Studying His Word and His Works

Romans 5:1-5, Peace, Access, Hope

Listen to the study here: Romans 5:1-5

Read here: Romans 5

Review

  • Calvin on theme of Romans: “Man’s only righteousness is the mercy of God in Christ, when it is offered by the Gospel and received by faith.”
  • Luther: Simul iustus et peccator = At the same time, righteous and a sinner! Romans 3:23-25, all have sinned AND are justified by His grace
  • Really important to connect back to Romans 1:17, righteous shall live by faith, which is connected to Habbakuk 2:4. 
  • In Ch. 1-3 Paul shows us our unrighteousness, and God’s wrath against that, and then switches to Christ’s righteousness as our covering, the propitiation of our sins (Romans 3:25). Christ is the final sacrifice for sin, fulfilling the promise to Abraham.
  • In Ch. 4, Paul retells Abraham’s story, clarifying he had faith before any works (circumcision) were performed. The timing is critical, and is meant to show neither Jew or Gentile could boast in being saved by their own works.
    • Faith being “counted” or “credited to our account” as righteousness is mentioned 11 times in Chapter 4! If “none are righteous” as Paul wrote in Romans 3:10, then this saving faith must be a gift from God. We are not saved by “placing our faith in Jesus,” as if we have a gift to give God. No, our faith is dead without Christ’s righteousness, imputed to us. His gift of grace, given to us. A “good infection” as C.S. Lewis describes in Mere Christianity. We are saved when we repent and believe (Mark 1:15), when we repent and get baptized (Acts 2:38-39).
  • Intro
    • After comparing our unrighteousness to Christ’s righteousness, Paul starts describing in more detail the benefits of salvation. Sproul says the beginning of Chapter 5 describes peace, access to God, and hope as the “fruits of justification.”

Peace

  • Verse 1
    • Therefore is always a logical conclusion or application to the previous statement(s). Like an if/then statement. If this is true, then so is the following.
      • Since the end of Chapter 3, Paul has shown us the truth that believers are justified by faith. He states the conclusion to that passage, and is now going to show us how that plays out in the life of a Christian. IF justified by faith, THEN peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
      • Have been justified means this has already happened for Christians at that moment we received His grace. Sproul contrasts this with the Roman Catholic’s false claim that we have to wait in purgatory for final justification. 
      • Peace with God is the first consequence of being justified.
        • And it’s peace through Jesus, who the Bible refers to as the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).
        • It is crazy how, in our world today, there seems to be a fight against peace, like there are actually people who want to keep the wars going.
        • Peace in this world may happen for a season, but it never lasts. I think this is a sign of our fallen human condition.  As Christians, I believe we need to fight offensively and defensively.
          • The offensive battle is primarily spiritual warfare, and Ephesians 6 offers a good description of that. We’re not supposed to run around picking fights and killing people.
          • The defensive battle is to have a strong personal, family and national defense. To “sell your cloak and buy a sword” of Luke 22:36. Spend some money on defense, in other words. That Christ’s words in Luke were meant primarily for defense is seen when Jesus rebukes Peter for going on the offensive and chopping the ear off the high priest’s servant (Luke 22:49-51). We will discuss this more later in Romans.
        • Sproul says in our natural, fallen condition, we are basically at war with God, which is what Chapters 1 and 2 described. But when we are saved, and find peace with God, that is true peace. Imagine the consequences of a worldwide revival. It seems quite reasonable to assume that world peace would break out. 
        • But, if we have Christ in us, the Prince of Peace, then why do we have “relationship wars” and divisiveness and battling over big and super small things? In America, why is there a high divorce rate among Christians? We’ve received this gift of faith, the Holy Spirit now dwells in us, but that doesn’t turn us into zombie robots for Jesus or something. We have to work now, because faith without works is dead(James 2:26). We have to, like Abraham, “grow strong” in the faith we’ve received while giving God the glory (Romans 4:20). To be peacemakers, we need to know the Peacemaker that dwells in us now, and to know Him we need to stay connected to him through the Word, prayer and fellowship.
        • Sproul says the work of Christ is that of mediator to bring the estranged parties (God and man) together. The Prince of Peace came to end the vertical relationship warfare. It is up to us as Christians to surrender daily to Christ in us, which is the only way to bring peace in horizontal relationships (man vs. man).
          • In Mere Christianity, Lewis described Christians as “little Christs.” We need to model Christ as a mediator and peacemaker in our own relationships, whether between us and another, or between nations. It doesn’t matter the position God has put us in. Where there is conflict, we are to look first towards bringing the peace. 
            • “Peace if possible, truth at all costs,” said Martin Luther.
        • Jesus didn’t have any worldly possessions to give his disciples, so he said “my peace I give to you.” (John 14:27). It is peace with God that settles the soul and gives the assurance of forgiveness. 

Access to God

  • Verse 2
    • When we receive the gift of faith, at that moment we have access to God.
      • This is the original plan, Adam and Eve made in God’s image, a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8), with unlimited access to God, but then they blew it and afterwards hid from God when He entered the garden. They were banished from Eden and no longer had access to God. The rest of history has been about restoring access.
      • When nomads, Israel camped in a circle, with the tabernacle at the middle, symbolizing equal access to God. Only one person, the high priest, was allowed into the Holy of Holies (a.k.a. Most Holy Place, Exodus 26:33), once per year on Atonement Day, and he was only allowed in after a long series of works-based ablutions and rites of purification. 
        • So, even though they camped in a circle, there was really no access to God except for one guy, once per year! But this is part of the story, because when Jesus died, there was a great earthquake, and the heavy curtain surrounding the Holy of Holies was torn (Matt. 27:51), and this happened to signify that through Christ’s work on the cross, there was now access to God.
      • We now have access, and we have this peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7).
      • We have access by faith into this grace. Sproul says faith and grace are inseparable. The “gift of faith” we receive is part of the “gift of grace.”

Hope

  • Verse 2
    • We rejoice in hope of the glory of God, the third fruit or consequence of justification.
      • Hope is the gift God gives everyone justified by faith. This is not an “I hope the Aggies win tomorrow” kind of hope. That kind of hope has no assurance it will come to pass. 
      • Biblical hope, this gift from God kind of hope, is described as the anchor of our souls, described in Hebrews 6:19.
      • Three key words in verse 2 are rejoice, glory and hope.
        • Rejoice: In Greek this word is more like “boasting” or “glory”, so “we glory now in the glory of God.” 
        • Glory: we get the word “doxology” from the Greek for this word,”doxa”. When we sing the doxology “praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below….” We are glorifying the One who possesses glory. Glory in the OT is “kabod”, a word that means “weightiness” or “heaviness”, as in His being is not light or insignificant, something that should be taken very seriously.
          • The purpose of worship is to ascribe glory to God.
        • Hope can be a confusing word. Paul says In I Cor. 13 that out of faith, hope and love, the greatest is love. But that doesn’t mean hope is unimportant.
          • Sproul mentions that biblical faith looks to what has already taken place, and we believe it, by God’s grace we can put our trust in it. Hope is faith looking forward. It’s the Hebrews 6:19 “soul anchor” that keeps us stable, keeps us from being blown all over the place.
          • This hope is a Holy Spirit generated hope, it is something Christians have, this anchor and rest and peace that everything’s going to be ok. It’s like a “down payment” that gives us assurance for the future God has promised (eternal life).
          • Hope is NOT wishful thinking, it’s assurance that God is going to do what He says He will do.
  • Verse 3
    • Because of this hope, we can glory in tribulations, we can count our trials as joy (James 1:2-3)
      • This anchor holds in times of trouble, it holds when a loved one dies suddenly and tragically, it holds when we’re caught in a storm at sea and have to make it through, it holds through relationship challenges that come and go. Look at your life, look at Paul’s life, look at the beatings and other trials he endured. The shipwrecks, snake bites, beatings, etc. 
      • For a Christian, the fruit of justification is the presence of joy amidst the trials.
      • Tribulation produces perseverance, it puts muscle on our souls. It connects back to Romans 4:20 and Abraham “growing strong” in the faith he had received. Saving faith is a gift we use, it is something we exercise. It’s not a trophy to set on the mantle and forget about. It is something that becomes part of us, connects us to the Holy Spirit now in us.
  • Verse 4
    • Paul is going through a chain of events here, where trials produce perseverance or endurance, and endurance produces character. Character is built in hard times. We don’t need to hunt those out, but we don’t need to avoid them, either. It is honestly part of fellowship and attending church.
    • If we are passive and just sit at home and avoid things, then we don’t exercise faith, and we don’t experience God the way he wants us to. “In this world you will have tribulation”, Jesus said in John 16:33. Well, you won’t have very much if you just stay at home, uninvolved, if you don’t get out there and try to make disciples like Jesus said to do in Matthew 28:19-20. Or in Proverbs 26:13, “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion in the road! There is a lion in the streets!’ ” You don’t get to see what it’s like to be a real man or woman in Christ if this describes you, at home avoiding trials instead of confronting them with joy.
  • Verse 5
    • So suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope. And this hope does not put us to shame, it “does not disappoint” as some translations say. This is further evidence that biblical hope is not this “I hope the Aggies win” kind of hope, which can “put me to shame” when one of my alma maters loses. Biblical hope, part of the gift of the Holy Spirit, is this peace, this assurance that promises will be fulfilled. But notice that, like faith, hope is something to exercise(character produces hope), it is part of the sanctification process, and as we grow strong in Christ, we understand this hope more and more. We will have disappointments, like when we plan a hunting trip and then the flights get canceled. We were hoping things would go as planned, but then they don’t and it’s disappointing. The assurance we have in Christ is a different kind of hope, we can have peace that God is not going to send us a text message that our flight to Heaven has been canceled. Christ booked the reservation for us and it is 100% confirmed.
      • Remember, God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  At that moment of salvation, that point (which we need to remind ourselves of daily) when God showed us we have nothing to give, only receive like an undeserving beggar. We don’t pour into God. He pours into us.
      • Sproul says salvation is not like receiving just one gift under the Christmas tree, but gift after gift, all wrapped together like a metroshka doll. The first package is justification, then inside that is peace with God, and inside that is access into His presence, and inside that is the ability to rejoice in glorifying the glory of God, then inside that is joy amidst the trial, and then the trial gives us the gift of perseverance, and inside that gift is character, and inside that is a hope that does not disappoint. The final present is the love of God poured profusely into our hearts by the grace of God. All of those are the gift of our justification. For Paul, it’s Christmas all day long, all year long!
  • Up next: Romans 5:6-11
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