[0:00] Join me in your copy of God's Word to the glorious book of Romans, chapter 5. Hope that you have enjoyed the study thus far in Romans.
[0:14] ! We know it's been sort of spread out, so our goal now is to kind of continue moving through it, like Nathan said, at a little bit of a faster pace. Just indulge me for a few minutes while I just want to emphasize, I guess, the importance of the book of Romans.
[0:31] If you're joining us for the first time in Romans, or you can't really remember from several weeks ago what was preached, some people here today may think, I understand the gospel message really well.
[0:49] I believe the gospel. I'm a Christian. I have for a long time trusted my life to Christ. I'm ready to move on to something else more deep beyond the gospel.
[1:05] I'm ready for deeper spiritual things. You may be thinking I might be bored in Romans. I may not be challenged in Romans.
[1:15] And I want to humbly confront people who feel this way this morning. There's a great quote by David Pryor and it says this, We never move on from the cross.
[1:32] We never move on from the cross. Only into a more profound understanding of the cross. The gospel can help you break free of all sorts of sin in our lives.
[1:48] Many of us who may claim that we know the gospel, love it and cherish it, and we're ready to move on to something else, those same people will forget the gospel probably later today.
[2:02] And definitely tomorrow. If we watch the lives of many throughout the week, even my own life, think about your own life, much of it is marked by unbelief in the gospel.
[2:15] Your lives would look radically different if the gospel was foremost in your mind and in your heart on a daily basis. Many of you are lack.
[2:25] You have a lack of joy. You're often bored. You're lazy. Depressed. Eaten up with anxiety and a lack of peace in your life. When facing circumstances, you may even lack consistent spiritual growth.
[2:43] And it seems like the Christian life for some of you has just been reduced down to a list of just don't do this and try to do this during the week. Always looking for a new technique, a new book.
[2:57] A new truth to take comfort in, to strengthen your faith. Many of you may be posturing throughout the week, trying to project that you are stronger in your faith than you actually are.
[3:11] Many may be performing, trying to prove themselves to others around them and to God. And then many of you are just faced with panicking. You are looking around with fear and anxiety in your life.
[3:25] If any of this stuff characterizes you, you need to be reminded that you do not move on from the gospel. The gospel itself is powerful enough to give you the confidence to free you from joy-robbing, legalistic, pharisaical thinking in your life, the crippling effects of guilt and shame in your life.
[3:50] It will help you. The gospel can set you free just basing the quality of your faith on how you feel on a particular day. Free you beyond circumstances and help you grow in joy and in gratitude.
[4:05] Because sadly, one of the lingering effects of sin in our lives is we have a tendency to forget. We have a tendency to forget the most basic foundational truths of the word of God.
[4:20] We forget it. And we think that we've moved on. And Satan, the world, and sin in our lives would love us just to forget the gospel and think that we've graduated from it to another theological level.
[4:35] The late Tim Keller learned a lot from him. Not a perfect man, but learned a lot from him. But one of the things he said I'll never forget is the gospel is not just the ABCs of Christianity.
[4:49] It's the A to Z of Christianity. It's not just the minimum required doctrine necessary for you to become a Christian, but it's the way that we make all spiritual progress therein.
[5:02] The gospel is that message that is simple, that a child can understand it, but yet so deeply profound that the greatest theologians can stare at it every day of their life and never get to the depths of it.
[5:15] Paul said he wrote a preaching to the Gentiles, the unsearchable riches of Christ. Ephesians 3, 7, and 8.
[5:26] If the gospel is true then, if it's true, it must stand up under the harshest scrutiny. We need an airtight case for the gospel if we are entrusting our souls to his message.
[5:43] If your faith, if your salvation was on trial, and you were headed into a courtroom, what would you take with you?
[5:55] Arguably, the book of Romans gives us the fullest detailed at-length explanation of the gospel. It is written like a court case.
[6:07] It is the fullest explanation of our salvation. It might have already been said, but Martin Luther believed that if you understood the book of Romans, it was the key to unlocking the entire Bible.
[6:21] So never get bored of reading Romans. So a quick reminder of where we've been. Quick reminder. Chapter 1 and 2, Paul brings a case against all humanity, including himself, Jews and Gentiles, that we are all fallen, sinful, and rebellious to our Creator.
[6:42] In chapter 3 and 4, he then moves to establishing unequivocally that salvation only comes on the basis of God's grace, working through man's faith.
[6:55] This is almost as if he put us all in the same category. He said, you cannot save yourself. You cannot be good enough. You cannot keep God's law. If you're going to face God, who is called the righteous judge, one day at the judgment, you cannot go on your own.
[7:13] If you bring your own works, or your own merit into things, or your own morality, you will be consumed. So he makes the argument that salvation comes only on the basis of God's grace, working through our faith in Christ.
[7:29] If we come any other way, even trying to keep God's law, which we've established in the previous chapters, which is impossible, we will fail. So in placing all humanity under the power of sin, Paul then points to the redemptive work of Christ in saving sinners.
[7:47] Faith in the Savior has always been the only way for us to be made right with God. And he points in chapter 4 that Nathan just went through to Abraham's faith.
[7:59] That he was justified, made righteous by his faith. So having established that, that man is not saved by works or by keeping the law, but by faith in Christ through God's grace, here's where we're going from chapter 5.
[8:16] I will say that chapter 5, at least half the time that I sit down and open the Bible to share the Gospel with an unbeliever, I use Romans chapter 5.
[8:28] You'll hopefully see why. So that's what we've done where we're going. Here's just a question for you. If the preservation of our salvation depends on what we do or don't do, then our salvation is only secure as our own faithfulness.
[8:49] That's scary. If your salvation that we've talked about in the previous chapters is kept alive, maintained, and preserved by your own strength and willpower, then that is very terrifying.
[9:03] Thankfully, that's not the case. So Paul moves beyond that to the central theme of chapter 5 through 8. which is that if we are righteous in God's sight, if God has truly saved us, we have a certain hope and a certain hope of future glory and eternal life.
[9:26] If you look at verse 1 in Romans 5, it says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith. So he now turns to the implications of that statement and describes the blessings or the benefits, the consequences of a believer being justified before God.
[9:47] He expounds on the results, the effects of that great reality that we are justified before God in Jesus Christ. So, really quickly, I'll give you five, maybe not quickly, but I will give you five certainties, okay?
[10:07] Not hypotheticals, not we hope this maybe works out, it's certainties, okay? Five certainties that we see in this passage. So let's read it together. Romans 1, 1 through 11.
[10:19] Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
[10:30] 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.
[10:49] endurance. Endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit whom He has given us.
[11:05] For while we were weak, 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.
[11:18] 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.
[11:37] For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through 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.
[11:59] So from this passage, we're going to look at five benefits, five blessings, five results of being justified before God and Christ.
[12:11] number one is certain peace with God. Certain peace with God. And you see that in verse one. We've been justified by faith.
[12:22] We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. If we understand what Paul has written so far in Romans, especially chapter one and two, we understand that that is a remarkable statement for us to hear, that we have a peace with God.
[12:41] Previously, our relationship with God could only be described in terms of extreme enmity, hostility towards each other.
[12:53] It says in Isaiah 57, verse 20, the wicked are like the tossing of the sea. It cannot be quiet. And as waters toss up mire and dirt, there is no peace, says God for the wicked.
[13:10] We were locked in a serious contention, in a legal dispute with God as His enemies. Look at verse 10. We were locked in a serious dispute with Him.
[13:21] But, what Paul is saying is now, by His grace, what Christ has done for us, we are justified by faith in what He has done.
[13:33] We see that in chapter 4, verse 25. And so, hostility that existed with God previously is now taken away because of what Christ has done.
[13:45] We are no longer enemies, but at peace with Him. And this is a real peace. Paul's present argument explained in those previous chapters says that we were at war with God and that we now have been justified by faith.
[14:03] faith. Now, I'm going to try to not get off track too far, but I'm begging you if you are a believer, especially if you are a member of this church, understand what being justified means.
[14:17] Alright? It's a word that's everywhere in the New Testament, especially in Romans. So, it is not just enough for us to have our sins forgiven.
[14:29] To have something canceled or taken away or forgiven is not enough to stand before God. Just because you've had dirty clothes taken off doesn't mean that you have clean clothes on.
[14:43] Right? And we need clean clothes to approach God's throne. So just to have sin taken away and forgiven does not mean that we are righteous. So, what happens?
[14:56] Christ then, this is that glorious doctrine of the great exchange, Christ gives us His perfect righteousness. He gives us His clean clothes. It says in Isaiah that He has wrapped us in robes of righteousness.
[15:10] So now, we can approach God actually clean, actually bright, actually righteous in His sight. When He says we are justified, He is declaring that you have kept the law.
[15:24] You are blameless. And He's doing that on the basis of what Christ has done and not what we have done. So that is the great exchange. Christ takes our sin and bore our punishment and He gave us His righteousness so we could be accepted by God.
[15:40] So the result of that justification is we have real actual peace with God. Peace is not subjective but objective. It is a legal term.
[15:51] We have right standing with God and therefore we have peace with Him. If you look a little further, we have peace not because of our good moral behavior, religious activity, going to church, good deeds, reciting Bible verses or any other good thing that you can think of that we struck our own deal with God.
[16:14] Spent three years in college with a guy, a veteran of the Iraq war and all he talked about was like he had his own deal struck with God and I kept telling him you don't.
[16:24] Like you come on his terms and not yours. We cannot have peace with God through anything we do but we can have an actual peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
[16:37] He alone is the agent of our reconciliation. So let me just ask you a question. Brother or sister, are you fearful that God is still going to punish you for your sins that you have committed in the past?
[16:55] Are you afraid that something that you might do in the future is going to cause God to finally judge you? Does the reality that if you have Christ and you are justified in him, does that give you peace?
[17:11] what he has done for you? Does that comfort your soul? Does it take your anxiety away about facing God one day? So that's one, we have certain peace with God.
[17:25] Number two, we have certain access to God. Certain access to God. Verse two, through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.
[17:38] God. This would have been an amazing statement for particularly Jews hearing this. Many generations before Christ having access to God was a crazy idea, scary idea, foreign thought.
[17:52] Many of the people of Israel in the Old Testament knew that sinful man was incapable of approaching God and entering into his holy presence. They had witnessed firsthand, men and women just consumed by approaching God on their own.
[18:10] God could only be approached through various protocols prescribed in the Mosaic and Levitical law. But now, since Christ has secured peace by his blood shed on the cross, we are no longer his enemies but at peace with him, because of that we can have access to the holy presence of God.
[18:33] Access to relationship with him. Access to worship him. Access to have like a child would have to a father. That's what we have, access to God through what Christ has done.
[18:49] So, have you taken that access for granted? It has just approaching God become so familiar that you've forgotten that it is a huge blessing to account yourself to be able to go into God's presence because of Christ.
[19:04] It says in the psalm, psalm 68, verse 2, that the sinful, the wicked, will not stand in God's presence, but they will perish as wax does before the fire.
[19:16] That's scary. So, how does that not happen to us? It's because we are standing in Christ. You and I would never, ever dare approach the holy presence of God apart from Jesus Christ.
[19:31] without him, the presence of God, the holiness of God has to be protected from us. If we try to enter into God's presence on our own, God would be dishonored and we would be destroyed.
[19:45] Right? But now, only because of Christ, our great high priest, we may come near and feast our hearts on the flaming beauty of his holiness and his presence and stand there just in awestruck glory.
[20:00] It says in Hebrews 10 verse 19, we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain.
[20:13] So, therefore, we do not have to fear, to come into God's presence, but we must come through Christ and through Christ alone. There is no other way.
[20:24] Because of the work of Jesus, we can have access to God through a remarkable state of his grace in which we stand firmly, securely. That word stand carries the idea of permanence, of standing firm and immovable.
[20:41] That's awesome. We can stand there certain. So, this is a blessing of justification. We can have peace with God, access to God. Number three, number three, certain hope, a certain hope in God.
[20:58] See this in verses two through five. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.
[21:10] endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame. So, biblical hope is not just wishful thinking, it's not just crossing our fingers and hoping that things just turn out the way we want them to be.
[21:27] Biblical hope implies looking forward to something good in the future with confidence, certainty, and expectation. Here, true, genuine believers can be assured that as a result of being justified before God, they can possess true hope of the glory of God.
[21:50] Right? That is a promise that one day we will be glorified. We will be perfected on the last day. That is amazing.
[22:01] So, prove it, right? How do I know that? Well, you don't have to turn now, let's read you one verse out of Romans chapter 8. Now, think about it, if we are justified, it says, those whom he predestined, he also called, those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified.
[22:23] Like, we have a certain hope if we are made right in God's sight that we will one day be glorified. It's one of the clearest hallmarks of a justified believer is our perspective on the future, how we look at things in the future.
[22:40] True believers who are righteous in God's sight have a certain hope of future glory to be with God forever. So, if you look a little further in these verses, if that amazing hope of future glory is in Christ, if we have that, it will endure.
[23:00] endure. It will endure even in suffering. You see that? Sufferings here is really the word tribulations. It means to be put under great pressure.
[23:13] And in the context, it's not necessarily referring to the common hardships that we just have in our everyday life. It's specifically referring to the suffering that we may endure because of the backlash of being a follower of Christ.
[23:28] the suffering that we endure by being right with God. So, some of us might think that suffering would undermine our confidence in God.
[23:40] But Paul is actually making the opposite argument. If your hope is destroyed and is obliterated by a little bit of suffering, then it wasn't really a hope worth having. It's not a real deal.
[23:51] But if you have an eternal hope, not saying it will be easy, but it will endure. It will last. And Paul proves that by arguing cause and effect here in these verses.
[24:04] And our suffering, God allows into our lives, He provides the opportunity and the need for our hope to endure. That endurance that we see, or that perseverance through trials, it produces character.
[24:23] The word here is provenness. it proves something. A character that has stood up under extreme trial and examination and found to be genuine through testing.
[24:37] That's what we're implying here. So, understand, like, I was just trying to think of a story to tell, but I probably will resist because it will take me a long time to tell it.
[24:49] But in the past, like when soldiers were facing a great enemy, outnumbered three to one, and they were asked, like, how are your men just not going to run when the enemy shows up?
[24:59] They're terrifying, they outnumber you, and like this particular general who was Caesar said, they won't run because they have been tested. They have been tested, they are veterans, and they will stand until the end.
[25:16] He knew the quality of the provenness of the men that were under him. Right? So when we face trials, and we endure under that extreme testing, we will have proven character.
[25:30] And that proven character produces a stronger hope and confidence facing the future. You see that? It's just right in front of us in these verses. So therefore, suffering is important because it is the testing ground for faith and hope to be strengthened.
[25:48] we all would argue that the most humble, mature believers we know are those who endure great suffering in their lives and somehow persevered through it, still trusting God, still clinging to his promises despite the pain and despite the loss.
[26:07] God uses those trials to make us more like Christ, to give us godly character. So therefore, we can rejoice, not only in the future glory, but in present trials and sufferings.
[26:22] Not because they're pleasant to go through, but because God uses them to transform us for the better, to make us more like Christ, and to bring us closer to him.
[26:35] For those of you who may be lacking hope this morning, does this reality, that we are made right and justified in God's presence through Christ, does that give you hope to face the future?
[26:52] Does it bring hope to you that all the sin that you bring is not going to ultimately destroy you, but you will have hope to stand before God one day, even through the sufferings of this present life, you can have hope for the future.
[27:10] number four, a certain love from God. Number four, a certain love from God.
[27:22] Look at a part of verse five, starting in verse five. He says, connecting it to the previous verses, because the love, because God's love has been abundantly poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit whom he has given 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 own love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
[27:57] So in these verses, Paul grounds the subjective experience of God's love to the objective work of Christ on the cross. So we have a hope that does not put us to shame or doesn't disappoint us because it's anchored in not our own goodness or our own love for God, but in his agape unconditional love for us.
[28:22] That's where we can ground this certain hope, is it's based in God's love. Our hope, our final deliverance is certain, again because it's based on God's love and that he has given us his Holy Spirit.
[28:36] Now why does this matter? The Spirit enables us to trust in the atoning work of Christ. The Holy Spirit is how he is the agent in which God manifests his love to us.
[28:50] One of his primary roles is to assure born-again believers that are justified in Christ that they truly belong to him.
[29:01] Jesus said in John 14 verse 26, when he comes, he will remind you of all that I have taught you and to bring to remembrance all that I have said.
[29:12] Right? So that's what the Spirit does. He brings the truth of God's word, the promises of God's word, reminds us during those trials that we go through in everyday life. So he is the agent of God's love.
[29:24] He brings it to us. Similarly, Paul wrote in Ephesians 1 verse 13, when you heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, you 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.
[29:48] So, while we wait for hope to be finally fulfilled, God's love, literally it says, is being poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
[30:01] So the hope of future glory and final deliverance is rooted in God's unconditional love for his people that his son died to save. So look here also at verse 6.
[30:13] Look at the timing of God's love. It says, at the right time. Alright, so we may think, why did it take so long for Jesus to come? Well, God says it was the right time in redemptive history for Christ to appear to accomplish the work of salvation.
[30:31] So how many of us functionally believe that God helps those who help themselves? How many of you actually believe that? A few years ago, a study revealed that half of evangelicals thought this was a direct quotation from the Bible.
[30:50] Half. 84% at least believe that it was a biblical truth. So, not true at all. Both wrong, both heresies.
[31:00] Ben Franklin said that in Paul Richard's Almanac, not in the Bible. So, what does it say here? Paul writes that God lovingly sent Christ for us when we were weak.
[31:12] See, that means helpless, vulnerable, defenseless. It denotes a lack of moral strength. It is connected to us being ungodly.
[31:23] unable to save ourselves or do anything to pour ourselves out of the pit that we were in. In that helpless state, Christ came. And so, we see, he gives you an example here.
[31:36] There is no greater love than what Christ has done. He contrasts the death of Christ with other examples of human heroic deaths. Right? Such deaths are substitutionary in nature, meaning somebody else dies for another person.
[31:53] Right? And he says, on the rare occasion, even a fallen, sinful human being might die for a morally upright person, a good person, one that's done much good.
[32:06] But those examples are radically different in comparison to Christ's love for us. They pale in comparison. Human love at its very best is puny, weak, and pathetic in light of who God is, in light of his love.
[32:23] Why? Now think about this, because all others are rooted in mutual love or friendship. Jesus says, it's easy for you to love those who love you. What benefit is that to you?
[32:35] If even sinners love those who love them, he didn't die for righteous people. He didn't die for people who did good to him. Jesus died a horrible death for unrighteous, ungodly, hostile enemies.
[32:52] It'd be easy for you to maybe die for your child or for a really good friend or a parent, a loved one, but they love you more or less. But again, Christ died for those who hated him, for the ungodly, for his enemies.
[33:07] He took the place of sinners like you and me who lived in willful rebellion against him. So, in God's love, he initiated our salvation.
[33:19] 1 John chapter 1. God's love, and this is the love of God, not that we have loved God, but that God loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sin.
[33:35] Number five, moving quickly here, trying to land the plane. Number five, we have certain reconciliation with God. Certain reconciliation with God.
[33:47] Look at verse 9. Since therefore we have been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
[33:57] 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 received reconciliation.
[34:15] So we don't like to be called enemies of God. Right? That is a hard term to swallow. Most people think I'm cool with God. I've got no problem with God.
[34:26] Like what problem does he have with me? Well, unless you are in Christ, you are his enemy. That means, this word means one who is hostile, hateful, or bitter in opposition to another.
[34:40] The same word is used of the devil in Matthew 13. Romans has taught us that sobering reality that all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. Me, you, the best person you know, everyone apart from Jesus Christ.
[34:55] We have all sinned and rebelled against him. It says in Ephesians 4 that we were once alienated from a life with God. That means to be shut out of one's fellowship and shut out of one's intimacy.
[35:09] Alienated. Apart from Jesus, our sin has shut us out, excluded us, and cut us off from fellowship with God. We love the world and the things in the world.
[35:23] And James 4, verse 4 says, if you are a friend of the world, meaning that you love it, it's what you go for, it's what you get up for, if you love the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.
[35:37] God said through Isaiah, our iniquities have made a separation between us and God. So think the idea separated. Often held that many people, again, are enemies of God, but people wouldn't say, those same people wouldn't say, well, I think God doesn't have a problem with me, but the term here is actual mutual hostility, meaning that God is equally angry with us for our sin and for our rebellion against him.
[36:08] God loathing the rebellious sinner and the sinner loathing God. Charles Hodge once wrote about this verse, there is not only a wicked opposition of the sinner to God, but a holy opposition of God to the sinner.
[36:23] Sinful man has turned away from the God of peace and made war on him instead. We all have done it, directly and indirectly, just rebelled against God.
[36:35] So it says, formerly, we were his enemies and we needed reconciliation. And now in Christ we are reconciled. Are reconciled.
[36:46] The New Testament noun here means a restoration of favor. It's used three times in this passage. It means to change the relationship of hostile parties to come together again and be in peace with one another.
[37:02] To resolve their differences and to restore relationship. So the separation and alienation our sin caused with God can now be resolved by what Christ alone has done.
[37:15] He has brought us back into fellowship with one another by removing the thing that was causing the hostility, namely our sin. Right? That's what it says right here.
[37:27] And this is done by the death of Christ. In these verses, some people in the modern church want to say, hey, God is love and He is only love.
[37:38] Others may want to say God is wrath and He is only wrath. Well, in these few verses, you see them side by side, the love of God and the wrath of God. If someone says, you're saved, what are you saved from?
[37:50] You were saved from the wrath of God. So all of us, even those of us who are in Christ will be aware when that wrath comes one day. And in that you are inside Christ.
[38:06] Inside what He has done, reconciled by the death of His Son. Now look at that amazing phrase, we shall be saved by His life.
[38:19] Saved by His life. That is a definitive certainty. If we are justified, we are reconciled. And we are looking to the future with hope of glory.
[38:35] And we shall be saved by His life. That is a certainty and a promise. So just a conclusion in that very last verse. What is the result of this?
[38:47] Verse 11, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The response to such grace and such love to sinners like me and sinners like you.
[39:01] There is no response but to rejoice and to take up your cross and follow Christ. Give your life to Him unreservedly. This news should cause great joy in your heart for what He has done.
[39:15] So this is the gospel, guys. This is a further explanation of what Christ has accomplished. You go into a courtroom and your faith is on trial. This is your case.
[39:26] This is your case that you bring to stand righteous before God. So let's just give Him thanks in prayer together.