey through life has many twists and turns. It is never straight. There are winding paths. where perhaps we can get car sick from the whiplash of the uncertainty or unpredictableness of our lives. There is the stormy weather that can make the road can seem blurry. It distorts our vision of the road ahead. Or its also the season of life that we endure. In the seasons of summer, where we are flourishing and doing well in life. To the winter seasons where disappointments arise and many times we can question where is God? Does He love me? In the winter seasons, if we are still crying out to God in our desperation, we can know that we are still growing. Things are just dormant for now. But, the growth is in places where we do not see.

We need to reframe our journey as being transformative. The twists and turns, the ups and downs. The seasons of winter and summer. They are all for a purpose. It for the purposes of eternity, that we can see through the eyes of eternity. Some things in our lives may happen and will be a mystery as to why it happened that way. Instead of seeing it as being hard and worth nothing, we need to draw near to Christ. But we need to reframe all of this as see these things as how we are being formed in Christ.

For we may know the Bible well. It is head knowledge to us. But how does this move into our hearts? How does it DEEPLY penetrate through the outer shells of our being into our hearts? How can we let this tangibly infiltrate every area of my life. The Greek word for “know” is oida which means: “to have seen something in the past becomes to know in the present.” It means not only having the knowledge in your head but also being able to comprehend what that means in your heart. We need to not only know God’s truth but delight in God’s truth. The Pharisees knew the Scriptures backward and forward but their hearts were far from God. They could quote verses and rebuke Jesus, but they missed the very One those verses pointed. Head knowledge will make us prideful, restless or even discouraged when we realize how much we don’t know. But, when we allow the truth to sink from our head to our hearts, it changes how we live, love and see God.

Jonathan Edwards gives this great illustration using honey. In your mind you can know that honey is sweet. People can tell you its sweet. And others can tell you that local honey is even better because it has antibacterial properties and it can help to give you antigens that will help fight off allergies. You can read books about how great honey is. But until you have tasted it and experienced the actual benefits of honey. You can know with your head but not with your heart. When you actually taste it, you experience it for yourself. You know it in a full way. You can know it in your heart.

Endurance means a patient enduring. It literally means to abide under. We are to hold out or bear up under difficult circumstances. Literally it means remaining under pressure without surrendering.

Once when I was in my 20’s, I wanted to run a marathon. I wanted to learn what it meant to endure. I kept going when there was pain. I kept going even in the rain. What for? So that I could say that, “I had finished a marathon!” We need to learn to press in even when there is pain and keep doing it without surrendering or giving up.

When Greek translators rendered Hebrew words for hope, they infused the Greek word hypomone with expectation and trust in God. So it is not merely self determination, as with a marathon. It is in confidence that God can deliver His people from threatening situation. It means we need to have both active resistance and confident waiting. We need to hold fast to who Jesus He is. We need to have our confidence in the Lord. It is through God’s sustaining power that we can hold fast to Jesus and see the reality of our faith turn to hope.

So, endurance is the pathway to hope.

Endurance brings about character

As we go through hardships, can we say that our Christian character has stood the test?

In 1 Peter 1:6-7

1 Peter 1:6–7 ESV

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

We can see that the testing of our faith produces gold. Even though it is tested by fire, the desire is that our faith can be found to be a purified and precious commodity that would shine and give praise and glory to Jesus Christ.

Gold is actually mined from among earth’s minerals. But when we think of gold as precious we think of it being used in the jewelry that our spouses buy to give us for engagement or anniversary. In its raw form it cannot be used as jewelry. It must go through a process of refinement. It has to be melted to remove all the impurities. As we go through the furnace of affliction, God is producing in us our character that will prove to make us like pure gold. He shapes us and makes us into that beautiful piece of jewelry that can reflect His beauty,

The Greek word dokime conveys proven experience and strength gained through life’s trials. This translates into character in our English bibles. Others will be able to see Christ in us as we respond to circumstances in a way that will reflect Christ and the way He would respond.

So, when a justified person who abides under Jesus while enduring hardships, she emerges stronger in character and integrity, gaining a deeper heart knowledge of God’s presence and strength. Character is the tested and proven inner substance, like gold, that results from faithfully walking with God through difficulty.

IV. Character brings about hope

The end goal of this journey of transformation is that we can experience the hope that God promises us.

It is confidence that is grounded in tested experience. Those who go through long seasons of trials, abiding under Jesus, know that it is only God who can sustain. That is where real hope comes from—God, His character and His power to sustain us.

Hope in the bible is described as

good (2 Thessalonians 2:16 “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace,”

blessed Titus 2:13 “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,”

and living 1 Peter 1:3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,”

Hebrews 7:19 “(for the law made nothing perfect); but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.” It is a better hope that is based on a better convenant, the new covenant that Jesus opens the way for us to be forgiven, rather than relying on the blood of bulls and goats for the cleansing of sin, as in the OT.

Hebrews 6:18–19 “so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain,” It is an anchor for our souls during the storms of life.

It is a hope described in verse 5, it does not put us to shame. It does not disappoint.

Human hope is the expectation, the uncertain confident or anguished desire for a good outcome. It is based on trusting in myself and my own resources. It is based on how good I think I am or my own desires.

Biblical hope does not put us to shame. It will not disappoint. It rests entirely on God’s character and actions, and not on human achievement or circumstance. It is a confident anticipation of what will come. It is not merely a wish.

Biblical hope means having a life reoriented towards God’s priorities and knowing that when we seek Him out. When we seek out His will, He will not abandon us. He has saved us, justified us, brought us back to His side. He calls us friend—-so that we can have hope for this life and for an eternity. Our life on this side of heaven is for His purposes and when carried out under His will, we will experience hope on this side of heaven.

Biblical hope is lastly enabled by God’s love, which is poured out in our hearts by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s presence living inside of me. So experience the power of God, the love of God through the power of the presence of the Holy Spirit, living inside of me.

V. Biblical hope is one that does not disappoint. As know Jesus more and more in this journey of faith, we know that He is with us and is faithful. There are many things we will not understand in this life, but will know that the way of journeying with Jesus is far better. The way of Jesus should be our heartcry.

Conclusion:

Option 1:

If Your Opening Is About “Face” (面子) & Being Accepted

Closing Story: The Child Who Stops Performing

Story:

“I once watched a young child at a family gathering. Whenever adults were around, she sat up straight, answered politely, and tried very hard to be ‘good.’ But when she crawled into her mother’s lap, everything changed. She relaxed. She stopped performing. She rested.”

Pause.

“The difference wasn’t her behavior—it was the relationship.”

Bring it home:

“So many of us have spent our lives trying to keep face—before people, and even before God. But Romans 5 tells us we are already made right. Already welcomed. Already accepted.”

Tie to hope:

“Biblical hope does not disappoint because it is not based on how well we perform—but on the finished work of Christ.”

Faithfulness in the journey:

“So sisters, faithfulness doesn’t mean striving harder. It means returning again and again to the truth that we belong. That we can rest. That we can live honestly before God—without fear of losing face.”

📌 This brings your audience full circle: from performance → acceptance → hope.

Option 2:

If Your Opening Is About Strength & Carrying Burdens Silently

Closing Story: The Cracked Pot

“There is a story of a woman who carried water every day using two pots. One pot was perfect. The other had a crack and always arrived half-empty.”

“The cracked pot felt ashamed. It apologized for being flawed and thought it was useless.”

“But the woman smiled and said, ‘Did you notice the flowers along the path on your side? I planted seeds there, knowing you would leak. Every day, because of your weakness, you helped bring beauty to others.’”

Connect:

“What felt like failure was the very place life came from.”

Tie to Romans 5:

“Endurance produces character. Character produces hope. Not despite our weakness—but often through it.”

Faithfulness:

“Faithfulness in this journey doesn’t mean having no cracks. It means continuing to walk with God, even when we feel inadequate.”

Final anchor:

“Biblical hope does not disappoint—because God is faithful to work through even our broken places.”

Option 3:

If Your Opening Is About Immigration, Quiet Perseverance, and Journey

Closing Story: The Long Walk Home

Story (gentle, reflective):

“When families immigrate, there is often a season where nothing feels settled. The language is unfamiliar. The systems are confusing. You don’t yet feel at home—but you keep going.”

“There are moments you wonder, ‘Was this worth it? Will this ever feel right?’”

Pause.

“But you walk step by step, trusting that where you are headed is better than where you were.”

Spiritual parallel:

“Our journey of faith can feel the same. There are seasons of disorientation, suffering, and waiting.”

Tie to biblical hope:

“Hope is not the absence of struggle—it is the confidence that God is walking with us, and that He will bring us all the way home.”

Final encouragement:

“So remain faithful in the journey. Biblical hope does not disappoint—because the destination is sure, and the One who walks with us is faithful.”

__________

Ending Prayer:

“We are justified. We are reconciled. We are not abandoned.”

Pause.

“The path may be hard. The seasons may be long. But our hope is sure—because it is anchored in who God is.”

“Biblical hope does not disappoint—so let us remain faithful in this journey of faith, trusting the God who holds both the beginning and the end.”