God's Amazing Love to His children through Jesus

God’s Amazing Love is expressed to His children through Justification (Rom 5:1-5)

Explanation: In Chapters 6 - 8 Paul is going to discuss the Hope that believers have in Jesus. A great part of that hope is discovered through the process of Justification. In the first 5 verses Paul shares some of the benefits that are the result of a sinner being justified in the presence of God through faith in the finished work of Christ.

The first benefit Paul mentions is peace. God shows His amazing love to us in that He grants us peace with Him. Peace is not just the absence of conflict, it is the calmness that comes from knowing that a thing is settled and finished. No other approach to God yields this kind of peace; all other approaches have the supplicants striving and working to earn enough favor to satisfy the Almighty. When is it enough? Outside of Christ there is no answer and the practitioners of other faiths remain uneasy and unsettled; they lack peace.

What a gift God gives to His children through Christ - we can rest in the Peace He gives. Even when our lives are upside down and chaos abounds - the one who is in Christ has a peace that does not pass, a peace that the world will not understand.

Another benefit that justification yields is access to Grace. What an amazing display of God’s love - we have been given access to living in Grace, and we have been set free from the constraints of the Law

Illustration: The difference between a ticket to a concert and the full-access pass. The ticket only gets you in the show; the full-access pass gets you front row seats and then you get the privilege of going back stage and mingling with the artists.

Another very important aspect of God’s Amazing love is that being justified also makes sense of our pain and suffering. In Christ we can know that our pain is not pointless and that our suffering is going to accomplish something. This truth allows the Apostle to declare that we CAN “rejoice in our sufferings” (v.3).

Apart from the certainty of faith in a Sovereign God one is reduced to random chance or some mystical idea of Karma to try to understand the hardships of life. It is only in Christ that the unexplainable and tragic have meaning. Now that doesn’t mean that it’s always easy for believers to handle difficulties or that they never question God on why He is allowing the suffering.

Illustration: visiting with Steve and Shelia last night at Baptist Hospital. Steve has been in and out of hospitals since October of last year. For the past four months he has been dealing with extreme pain, undergoing surgeries, and now he has a “covered -hole in his stomach and is being told that he won’t be able to eat real food for up to a year.

Argument: He is a Christian pastor who has served God’s people as an under shepherd for over 40 years. He has been asking why, and he doesn’t understand. He is dealing with discouragement, but he is holding on because he knows that God loves him and that God is somehow working things out for His glory.

This aspect of God’s love is available to each of His children. We have the Holy Spirit of Christ living within us and we have access to His grace. In our process of becoming more like Jesus, we can, however, respond negatively to those hardships that God allows into our lives. I found the following quote from Douglas Moo helpful:

The Epistle to the Romans 1. From Justification to Salvation (5:1–11)

All suffering betrays the presence of the enemy and involves attacks on our relationship to Christ. IF MET WITH DOUBT in God’s goodness and promise, or bitterness toward others, or despair and even resignation, these sufferings can bring spiritual defeat to the believer. BUT if met with the attitude of “confidence and rejoicing” that Paul encourages here, these sufferings will produce those valuable spiritual qualities that Paul lists in vv. 3b–4.

Application: Realize this - all types of people encounter pain and suffering, those who are in Christ, and those who are lost. We who are in Christ actually have the ability to respond to pain & suffering in a redemptive way that leads to becoming more mature in our faith.

The magnitude of God’s Amazing Love is displayed through His timing (Rom 5:6-8)

Explanation: Paul continues to pour out his understanding of God’s love to His children. He does this by introducing the timing of when God extended His love to us. Paul points out that God grants His love to us “while we yet sinners” (v. 8). God did not wait until we had earned or deserved His love; He gave us the gift of Jesus while we were still in open rebellion to Him.

If God had waited until we deserved His love, we would still be waiting. One our one we can never get to that place. That’s why Paul states His love came to us “when we were yet without strength” (v. 6)

Illustrate: A great deal of our societal structure is based on performance-based awards:

Do really well at your job and you can qualify for a promotion / raise

Excel as a player and you get a better contract

Obtain A’s & B’s and you get to go on the special trip / event

Argument: Merit-based awards for personal achievement is not necessarily a bad thing. Not everyone puts in the same effort and not everybody deserves the same recognition. There is nothing wrong with recognizing merit - the “every body gets a trophy” mentality is destroying the ideal of doing your best. The modern concept of “equity” is poisonous to societal flourishing.

There is however, a magnitude of difference between the material dimension and the spiritual. This is what makes God’s love so truly amazing. He grants His favor and approval to those who ARE NOT WORTHY. He gives His love to the UNLOVABLE.

The idea of “God helps those who help themselves” is not biblical. It comes from one of Aesop’s fables. The biblical truth is that God helps those who cannot help themselves.

Application: You are messed up and you can’t fix yourself. You can’t ever work to improve your life enough to where God can accept you. The Good News is that you don’t have to. God loves you enough to meet you where you are. And He loves you enough not to leave you where He found you!

God’s Amazing Love to His children is observed in our inheritance (Rom 5:9-11)

Explanation: Paul concludes this section of his letter by emphasizing another aspect of justification: the avoidance of God’s wrath. Those who are in Christ have had their future changed. Before coming to Christ through faith, each person was under God’s judgment because of sin. Paul is telling his audience that not only has the negative been averted (no Hell in our future), but we actually get to benefit from the positives of being reconciled to God in the present and by experiencing His life in us now.

Illustration: a person may be the beneficiary of some benefactor’s will, and not even be aware of it. It is possible for one to be a designated beneficiary of large sums of money without knowing it. Until the death of the benefactor, the beneficiary's life remains the same. This same person will however, experience a great change in circumstances once the will is executed.

Argument: The one who is in Christ, however, is more like the one who benefits from a trust fund. While the majority of the assets aren’t released until the death of the benefactor, the beneficiary of the trust fund can draw on the trust to meet current needs and can inherit sizable percentages of the trust at certain disbursement ages (25, 30, 0r 35).

Those of us in Christ will not receive our full inheritance until Jesus comes back for His bride or until He calls us home. We do, however, experience a vast difference in the quality of our life when we place our faith in Jesus. We are made new creations (2 Cor 5:17) and we are indwelt with the Holy Spirit so we can actually experience life at a new level (cf John 10:10b). We have to wait to experience the total fulness of salvation (glorification), but we are being “saved by His life” now in a very real sense.

Application: You can experience Joy in the journey as you grow in becoming more like Jesus. Realize that all of the joy is not going to be fun; part of the joy may be gained by learning to trust and experience God in a more full was through hardship. You can trust Him because He has already demonstrated His Amazing Love.