Romans 5:1-5
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Hello Maple Grove,
Pastor Jason asked if I would give a brief word of encouragement this week as it seems that our time of not being able to gather together will continue for several weeks. It has been nearly a year since my family and I began attending Maple Grove and until this strange time, I don’t think we have missed a Sunday gathering. I mention that to only to say this, we have grown very fond of our church family here. And we miss everyone dearly.
I long to gather again. I long to do the things we do every time we gather. From the small things, like sitting around together before Sunday School drinking coffee, well, mostly sitting when I’m not corralling my kids. To the bigger things like singing together, oh, how I miss singing together. I miss praying together, and I miss sitting under the Word of God preached together. I just miss being together.
In this time unlike any for over 100 years, we are unable to be together. But, this bitter providence does not prevent us from praying for one another. It does not prevent us from longing to be together. I pray that when we are able to gather once again, we will not take for granted this being together. I pray that we will meet with a joyful seriousness. I pray that we have a new appreciation for praying together. I pray we have a serious joy in hearing the word of God preached, that we sing together with a gusto that comes from a joy-filled gospel driven love for our great Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I pray that we take the Lord’s Supper together with a renewed sense of the sweetness that it is to partake of the means of grace with other Christians covenanted together as we live the Christian life. I pray that this time of being apart drives us to deeper, sweeter, discipling relationships. For the glory of God.
I wanted to take a look at a few verses from Romans 5. The first five verses from Romans 5 actually.
In these few verses, we find the key to the Christian life. This is not the only place in Scripture that we find this key, but I think here it is especially clear and especially helpful in these days of difficulty and uncertainty.
I’d like to read these verses and then briefly, by God’s grace, give you the encouragement they have given me during this time.
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Verse 1 begins with the word therefore, and though it is a tired cliché, we must ask what the therefore is there for. Thankfully, Paul gives us the explanation in the rest of verse 1. Since we have been justified by faith.
In the first 4 chapters of Romans Paul has explained the gospel. He has made clear that all men are sinners. We are every one of us sinners. Not because we do sins, but because we are sinners by nature. In other words, we do sins, because we are sinners, not the other way around.
This has been the case since the fall in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve rebelled in the garden. They were our representatives and when they sinned, all mankind inherited the consequences of that sin, and are born by nature sinners. Dead in sin. In rebellion against the Holy, Righteous, Just, Almighty God.
But Paul goes on to explain, right from the beginning of Romans, in chapter 1 verses 16-17, he gives the remedy for sin problem. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Though we are dead in sin, God in his great love and grace, sent his Son to live the life that we could not, perfectly fulfilling the Law of God, and then to die as a perfect, spotless, sacrifice in the place of all who would believe in him. That by faith, sinner can be made right with God. By faith, sinners are made righteous, brought from rebellion into the family of God. Not because faith merits anything, but because of the great grace of God.
Paul says,
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
After Paul lays out the gospel, that sinners are saved by faith, he moves into chapter 5 as we saw, with a therefore. Therefore, because, since, we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is not just a past tense thing, something that happened to us, or a present tense thing, something that is happening to us, or a future tense thing, something that will eventually happen to us, it is all these things, simultaneously.
This is especially important to understand in times like these, that being a Christian isn’t just something that happened once a long time ago when we made a profession of faith, and now we are waiting around until the end comes.
Christianity is for all of our lives in every sense of what that means. Christianity is a past reality. We have been justified by faith. That is something that happened in space and time, based on Christ’s finished work on the cross, and our placing our faith in Him and this finished work, we have been justified, made right, counted as righteous in the sight of God.
This is a concrete fact, as real as reality itself, if you have trusted in Christ for your salvation, you have been justified. And since we have been [in the past] justified Paul says, we have [right now in the present] peace with God. This is a boots on the ground, right now reality. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, our biggest problem, the one that dwarfs all others as to make them insignificant, is taken care of. By our nature we are at enmity, at war, in rebellion against the Holy, Righteous, Just, Sovereign God of all the universe, but in Christ, we are now at peace with God.
We are at peace with God. This means that God is at peace with us. Do you realize what this means? God, Holy, Righteous, Just, Sovereign God of all the universe, is at peace with us. Which means, for Christians, there is no wrath for us, there is no anger for us, there is no punishment for us. That is astounding. By nature, we deserve wrath, anger, punishment from God, anything but peace with and from him. But in Christ we have peace. And because we have peace with God, we can have peace in our own hearts.
When we have our actual guilt removed in justification, we have actual peace with God. Even in the midst of the worst trials. Even in the midst of all kinds of uncertainty, uncertainty about jobs, uncertainty about money, uncertainty about our health, uncertainty about the future…verse 2,
2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Through Jesus we have access [right now] into this grace in which we stand, this very same grace that we are saved by also sustains us. And because of this, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Because we are saved, we can glory in the glory of God. We can revel in the glory of God. In knowing that He is holy, and knowing that he is good.
What does this mean? And how do we do it? We do this the same way we are saved, by faith. We bring our whole lives under the Lordship of Jesus Christ by faith. The Christian life is not a matter of being saved by faith and then gritting our teeth and building our character by gritting our teeth and trying real hard. The Christian life is all of faith.
From first to last, it is of faith. This faith is not a kind of wispy, blind hope, but a rock solid trust that Jesus is who he says he is and did what he said he did, and does what he says he will do.
When we by faith make Christ and his finished work our own in this way, we make use of the only way that God intends to save anyone. This is the whole of Christianity, the key, this is where we live, in verses 1-2 of Romans chapter 5.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
That sounds all well and good when things are going well. We’ve been justified, we are at peace with God, we have access to the grace by which we stand before him, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. But what about when things are not going well?
What about when we are unable to leave our own homes without fear? What about when the world is falling down around our ears? What about when we face real trouble? Whether from persecution or sickness? From financial uncertainty or the very real possibility for many folks of catching a life-threatening disease when we go get groceries?
What then? Paul tells us.
3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Our faith is for the real world, for the here and now. It is not just a theoretical thing. It is a right now, in the midst of this coronavirus pandemic, in the midst of jobless rates that rival the great depression, in the midst of more uncertainty than I have faced in my short life, our faith is sufficient to meet all this uncertainty, not because of the strength or greatness of our faith, but because of the strength and greatness of the object of our faith. Christ is sufficient to meet all challenges. So much so that we are to rejoice in our suffering because, this suffering produces endurance or patience and in this patience we learn to wait on the Lord, really wait, in full expectation that what he is doing is for our good.
And as we wait, endurance in patience, character is produced, and character then produces hope. And this hope is not a hope that can possibly fail. It will not put us to shame. It cannot. Remember
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes...
Why will this hope not put us to shame? Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Our here and now reality of not being ashamed, of the gospel not leading to our shame is because of two things, two absolute, concrete facts for all Christians and only for Christians. First, Christ actually lived fulfilling all righteousness, he actually died paying the price for our sins in full, and he actually rose again sealing all that he said. And two, the Holy Spirit has really come to live in us. It is by the Holy Spirit that any of this makes sense. It is only by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that we have faith and continue to have faith. It is only by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that we know the love of God. It is only by the Holy Spirit that we experience the objective peace that comes from the application of the Gospel.
As Christians, we are saved by faith, and we live by faith, and we hope in faith, all through the Holy Spirit who is given us, who lives in us.
I pray that this encourages you as much as it does me. I pray that you are helped by this little video and that we are able to meet face to face very soon. Until then, I miss you. I’m praying for you. I love you.
