“Peace with
God”
Romans 5:1-11
October 21, 2007
Dr. Jerry Nelson
My
brother was in senior high school and I was in junior high.
My parents, after years of scraping to make ends meet, finally had enough that they were able to take a two-week vacation to California from Wisconsin.
My
brother and I were left to take care of the farm.
Because it was winter the major tasks were feeding and
milking the 60 or more cows that were the family’s source of income.
Milking meant every morning from 5:00 - 7:00 and every evening the same hours.
Well,
Mike and I were busy young men, busy in school and in our social lives. Cows were clearly a hindrance, a barrier to
our preferred activities.
We
may have started those two weeks well but within days we were totally off
schedule, cows were getting milked at 4 in the afternoon to allow us to get
away for the evening and they were getting milked at 8 or later, in the
morning, because we would sleep in after a late night out.
As
I remember it, it was actually my brother who was so irresponsible.
None-the-less,
when my father returned from vacation he found quite a mess - barns that
weren’t cleaned, cattle uncared for, and milk production way down.
The proof of our undisciplined lives was revealed in the
milk-check from the dairy.
For
good reason my father was angry.
And for many days we walked on “egg shells” around him.
There was an “air” of disapproval that could be cut with a
knife.
The last thing you wanted to do in that situation was cross
him.
We
were very careful to do the right thing and say as little as possible.
We lived with the fear that the consequences of any current
mistake would be more severe because
of our past conduct.
There
was great relief when the morning chores were over and we could get on a bus and
out from under the apparent watchful and seemingly frowning eyes of our father.
I’m certain I remember it far worse than it was - and I’m equally certain my father wasn’t nearly as angry as I, in my guilt, made him out to be.
But
in a lot of the relationships of life, especially with those in positions of
authority, we live with certain uneasiness - maybe even a fear - that if we
don’t get it right, we’ll lose.
As
I asked last week, how are things between you and God?
What is God’s basic disposition toward you?
What is his attitude toward you right now?
Many of us assume that if we’ve been doing fairly well lately, if we’ve been acting like a Christian, God is probably basically pleased with us.
While others of us who have blown it recently or just haven’t
been paying attention, assume that God is probably disappointed in us and maybe
even slightly angry.
Is
God “sore” at you right now? Is he
peeved? Disgusted? Fed up?
Is he disappointed with you?
Do you kind of “walk on egg shells” around God?
Maybe you just kind of ignore God - you just do your best and hope it will be good enough?
If
there is a God, and most people are convinced there is, then what that God
thinks about us is important now and important forever.
Even those who claim to have no religion spend a lot of energy trying to believe there is no God so they won’t have to deal with him.
The result is - most people are afraid of God.
Many
times, in Calcutta, India, I along with some of you have visited the temple of
Kali the Hindu god of death and destruction.
There blood sacrifices are offered each day in the midst of
incredible filth, animals killed to assuage the anger of the gods - to keep
them from inflicting more harm on the people.
In China, a woman writes “of finding shelter one night in a village temple because there was nowhere else to sleep.
In the night she woke and the moonlight was slanting in
through the window on to the faces of the images of the gods, and on every face
there was a snarl and a sneer, as of those who hated people.” Barclay p72
Why
are even many Christians so afraid of God?
Do you remember the children’s song: “Be careful little
hands what you do; be careful little hands what you do; for the Father up above
is looking down in love, so be careful little hands what you do.”
Is that our impression of God? We sing the “looking down in
love” part but we most remember the “be careful” part.
Does God have a hidden video camera that watches everything
we do to see if we “mess up” so he can pounce on us?
The
Apostle Paul, in the first 2½ chapters of Romans has painted quite a word
picture of our relationship to God.
Describing
all people, he used words and phrases such as:
godless and wicked
unthankful to God
refusing to give glory to God
exchanging the truth of God for a lie
considering God as unworthy
stubborn, unrepentant
And then he described God’s relationship to us as:
“God gave them over” - God let people reap the consequences of their sin.
The “wrath of God” is being revealed against them.
And there is a day when God’s righteous judgment will be
fully poured out on unrepentant humanity.
According
to the Bible that is an accurate picture of people’s relationship to God apart
from Christ. We are in trouble with God.
What does
it mean to stand under the wrath of someone?
We are now hearing in the news about the man who
videotaped himself molesting a three–year-old little girl.
Imagine the parent’s righteous anger.
Fortunately the little girl is safe and will probably have
no memory of the incidents.
But imagine the gulf of hostility between the parents and
that man.
Such is the
gulf that exists between a perfectly holy God and us.
The
greater problem is not that we are angry with God but that God is rightfully
angry with us.
And it is not simply that we have failed to live up to
some arbitrary law but that we have spurned the very person of God.
Like the man recently arrested, we have not simply
violated a code, we have deeply offended God, himself.
The
Scripture does not present God as impassive and insensitive but as emotionally
moved by actions of his creatures.
So
it is no wonder that the Bible also reveals God as angry about some things.
As I said a couple of weeks ago, God’s anger is not
personal pique or wounded pride; it is a righteous anger at how his creation is
being destroyed and how his holy character is being defied and defiled.
Again the worse problem is not that we see God as our
enemy (we can’t harm an infinite God by our anger); the worst problem is that
God sees us as his enemy.
But
in the last half of chapters 3 and 4, as we have seen, Paul makes it clear that
while wrath is our deserved destiny - God in grace has poured out his
wrath on the person of his Son instead of on us.
Christ has paid the penalty for our sin so that we might be
granted the righteousness of God - a righteousness we must have if we are to
have a right relationship with a holy God.
And so we saw in 3:21 that instead of the wrath of God, “but now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, apart from works has been made known.
And we see in verse 22 that this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
Then
Paul spends all of chapter 4 making the point that in no way can we earn that
relationship with God - it is a gift of grace through faith alone.
Now
in chapter 5, Martin Luther says, the Apostle Paul "speaks as one who is
extremely happy and full of joy" (Luther
in Moo p297)
Everything has changed between you and God!!
I want to read the first two verses of this chapter once again and I want you to notice the three specific things that have changed for you because of justification by grace through faith:
Romans 5:1-2 “Therefore, since we have been justified
through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this
grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.”
“Therefore
SINCE we have been justified through faith”
What have we already learned about justification?
What does it mean?
To be “justified” means to be declared “not guilty” by God.
Now
Paul writes in 5:1-2 “Since” justification is true for those of you who trust
in Jesus alone, what dramatic changes have taken place in your relationship
with God?
#1,
in verse 1, is what? “We have peace
with God!”
#2,
in verse 2, is what? “We have gained
access into this grace in which we now stand”.
#3,
at the end of verse 2 is what? “We
rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.”
So
first, what does it mean to have “Peace with God”?
Look again at Romans 5:1 "Therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
This
is not the "peace OF God" - This is not simply a feeling of
serenity some people speak of after a particularly difficult decision.
That is not what we are talking about here.
This is 'peace WITH God," which has to do with
our relationship with God.
This
“peace” is describing the actual relationship between you and God; how God
feels about you and how you feel about your relationship with him.
I think Colossians 1:21 helps us understand this: "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation
What
was our relationship with God before faith in Christ? Enemies.
The Bible says we were alienated, separated, at odds, no positive relationship, in fact, God was rightfully angry.
But
what action did God take? Christ died for us.
What
resulted from God’s action in Christ’s death for us?
Paul calls it “peace” and later he will describe it as
reconciliation.
And we are brought into a positive relationship with God by God’s gracious action of forgiveness through Christ.
On
April 14th of last year, the Boston Globe carried the story of
3-year-old Kai Leigh who was paralyzed from the waist down because of a gunshot
wound received while she played on her third floor balcony.
Twenty nine-year-old Anthony Warren came into the neighborhood carrying a gun because he was angry with a man.
Firing warning shots into the air, one of his bullets hit and shattered the body of little Kai Leigh.
Two years later, Anthony Warren had pleaded guilty to the
appropriate charges.
At
Warren’s sentencing, Kai Leigh, now 5, took the stand to testify.
She sobbed as she explained what the last two years of her life had been like.
Then she totally surprised all in the courtroom except her mother when she ended her statement with these words:
“I forgive you Anthony Warren. What you did to me was wrong,
but I still forgive you.”
The gravity of the situation, punctuated by those words, brought even veteran court officers to tears.
Even Anthony Warren was deeply affected.
He rose to say to the child, “I’m sorry!”
Warren was sentenced to 13 years in state prison.
But the scene in that story, to which I most draw your attention, happened as Warren was being led out.
Kai Leigh’s mother reached out taking Warren’s shackled
hands and pulled him to herself in an embrace. (Boston
Globe, April 14, 2006)
That and so much more is what God does to us.
When
I wake up each morning my negative history does not cloud God’s attitude toward
me.
God has no memory of my sins.
God will not even hold any future sins against me.
He will never withdraw his love contingent on my actions.
By God’s grace I am at peace with God.
Our relationship is one of unhindered friendship.
And best of all, nothing I could do, would change God’s attitude because God’s attitude toward me is not based on me but on him.
“Having been justified through faith we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
But there is another dramatic result of having been declared righteous through faith:
Point
# 2 in our text found in verse 2: “through whom we have gained access by faith into this
grace in which we now stand.
By
God’s grace we have been moved into a whole new sphere of reality.
Something is now true that wasn’t true before.
Think of the circumstances under which we
lived before!
The Bible speaks of all the forces arrayed against
us without Christ
our own
fleshly sinfulness, the world, and the Devil.
Our own sinfulness works against us like
a cancer destroying everything it touches.
Our greed
destroys our dreams because even when we get what we want it isn’t enough.
Our
selfishness destroys our relationships because sooner or later the others
realize it isn’t friendship or love, it is opportunism.
And a sinful world is against us - the
dog-eat-dog world wherein we fight a zero-sum game where I must lose for you to
win.
And the Bible teaches there is a very real person called
Satan, the devil, the destroyer who has the will and power to exploit every one
of our weakness and more and to destroy.
And
not only were these forces against us but worst of all we lived in the place
where God’s wrath was upon us.
BUT NOW we live in a situation where God’s grace is continually upon us.
In Christ we have been moved, as it were, to a whole new
house - before we were in the prison-house awaiting execution.
But now we are in the house of the king sitting on our
Father’s lap in the family room. We
are surrounded by grace.
I’ve
told some of you before, but many years ago my brother and sister-in-law flew
to Brazil and there they met five young children, brothers and sisters, who had
literally lived on the streets, scavenging for food, abandoned by their
parents.
Mike
and Natalie paid the necessary fees and costs to adopt those five children (in
addition to the three children they already had).
They flew with them on their laps to Minneapolis, Minnesota where for the past many years they have fed them, clothed them, sat up with them when they were sick, schooled them, and most of all loved them.
Can
you imagine the difference?
Children who had nothing and no future were given access into this grace in which they now stand.
They live in a wholly different world - not most importantly materially but relationally.
Please note that we have gained "access...into this GRACE". We have been given the privilege of living in the environment of grace.
Listen
to just some of what is now ours by grace:
Jeremiah
29:11 “For I know the plans I
have for you,” declares the LORD,
“plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future
Romans
8:28 “And we know
that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been
called according to his purpose.
1
Corinthians 10:13 “God
is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when
you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under
it.
1 John 5:14-15 “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask
anything according to his will, he hears us.15 And if we know that he
hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him
Matthew
6:8, in fact, your Father knows what
you need before you ask him.
But what is the third thing that has so dramatically changed in our relationship with God?
Look please at the last part of verse 2, "And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Again
I remind you that “hope” does not mean uncertain wishful thinking.
Usually when the Bible uses the word “hope” it means just the opposite - it means a confident certainty that something will take place.
We can now live in the joyful, confident expectation of the future!
And
what can we be certain will take place? It is the glory of God.
There
is coming a day, when Jesus comes again, that the glory of God will be seen in
all its fullness.
In that day we also will reflect that glory
of God in ways we cannot even now imagine.
Living historically on this side of the fall of mankind in
Adam, we have little understanding of what God originally created.
And we have little appreciation of what it will all be
like when creation is restored.
We were
created in the image of God but sin marred that image.
We sinned and fell short of the glory of God.
But when we are justified and granted the
righteousness of Jesus, God begins to re-form in us his image, his likeness.
2
Corinthians 3:18 “And we…are
being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory…”
And a day is coming when we shall be
fully transformed.
1 John 3:2 “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what
we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we
shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
And Paul will later
tell us that the whole creation looks forward to that day when the creation,
including God’s children, will be restored to that glory.
Romans 8:18-19 “I consider that our present
sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.19 The creation waits in
eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.
Our great hope is the
return of Jesus and the restoration of all things to their created glory, which
reflects the glory of God.
That is our
future.
I suppose Paul could have ended this section of his letter on that
positive note
But when
Paul talks about the future he knows that present circumstances could make us
doubt.
And so he speaks to the relationship of hope and suffering.
Romans 5:3-5 “Not only so, but we also
rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces
perseverance;
4 perseverance,
character; and character, hope.
5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured
out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us
As we saw in 1 Peter, usually when the
Bible speaks of “sufferings,” they are not the physical maladies that we all
experience sooner or later in life.
The “sufferings” spoken of here are the opposition
to our faith that we experience by those opposed to the gospel.
It’s the
ridicule a student experiences in the classroom when he/she defends the faith.
It is the
discrimination an employee experiences when it is known that he or she is a
Christian.
It is the
isolation a family member experiences when the rest of the family shuts them
out for being a Christian.
As a general rule the statement that
suffering produces something good, would prove untrue.
Calvin
pointed out that suffering usually “provokes a great part of mankind to murmur
against God, and even to curse him.” (Calvin, in Cranfield, 104)
But when
suffering is understood as God’s loving discipline and when it is met with God
sustaining faith, it produces endurance. (Cranfield, 104)
Paul
is saying that suffering doesn’t contradict our confidence but actually builds
stronger confidence.
Just as an infection produces the antibodies the human body
needs to fight the infection so suffering produces the very perseverance the
human spirit needs to fight the ill-effects of suffering.
In
brief, here’s Paul’s argument:
·
Suffering, discrimination, hostility, and injustice of all kinds,
because of our faith, are used by God to build our perseverance, our
endurance.
·
And perseverance
builds proven character.
Character is a mature perspective that knows God is sufficient for every situation.
·
And such character
only builds greater hope or confidence.
I have seen
it in the lives of so many of you.
That describes Rick Bolunchuk’s story. It is Lou Stoen’s story.
Suffering has not brought despair.
To the contrary, it brought greater and greater confidence
in the hope of the glory of God.
And
so Paul has given us three ways our relationship with God has dramatically
changed because we have been declared righteous by God’s grace through faith:
1.
We have “peace” with God.
2.
We now live in the sphere of God’s grace.
3.
We have the great hope of sharing in the glory of God for
eternity.
At
this point in Paul’s letter I think he responds to an unspoken doubt.
Paul has so confidently spoken of the great results of justification but as I said earlier, our experience may make us question all of this.
In
Romans 5:5 Paul wrote, “And hope does not disappoint
us, because God has poured
out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”
I’ve had times when I have been almost
viscerally aware of the reality of God so that I could say I can “feel” it.
There have been times when his presence and his love
were so obvious that I could say that I experienced it.
Some
describe a sense of being overwhelmed by the love of God.
John Wesley
spoke of his heart being strangely warmed.
But there are times when I experience
none of those feelings and my faith must fall back on truth alone.
How can we be certain God loves us?
Here’s
the convincing argument:
Romans 5:6 “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
The cross
of Christ is the greatest proof of God’s love for you!
Paul
says let me compare God’s love to the way humans love.
Romans
5:7-8: It’s rare that someone would die for a person who has done well or who
is a friend, someone whose life is worthy of dying to save.
But I suppose there have been times when someone has died
for such a person - like when a parent dies for a child, a husband for his wife
or a soldier for his comrade.
But,
Paul says in verse 8, see the contrast in this: "God demonstrates his own
love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us."
Two things about us:
We are “sinners” or as it says it in verse 6
"ungodly,” “wicked.”
Those words don’t speak of neutrality toward God but a definite disregard for God and hostility toward God’s laws.
And secondly, back in verse 6, it also said we were "powerless," weak, and incapable.
So, when we were still ungodly, powerless, sinners God
demonstrated his love for us.
Do we not realize that God already knows the worst about us?
Do we not understand that God knows every sin we have done or thought or will do or will think AND STILL he died for us and he loves us.
His
love for us is not built on our ability to be worthy of it.
His love for us does not continue dependent on our
ability to be worthy of it.
He has chosen to love us IN SPITE of us and because of Him.
How can we be certain of peace with God, certain of living in his grace, and certain of a future with God?
Because throughout history God in Christ, has demonstrated his love for us already.
The cross
of Christ is the greatest proof of God’s love for you!
In
our text, it is as if Paul anticipates another question: How can I know God
will continue to love me and for eternity?
Here is but one of many times that Paul wishes to give great assurance of our eternal relationship with God.
Paul uses a logic that argues from the greater to the lesser.
If God can do the greater thing, surely he can do the lesser.
Paul says it twice. In verse 9: Since you
have been justified by Christ’s blood, since he willingly gave his life for you
so that you could be forgiven you can certainly count on him to save you
from the wrath of God that is to come.
If he would do the greater thing, give his
life for you, you can depend on him to do the easier thing, love you to the
end.
He says it again, in verse 10: If he
reconciled you to himself when you were his enemy, certainly now,
as his reconciled friend, he will save you by his life.
The
risen Lord is the one who guarantees our future with him.
Christian, if you are trusting in Jesus, God
is at peace with you.
Secondly, you live in the place of his grace - he wants
nothing but what is good for you - he loves you.
And thirdly, he will love you without fail
right through to the end.
You are not under his wrath you are under his love.
If you are trusting in Jesus Christ as your saving-Lord - realize your whole relationship with God is totally different than before.
Don’t live in fear – live in trust.
That’s
why Paul concludes with V11
“Not only is this so, but we also REJOICE in God through our
Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received reconciliation.”