Romans 5:6-8 "The Glory of Justification"

Introduction:

A. When we are considering the glory of justification from Romans 5 we are examining the mechanics of the gospel.

Christian examining such things is not primarily for us to know theological truth for the sake of knowledge alone. But it is to know the beauty and character and glory of our God who has orchestrated our salvation.

You may not know this about your pastor but I paint. Yes I do. A few months ago I painted my home office blue. Through the years I have painted a lot and I have gotten to the place that I can paint without tape on the wood.

Depending on your ability you may think I am a real artist when it comes to my ability to paint.

There is this other guy named Rembrandt from the 1600’s. He is dead now but he painted too. But he painted scenery and people and his works are considered masterpieces.

No one has ever walked into one of my painted rooms and said, “Masterpiece! Lets rope this room off and sell tickets. This is beautiful lets share this room with the world”.

But Rembrandt they actually do that with his paintings.

B. Christian what God has done in His plan of Redemption is the greatest masterpiece of them all. It is the most glorious and valuable and beautiful of all time.

But even in the Church it can be so common in our eyes that we treat it more like a painted room than a work of art that God providentially fashioned for us in Christ.

Look back at your text to verse 6* at what I am calling The Providence.

I. The Providence (6).

A. Our Status was one of weakness. This is denoting our human inability to initiate anything on our own to bring ourselves to God (6a).

How can a creature with a depraved nature change himself to meet the standard of a God that is Holy, when everything man has at his disposal is tainted by sin? Jeremiah 13:23 ask the question:

Jeremiah 13:23-- Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.

The point God is making through the prophet Jeremiah is that the people had proved the reality of their depravity over and over again.

And God was not unjust in His punishment of raising up the Babylonians to overthrow the southern kingdom of Judah during the prophetic ministry of Jeremiah.

Nothing has changed since the Fall of man in Genesis 3 regarding man’s nature, he is still incapable to initiate his own transformation before God.

B. But God has taken our weakness into account and has initiated a providential plan. And He appointed the perfect time in history for Christ to come and to fulfill His redemptive purpose. There was a providential order that was decreed by God even before He said “let there be light” and Christ knew this to be true (6b).

See John 17:1—(The high priestly prayer of our Lord) When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you,

Acts 2:23—(Peter speaking at Pentecost) this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Gal. 4:4-5—(The Apostle Paul writes) But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

C. All of redemption’s plan was according to the providential timetable of God and in full awareness of our weakness and our ungodly status.

In our day and culture we think such truth about our condition depressing and quite deflating of the idea of human self-esteem. Pulpits have adopted pop-psychology instead of gospel centered preaching.

The reason is largely in order to establish a perception of health and wholeness in the individual psyche.

The problem is though such a pursuit can inform you of the human concept of love; Yet, it will never bring you to the place of encountering God’s love in the fullest expression of it.

God’s love expressed doesn’t deny the reality of our weakness and our sin. We have seen the Providence of God and here we see the Passion of God, meaning the love of God expressed as seen in verses 7-8:

II. The Passion (7-8).

A. Paul hypothetically speculates the human motive behind why someone might die for another person when it comes to human love for another human. And he is reasoning how that love may show forth in a virtuous act of sacrifice.

The philosophers of his day would speculate on what the highest end of human virtue actually was. To have someone die in the place of a righteous or good person would be a noble pursuit because it would show forth moral courage and love for another person.

Especially if the person one was dying for was considered to be more noble than yourself.

It made rational sense to the Greek philosophical mind to choose in the direction of reaching towards the highest moral virtue.

For the Greeks the highest form of love was “Phileo”, love between friends. Even in our time when we see or hear of a story in the news where someone dies in order to save someone we call that person a hero.

B. But the Apostle Paul contrast this Greek notion with the expression of God’s love for the ungodly. No one would die for the immoral, for law breakers. A good person or a righteous person maybe, but never someone who is morally corrupt.

Nobody desires to die for a serial killer or a serial rapist or a bank robber. No we usually seek to punish such crimes at times even with Capital punishment.

But God expresses His love towards us through offering up His own Son to die in our place while we were still sinners. While we were justly deserving His wrath, Christ died for us.

This is the pinnacle of the love of God. There is no higher display or example that is more definitive and quintessential of God’s expressed love for sinners than the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

Jesus didn’t come to die for good people. Some may consider themselves good people and say, “I guess the Pastor is saying that He didn’t die then for me.” Jesus told us Only the sick need a doctor (Luke 5:31).

Only lost sinners are in need of salvation because their moral status reveals their condition. Humanly speaking such love makes no sense but God’s love goes beyond human understanding.

You see God’s love is saturated in mercy and kindness towards us because it is being exercised towards us in His covenant grace through Christ.

If you think something else encapsulates the love of God more than the gospel then my friend you are sadly mistaken. Certainly the love of God shows forth in many ways but at the top of the mountain of the love of God there is a Cross with a sacrifice having been made.

A Cross where a substitution was made in our place and the love of God was expressed with laser precision and yet with glorious revelation for all to see.

One of the elders in my first church once asked me in a session meeting, why don’t I ever preach on the love of God, all I ever preach is the gospel of the Cross. Didn’t I realize we are all already saved, we don’t need to hear the gospel anymore.

I laughed and said I wish that everyone was saved. But the gospel is the love of God.

God’s love is not just merely an emotion like humans so often think of love. God’s love is sacrificial action that is driven by His divine kindness towards the undeserving.

You see it illustrated in a physical sense in the Gospel accounts when Jesus encountered leapers who by the law were condemned as unclean but Jesus, our Lord was moved with compassion to touch them and made them whole.

Christian our Spiritual condition before God was just like that. And yet God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that all those believing in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. (The Gospel is God’s Love Language. “The 5 Love Languages” Gary Chapman)

Conclusion:

You may be here today and you may feel just like an unclean leaper. Not that you have a physical disease but you may think yourself to be too far gone. God would never come to you and make you clean.

But how wrong you are He is here once again to hold open the offer of the gospel for all those who are broken, for all those who are sick. Remember only the sick need a physician and only the broken need restoration.

Believe the gospel.

Believer Romans wasn’t written to the theologians at the local seminary at Rome. There wasn’t one. It was written to the church at Rome.

God wanted us to know this because He wanted us to be informed not only, of the gospel that we are proclaiming to the world, but also informed of the gospel that we are believing in the world.

Why? God is telling us that He loves us.

God’s masterpiece on our behalf; the glory of God manifest to bestow His grace in working humility in us. Confess and receive from Him and rest in His covenant love.

Lets Pray.