Faith Bible Church - Sermons
Since We Have Been Justified By Faith... (Romans 5:1-11)
Well, I have heard that the brain can process what the ears hear way faster than anybody can speak. So I might push the envelope on that a little bit today, but we'll be fine. This summer we're taking time to focus on the theme, "Deep Roots of Vibrant Faith," and we're looking at six focus areas that we go through on our spiritual journey from coming to know Christ and growing in our faith, becoming more like Him, and impacting other people's lives. And we're looking at these stages from explore, discover, redeem, grow, lead, and go. And I really want you to look at these as phases that we go through, not so much a stage like you, you enter one and then you finish, you go on to the next one and you're done. In a sense like you graduate from each stage, they overlap, they work together. As we grow in our faith, we're continually, even as we're leading and going, we're continually being redeemed and growing, and we're always prayerfully impacting each other's lives. So don't see them as just sequential, but deep roots lead to vibrant faith. Now speaking of roots, a couple weeks ago I gained a new perspective on a root system. A couple weeks ago we spent some time in Sequoia National Park with some very good friends, and I've got a picture coming up here of a Sequoia tree, and these trees are massive. That is the general Sherman tree, and that is the largest tree on the planet in volume. Now it's necessarily the highest or the widest, but in total volume it's the largest on the planet. And just to stand in front of these trees and to take a picture like that you had to do your pano going up, they're just enormous. And what was amazing to me was to understand a little bit more about the root system. But a Sequoia tree, the roots, I mean the tree itself is hundreds of feet high, but the roots, believe it or not, are only three feet deep. And you think to yourself, so where did they get their strength? How do they stand so securely? Well instead of growing deep, Sequoia roots go wide, and they interlock with each other. There's an illustration for us. As believers in Christ as we're rooted in our faith, we need each other. So don't know, it's just your roots grow deep. Let them go wide. It sounds like a song, but I won't now sing it. But today we're moving from explore to discover, and I was thinking about what text to focus on today. I wanted to focus on what is it that a new believer needs to understand early on as they begin their Christian life. After Buck pointed out the truth of who Jesus is and what it means to know Him, I found myself saying, "Okay, now that you've begun a relationship with Christ, here are some key things you need to know." And as I said that to myself, I thought, "Wait a minute. The Apostle Paul almost says the exact same thing in Romans 5." So if you would, go ahead and turn to Romans 5 now, and we'll see what he gets at. Just to give you some context to the book of Romans, in the first four chapters, Paul presents a courtroom argument for the truth of justification by faith. He gives a solid argument showing the power of the gospel for an unrighteous world. And how the righteousness of God is made available to us, and how we can be justified or brought back into a right relationship with God by faith in Jesus Christ. In chapter 3, it's kind of the core, verses 21 to 26, of justification by faith, the atonement, Jesus dying on the cross to pay the penalty for us in. And as we respond in faith, we are justified. And then in chapter 4, Paul develops that even further by saying even Abraham was justified by faith, even David was justified by faith. And now he gets to chapter 5. And under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he says, "Okay. Having been justified by faith, here are key truths you need to know as we walk with the Lord." And I want to look at those today, and you're going to see how much these key truths communicate security to the believer in Jesus Christ. We desire security, and where do we find our ultimate security? It's in Jesus Christ. And I'm so thankful that God's Word shows us that our Heavenly Father wants us to know that. He wants us to know the security we have in Jesus. So I'm going to look at 1 through 11, for now I'm just going to read 1 through 5 together. 4. 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. Let's pray together. Father, we thank You so much for the gift of Your Word. Thank You for its power, thank You that it is true. Lord now, we ask for Your Holy Spirit to work in our hearts and minds, help us to understand these truths, help us to embrace them. Father, I pray that Your Word would be like the seed falling on good soil in our hearts, so that it would produce a fruit, not only in our lives, but in the lives of those around us. We need You in Jesus' name, amen. So did you see the transition and summary statement? Since we have been justified by faith, seven words basically that summarizes the first four chapters of Romans, since we've been justified by faith. So you see the therefore, He's turning that corner. Since we've been justified by faith, here are four powerful truths that we need to know and they all point to the security we have in Christ. The first one is this, truth number one, we are secure because we're at peace. We're secure because we have a peace. Right away, Paul starts out and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we have peace with God through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Peace is an absence of conflict, it's the absence of war. If you've been justified with by faith, you are no longer at enmity with God. And I want to point out here what Paul's saying here is that we have peace with God. He's not saying the peace of God, like what you might be familiar with in Philippians chapter four, when he says that the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and mind in Christ Jesus. That's something different. What Paul's saying here is that if we're justified by faith, we have peace with God, meaning we are now brought back into a right relationship with him. And it's a joy, it's a wonderful that he tells us this right away. He's wanting a new believer and all of us to know that when we've put our faith and trust in Christ, we have not just a ticket to heaven, but we have a personal relationship with the creator of heaven and earth. Peace with God is a relational term, it's a relational phrase, and that's what we now have as believers in Christ. And that's all by the grace of God. Because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, that's why it says, through Jesus Christ. Listen to Romans 8, 14 and 15, "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, for you did not receive the Spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received his Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba Father. Having been justified by faith, we don't just have a ticket to heaven. We have peace with the creator of heaven and earth. We are now his child. If you've placed your faith in Christ, you have this peace. But let me implore you, let me appeal to you. If you have not placed your faith in trust in Christ, you don't have peace with God. Maybe you've never come to understand the gospel, and if that's you, we'd love to explain more about what Jesus accomplished for all of us on the cross and how when we respond by faith, we can stand forgiven. If you have heard that and you've ignored it, my appeal to you is to not ignore it. So that you too can have that peace with God today. Truth number two, not only do we have peace with God, but we're secure because we're under grace. We're secure because we're under grace. Verse two says, "Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand." I want to point out a couple of key words. I want you to look at that verse there, verse two. Sometimes when you read a verse, I know kind of the familiar words jump out and we might miss the less common words. I want you to notice what he says, that we've obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, into is the key word, into this grace in which we stand. Here's what I mean by this. Think of the difference between a hallway and a room. You know, the difference, a hallway is something we walk through in order to get to a room, right, or to get somewhere. You walk through a hallway, you don't linger in the hallway, usually. Whereas a room is a place you walk into and you stand, or you may even sit, you stay there for a while. What Paul is saying here is we have access into his grace and we stand there. I think the danger is too many times I think we think of grace as a hallway that we walked through in order to be saved. We might say to ourselves, "Yeah, X number of years ago, I was saved by grace through faith." And now, ever since then, I've been living my life trying to please God through discipline and self-effort. That's not accurate. We have a standing in grace every day of our lives. We have access into this grace and we stand. Just think of the danger of not understanding or embracing this truth. You might live your Christian life striving, performing, thinking that you're going to get a quarterly report card from God and he's going to be assessing your spiritual performance. We need to understand that we have a standing in grace. You might still hang on to guilt over past sins rather than embracing the truth that those sins were paid for at the cross and now we stand in his grace. You might experience doubt over lingering sin rather than resting in God's grace and relying on his spirit to work in your life to give you the power and the ability to defeat that sin, to give you victory. His believers in Christ are Heavenly Father and wants us to know that in Christ we have a continual standing in grace. Hebrews 4, 16 says, "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." That is not a one-time promise when you come to Christ. It is every day that we have the standing in grace. Truth number three, we find security even through our suffering. After this first couple of truths, Paul jumps right in and says not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings. It stood out to me this week as I think about this, like here is Paul explaining to believers now that you are justified by faith, here are some key things you need to know and by the third verse he tells us we are going to have suffering. Right away he doesn't mess around. He says, "Expect difficulty in the Christian life." We are not promised an easy life, don't expect it. But we are promised that there is a purpose and that we are not alone as we go through this suffering. A couple things about these verses that I want to highlight is that the idea of suffering here or some of your translations may say tribulation, the word has the idea of pressure like the squeezing of an orange pushing that juice out, its pressure. And the context doesn't tell us exactly what the suffering refers to as if it is related to our faith like persecution. And so likely what Paul is getting at is just general suffering that we all could go through during our lifetime. And so what I want you to notice here is that Paul says that we rejoice, because that's a notice the word we notice much, is that we rejoice in our suffering. And that's important to realize that we are not expected to rejoice about the suffering itself, but that we can find joy in it. I don't think these verses communicate the expectation that we should be happy about our trials. I don't think we are expected to rejoice over the loss of a loved one, or learning about a serious diagnosis, or the loss of a job, or a strain in a relationship. But it does communicate a perspective that there is a purpose in our suffering and that we are not alone, and when we know that purpose, we can find joy. So how do we find that joy in the midst of suffering? It's a key phrase knowing that. As you are going through a trial and it's hard, we need to remember a truth. It's like we need to mentally and spiritually calculate this purpose behind this trial. When he goes through the perspective or this progression of thought that suffering leads to endurance, endurance leads to character and character leads to hope. And here's what he's getting at in describing that progression. That if your suffering drives you closer to Christ rather than away from Christ, if in the midst of a trial, your faith by the grace of God causes you to draw near to him rather than pushing you away in bitterness, that's endurance. Your faith is now stronger. Then that endurance reveals your character that God is truly at work in your life. And that character gives you hope, or another word for hope is confidence. And this is all by the grace of God. He's the one who's working in you, giving you the strength to endure. So we need to know that. We need to calculate that spiritually. I think back for me personally even looking back at a season of my life when I was 19 years old, very new believer in Christ. I didn't know much at all, that age of 19, fall of my freshman year in college, my mom passes away. And so for me to look back on that experience, there is not joy in that loss. That loss did not create joy in it of itself. But over the years and still today, I can look back at that season of my life as a very young believer and see that that event drew me closer to Christ. I could tell my roots were going deeper. Praise the Lord that my faith during that season, though it was very young, didn't buckle. That God was the one working holding me fast, like the song that we sing. Hebrews 12-1, let us run with endurance, the race that is set before us. There are going to be hard times, but God uses them in our life. There's another illustration that we learned about this Sequoia tree. Here's another picture. So as I mentioned, we were there a couple weeks ago with some dear friends of ours. There's Brian standing in front of a tree. Do you notice the difference between that tree? That's a lot of fire damage. And so when we walked into this forest and saw the many trees and how huge they are, we were expecting to see their size. That part we were expecting. What I didn't expect was to see all the fire damage. And the older the tree, the more damage there was. And I know for me, as you walk around that forest and you see the fire damage, the initial response might be to look at a tree like this one here and say, oh, that's too bad. That's really sad that the fire damaged the tree that way. But then as we read more about the impact of fires on the Sequoia tree, we learned that actually fires help the tree get stronger. There's some technicalities in there, but basically what happens is it causes the cones to drop, release their seeds and regenerate. It causes the brush around the tree to burn away the smaller trees, which eliminates the shade, which allows more sunlight into the soil. So then the tree itself is stronger. So for me, I look at a tree like this and I can think to myself, oh, that's too bad. Whereas the tree is looking at me and as if it would say, which it can't say, but it's almost like the tree is saying to me, yeah, I've been through trials. Yes, I've been through fire. Yes, I've been hurt. But look how strong I am. Look how big I am, that those fires actually made me stronger. And you look at these trees and you're just amazed, but we can look at each other and be amazed because God does the same work in our life. The fire wasn't pleasant for the tree. The trials are not pleasant for us, but God has a purpose and he's drawing us closer to Christ because of it. The next point, truth number four. Our future is secure. What I'm going to do here is go back to verse two, the second half, and then I'm going to develop that through verses six through eleven. That should say six through eleven, that's my typo. So verse two, B, and then six through eleven. What Paul says here is, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. The biblical understanding of hope is a confident expectation of a future reality. In this context, it's a joyful and confident expectation of our eternal salvation. The simple explanation is confidently looking forward to heaven because we know we're going to be there. Does this verse sound familiar when you sit when it says the hope of the glory of God from Romans? Just a couple of chapters earlier, Romans 3.23 says what? For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Well, here in chapter five, after he's explained justification by faith, he says, since we've been justified by faith, now we can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And it's all because Jesus has done for us and that we can be justified by faith. If you have been justified by faith, you have peace with God today, but we will have peace with God for eternity because we can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Now I want to look at verses six through eleven because Paul develops this idea a little bit more and he actually presents a logical argument for how we can be so confident that this will happen. So let me read verses six through eleven. And as I read, what I want you to notice is what Paul is doing to develop this logical argument. He's looking back at the past to give us evidence that our future is secure. So he's helping us be confident out of our future by looking back at what God has already done in the past. Starting with verse six, "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, for perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God chose his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since then, 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. In a minute, we're going to look at how he's looking back to help us look forward. One thing I want to point out here is two words that Paul uses here that I think are significant. He refers to our relationship with God by using the word justified and reconciled. And I'm confident that that's very intentional. Paul's not just using two different words for stylistic reasons. Justified and reconciled refer to the two different ways in which we relate to God. Justified is a legal term showing that we, because we've put our faith in Christ because what Jesus accomplished on the cross, we now stand before God with our sins forgiven. God now looks at us and because of Christ, he can declare us not guilty. It's a legal term. But then the word reconciled is a relational term to show that now the way we relate to God is not just stoically like a judge who declares you not guilty, but as a father and a son or a daughter. That not only we declared not guilty, we're also declared to be his child. And think of the danger of not keeping both of those in mind. If you only think about justified, you might relate to God more in that like a judge who just declared you innocent. You'd be happy, but you don't have that warm relationship, that intimate relationship. If you neglect the justified and only think about reconciled, you may not have that awe and that gratitude. But now what I want to do is look and see what does Paul say? He's showing us that what has happened in the past can give us confident for what he has yet to do in the future. So when those verses look what's happened in the past, he says while we were weak, Christ died for the ungodly. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were enemies, we were reconciled by the death of his son. So what God had done in the past was the harder thing. And look what he says is going to happen in the future. In the light of what has already happened in the past, he says in verse 9, shall we be saved from the wrath of God? In verse 10, shall we be saved by his life? What he's referring to is the culmination of our faith being welcomed into the kingdom of God, being saved from God's wrath at the end and welcomed into his kingdom. Here's an explanation, a quote from Douglas Moo in his commentary on the book of Romans. He says this regarding these verses, "If God has already done the most difficult thing to reconcile and justify unworthy sinners, how much more can he be dependent on to accomplish the easier thing to save from eschatological wrath those who have been brought into such relationship with him." And Paul's point is that what God has already done to secure our salvation is greater than what he has yet to do to welcome us into his kingdom. Just as a personal illustration that kind of has the same idea, many of you know that we adopted all four of our kids. The older two, we adopted from birth so they don't have any memory of the process, obviously. We took them home right from the hospital. But the younger two were older. They were six and nine when we adopted them. So they were familiar with the process as it was moving along. And it was a process. So Melissa and I walked through the, I think, 36-ish hours of training. We had paperwork to fill out, application, multiple interviews with social workers. I remember the fire department had to come to our house to make sure it was safe. And then at the end, we would go to the courthouse. We went to the courthouse in downtown Cincinnati, stood before the judge, tried to make our case that I think we're going to be good parents. I think we'd be a good fit, I hope you agree. And stood before the judge to state our case, other family and friends were there as well. And then the judge, after thinking, says, "Okay, I approve." And so at that moment, it's amazing to think what happens in the adoption process. The kids in the last name is now Bush. They're going to get a new birth certificate with our names listed as parents. They get a brand new social security number, their previous identity is gone, disappears. And so imagine this, on that day when we had that court date, everything's finalized. We call it Bush Day. So after the court time, we go out and we celebrate, and we drive home, and as we pull into the driveway, what if we pull in and Melissa and I get out of the car, and the kids just stayed in the back seat? And we said, "What's wrong?" And they said, "Well, they didn't really say this." So if they said, "Well, I wasn't really sure if you were going to let us in the house." And I would say, "You're kidding me. Look at the process that we just went through. Your last name is now Bush. My name's on your birth certificate. This is our address. Welcome home. Come on inside. Get something out of the fridge. Go hang out in your room. You're home." That's the kind of security that God wants us to experience, because that's the kind of promise that He's given us, that He's already done the more difficult thing to justify us and reconcile us. Now we can know we are going to spend eternity with Him in heaven. If you've been reconciled with Christ, you have peace with God today, but we also know that we're going to have peace with God for eternity, because we can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Let's pray together. Father, thank You so much for the truths that You've communicated to us in Your Word. Thank You that because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, that we can stand before You forgiven, and not only forgiven, but as Your child. Lord, I pray that You would help our roots to go deep, help them also to go wide, help us to stand firm, but thank You that You are at work in our lives, You are the One that gives us our strength. We give You the honor and the glory and praise in Jesus' name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]