I’d like to begin this morning with a question, one that I first came across more than 30 years ago in an evangelism training program called Evangelism Explosion:
“Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you know for sure that if you were to die today you would go to heaven?”
That question was one of two “diagnostic questions” that we were taught to use in sharing the gospel with unbelievers in order to determine whether or not a person was “saved”. As I’ve matured as a disciple of Jesus, I’ve come to understand that eternal life involves so much more than just going to heaven when I die, as important as that is. Therefore, I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps this question is more useful in evaluating how confident a disciple of Jesus is in his or her salvation than it is in determining whether or not a person is a believer in the first place. Since heaven is the ultimate fulfillment of our salvation, how sure we are that we will arrive there one day is probably pretty good measure of how confident we are in our salvation.
If you can’t answer that question with a confident “yes” this morning, if you’re not 100% sure that if you were to die today, you would go to heaven, I’ve got good news for you. Paul’s words in Romans 5 that we’ll study this morning should give all of us who are Jesus’ disciples great confidence in our salvation. And even if you are already confident in your salvation, it certainly won’t hurt to be reminded once again of why we ought to have that kind of confidence.
Originally my plan was to cover the first five verses of Romans chapter 5 this week and then cover the next six verses next week. But the more I read and studied both passages, the more I became convinced that they need to be considered as a whole unit. So we’ll be looking at verses 1-11 as a whole for the next two weeks. This morning I want to focus on why we can have confidence in our salvation and then next week I want to come back to this passage and see how that truth helps us to persevere through the trials of life.
So go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 5 and follow along as I read beginning in verse 1:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 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. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 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. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
(Romans 5:1-11 ESV)
Here is what I would suggest is the main message of this passage:
God’s love guarantees that
since He saved me, He will keep me
This passage is major turning point in Paul’s letter. After his introduction in the first 17 verses of the letter, Paul spends nearly two chapters describing the hopeless condition of man. Then at the end of chapter 3, he reveals God’s divine solution for our sin made available to all through Jesus. Paul continues that line of thinking in chapter 4, where he illustrates what justification by faith looks like and proves that it is the only possible way to be made right with God using Abraham as his example. But at the beginning of chapter 5 Paul turns from explaining how one is justified to describing the results of being justified.
He begins this section by pointing out that justification by faith is the permanent possession of every disciple of Jesus. Undoubtedly Paul’s Jewish readers would have had a lot of questions after reading what Paul had written in the first four chapters, questions that many of us may still have today that keep us from having complete confidence in our salvation:
• Even if faith will justify me in the beginning, will it justify me in the ends?
• Is it possible that God could change his mind and “unjustify” me?
• What happens when troubles and problems come into my life? Do they mean that God no longer loves me or that I’m no longer justified?
• How can I be sure that if I follow this way, it will take me to heaven?
In these 11 verses, Paul assures his readers that they can be confident that their salvation will carry them through to the end because it rests on God’s love – a love that will never cease or change. So let’s examine…
HOW GOD’S LOVE GUARANTEES HE WILL KEEP ME
1. All three persons of the Godhead are involved in my justification:
As we’ve discussed before, even though the term trinity is never found in the Bible, the concept of a triune God – one God consisting of three distinct persons – is present throughout the Scriptures. This is one of those places. In this passage we find all three persons of the Godhead, - Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are intimately involved in my justification and salvation:
• God the Father loves me and initiates the plan that provides for my justification
When I started preparing the message this week, I was frankly overwhelmed by all of the crucial teaching that is included in these 11 verses. I quickly understood why quite a few pastors have preached 4 or 5 messages on these 11 verses. But the more I read through these verses, the clearer it became that the main theme here is God’s love. It is God’s love for you and for me that is the motivation behind His plan to justify us through faith and it is his love that guarantees that He will carry His plan through to completion. We see that love mentioned specifically here in verse 5 and again in verse 8.
That love was not just some emotional feeling on the part of God, but rather it was a decision of His will to do something for our good regardless of what it would cost Him. Because of His love for us and because He knew before creation that all of us would be sinners who fall short of His glory, God initiated the plan that Paul described in the first four chapters of his letter. It was a plan that demanded a great cost on God’s part – the death of His one and only Son.
This plan was in place before creation. As we saw earlier when we looked at chapter 4, God had revealed that plan, at least in part, to Abraham. It was with that plan in mind that God promised that He would bless all the nations of the world through Abraham’s seed. That plan was advanced when Isaac was born and then it was brought to its fulfillment by Jesus, the promised seed. As Paul points out in verse 6, that all occurred at just the right time according to God’s plan.
• God the Son provides the means for my justification through his death and resurrection
In just a moment, we’re going to see the benefits we receive as a result of God’s plan. And all those benefits are made available through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Three times in this passage, we are told that all that we have comes “through Jesus.” In verse 1, we find that we have peace with God “through Jesus.” In verse 2, Paul writes that it is “through him” that we have access into the grace of God. And finally, in verse 11, we see that it is “through our Lord Jesus Christ” that we have received reconciliation.
Paul further explains how that occurs in verse 10, where he explains that we were reconciled “by the death of his son” and that we shall be saved “by his life”. So there can be no doubt that Jesus is the only way that we can be made right with God since He is the only one who has ever died for our sins and been raised from the dead.
• God the Holy Spirit confirms my justification through His presence
In verse 5, we see that one way that God demonstrates His love for us is that He pours that love into our hearts by giving us the Holy Spirit. I want us to note two things here:
o The giving of the Holy Spirit is a lavish outpouring of God’s love for us, not just a trickle. His love isn’t just rationed out to us drop by drop, but it is a mighty, endless current.
o The verb tense of “has been given” indicates that this is something that God did for us at a given point in the past. That occurs at the very same moment in time that we are justified. So we only get the Holy Spirit once. And just like there is nothing we can do to earn our justification, there is nothing we can do to earn more of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit serves a number of purposes in our lives, but the one that is most relevant to what we’re studying this morning is found in Ephesians 1:
In him [Jesus] you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
(Ephesians 1:13-14 ESV)
The Holy Spirit is given to every believer as a guarantee that our salvation is permanent and that God will bring it to its completion by making sure we receive the inheritance that we learned about in Romans 4 – that future physical kingdom where we will reign with Jesus.
So my salvation is guaranteed first of all by the active participation of all three persons of the Godhead in the process of salvation. Secondly it is guaranteed because…
2. Through the salvation He provides, God satisfies my deepest needs at every stage of life:
As we’ve already seen, the verb tenses Paul uses are critical in understanding this passage. Understanding the tense of the verb “has been given” helped us to see that the giving of the Holy Spirit is a one-time event that occurred in the past.
Verb tenses will continue to be important as we go through the rest of the passage as well so my initial thought was to have a brief Greek grammar lesson at this point in the message. But since I knew that as soon as I mentioned the word “grammar” most of your eyes would immediately glaze over, I decided that we’ll use the “Connections” time to explore that a little deeper for those of you who are interested in doing so.
In addition to paying close attention to the tense of the verbs Paul uses, it’s also important to note the repetition of certain phrases in this passage:
o Note the phrase “while we were…” in verses 6, 8, and 10. Those three verses all describe what we were like before we were justified through faith. But what is really interesting to me is that the verb “we were” in all three of those verses is actually a present tense verb rather than a past tense verb. I think Paul uses a present tense verb there intentionally because he wants to show that those three things are a reflection of our natural character – we are and have always been weak, sinners and God’s enemies.
o Note the phrases “much more” in verses 9 and 10 and the phrase “more than that” in verse 11. We’ll come back to the significance of those verses near the end of the message.
o Finally, you will see the phrase “we rejoice” in verses 2, 3, and 11. We’ll spend more time focusing on that concept next week.
When we consider all these things as a whole, we find that the salvation that we receive as a result of God’s love meets all my deepest needs – past, present and future:
• I am a sinner, but in the past, I was justified and reconciled
In verse 8, we are reminded that God didn’t wait to show His love for us until we got our act together. He did that while we are still sinners. And aren’t you glad for that? If God had waited for us to quit being sinners then He would still be waiting to show us His love.
Paul describes what God did to deal with the problem of my sin in two different ways:
o In verse 1, Paul reveals that we have been justified. As we’ve been reminded frequently in our study of Romans, to be justified means that God has declared us “not guilty” because Jesus paid the penalty for our sin through His death and resurrection. The tense of the verb “justified” there indicates that this is a one-time action that occurred in the past. It is not something that needs to occur over and over again. The matter of our guilt was settled once for all the very moment that we placed our faith in Jesus alone.
It is also important to note that “have been justified” is a passive verb, which indicates that it is not something we do for ourselves, but something that God must do for us.
o In verse 10, Paul writes that “we were reconciled to God”. The idea of reconciliation is to bring together two things that are separated. As we’ll see more fully in a moment, my sin has separated me from God and actually made me His enemy. So there is a need for me to be brought back together with Him. And we see that “through Jesus”, God has accomplished that reconciliation.
Just as we saw with justification, the verb “were reconciled” in verse 10 indicates it is a one-time action that took place in the past. And it, too, is a passive verb that shows that it is God and not me, who has accomplished that reconciliation.
So we see that in the past, God satisfied my need to deal with the fact that I am a sinner by justifying me and reconciling me to Himself.
• I am God’s enemy, but in the present I have peace with God
My guess is that most of us, even before we became disciples of Jesus, would not consider ourselves to have been enemies of God. I certainly know that before I put my faith in Jesus, I wouldn’t have considered myself to be God’s enemy - it was more like I was just indifferent to the things of God. But from God’s perspective, our sin nature automatically makes us His enemy and separates us from Him. Here are just a couple verses that confirm that idea:
For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.
(Romans 8:7 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,
(Colossians 1:21-22 ESV)
It is clear here that the mind that is not set on the things of God is hostile to God and therefore makes us His enemies. Before we were justified and reconciled to God every single one of us was an enemy of God.
God certainly satisfies my need to deal with the fact that I am an enemy of God by reconciling me to Himself, as we have already seen. But God does something even greater than that. As Paul reveals in verse 1, He gives me peace with Himself.
The word translated “peace” here comes from a root word that means “to join together”. It is important to note that this is peace with God which is not the same as the peace of God that Paul writes about in Philippians 4. The peace of God is more of an experiential subjective state which undoubtedly rests on first having peace with God. But the peace of God that Paul writes about here is an objective fact. The idea here is that I have been cleansed from the sin that kept me from being joined together with God so that there is no longer anything that separates us. Therefore, I am no longer God’s enemy.
It is also important to note that when Paul writes that “we have peace with God”, he uses a present tense verb. That indicates that this is our present condition and that it will continue indefinitely into the future. That means that when I place my faith in Jesus, my justification results in me permanently being at peace with God.
There is one additional way that God meets my present needs…
• I am weak, but in the present I stand in God’s grace
In verse 6, I learn that in my natural state, I am weak. Given the context, there is little doubt that Paul is once again reinforcing the idea that I am completely incapable of doing anything on my own to be justified before God.
In verse 2, we find how God satisfies my need to deal with this weakness:
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand…
The word “access” was used to describe the right that was granted for someone to enter into the presence of the king. In Paul’s day, not just anyone could waltz into the presence of the king. To do so without an invitation could result in death.
This idea of being invited into the presence of God was completely foreign to the Jews. To them, seeing God face to face meant swift and certain death. For instance, only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and later the Temple and even He could only do that one day a year on the Day of Atonement.
But one of the benefits of our justification is that we have now been granted access into God’s presence.
The verbs “obtained” and “stand” are in the perfect tense in Greek. That simply means that Paul is describing actions that occurred in the past, but which have continuing effects. So those verbs emphasize the permanency of our access to God. We could accurately translate the first part of verse 2 like this:
Through him we have also obtained, as a permanent possession, access by faith into this grace in which we stand permanently…
Paul specifically writes that we have been given this permanent access into the grace of God. Grace is the sphere of God’s infinite power working for us and not against us. And that is exactly what we need to counter our weakness to do anything about our sin.
Finally we see that God provides for my future need…
• In the future, I will be saved from God’s wrath and share in God’s glory
Let’s look at verses 9 and 10:
Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
Let me point out two important elements in these verses:
o First, notice the phrase “much more” which Paul uses twice in these verses. That, in itself points to the fact that our salvation involves much more than just being justified and reconciled in the past and being at peace with God and standing in His grace in the present.
o That idea is reinforced by the use of future tense verbs – “shall we be saved”. So again we see that there is a future aspect of salvation that we have yet to experience.
So what exactly does that future salvation look like? Paul reveals two of the most significant aspects of that future salvation:
o In verse 9, he tells us that our future salvation guarantees that we will be saved from the wrath of God that all of us deserve because of our sin.
o The other element in that future salvation is described in verse 3:
…we rejoice in hope of the glory of God…
What exactly does that mean? I think we need to bring in a couple of other passages to help us understand that. Let’s begin with Jesus’ own words:
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,
(John 17:22 ESV)
And let’s look at a passage that we’ll eventually get to in our study of Romans that is even more to the point:
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
(Romans 8:16-18 ESV)
While we can’t possibly cover everything that is wrapped up in the hope of the glory of God, at a minimum, it means that we can have a confident expectation that one day we will literally share in Jesus’ glory in a way that is completely unfathomable for our human minds.
Paul wants his readers, and us, to be confident that God will be sure to bring us to that final culmination of our salvation. In effect, Paul is claiming that if a dead Savior on the cross can justify us and reconcile us to God, then certainly a living Savior is capable of making sure that we are saved from God’s wrath and share in Jesus’ glory. As we said at the beginning this morning…
God’s love guarantees that
since He saved me, He will keep me
Let me close by asking once again, the question I asked at the beginning of the message:
“Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you know for sure that if you were to die today you would go to heaven?”
My prayer this morning is that every single one of us here can answer that question with a confident “yes”, knowing that it is God’s unchanging, never ending, all powerful love that guarantees that God will finish the work He began in my life.
