Romans 5v6-8 Assurance

Please open your Bibles to :1-8; READ

READ v1-8

Please open your Bibles to

These are wonderful verses in the Bible.

These are wonderful verses in the Bible.

Full of assurance for all who have put their trust in Jesus Christ.

And in my experience, we need to regularly return to these fundamentals.

Because life is full of challenges;

and we are aware of our sin, weakness and failure.

Our default is to rely on a type of natural theology - where we develop our view of God from our reason and experience.

They are full of assurance for all who have put their trust in Jesus Christ.

When the sun is shinning and my family is well and no one is angry with me - well on those day’s it is easier to think that all must be well between me and God.

But what about when life is falling apart?

- When I am in pain, when someone in my family is suffering or dying; when I have lost my job.

- When I have lost my temper; or succumbed to temptation; when I have been a disappointment to myself; when I have been a disappointment to others.

How do we think of ourselves in our relationship with God then?

Natural theology easily kicks in and we think

God is against me; he is angry with me, he is punishing me; he does not love me.

For the person who has put their trust in Jesus Christ.

That is when I most need to recall what God says in .

And so we have to keep coming back to what the Bible says in places like ; to hear what is objectively true of the person who has been justified through trusting Jesus Christ.

And so if you put your trust in Jesus Christ, listen to what is true for you and me today:-

v1 - we have PEACE with God! God has brought about the most amazing reconciliation between himself and us. We have ACCESS to God’s grace! Our whole life is one that is surrounded by the grace of God! We can have full assurance of a glorious eternal future! So much so that we can, ‘BOAST in the hope of the glory of God.’

What an amazing assurance that is ours to know that we are destined for glory!

And the link is unbreakable - those who are justified can be certain that they will be glorified. All by God’s grace through trusting our Lord Jesus Christ.

And in my experience, we need to regularly return to these fundamentals.

But how does the experience of suffering relate to that?

v3-4 have another extraordinary statement that ‘we also glory in our sufferings.’

How can this be so?

Because we know that the experience of suffering does not ultimately harm or weaken the faith of the justified believer;

but actually serves to STRENGTHEN THEM.

We know that Suffering produces perseverance;

and perseverance produces a proven- tested-ness of character which serves to strengthen our hope of sharing in God’s glory!

Because life is full of challenges;

And alongside all the difficulties of suffering,

the justified believer, has an ongoing experience of God’s love being poured into their hearts through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Now that is the immediate context of the verses we are going to briefly consider this morning.

For no sooner does Paul refer to the love of God,

that he has to develop and expand on this amazing topic!

For when we grasp the nature of the love of God,

and we are aware of our sin, weakness and failure.

then this provides great assurance for the Christian that will sustain through the most difficult of circumstances.

The subjective experience of God’s love in our hearts,

is objectively demonstrated in history, through the death of Jesus Christ for us.

If we are lacking an experiential sense of the love of God; then the answer is to to come closer to the cross of Christ.

To spend some time prayerfully reading what the Bible says about the death of Christ for us.

Notice that God’s saving love was emphatically proved within history, when we NEEDED it MOST.

God’s love - when we needed it most v6

v6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

At just the right time - reminds us that our faith is rooted in history.

And that it was all part of God’s sovereign plan of salvation!

The apostle Paul alerts us to this at the start of his letter.

This gospel is the one that God promised beforehand through the OT prophets in the Scriptures.

But by the time you come to the end of the OT Scriptures; what is also clear as you look at human history is how utterly lost and spiritually bankrupt we are as human beings towards God.

Our spiritual rebellion is clear from the Garden onwards.

And despite the many advantages that the Israelites had from having God’s Word; by the time you reach the end of the history recorded in the OT it is clear - we are totally powerless to save ourselves from our sins.

Powerless to make ourselves right with God.

Paul Barnett’s little commentary on Romans brought this to my attention the repeated word ‘still.’

‘when we were STILL powerless’

‘when we were STILL ungodly’

- still living our lives without regard for God

v8 ‘while we were STILL sinners;

At the point in human history where it was beyond doubt that we were totally lost and incapable of saving ourselves.

At this point…. when we needed it most…at the right time, ‘Christ died for the ungodly’.

Jesus was regularly criticised by the religious leaders for spending time with those they deemed to be especially sinful and irreligious. He would eat meals and spend time with people who had dodgy pasts and questionable morality.

Jesus replied to them once, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are ill.

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’

And this is such wonderful news when we come to realise that we one of those who are sick and sinful!

If you think you are spiritually healthy - Dr Jesus has nothing for you.

But secondly notice that God’s saving love was shown to those who deserved it least!

God’s love - when we deserved it least v7-8

Who do we love?

Listen to the love songs on the radio!

I love you because …you are beautiful; …of the way you make me feel; ….because you love me!

We love those who we find attractive and loveable.

We generally only love people who have first loved us!

Compare God’s love to the best of human love.

That’s what v7 encourages us to do.

7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.

Saving Private Ryan is a powerful movie about some American soldiers sent behind enemy lines in WW2, in order to rescue Private Ryan and bring him home to safety.

A number of them lose their lives in the process.

One of the questions they keep asking themselves was whether Private Ryan was worth all this sacrifice and risk.

Who would you be prepared to give up your life for?

Your friend? Possibly, but they would have to be a really good friend!

Your wife? Hopefully!

What about someone who always seemed to dislike you? Someone who kept ignoring you in groups and who seemed to delight in saying malicious slander about you?

Would you give up your life for that person?

My guess is....... no.

No - we would not.

8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:

while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

While we were still sinners - when we cared nothing for God; when our actions were ugly and disgusting to him;

when we thanklessly took all that he had to give us but refused to acknowledge him!

v10 spells out the significance of being a sinner even further - while we were God’s enemies.

We should be in no doubt God is the enemy of sinners.

God’s holiness is such that he has to punish sin and wickedness.

1v18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness….

But here in part, is what is so amazing about God’s love.

Not only did God demonstrate his love when we needed it most; but he demonstrated his love when we deserved it the least!

One of the great fears as people get to know us; especially when we fall in love, is this uncertainty - would they still love me if they really knew me?

Well here is the most wonderful thing about our God.

He knows all things and he knows everything about us; right down to our worst deeds and our darkest thoughts.

But while we were still sinners Christ died for us!

The gospel of God both reveals that I am far worse that I had ever imagined but at the same time more loved than I could ever dream!

What assurance that gives us - even as we become aware of our weakness, our guilt and our shame!

Mez McConnell is the pastor for Niddrie Community Church, in Edinburgh; a church revitalisation from Charlotte Chapel; and he is also Director of 20 schemes has just published a new book— ‘The Creaking on the stairs: Finding faith in God through childhood abuse.’

Rosaria Butterfield has given this review; ‘The most disturbing book that I have ever read, I cannot recommend it highly enough.’

He details the abuse he experiences as a child. It had a massive impact on his life - initially towards a life of drugs, crime, violence and prison.

But then he became a Christian and started going to church.

This is what he writes in his chapter on grace.

p177 ‘What if people found out what I was really like? What a liar I was. What a fantasist. What if they realised that I had done some truly awful things in my life? I thought about a lot of my victims over the years. The people I stabbed. The homes I burgled. The drugs I had sold. The frauds I had committed. I dreaded people who knew me in the past coming into the church to expose me as a charlatan. I used to have nightmares of all the people I ever hurt coming to a church service and sitting there listening as I told them of my new life in Jesus. I could see their sneers. I could hear their jeerings. I could sense the anger, hostility and cynicism. What a joke! A lying rat like me hanging around respectable people and pretending to be a Christian. It sounded ridiculous to me and I knew I was genuine!

Then one day I discovered these verses in the Bible - Romans 5v6-8. I discovered that Jesus didn’t just die for me. But he did it knowing just how ungodly I was. He saved me when I was at my weakest. When I was at my least desirable. He saw me at my worst and still saved me. He did not reach out to me because He saw redeemable features in me, like my fantastic sense of humour. There was nothing lovable about me. There was no good. Instead, His own love compelled him to do it!

The sense of freedom and relief this passage brought was profound, No, people in the church did not what I was truly like, but Jesus did. Yes people I had hurt could sneer and question my motives, but Jesus had still died for me.

And thirdly, notice that God’s saving love is now forever proven!

God’s love - forever proven v8

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this….

Christ died for us.

There is so much theological and pastoral gold in this verse.

Just consider what it tells us about our doctrine of God and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

How can it be that the death of this man in history, Jesus of Nazareth, is the very demonstration of the love of God?

This can only be so if the Jesus who is truly man is also truly God.

So that what he does, demonstrates to us the very character and person of God!

This becomes explicitly clear when we get to v10.

We were reconciled to him through the death of HIS SON!

Consider then how COSTLY and EXTRAVAGANT was this sacrifice love!

This verse is surely as glorious as v16!

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son!

The Christ who died for us was God, the Son!

The one in whom God the Father was utterly delighted;

the one who was most worthy!

At his baptism, heaven declared - ‘You are my beloved Son,

whom I love, with you I am well pleased.’

God gave the very best of heaven for us,

the very worst of his creation!

This Christ, the only sinless perfect man;

the one who was infinitely precious as God the Son,

sacrificed himself in the place of sinners and DIED FOR US!

Paul the apostle has already made this absolutely explicit in 3 v23-25.

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith.

In chapter 3 Paul makes the point that the cross of Jesus Christ demonstrated the JUSTICE of God - enabling GOD to be able to JUSTLY forgive the sins of all who rely on the sacrifice of Christ.

His death, turning away God’s wrath against our sin, by absorbing it in himself; so that those who trust are completely forgiven.

Christ - DIED - how easily we say these words and forget what that means.

Reading of the ways that Mez experienced abuse, humiliation, mockery, cruelty, violence and hatred, brought this home to me.

Mez came to see that although he had suffered - Christ had suffered more.

Beaten, stripped, mocked, tortured

- the delight of heaven - chose to come and bear this for us! For me!

But here in chapter 5, his point is this - the cross of Christ PROVES FOREVER, God’s amazing love to justified believers in his Son!

Christ died for us!

Did you notice the surprising tense in v8?

We would more naturally say - But God demonstrated his own love for us in this while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

But that’s not what it says!

God DEMONSTRATES. It is present and ongoing!

God continues to prove his own love for us in the present

- by what he has proved in the past,

…while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Throughout our lives we will know times of great joy

but also times of tears and tragedy!

We will experience diseases and illness.

We may experience violence and opposition.

We may know heartache and loss.

But for the believer, whatever our circumstances,

and whatever subjective sense I may have of God’s love in any given moment.

the LOVE OF GOD for me today is proven forever -in the historical event of the death of Christ for me! The LOVE OF GOD for me is beyond doubt!

Chapter 8 If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

My great grandfather was saved in the Welsh Revival 1904.

This revival that impacted 100,000 in Wales was a rediscovery of the love of God.

The great hymn of that revival has these words:

Here is love, vast as the ocean

Loving kindness as the flood

When the Prince of Life, our Ransom

Shed for us His precious blood

Who His love will not remember?

Who can cease to sing His praise?

He can never be forgotten

Throughout Heaven's eternal days

Christ died for the ungodly - Christ died for us!

Can you say this for yourself? Have you trusted Christ? Why not do so today!

What AMAZING LOVE!

God’s love - when we needed it most v6

God’s love - when we deserved it least v7-8

God’s love - forever proven everyday v8

Amen.

__________

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.