Exposition of Romans 5:1-2

Welcome

Good morning,

I hope nobody got whiplash going from snow to eighty degrees this week! But I am so glad you came out to join us. I am really excited about all the progress being made towards the goals we have set.

I’m sure you guys have noticed that I’m carving out a little bit of time before my sermon begins each week to speak to the church family and give a mission report. Otherwise all the progress that’s being made here might go unnoticed, but you guys are doing a lot of work and this is my opportunity to brag on you guys a little bit.

Ministry Meetings

We’re having our business-ministry meeting: the purpose of this ministry team is being defined as recording and reporting the finances of the church in a transparent and open way that assures the full confidence of the members.

There’s actually a lot of work being done to expand the existing reports so that we can give everyone greater visibility into the inner workings of the church ministry. A lot of this work is behind the scenes, but we want to be able to send out end of the year reports to everyone in order to express our appreciation for your love and support. I could imagine Christmas being a season where we celebrate so many of the blessings that God has given to us.

One change that is being made to this ministry is that in the past the business meeting had to step in to coordinate and approve ministry decisions. But we want the business ministry to focus on their task of ensuring the clear and transparent financial operations of the church.

So I want to explain how we are going to meet the needs of approving and coordinating the ministry of the church. After-all, questions do come up and we have some level of coordinating oversight to work together to get things done.

Congregational Ministry Reports

We four seasonal ministry meetings for the whole congregation where I will distill the work that is being done and give a report so that everyone knows what is happening and what is going to happen. This year got a little bit off schedule so our Spring Meeting is going to be next Sunday on May 1st. These aren’t to be confused with our “annual meeting” where we vote on the budget.

My goal for these is to give the overarching vision of our ministry in 15 minutes or less.

Beginning with the Summer Meeting this year (which will be in August this year), I will start asking for the various ministry teams to send me any relevant information they want included in these reports. You don’t have to worry about formatting, I just need the raw information and I’ll put it together and report it the way you give it to me for you.

Ministry Team Meetings

I would like to start having ministry-team meetings on an as-needed basis to facilitate coordinating the ministry of the church. For example, in the announcements I’ve asked to meet with the building and ground’s ministry team sometime in the next week or two. I want to give you access to me to let me know what you are trying to do so that I can answer the questions you have or help meet any needs your ministry team has. And then if we need to reach out to other decision makers we can make sure that happens as well.

So real quick after church, the building and grounds ministry should come see me so we can nail down a time in the next week or so to meet together because I know there are a few items to discuss.

Challenge

Friendship prayer list:

One of the fruits of prayer is that it spiritually effects within us the things we pray for others. What I mean is that if you are praying for someone, you begin to connect to them and love them more deeply.

These friendship prayer lists are one way that your heart for the people in your life can begin to align with God’s heart for them. We talked about Jonah and how his heart did not match God’s towards the Ninevites. Proactively praying for someone on a regular basis is one means by which your heart will come in line with God’s for them.

Assignments

Read Romans 5:3-5.

Access To God By Faith: Romans 5:1-2

Today’s lesson brings us into Paul’s fourth argument that explains our access to God through faith. We are going to be introduced to the results of our being set right with God in Christ through faith. What does that mean for our relationship with God? And what does that mean in terms of our future?

Exegesis

Before we step up close to our lesson we want to explain the context and make a few observations.

First, you may remember how Paul's personal introduction to the Christians in Rome is based on Christ. He describes his identity in terms of his relationship to Christ, and his mission in terms of the calling he received from him. So Paul doesn’t just ask them to join his mission work because he is among the most famous apostles in the Christian faith, but instead, he’s asking them to reason what is the right response from their faith based on what kind of Lord they believe Jesus to be; can Jesus overcome the challenges they face as a small band of Christians in the most powerful city on earth?

This is important because it explains the theological texture of Paul’s rhetorical strategy in his first nine arguments from 1:18–11:36. Paul isn’t writing an academic treatise on Christian theology (even though his letter is saturated in gospel theology); he is issuing a call-to-action based on the person and power of Jesus Christ. So it is fitting for chapters 1-11 to lay out the work of Christ for salvation to the whole world.

This means these arguments are going somewhere. Instead of being separate, isolated chapters with their own individual theological thoughts, these arguments flow together and are designed to move the reader towards a very important conclusion, which is made in chapters 9-11. The intended theological effect of these arguments is cumulative, which is why missing this point causes so many Christian thinkers to set the emphasis of Romans in the wrong place, resulting in theological systems that would be unrecognizable to Paul himself.

Second, even though Paul has spent a considerable amount of time - the majority of his first three arguments - talking about the Jews, his audience is primarily composed of Gentile Christians. And, as Paul explains, it is their inclusion in God’s Kingdom that is part of the means by which God is going to be faithful to his promises to the Jewish patriarchs, which reassures both Jews and Gentiles of God’s faithfulness.

So in writing about how God is reconciling our broken world to himself through faith in Christ, Paul places Gentiles and Jews on the same footing before God, which not only reassures the Gentile Christians of God’s grace towards them, but also - and I think this is most important to Paul’s purpose - it includes them as integral functionaries of God’s Kingdom. They aren’t supposed to just sit back and let the “elite Jewish Christians” do all the heavy lifting simply because they are weak. No! They are supposed to get in the game and play right alongside them as coheirs of Christ and co-inheritors of his Kingdom!

Lastly, Paul’s fourth argument spans 5:1–11, where Paul explains the logical conclusions of his Abraham argument. In that sense, 4:1-5:11 is one complete thought. God’s means of justification through faith logically proceeds directly into Paul’s fifth argument based on the story of Adam. This is significant because the story of Adam underlies everything from 5:12 to 7:25, where the condition of the old man (i.e. Adam) then gives way to the condition of the new man (i.e. Jesus) in chapter 8 by means of faith.

I point this out because I am going to draw some fundamentally different conclusions than those drawn by Augustine and Luther. Paul describes Adam’s experience in 7:7–13 (where you’ll see the “I” stresses that we were all “in Adam”), and then what is presently true for those who are still “in Adam” and outside Christ in 7:14–25.

So the argument in 5:1–11 corresponds to chapter 8, which draws out key logical conclusions for Christians from what was explained in 5:12–7:25.

We can plainly see this correspondence:

Romans 5:1–2 CSB

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

Romans 8:1–4 CSB

1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, 2 because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, 4 in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

So we’re going to avoid some of the mistakes that come from treating these arguments as individual isolated theological treatises. What we are reading here today has its eye on realizing the new-man that is the subject of chapter 8.

The Triumph of Faith

Essential to Paul’s argument is the idea that “faith” as the means by which we are made righteous succeeds where the Law could not even attempt to go. There is a certain victory that the law was never envisioned to win that only faith can accomplish because of Jesus Christ.

And this victory is exemplified in Abraham:

Briefly expound > > >

Romans 4:20–25 CSB

20 He did not waver in unbelief at God’s promise but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 because he was fully convinced that what God had promised, he was also able to do. 22 Therefore, it was credited to him for righteousness. 23 Now it was credited to him was not written for Abraham alone, 24 but also for us. It will be credited to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25 He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

So faith is the means by which we find strength when facing the impossible and experience the glory of God. This happens when we are fully convinced that God will be faithful to his promises. Therefore, we are assured of our victory over sin by Jesus’ crucifixion, and we are assured of possessing eternal life by Jesus’ resurrection!

Romans 5:1 CSB

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Therefore” (“οὗν”) (v. 1): By now we are familiar with “οὗν”, which is one of Paul’s preferred formulas that summarize, conclude, and transition Paul’s propositional statements. So what follows marks a transition in thought based on the conclusions of Paul’s prior arguments.

So this verse summarizes and transitions the answers Paul has given to the problems raised by human sin in light of God’s justice.

“Since we have been justified by faith” (v. 1): Sometimes people glaze over listening to our good news because we have words that are meaningless to them. Like Charlie Brown’s mother, they just hear a long drain of indeterminate noise from us. This is why I like how N.T. Wright translates this clause: “since we have been declared ‘in the right’ on the basis of faith”.

The good news of Jesus shouts how the broken relationship between God and humanity is being set right so that there can once again be peace between us and God. In fact, I think if you ask a lot of mature Christians to explain the gospel, they might struggle to come up with something like that themselves as well because I think we, to whom the oracles of God have been entrusted, have buried our noses so deep into theology that we’ve lost sight of the simpler picture.

Now, so that we can really feel what Paul is saying here, I want you to imagine something with me for a moment that I hope will illustrate Paul’s point:

Imagine someone famous who was beloved by their fans passes away. Social media lights up with news of their passing, fact-checkers verify it’s not a death-hoax (because that’s the kind of world we live in today), and everyone is sharing how this person they’ve never met impacted and changed their lives for the better.

But the star’s obituaries betrayed a darker story; absent from their funeral was their father. They had a falling out when the star was younger and the quarrel never healed. The star dove into their work and never looked back at the tragically broken relationship with their father. Unfortunately, evidence of this tragedy was not limited to the relationship with the star’s father. This cycle repeated itself: the star had falling outs with their children as well, and were no longer on speaking terms with them. So the star’s children and grandchildren were also absent from their funeral.

For some of you, if you come from happy and supportive families, something like this might be very difficult to comprehend; what terrible tragedy could possibly separate family like this? But, for others, the pain of this brokenness is very real because they have lived out what it feels like not to have family in their life that they can call for help when things get difficult. They know what it is like to feel alone.

This explains at a superficial level an even greater tragedy: the vast majority of human beings live exactly like this in relation to their Creator. They refuse to acknowledge God, or even think about his existence seriously, and have even become hostile in their thinking towards God. Even though their life appears happy by all public appearances, and their friends appreciate them as nice people, they are cut off from the relationships that matter most in their life.

So what Paul is saying is that our “trust” in God, which is based on the love he demonstrated for us in Jesus Christ, is the means by which our broken relationship with God can be healed. And this is God’s wisdom for salvation.

“We have peace with God” (v. 1): Because Paul is speaking to Christians in Rome, he presents this justification as a past experience, obviously referring to their conversion, which should be clear enough from his comments later on in chapter six where he asks “Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Romans 6:3). So, although we shouldn’t focus too much on this detail, it is necessary to observe in order to avoid the mistake in thinking that because this is presented in the past tense it suggests predetermined outcomes. Paul is simply writing to Christians who have already been justified by Christ through faith.

What stands out in this clause is that we discover the chief result of being set-right with God: “peace”.

Now, if you were to replace “peace” with a blank space, and then fill that blank space in with what we hear most Christians or preachers talk about as the results of our salvation, how would this verse read? “Since we have been justified, we have 'a warm glow in the heart', 'a sigh of relief that God will fix all my problems', or ‘an orthodox understanding of theology’?” I think we want the hope that comes bursting out of us to reflect the reality of what God has done in us. We want our testimony to be one that when people read us they could fill in the blanks with the real good news of Jesus Christ!

Now this doesn’t change the fact, of course, that to a great many people today the whole idea of having peace with God is utter nonsense. Social media is ablaze with critics saying that "if there were a God, it’s crazy to think that he might actually be concerned with the individual goings-on of every single one of his human creatures”. But this simply misses that the reason you and I are relational beings is because we were created for a relationship with God. After-all, God did create animals that aren’t like us and don’t have all the complexities that accompany our capacities for relationship. He didn’t have to create us. And he didn’t have to make us the way we are made, to know love and joy; to be able to empathize and weep with those who weep; and to be able to celebrate the glories of life. But God did make us in this way precisely so that we could share in the glories of eternity as relational beings made in his similitude.

Human disinterest in finding peace with God really amounts to the relational dysfunction that we considered in our illustration about the famous star whose relationship was broken with their father, which created a vicious cycle that repeated in the lives of their own children. Our relationship with our Creator is the single most important relationship in our life precisely because it is the means by which we understand all other relationships.

I want to repeat that:

Our relationship with God is the single most important relationship in our life precisely because it is the means by which we understand all other relationships.

Our desperate need for peace is obvious once we have grappled with Romans 1:18–32. Not only our behaviour, but also our thinking, and even our feeling has become hostile towards God. For many people, those who are even willing to acknowledge the possibility of God, this means that they find it hard to believe that a relationship with God is even possible. And yet this is precisely what Jesus accomplished upon the cross, where the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom, signifying that God had removed the veil of separation in our flesh that separated him from us.

So when we are finally reconciled to God our father, we discover that he not only wants to enjoy this one-to-one relationship, but also to bring us into his Kingdom to share in his glory. Yes, that means sharing in the suffering of Christ on earth as we advance his Kingdom in the face of evil through love. But, even more, it means sharing in his eternal glories when Christ finishes our redemption.

“Through our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 1): I don’t know of any doctrine more central to the Christian faith that is more difficult to conform our thinking to than to this doctrine. In fact, I think it is one of the major principles of Paul’s teaching on the “new man” from chapter 8 that this truth is impossible for the “old man” to accept.

The most essential tenant of the gospel is that our justification, sanctification, and redemption come through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. They are not the result of our work, or labor, or victories as accomplished by our own strength. They are won by Jesus Christ!

And so Paul says:

1 Corinthians 1:30 CSB

30 It is from him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us—our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption

There’s nothing we can add to the work that Christ has accomplished on the cross. And thanks be to God that he doesn’t ask us to add to that work. Rather, he simply calls us to live out the grace that has been shown to us.

Let me repeat that:

God doesn’t ask us to add to the work he did on the cross. He simply calls us to live out the grace that he showed to us there!

Taken together, then, we find that the separation between us and God that was caused by our sins is bridged by the trust we place in God being assured by the love he demonstrated for us in Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:2 CSB

2 We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

“We have also obtained access” (“προσαγωγὴν” [prosagōgē]) (v. 2): Have you ever had a fight with someone, perhaps a colleague or friend, where you “reconciled” but nothing was ever the same? You weren’t hostile, but your presence around each other wasn’t welcome? This completes Paul’s summary transition to ensure that we understand that God’s forgiveness towards our sins is not like that: we have been granted access into his presence. The separation has been fully bridged. We can come boldly before his throne of grace!

However, this is selling what Paul means short. The word he used here for introduction is “προσαγωγὴν” (prosagōgē). It’s a word which is used to depict two great images:

First, it’s used for ushering someone into the presence of royalty. For this reason, it became used as the word that describes the approach of the worshipper to God. In this manner, Paul is saying that Jesus ushers us into the very presence of God. He opens the door for us to the presence of the King of Kings; and when that door is opened what we find is grace; not condemnation, not judgment, not vengeance, but the sheer, undeserved, incredible kindness of God!

Second, this word also brings to mind another picture that describes the place where ships come in to harbour or seek safe haven during storms. Taken in this light, the idea is that those souls that have been tempest-tossed in life have at last reached the safe-haven of God’s grace in Christ. Though we were sinking and being battered by the storms of life, Christ rescued us and gave us rest for our weary souls in his presence.

“Through him by faith” (v. 2): We must not make the mistake of thinking that Paul is merely being redundant here. “Okay Paul”, we might be tempted to say, “we get it; everything is through Christ by faith.” We shouldn’t think of these truths in such wearisome dogmatic tones to begin with. But that aside, this is describing something different than what we just finished describing.

Whereas above we said that Christ is the one who brings us peace when our trust for God is assured by the love he showed us in Christ. Now we hear that we gain access into God’s presence through this same faith.

Have you ever wondered how to experience the spiritual presence of God in your life?

I lament that so little emphasis within the Church is placed on communion in the very presence of God, especially given just how much emphasis is placed on this in Scripture. Perhaps it is this deficiency that has caused so many to grow lukewarm in their faith. The bright love for Jesus they once has grows cold because they so rarely - if ever - entered his presence to be refreshed by his love! And perhaps it is because they were never taught from the pulpit how to enter into this peace through faith.

There is available to Christians an “incomparable eternal weight of glory”:

2 Corinthians 4:16–18 CSB

16 Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. 17 For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. 18 So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

You will see that entering his presence through this kind of faith requires perseverance through many trials, daily inward renewal from the Holy Spirit, and eternity being stamped on our eyeballs so that we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

Let me apply this in real world terms:

When someone becomes so assured of God’s love by Christ upon the cross, that their trust in God becomes so absolute that they join Christ in the mission of his Kingdom and persevere through various trials for his sake, walking in the same footsteps of faith that Abraham walked, then they walk in those footsteps of faith into the presence of God being escorted by Christ himself. And their inner person should be filled with an eternal weight of glory that surpasses anything this world can describe.

One final note before I move on: sometimes I hear people criticize what I’ve said above as “emotionalism”. But let me say that we are called to love God with all of our “heart”, as well as our “mind”. I do not think it is a mark of spiritual maturity for one’s heart to be so little active in loving God that our emotions are all but silent. Nor do I see an emotionless faith from Jesus upon the cross. Instead, we want our emotions to be true. And so we should seek to experience Christ with our hearts as much as our minds (and let us not forget, “our soul and strength” as well).

“Into this grace” (v. 2): As you were meditating on this passage this week, as I hope you all spent time doing, I’m sure this clause stood out to you as you asked “what grace?” This is what I call “asking the questions of the text.” As you meditate on God’s word, you are allowing Scripture to penetrate so far into your thinking that you begin thinking the thoughts of Scripture. And so the questions of the text should arise - hopefully with their answer - in your mind as you begin thinking Scripture’s thoughts. And so we ask “to what” does “this grace” refer?

When one stands back and views this passage from the terrifying mountain top of Romans 1:18, where Paul describes our just deserves of God’s wrath, and how much we have all entangled ourselves into the wickedness of this age to such an extent that no one is wholly innocent; indeed, to speak of “good people” is really to speak of “greater and lesser degrees of guilt”. Then our eyes are immediately drawn to the bright glory of the peace described in the prior verse. That God elected in his mercy to overlook our rebellion and forgive our sin is the grace in which we stand in his presence. But this grace is more than mere inner tranquility. These cessation of hostilities between us and God radically reshapes both our inner person and the way we engage the world around us. So our “standing in this grace” does not suggest to my mind merely that God has ceased hostilities towards us while we maintain our hostilities towards others, but rather, it indicates a transformative grace that finally allows us to stand in God’s presence.

This is as Paul wrote to Titus:

Briefly expound > > >

Titus 3:3–7 CSB

3 For we too were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved by various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another. 4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, 5 he saved us—not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy—through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. 6 He poured out his Spirit on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we may become heirs with the hope of eternal life.

Therefore, this grace is the transformative peace of Christ that comes from the love he has demonstrated for us upon the cross, and is realized through the faith his cross inspires.

“In which we stand” (v. 2): There is a story told in the movie “Bridge of Spies” in which an agent of Russia is caught spying in America. He retells a story of a man who came to his house during his boyhood. His father would say “watch this man”. So he began watching this man whenever he came to his house. They man observed how he never once saw him do anything remarkable. Until, one day, the boys house was overrun by partisan border guards. His father and mother were beaten, along with this man. They boy saw how every time they hit this man, he stood back up. Harder and harder they would hit him. And still he would get back up. The man said he remembered the border guards calling this man “the standing man”. He remarked that it was because this man kept standing back up that the border guards stopped beating him and let him live.

I think the Church today needs to be renewed in this kind of grace. The kind of grace in which we are willing to stand, even when the world batters us, beats us, and does everything it can to get us to deny Christ, whether by word or action. We need to be a “standing people”.

1 Corinthians 16:13 CSB

13 Be alert, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong.

So one of the truths of the gospel is that when we enter this grace through Christ and experience the peace that brings about the cessation of hostilities between us and God, we are able to stand in that peace because we stand in the presence of God.

“And we boast in the hope of the glory of God” (v. 2): These verses are one of Paul’s great lyrical passages, in which he almost sings the intimate joy of his confidence in God. Trusting faith has done what the labour to produce the works of the law could never do: it has given us peace with God. And Paul shouts this! He sings it! He boasts in his hope for the glory of God.

I think this clause is where we’ll find some further clarity into what is meant if we look at other translations:

Romans 5:2 (NASB 2020)

2 ...we celebrate in hope of the glory of God.

Romans 5:2 (ESV)

2 ...we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

The idea being expressed here is the confident outpouring of a triumphant faith that is assured of its hope in the glory of God. Because God secures our hope, we celebrate, we rejoice, we boast in our hope in him even when the world wallows in hopelessness.

I think this celebratory triumph of faith is what should characterize the Church during periods of great darkness in the world. Though, drawing on a passage we referenced earlier, we cannot have this kind of triumphant faith if our attention is fixed on the temporal things of this world. To access this joy requires being fixed firmly on our hope in the glory of God.

Celebrate the Glory of God

Last night while preparing my sermon I finished the third clause of the first verse and the estimated preaching time on Logos was 45 minutes (which means about an hour for me). There is so much in these themes that could be unpacked. I’m not exaggerating when I say that every knock and cranny of these verses is filled with the glories of God.

These first two verses celebrate our access into the very presence of God himself. We have ‘the right to approach’: this is the language of the Temple, where people get to come near to where God is. And in this manner, ‘grace’ is almost shorthand for the presence and power of God himself. As a result of being justified by faith, we are ‘in a state of grace’ where we are surrounded by God’s love and generosity. As we do so, we realize that this is what we were made for; that this is what truly human existence ought to be like; and that it is the beginning of something so big, so massive, so unimaginably beautiful and powerful, that we almost burst as we think of it. When we stand there in God’s own presence, we sense that we are being invited to go all the way, to become the true reflections-of-God, the true image-bearers, that we were made to be. Paul puts it like this: ‘we celebrate the hope of the glory of God’. This is the glory that was lost through idolatry and sin (see 3:23). When we finally inherit this glory, the whole creation will be set free from corruption and share our new-found freedom, the freedom to be our true selves at last (see 8:21).

At almost every point in these verses we gain new and fresh insights as we stop and look back to where we came from, and then turn and look forward to where we are going; each revealing new insights into the grace of God and our hope in God’s glory.

No wonder Paul can then go on to speak of celebration even in the midst of sufferings, the necessary path through which we travel as we share the father’s work in this still-corrupt world. Because of this experience of God’s grace we actually celebrate in our sufferings. There is an experience of God’s grace that is so real that it overcomes our sufferings in this world and produces in us this kind of transformative rejoicing that we will explore next week in verse 3-5.

So this morning, as we now begin to turn our attention to worship Christ, let our hearts be filled with celebration as Christ escorts through faith into the presence of God. Come and join me as we lift one voice to worship our God and king!