"Therefore, since we are justified by faith ..." If you remember back to when we started this series on Romans, I said then that whenever we come across that word "Therefore" we need to stop and think about what’s gone before. What is it that the ’therefore’ refers to? Well, I wonder if you can recall what it is we’ve discovered as we’ve gone through Romans 1-4 so far? Turn back to Romans 1 if you will and see if you can recall what we’ve discovered as we’ve gone through each chapter.
We began in 1:16-17 with the statement that the gospel is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith - for the Jew first and also for the Gentile. That certainly fits with 5:1 "Therefore, since we are justified by faith" And we discovered that in it a righteousness from God is revealed - again, by faith for faith. Then in the rest of ch 1 we saw how all the efforts of people to be righteous, to be right with God, have failed. In ch 2 we saw how even the Jews who were given God’s law failed to keep it. So we saw that that there’s this universal failing of humanity to do what’s right, an inability to please God. But then as we moved into ch3 we discovered that even if humanity had failed to be righteous, God hadn’t. He’d remained faithful to his promise to Abraham to bring a blessing on all of humanity through his descendants. How? By sending Jesus to bring redemption to all who have faith. Look at 3:23&24: Now all people "are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." Finally, in ch 4 we discover that this has always been the case, ever since Abraham. Abraham was justified because he believed God. His righteousness was counted to him as a gift, just as our righteousness is counted to us as a gift now.
In other words, no-one has to earn their salvation. God gives it to us freely as a gift. All we have to do is to believe.
So, ’Therefore’, he says, ’we have peace with God.’
Now peace is a timely subject this week, isn’t it? The nation stopped on Thursday to remember those Australian and New Zealand soldiers who fought and died to secure our peace as a nation. I don’t think it’d be far off the mark to suggest that Anzac Day is the most spiritual day in our calendar. And it’s important that we stop to remember, that we don’t take for granted the peace that we, the many, enjoy as a result of the sacrifice of the few who fought and died. In fact if you think about the world in which we live, peace is a rare commodity. So much of our world suffers from war, violence, terrorism, oppression and the like, while we enjoy freedom, choice, comfort, a legal system that protects our rights, a social welfare system that ensures a basic standard of living. All as a result of the peace in which we live.
There’s a similar situation for those who have faith in God. Paul says we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And this is a peace which affects us both in the present and in the future. Look at what he says:
Now:
"Through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand." Our current status is that we now have access to the grace of God in which we stand. In other words we now have access to that righteousness that Jesus Christ has won for us. You hear about young people who are left a large inheritance that’s tied up in a trust account that they can’t access until they’ve met certain conditions: coming of age, getting a degree, getting married, getting rid of their nose ring. And sometimes Christians think of the righteousness that God offers us as being like that. It’s something they know is theirs but they think they have to do something before they can actually get their hands on it. It might be some moral reform, it might be some regular religious service, it might be having a regular quiet time. Whatever it is, they think that the gift of righteousness is dependent on how they behave. But that’s to misunderstand the grace and the gift of God. There are no strings attached to this gift. We have access to it right now. When God looks at you today, he sees, not your failings, but the righteousness that Jesus Christ gives to all those who believe in him. So we have peace with God right now.
But there’s a future hope as well.
Then:
"We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God" (v2). If right now we can enjoy the knowledge that Christ has made us right with God, we can also look forward to the day when we’ll share God’s glory. That is, we look forward with eager anticipation to the day when our whole being will be transformed into the likeness of God, into a state not enjoyed by human beings since the day when Adam and Eve first disobeyed. We look forward to a day when our righteousness will not just be a conferred righteousness, but an actual righteousness, when our old sinful bodies will be replaced by new bodies at one with God. That’s what he means by sharing God’s glory. No wonder he rejoices in what’s to come.
But even in the present, in this imperfect world in which we still live, we can rejoice in the peace we have with God. Even when we suffer as a result of our faith we can be confident in the peace we have with God. Look at v3:
Now:
"And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and hope does not disappoint us,"
Even living in a fallen world, we can rejoice, we can boast in the knowledge that whatever happens to us leads us to peace with God. Now remember that when Paul talks about suffering, he’s thinking of being thrown out of the synagogue, of being spat on and cursed and insulted. He’s thinking of being imprisoned, whipped, shipwrecked, stoned, all because of his proclamation of Christ as Lord. But those things haven’t stopped him, or cowed him, or depressed him. Rather they reinforce his confidence in the gospel. How is that? Well, he says, suffering produces endurance, endurance character, character produces hope, which doesn’t disappoint us. I found that word ’character’ translated by one person as provedness. Now I’m not sure that’s an actual word. My spell checker didn’t like it. But it gives us the idea, doesn’t it? It when we’ve endured opposition that we begin to discover that our faith is real and lasting.
When those first Anzacs sailed into Gallipoli on the first Anzac Day, they were largely unproven soldiers. If they’d seen any fighting it was nothing compared to what they were about to experience. I imagine that not a few of them would have been praying as the landing barges hit the sand that they’d show courage in the face of the gunfire they were about to face. But when they withdrew some months later, having endured the relentless machine gun fire, having made some progress against an immovable enemy in an unwinnable campaign, they could hold their heads high (once they were out of range of the enemy bullets of course), because their courage, their character, was proven. And that gave them confidence to go into their next campaign knowing that they’d endure it as well.
So for us, as we endure as Christians, as we persevere in our faith we gain confidence that we’ll continue to endure. Our weak faith grows and character develops. And it isn’t just our own perseverance that does this. Those who are young in the faith sometimes wonder whether they have enough faith to see it through, whether the faltering belief they have is enough. The answer to that question is yes! It is enough. Why? For two reasons. First, because faith is never measured by quantity. Jesus said faith the size of a mustard seed was enough to move a mountain. The quantity of faith isn’t what matters, What matters is the God we have faith in. He’s the one who supplies the power, not us. But secondly, even if our own faith is weak, we can look at the way the faith of others has endured through history. Make no mistake, Satan has been trying to destroy the church since Jesus first chose his disciples. He’s thrown every weapon in his arsenal at us, and the church is stronger today than it’s ever been. Why? Because people have endured, they’ve persevered in their faith in God. And God hasn’t let them down. So again we can look forward:
Then:
He says: "Our hope doesn’t disappoint us." He knows he’ll go on, and that the church will go on, because our faith has been proven over and over again.
I guess you could say that the hope of those first Anzacs hasn’t disappointed either. We’re rightly proud of the reputation of our Aussie diggers. Wherever they’ve been involved in conflicts they’ve done well. Still, as the Americans discovered in the Vietnam War, the reputation of a nation’s army is only as good as the next war allows.
But the proof of the Christian’s future hope is more than just the perseverance of the saints. It’s this: v5: "Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." As we look forward to the hope of God’s glory, we begin to experience it even now in the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit. God has shown his love for us not just by sending Jesus to die for our sins and to rise for our righteousness. He’s poured his love into our hearts, Paul says, by giving us his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s presence is the reason that Christians have endured. Our hope doesn’t disappoint because each step of the way God is with us strengthening us, guiding us, empowering us. And notice the way he expresses this gift of God’s love. He’s lavished love upon us. There’s a sense of abundant generosity in that phrase ’poured out’. To show just how generous this gift of love is he goes on to show us what God’s love means in practice"
Before:
He says: "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." God chose just the right time to show us how much he loved us. How was it the right time? It was the right time because it was while we were helpless, weak. "God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us." Can you see why this was "the right time"?
It shows the nature of his love for us. That is, his love is unconditional. Christ died for us while we were still sinners, while we were his enemies. You can imagine a soldier taking a bullet to save his mate, but you can’t imagine him trying to protect one of the enemy can you? Yet that’s the nature of God’s love for us. Even when we were bitterly opposed to his rule, even when we stood under his righteous judgement he sent his own Son to die on our behalf.
Secondly it shows that our righteousness is all his doing. There was nothing that we could do to make things right with God. As we saw in the first couple of chapters we’re unable to do anything by ourselves to please God. Whatever we try will be flawed. But God does what’s needed. It’s all his doing. It depends on him alone.
Thirdly because he did it while we were still sinners, it assures us that nothing we do can separate us from his love. Now Paul will develop this idea further in chapter 8, but for now we need to remind ourselves of this fact. Too often we fear that God has turned away from us because of something we’ve done. You hear people say "I felt like God was a long way away." Or "God had abandoned me." If you feel like that then it’s important that you reflect on your condition when he first called you, when he sent Jesus Christ to die for you. It was while you were still his enemy. It was when you were still weak, still a sinner, deserving only of his anger and judgement, that he sent Jesus to die, to bring you back to him. So why would he let you go now?
Now:
Which brings us back to the present: He says, (v11) "But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."
One of the great things about the Anzac Day service in Anzac Cove is the fact that you find there not just Australian and New Zealand soldiers, but Turkish soldiers as well. It’s become not just a service of remembrance of those who died, but a recognition of the reconciliation that’s come about in the years since the war. And so they can join together in peace to remember their fallen heroes.
We too can rejoice in the reconciliation with God that we enjoy through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. This is a present reality that means that we can already enjoy the presence of God with us. The peace he talks about in v1 is a peace that rests entirely on this fact: though we were God’s enemies we’ve now been reconciled through the death of his Son. We can now get on with serving God to the best of our ability, as his Holy Spirit enables us and as we wait for the salvation he has prepared for us. And that brings us to our last point:
Then:
He says, in v10: "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. The peace we have isn’t just an external peace. It’s also an internal peace, a peace of mind, a confidence in the future. As we just saw, nothing can separate us from God’s love. But that’s now. As we look into the future, to the last day, when Jesus returns to judge all people, what do we expect? Well, what does it say? "If while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." Jesus died to reconcile us to God. That’s our present status. So when he comes to judge, what will happen to us? We’ll already have been reconciled to God. Our sins have already been dealt with. All that will remain will be for us to be raised to eternal life with him. Which brings us back to the beginning. Jesus’ risen life will become our risen life. We’ll be given a new body which will reflect his glorious body and in that new body we’ll share the glory of God.
And so we return to where we started. None of us can, nor need, earn our salvation. God offers it to us as a gift, freely. He reconciles us to himself, removing the cause of enmity between us. And so we have true peace, peace which passes all understanding, peace with God, won for us by Jesus Christ and attested to by the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. We’ll go on in the next section to see how this peace we have with God is made available to all people, but for now the focus is on those who believe already. The message is one of hope and encouragement, of assurance. So be at Peace. Be encouraged that God’s love is such that he’ll never let you go, and that through the Holy Spirit he is with you and will help you to endure to the end.
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