God Demonstrates His Love

“Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try. No hell below us. Above us, only sky. Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people, livin life in peace. Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger. A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people, sharing all the world. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us and the world will live as one.”

Now take imagine one step further to reimagine.

To reimagine is to reinterpret something imaginatively.

Despite the way it is used in marketing,

Reimagining something does not imply that whatever is being reimagined is any better.

We could reimagine that this building is actually a giant gingerbread house,

If this building were actually a giant gingerbread house,

Good luck when winter comes!

The reason I bring this up is because this trendy word has made its way into the Church in subtle ways.

And it is not necessarily that everything that uses the word reimagine is bad.

But at the same time, not everything reimagined should be embraced as good, better, or even biblical.

Some things are appropriate,

For example,

Earlier this year we participated in a reimagine children’s ministry conference,

Focused on how to create a new vision for children’s ministry in a post COVID world.

That makes sense.

But on the other hand,

Last week I referenced a book titled reimagining Christianity.

When you restate this title using the definition for reimagine,

It means reinterpreting Christianity imaginitively.

That should sound scary,

We should not do that.

Reinterpreting children’s ministry imaginitively, sure.

Reinterpreting the Christian faith imaginitively, definitely not.

You see the difference?

But it gets worse.

There was a conference in Minneapolis called reimagining God.

Which means reinterpreting God imaginitively.

This should sound absolutely insane to us!

The founder of this event was Virginia Mollenkott,

A proclaimed lesbian feminist Christian.

At this conference she argued that it may be necessary for women to leave denominations to create a new holistic church.

And this was no small event,

Nearly two thousand people were in attendance.

Regarding the topic of our It Is Well series,

She said Jesus’ atonement was the ultimate in child abuse and a model of human child abuse.

She said it depicts God as an abusive parent.

Dolores Williams, a former professor at Union Theological Seminary in NYC,

Agreed,

Condemning the atonement,

Classifying it as an abusive patriarchal system,

Then saying, “I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses, dripping blood, and weird stuff.”

This was a seminary professor saying this!

Calling the story of the cross weird stuff.

Thinking we do not need it.

And that is the problem when we imagine or reimagine things,

Because the Bible,

Which clearly presents folks hanging on crosses and dripping blood,

No longer becomes truth when we imagine or reimagine things.

Our minds replace the Bible as our source of truth.

And that is a scary foundation to build a life upon.

You would be better off living in a gingerbread house.

The cross is at the heart of Christianity,

It is the core of the gospel,

It shows us what God is like.

The cross shows that God forgives us of our sins because Christ took our place,

After living without sin, He died the death for our sins.

One of the arguments against this that was presented at the reimagining God conference asked,

What good is the cross to us right now? How does it affect our lives today?

To which they argued that it doesn’t.

They argued that the cross was pointless and disturbing.

But is their response correct?

Is the cross really no good on our attitudes to one another?

Does the cross not affect how we treat others?

Are there any benefits of Christ’s death that come to us in this life?

Any effects on our behavior at all?

Instead of imagining or reimagining answers to these questions in our minds,

This morning we are looking at Romans 5:8-10,

Where God demonstrates His love.

Quick recap of Romans 1-4.

In the first three chapters,

Paul essentially lays out the argument of how depraved we are,

And how we can never do enough works to make ourselves righteous.

Saying not to even try to be religious enough to get to heaven,

Because it will never happen.

The culmination of this argument leads to Paul to say that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Then in Rom. 3:21, Paul says,

“But now,”

A righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been revealed.

This is the way of salvation.

It is faith in the blood of Christ.

Then in ch. 4, Paul uses the OT Father Abraham,

As an example of justification by faith alone in Christ alone.

Abraham knew he was justified by faith and not by works,

Paul was not reimagining the way of salvation,

He was showing that it has been the same since father Abraham.

The only thing that has changed is that we now understand God did it through Jesus.

So, we do not have to imagine being loved by God,

God demonstrates His love.

Paul begins ch. 5 with the word “therefore,”

To transition to the next point of his argument.

Shifting from the condemnation of the opening chapters,

To now bringing his argument for justification to its fullness,

By teaching about the blessings of justification that come from God.

Paul is answering those questions we mentioned earlier,

What good is the cross to us today?

How is it beneficial to us today?

In what ways does it affect our relationships with others?

We do not have to imagine any benefits.

Paul presents the benefits that flow out of Christ’s death and resurrection in Romans 5;

Peace with God,

Joy in trials,

And a deep confidence in a restored loving relationship with God forever.

After arguing for the need to be justified by grace through faith in Christ,

Paul knew that many of his readers would wonder how this justification helps when facing trials and suffering in life?

So, Paul addresses how it helps develop Christian character through trials and suffering.

Jesus said in John 16:33,

That in this world, we will have tribulation.

Justification does not relieve us of these trials.

But because we are justified in Christ,

Romans 8 teaches that no amount of suffering will separate us from the Lord,

If we are in Christ, trials will bring us closer to the Lord,

And they will make us more like Him!

Simply put,

Paul argues in the opening verses of ch. 5,

That suffering builds Christ-like character.

This is why Paul says in vs. 3 that we rejoice in our sufferings.

Then, in vs. 5-8,

Paul backs up his argument by explaining the grounds for his confidence.

Which leads to our passage this morning, vs. 8-10.

Where we see God demonstrates His love.

We will approach this passage by first looking at our past.

Then we will look at present benefits,

Followed by the future benefits,

Before circling back around to the point.

And the summary of this passage is;

We do not have to try and imagine God’s love, God demonstrates His love in Christ. Now go, be a picture of that love.

WE: The Past (vs. 8b)

The past is really about the timing of Christ’s substitution.

Paul underscores that Christ’s death in our place happened while we were still sinners in vs. 8.

Then again, he says it was while we were enemies of God in vs. 10.

Christ died for us while we were totally messed up.

This is the amazing point Paul is driving home.

Again, chs. 1-3 were all about how we all are God’s enemies.

Yet, the example of Abraham shows how God credits faith as righteousness.

Meaning, we are not righteous ourselves,

Just the opposite, we are wicked,

But if we have faith in Christ,

God considers us righteous anyway.

Going back to Paul’s introduction in ch. 5,

He was arguing that those who are enemies of God do not have access to God.

Once we are justified by faith,

Then we have peace with God through Jesus Christ.

It is through Christ we obtain this access to God by faith,

Paul reiterates in vs. 2.

We then stand upon this gracious access and rejoice!

But it was in this past state of enmity that God demonstrates His love.

Paul calls us all sinners here.

And in a seemingly weird sort of way,

This is a good thing.

In Luke 18:13, Jesus commended the tax collector for declaring himself a sinner.

It is not that being a sinner is commendable.

The fact is, we are sinners,

It is acknowledging that to be true which Christ,

And now Paul,

Are pointing out as important.

Because sinner is a firm word.

It describes how God sees us.

Matthew Henry described sinners well way back when;

“Neither righteous nor good; not only such as were useless, but such as were guilty and obnoxious; not only such as there would be no loss of should they perish, but such whose destruction would greatly redound to the glory of God’s justice, being malefactors and criminals that ought to die.”

Yet, God shows His love for us.

Paul reiterates it even more strongly in vs. 10,

Enemies of God.

Already in ch. 5,

Paul has called us weak, ungodly, sinners, and now enemies of God.

What a terrifying thought.

What a horrifying thing to be,

An enemy of God.

But that is what we were.

We opposed God,

We opposed His people,

We opposed His message.

It was not just a matter of weakness,

It was not just a matter of ungodliness,

It was not even just a matter of sinfulness,

It was a matter of war against God.

We were His enemies.

This made us rightly objects of God’s wrath.

Because we were hostile to God,

God is rightly hostile toward us because of our sins against Him.

Richard Sibbes rightly realized;

“If we had all the creatures in the world to help us, what are they but vanity and nothing, if God be our enemy!”

Think about our past,

Think about the images Paul uses here;

Sinners and enemies,

And notice how it is related to the timing of Christ’s death in our place.

Christ did not die after we humbled ourselves,

Christ did not die after we became obedient.

No, Christ died for us while we were still sinners,

While we were God’s enemies.

Think about that,

Our ethical compass tells us to arrest, punish, torture, and kill our enemies.

But God in heaven instead determined to send the Son,

To die in the place of His enemies.

Wow.

This means Paul is doing so much more than name calling,

Or putting us down,

Or discouraging us.

He is driving home the point of our past,

To contrast against how great God’s love is.

God’s love for us is not based on anything in us or anything from us.

It comes from His gracious and loving heart.

In fact, it is the opposite of what we deserve.

If you are listening and you have not trusted in Christ,

Then not only is this describing your past,

It is still describing your present.

So, I ask,

What do you think you deserve from God?

The Bible says if you are to be saved,

It is only by God’s grace.

And what we find when we turn to Jesus,

Is a gracious Lord!

How can you tell?

By the timing of His death.

He died for us,

While we were still sinners.

He did not wait until we cleaned ourselves up,

He did not make us work to earn His gracious gift.

No,

While we were still sinners,

He died for us.

This communicates an oh so important lesson for us.

Brothers and sisters,

If this is how God treats His enemies,

How does this inform the way we are to treat those who wrong us?

Think about who has wronged you?

Now, if you are to follow Christ,

What are your obligations toward your enemies?

If we are honest,

We tend to act or think like we owe them nothing.

They wronged me,

I can treat them however I want.

Or, in a more subtle sense,

We would say we do not really have enemies.

Maybe people who just get on my nerves,

Or people who disappoint me.

Think about at work,

Perhaps you have someone there who you think is obnoxious or irritating,

They just always seem to get under your skin.

Or maybe you have a family member that you believe has wronged you.

As you think of this person,

Do you feel your sense of rightness,

And your sense of their wrongness being deepened.

It is because the sin in your heart postures you to believe you are right,

To allow your false sense of righteousness to inflate your position over this other person,

So, that you can look down at this other person,

And how wrong they are for the way they treated you.

Do you feel that righteous indignation building up inside you?

Recognize it,

Then stop it.

Because you have wronged God in far greater ways than anyone has wronged you.

And how does God treat His enemies?

So, how are we treating ours?

Think about it,

When was the last time you asked someone to forgive you?

Because the reality is,

We all do things that are wrong.

We all sin,

Therefore, we all must ask for forgiveness.

When it comes to asking God for forgiveness,

We are only able to approach Him through Jesus Christ,

Who made the way possible,

By dying for us,

While we were still sinners,

While we were still enemies.

So, brothers and sisters,

We must let go of this righteous indignation.

We must let go of this mindset that we have pleased God with our actions.

It is simply untrue.

And this way of thinking feeds our heart more and more pride.

We are doing nothing but lying to ourselves.

So, we must slaughter pride,

And foster humility.

We do this by meditating on the truth that Christ died for you,

While you were still a sinner,

While you were His enemy.

Understand this deception in your heart,

And you will better understand how much you have in common with every other person you interact with.

As you do,

You will better know how to introduce them to the One who died for them,

While they were sinners and enemies of God.

We can be certain of God’s love because He did this when we were helpless, ungodly, sinful, enemies.

This love God has for us is something He freely chooses to do.

But by choosing to love us,

Despite the fact that we were sinners and enemies,

It communicates our worth in God’s eyes,

Because He made us in His image.

GOD: The Present (vs. 8c-10a)

Therefore, we have present benefits from Christ’s death for us.

The entire OT sacrificial system prepared God’s people to understand that Christ died for us, as vs. 8 says.

Christ, who knew no sin,

Became sin for us,

And bore God’s judgment in our place.

As vs. 8 says,

He did this for us!

Our human limitations makes us unable to fully know this kind of love!

That is the comparison Paul makes in vs. 6-7.

As humans,

We may die for a righteous person or a good person.

But Christ died for us while we were sinners and enemies.

And it was not a gentle death,

It was barbaric.

It was a cruel execution.

It was offensive and grotesque.

It was a death reserved for the worst of criminals.

And yet, the Hero of our story was killed in this way for us,

The ones who deserved that death.

He did it as our substitute.

This is the substitutionary atonement.

Jesus taking our punishment.

And the horrific nature of the cross only underscores what our sins deserve.

Jesus’ death was not by chance.

This was God’s sovereign will.

To have Jesus die the worst kind of death imaginable to show the reality of our spiritual state as sinners and enemies.

So, how is this effective in the present?

It is effective at the crossroad of fact and faith.

The fact of the historical death of Jesus being received by faith is how we benefit from His death in the present.

Because faith without the cross means nothing.

We act as if there is some inherent power in our faith,

There is not.

Faith is worthless without Christ and His death.

The reality is we cannot have faith without the cross because our faith is in the cross.

Yet on the other hand,

The cross is not merely a symbol,

Nor is is solely a historical fact.

The cross must be clung to by faith.

What I mean is that you would be mistaken if you thought that just because Christ died,

You do not have to bother with any of this religious stuff.

Because without trust in His death,

You will not benefit from His death.

Friends, Jesus died so that you would see God’s love for you,

Then trust Him with your life,

Trust Him for your justification.

Paul introduces this as a present benefit of Christ’s death in vs. 9.

All who believe have now been justified by His blood, he says.

Blood is used throughout the Bible as a symbol of life and death.

Instead of just saying we are justified by His death,

Paul uses blood here to communicate how Christ serves as a sacred sacrifice for our purification, atonement, and justification.

Elsewhere, the NT talks about the “blood of the covenant.”

So, blood is a symbol of the covenant relationship between God and people,

Established by the death of Christ.

Brothers and sisters, this means we now live in the present reality of this justification.

We have been declared righteous by God through Christ.

We, the sinners and enemies of God, escape judgment because of God’s love for us.

We did not make ourselves righteous.

Paul’s point here is that we are made righteous because of this amazing display of God’s love,

That is, Christ’s death on the cross.

It is by His blood we are justified.

The cross is central to the gospel.

This spills over into other present benefits;

Hope, assurance, and reconciliation.

As Paul says again in vs. 10,

His death achieved reconciliation that we have now received.

His death is the channel that brings us into a right relationship with God.

This is what reconciliation is.

It is the practice of resolving differences.

It is the mending of broken relationships after a wrong.

To replace enmity with friendship.

In our case, it is the brokenness of our relationship with God,

Caused by our sin.

Paul elaborates on this in Col. 1:21-22;

Colossians 1:21–22 ESV

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

This reconciliation was made possible by the death of Christ.

We no longer are an enemy of God with our evil deeds and hostile mind,

But now yield to Him with full confidence in a loving relationship.

So, Paul implores with believers in 2 Cor. 5:20 to be reconciled to God!

Here in Romans, our reconciliation does not refer to the change in our disposition toward God.

Rather, it teaches that we have received reconciliation from God.

Meaning He has laid on us the token of His friendship.

In the preceeding verses of 2 Cor. 5:18-19, Paul teaches how reconciliation originates with God;

2 Corinthians 5:18–19 ESV

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Similarly, Eph. 2:16 refers to the restoration of God’s favor that we have forfeited.

Not that we are winning back the love and loyalty of God.

God demonstrated His love by dying for us while we were still sinners.

And His death calls us to be reconciled to God by trusting in Christ.

We cannot miss the cross in this.

Reconciliation happens only through the death of Christ.

This reconciliation is incredible when we consider the severity of Christ’s death.

How deep and wide of a chasm must have existed between us and God because of our sins to merit a death of this magnitude to repair it.

Yet Jesus was willing to endure this horrific death to reconcile us to God.

As we sang this morning,

Though our sins are great,

His mercy is more!

The restoration of His favor is through the satisfaction of His justice.

This maintains His consistent nature.

Justice demands that He punishes sin,

The death of Christ satisfies that justice,

Such that, the death of Christ reconciles us to God.

Then His love overwhelms our enmity.

This justification makes God our friend,

It allows Him to pardon and save us,

While upholding His just nature.

Therefore, presently, we who believe in Christ,

Are children of God.

So, picture the present blessings of this justification.

God shows His love,

That while we were sinners,

Jesus died for us.

Now that we are justified as His children,

Picture how much more He shows His love!

Friend, if you do not trust in Christ,

I am willing to guess that you still long for relationship.

At its core, that longing is a longing for a relationship with God.

He does not want you to remain a sinner and enemy.

He demonstrates His love by dying for you to wake you up to the reality of the peril you are in.

That is why you have feelings of dissatisfaction,

That is why you have this deep sense that there is something more.

You experience this for a reason.

It is present in all people,

Because we have a Creator who has made us with this desire to be in a relationship with Him.

But our sin has broken that relationship.

God would be completely just to leave us in our sins.

But He demonstrates His love by having His Son take on flesh,

Live the life we are called to live,

Then die on the cross,

Not for His sins,

He had none,

But for our sins.

We have confidence to trust in this because Jesus rose from the dead.

So, our hope is placed firmly in the fact that Christ has ascended to heaven,

Where He is presently interceding on our behalf.

That is what Christ is doing right now.

Hebrews 7:25 says He always lives to make intercession for them.

Dane Ortlund is spot on with his observation;

“There has been a remarkable recovery of the glory of what Christ did back then, in his life, death, and resurrection, to save me. But what about what he is doing now? For many of us, our functional Jesus isn’t really doing anything now; everything we need to be saved, we tend to think, is already accomplished.”

We have already discussed for a number of weeks now how justification means we are declared right,

Legally exonerated in God’s courtroom,

Based upon what Jesus has done.

And we are justified,

Not when we clean ourselves up, get our act together, and begin following God’s law perfectly,

But when we honestly acknowledge that we will never make ourselves right on our own.

John Bunyan wrote about this in his classic work, Christ a Complete Savior:

“[God] justifies us, not either by giving laws unto us, or by becoming our example, or by our following of him in any sense, but by his blood shed for us. He justifies by bestowing upon us, not by expecting from us.”

This is the idea of justification we have been exploring.

It is focused on what Christ has done.

It is rooted in His death and resurrection.

Rom. 5:1 begins by saying “since we have been justified,” past tense.

But what does the Bible say Jesus is doing right now?

He is living to make intercession.

Ortlund again comments here with a focus on the heart of Christ;

“Christ’s heart is a steady reality flowing through time. It isn’t as if his heart throbbed for his people when he was on earth but has dissipated now that he is in heaven. It’s not that his heart was flowing forth in a burst of mercy that took him all the way to the cross but has now cooled down, settling back once more into kindly indifference. His heart is as drawn to his people now as ever it was in his incarnate state. And the present manifestation of his heart for his people is his constant interceding on their behalf.”

What does it mean that Christ is interceding on our behalf?

In a general sense,

Intercession is the act of a third party coming between two other parties to make a case to the one party on behalf of the other.

Do you follow?

Let me give you some examples;

Parents, you may have felt the need to be an intercessor on behalf of your children to a teacher or a coach.

Professional athletes and entertainers usually hire an agent to be an intercessor for them with their team or with a movie studio.

This is the idea of intercession.

So, again, what does it mean then that Christ is interceding on our behalf?

Well, the parties that Christ is interceding for are people and God.

But, you may be wondering, if we have been justified,

Why does Christ need to presently intercede for us?

Does this mean His work on the cross for us was incomplete?

That could not be further from the truth.

The intercession of Christ applies what the atonement accomplished.

Ortlund once again summarizes this well;

“Christ’s present heavenly intercession on our behalf is a reflection of the fullness and victory and completeness of his earthly work, not a reflection of anything lacking in his earthly work. The atonement accomplished our salvation; intercession is the moment-by-moment application of that atoning work. In the past, Jesus did what he now talks about; in the present, Jesus talks about what he then did.”

Christ’s work of justification and intercession are knitted together in the NT.

Paul writes in Romans 8:33-34;

Romans 8:33–34 ESV

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

We can understand this in an even deeper sense.

Christ’s work of intercession reveals how personal our rescue is!

The work of justification without Christ’s ongoing intercession makes salvation an impersonal formula.

It is far more cold and mechanical than Christ’s heart truly is.

His intercession is a reflection of His heart.

The same heart that demonstrated God’s love by laying down His life on behalf of His people,

Is now manifesting itself as He continuously intercedes on our behalf to the Father.

Now, it is important to understand that the Father is not reluctant to welcome us to Himself,

Nor is the Son more loving while the Father is more full of wrath.

Our passage says God—Father, Son, and Spirit—shows His love.

So, the atonement was delightedly agreed upon by both the Father and the Son.

Now, the intercession of the Son is not meant to make any sort of reflection of the Father’s character,

Rather it highlights the warm and loving embrace of the Son for us.

Christ’s intercession does not mean that the Father is cold toward us,

It just shows how full the Son’s heart is toward us.

Because the Father’s deepest joy is to say yes in response to the Son’s intercession.

Think of it as if you have a family member or a loved one running a track meet,

You are cheering that person on with all you have out of excitement and joy and love for them.

As they round the final corner,

They have a huge lead over the rest of the field,

What do you do?

Do you just sit back quietly because you are pleased that they will win the race.

No!

You continue to yell, shout, scream, and cheer them on with all the love you can show in their moment of victory!

This is what Jesus is doing for us as He intercedes to the Father.

This is His present posture in heaven;

Pouring out His heart on our behalf to the Father,

Cheering us on in our moment of victory.

This is his deepest desire.

I love how Ortlund again simply puts it;

“The intercession of Christ is his heart connecting our heart to the Father’s heart.”

Going back to Hebrews 7:25, the whole verse says this;

Hebrews 7:25 ESV

Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

The author of Hebrews says that Christ is able to save to the uttermost,

The uttermost is comprehensive,

It is complete and exhaustive salvation.

Why would the author need to include this detail?

Because we are uttermost sinners who need uttermost saving from an uttermost Savior.

And that is who Christ is and what Christ does.

His salvation is comprehensive,

He is in the presence of the Father,

Interceding to Him on your behalf.

Christ is able to save to the uttermost.

That means His redemption, restoration, and reconciliation,

Reaches into the deepest and darkest parts of your life,

The places where you feel most ashamed,

Dane Ortlund offers more encouragement here;

“Those crevices of sin are themselves the places where Christ loves us the most. His heart willingly goes there. His heart is most strongly drawn there. He knows us to the uttermost, and he saves us to the uttermost, because his heart is drawn out to us to the uttermost. We cannot sin our way out of his tender care.”

The reason we can have confidence in this,

Is because, as Hebrews says, He always lives to make intercession for us.

He never stops bringing His atoning life, death, and resurrection before the Father.

John Calvin said it this way;

“[Christ] turns the Father’s eyes to his own righteousness to avert his gaze from our sins. He so reconciles the Father’s heart to us that by his intercession he prepares a way and access for us to the Father’s throne.”

Do you understand what this means?

This acknowledges that even as justified believers,

We are still ongoing sinners,

All of us.

So, because we continue to sin while we are here on earth,

Christ, in response, continues to intercede on our behalf in heaven.

He did not just justify us with His atonement on the cross,

Then say “good luck,” and send us on our way in this world to be righteous on our own.

No, Jesus is essentially praying for you right now.

And He has been praying for you,

And He will continue to pray for you.

What a comforting thought.

Even when we neglect this life-giving and miraculous work of prayer,

We know Christ is never ceasing to pray on our behalf.

What a calming and peaceful reality.

This is what Christ is doing in the present.

Let His present work reassure you!

If you trust in Christ,

You have an intercessor who has the Father’s ear at all times.

And both the Father and Son welcome you into the deep and loving riches of their heart.

Though our sins reach to the uttermost,

His saving goes even further.

His saving work always overpowers our sin,

He always lives to intercede for us.

Richard Sibbes once wrote on this subject;

“What a comfort it is now in our daily approach to God to minister boldness to us in all our suits, that we go to God in the name of one that he loves, in whom his soul delights, that we have a friend in court, a friend in heaven for us, that is at the right hand of God, and interposes himself there for us, in all our suits that makes us acceptable, that perfumes our prayers and makes them acceptable.”

So, in response,

The Bible commands us to repent.

That means we turn from our sins,

And trust in Christ’s atonement and intercession to be reconciled to God.

This is what the gospel is all about,

Being able to relate to God in loving friendship.

FBC, we are to be a living picture of this.

A community of guilty and alienated sinners,

That confess and repent of our sin,

To move toward forgiveness and restoration by God’s grace.

This is so unique from other religions.

Confucius and Buddha and Mohammad do not teach this.

They do not hold out the hope of a personal relationship with God.

And what is even more extraordinary is that God is the One Who came to us,

So, that we could have a personal relationship with Him.

Presently, we get to experience living in relationship with our Creator,

Who knows the most intimate of details about us,

Down to the number of hairs on our head.

And God won this relationship for us by Jesus dying on the cross in our place.

YOU: The Future (vs. 10b)

Since we now have been justified by His blood,

Paul asks rhetorically at the end of vs. 9,

How much more will we be saved by Him from the wrath of God.

Or again at the end of vs. 10,

How much more shall we be saved by His life.

The mention of God’s wrath should give us pause.

We cannot deny that God has wrath.

To do so is really to dishonor God.

His wrath is not a random cause and effect in the universe.

The Bible is clear that He is a God of wrath.

That is not all He is,

But it is part of His character.

As beings made in His image,

We have a malfunctioning version of His wrath.

So, unlike us,

God’s wrath is not some form of a divine temper tantrum.

His wrath is always right, good, fair, and just.

Because His wrath is always in opposition to evil.

The fact that we were His enemies,

Means we were liable to receive His wrath because of our sins.

Because God’s wrath is always in opposition to evil,

This means our sins are evil.

So, God’s wrath is the opposition to us harming ourselves or others by doing evil.

And He is committed to this,

It is intrinsic to His character.

As a result,

A future of His wrath awaits us all.

This is the execution of God’s justice,

He judges our sin.

In our passage,

Paul connects God’s final judgment with final salvation.

He says twice “shall we be saved,”

This is future tense,

A future saving.

What does Paul mean?

You may be thinking, if I am justified aren’t I saved?

If that is that case, how can I be more saved?

That is a great question.

This is a challenging concept for us to wrap our minds around.

It is correct to say that if you are justified by Christ’s blood you are saved.

This was the more difficult part of out saving.

But it is also true to say that in the future you will be saved.

And we can be certain of this because the hard part has already been done.

So, you are both already saved and not yet saved.

You are saved because you are justified,

Meaning your salvation is secure,

Never to be taken from you.

But you are still in this world that is fallen,

You still sin.

So, Paul is saying,

In the future,

After you die or after Jesus returns,

You will face God’s judgment for your sin.

At that time,

You will be saved from the wrath of God.

God is good and just and righteous,

And we have opposed Him.

So, we need Jesus to rescue us from the coming wrath.

This is how you are both saved and will be saved.

And Paul’s argument is that since we have been saved by Christ’s death,

We are now reconciled to God,

Surely, we will be saved from His wrath in the future.

We have confidence that we are saved and we will be saved,

Because the final judgment has not yet come.

Pastor Mark Dever gives a great summary here;

“We have been saved, [Scripture] says many times, from the penalty of sin, and so we have that future acquittal assured to us. We are being saved right now from the power of sin in our lives, as we see it being broken. And then here in Romans 5 Paul talks about how we will be saved at the final judgment.”

If you are saved in any one of these three ways,

You are saved in all of them.

That is what Paul is teaching in our passage.

Having been justified by the death of Christ,

We are now reconciled as Christ interceded for us,

And we are certain that we will be saved from final judgment.

We can be sure of this if we trust in Christ.

But it important to remember that the final judgment has not happened yet,

Which is why Paul is writing about the confidence we are to have in our future salvation,

It is a glorious truth!

If we trust in Christ, we will not experience God’s wrath!

This is the assurance of being a Christian.

Richard Sibbes reflects on this;

“When our sins are set in order before us, the sins of our youth, middle and old age, our sins against conscience, against the law and gospel, against examples, vows, promises, resolution, and admonitions of the Spirit and servants of God;...when wrath shall appear, be in some sort felt, and God presented to the soul as ‘a consuming fire,’ no comfort in heaven or earth appearing, hell beneath seeming ready to revenge against us the quarrel of God’s covenant, Oh then for faith to look through all these clouds! I see mercy in wrath!…life in death! the sweetness of the promises! the virtue and merit of Christ’s sufferings, death, resurrection, and intercession at the right hand! the sting of death removed, sin pardoned and done away, and glory at hand!”

That is the future blessings we have in Christ.

We do not try to remove God’s justice and see if we manage to survive the final judgment.

God has already made the way of salvation possible in Christ.

The benefit comes through Christ, Paul says,

Because of His sacrificial death for us.

It is because, as we looked at last week,

Christ was delivered up and raised up.

Therefore, we have confidence to walk in the newness of life.

Friends, if you do not trust in Christ,

What confidence do you have in the future?

What hope do you have after this world?

God reveals Himself to us in the Bible.

He reveals that He is good,

But we are sinners,

And that is bad news,

Because all our good stuff does not outweigh our bad stuff.

That is not how salvation works.

So, because God is good,

He will judge our sins,

And when that day comes,

A day that you do not know,

What is your plan?

If you trust in Christ,

Our hope rests on Christ,

Who has been raised from the dead.

And the Bible teaches that we will get to be in heaven because of the virtue of Christ.

We are united to Christ.

Have you noticed how satisfying good things can be?

But have you also noticed how that satisfaction does not last?

Do you ever wonder why that is?

It is because they point forward to a future reality in Christ that is eternally fulfilling.

Brothers and sisters, I pray we are filled with anticipation of this wonderful future that helps us in trying days,

And encourages us to fulfill our roles in our families, with our friends, and in the church well.

What a great hope and confidence and assurance we have in Christ!

May we lean on this hope to break free from the imprisonment of worldly circumstances.

May we at FBC be marked by a confidence and hope as we anticipate the future blessings God has for us!

WE: The Point (vs. 8a)

Going back to the very start of our passage,

Paul highlights the special purpose ascribed to Christ’s death.

Vs. 8 says it is a demonstration of His love.

He died for us.

I love the Christian Standard Bible translates it as “God proves His own love for us.”

Christ’s sacrificial death is certainly proof of God’s love.

The Greek word here is synistemi,

And the definition is to provide evidence for; stand as proof of; or show by one’s behavior, attitude, and external attributes.

So, the death of Christ provides evidence for God’s love,

His sacrifice stands as proof of God’s love.

Everything we have talked about this morning;

Our past as His enemies,

Now having justification, reconciliation, and salvation from God’s wrath,

All of it, was to manifest, show, prove, and confirm God’s love for us!

By demonstrating His love this way,

God silences any detractors from His love.

It leaves no room to doubt His love for us!

We would be rightly skeptical of God claiming He loves us,

If He had done nothing to prove His love.

So, God set out, to demonstrate how a holy God loves sinful people.

Love is the greatest Christian virtue.

Why?

Because God is love,

And all that Christ has done shows His love.

The virtue of love is rooted in God’s character of love revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Christ died for our justification, reconciliation, and salvation while we were His enemies.

Pastor Dever comments;

“[Christ] was the sun ignored, the victor uncheered, the Creator unthanked, the truth disbelieved, the lord disobeyed, the counsel unheeded, the husband divorced, the family left, and the child slain, yet his love was such that he acted to forgive us in a way that protected both his holiness and his mercy at the same time. This is what is means to say that God is love.”

Friends, what is your response to such love?

This is the heart of the gospel.

The point of Christ’s death and all it accomplished,

Was to demonstrate God’s love.

So, if we are to be His children,

We must be known for this too.

Here is a picture of Niagara Falls,

Impressive right?

I took this picture when I was there,

And as impressive as this picture is,

Let me tell you,

It is not as impressive as being there in person.

But the picture gives you an idea of the falls,

And it is better than me trying to explain it without you seeing a picture.

You see, the picture reveals to you that something greater is out there.

Now look around.

This is the church.

The church is meant to be a picture of God’s love,

Showing that there is something greater out there.

We, FBC, are to be a picture of God’s love.

How would we know of this love,

If God had not shown us the real thing in Christ?

We do not have to try and imagine God’s love,

God demonstrates His love in Christ,

Now be a picture of that love.

Pray

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