Justification IRL, Part 1 (Romans 5:1-2) | Louis Azuma

Speaker: So we're in Romans five.

We're gonna just look at two verses tonight.

All right.

Romans five verses one and two.

But before we get there, this passage talks a lot about.

Um, this thing called justification by faith, right?

And we've been talking about that a lot.

And just to catch you up, if you haven't been here, that means that

God makes people righteous, not by things that we do, but as a gift.

And we receive that gift by faith.

We receive it by trusting Jesus, by depending on him.

We spent a long time talking about how righteousness is a gift.

And we just got, we just entered a season where we got a lot of gifts.

We just got a lot of gifts for Christmas.

Hopefully you got some good ones, but every year you get some lame gifts

for Christmas, you get some gifts.

You're like, Hey, thanks.

But I'm just, I'm grateful that you got me something, but I'm just

kind of leave it in the closet.

I don't know if you've ever gotten a gift like that.

I got a couple gifts like that this Christmas where really grateful that

they thought of me, really grateful that they wanted to get something for

me, but not what I would've picked.

Right.

Um.

No, it wasn't pajamas.

That wasn't one of them.

It was another article of clothing.

My, someone got me these hats and I was like, I don't think I'd ever wear those,

but, and I don't think my wife would ever want me to wear them, more importantly.

Um, but they're, they're there, they're hats.

And I got 'em anyway.

So, um, sometimes right, you get a gift and you just, you're

like, thanks, put it in the box.

Forget about it.

Right.

Sometimes Christians can do that with justification, with being made

righteous, being made acceptable to God.

Sometimes if you're a Christian, you can think of your justification

like, great, I got saved.

I got made righteous.

God took away my sin, and then I leave that and I move on to what

I'm supposed to do as a Christian.

What we're gonna see in Romans chapter five is we're gonna see

that that being that action of being made righteous, God does that to us.

It's a gift that matters for the rest of a Christian's life.

Okay, so look with me Romans five, verses one and two.

Okay.

Therefore, whenever we see a, therefore right, we ask what is therefore there for?

It means it's, we're talking about what we just talked about,

therefore it's like a connection.

So whenever you see it, therefore, you should look at what we just talked

about and what we just talked about in Romans four was justification.

By faith being made righteous.

Being righteous, applied by faith.

So therefore, because we've been justified by faith, then there's gonna be three

things that happen as a result of that.

Three things that matter forever.

First thing, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Second thing, through him, through Jesus, we also have obtained access by

faith into this grace in which we stand.

So that's the second thing.

We've got peace.

We have access into this, this stuff, and we'll talk about what that is.

And the third thing, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

Three things.

So sometimes it's helpful for me when I read the Bible to kind of break

them up into sections like that.

It helps me just see it better, right?

Because sometimes you look at your Bible and it's a bunch of words and you're

like, I don't know where to start.

I like doing stuff like this.

Helps me see it, right?

So three things that, three results of being justified by faith.

First.

One second.

One third one.

Now, what I want you to notice here is, right, these are all not

something that we earned, right?

These are not things that we got because we're so great, because we did awesome

things because we're a good person, because we have Christian parents.

'cause we go to church, 'cause we grew up believing the right things.

They come through Jesus.

We've talked about that a lot in the book of Romans so far,

we've talked about that a lot.

That all of the, all of the goodness of God to us comes

through Jesus Christ, right?

We don't earn God's blessings.

They come as a gift by faith, right?

Grace has to be unearned.

It can't be earned otherwise.

It's not a gift anymore.

If you worked for it, if you deserved it, it wasn't a gift.

It wasn't something that God showed to you as grace.

It was something that you earned from God.

You put God in debt.

You said, I'm so good.

God, you better give this to me.

I deserve it.

That's not how it works.

All of this comes because of someone else, because of Jesus,

and we receive it by faith.

But anyway, three results, right?

Three results of being justified by faith.

Those are our three results.

So that first one, we're gonna focus on that one right now.

All right.

Peace with God.

Why is that such a big deal?

Well, I don't know if you've ever thought about this before.

This might be new to you.

Hopefully it's not.

But at one point in your life, and this might still be true to

you today, God was your enemy.

That might be new for you.

God was your enemy.

Maybe you just thought, oh, I just didn't believe in God.

Or, oh, I just wasn't a Christian, or I just didn't give my life to

Christ, or I wasn't following Jesus.

At one point in your life, God was your enemy.

If you aren't a Christian.

God is presently right now, your enemy.

There is hostility between you and God.

There's, it's not just ignoring God.

There is hostility.

There is anger there.

God's wrath is directed at your sin because as we've talked about in Romans

chapter one, what you're saying to God is you're not, you're not good enough.

I don't want you, I just want your stuff, right?

That's what, not trusting God is.

That's what worshiping other things, loving things more than God is.

And so at some point in your life, if, if you're a Christian, it was in the past.

If you're not a Christian, it's you right now.

God was your enemy.

You are opposed to God.

You are in rebellion against God.

That's why this is such a big deal.

Because the only way you can fix that, the only way you can get God to not be your

enemy anymore is through Jesus Christ.

So God is the enemy of those who are not following him, who

aren't trusting him, right?

You can't just ignore God and say, oh, well, just me and God.

We don't just get along.

We're just gonna go our separate ways.

That's not how it works.

You are opposing God.

If you are not following Jesus, and so the only way to get that taken

away is through Jesus Christ by faith.

So our first point tonight, trust Jesus to remove God's wrath.

You could write more.

You could say from you or from me.

The only way that you can have peace with God, you can solve the problem that

God is opposed to me and I'm opposed to God is through Jesus trusting him.

I don't know if you've ever had a teacher who feels like, feels like

your teacher's out to get you.

Have you ever been in one of those classes?

Carson just nodded so hard.

I'm not surprised at all, but if you ever been in a class where you

feel like, man, my teacher is just.

They're just looking and waiting for me to mess up.

Right.

Or you maybe had a coach like that.

Like, oh man, they are just waiting.

Every time I do something wrong, every time I mess up, every time I even look at

my friend to talk to them, they're on me.

Right?

I, I was in, I was in a class like that.

Mostly it was my fault because I deserved it, but I felt like,

man, my teacher is out to get me.

He.

Even accused me of forging my mom's signature.

I'm in fourth grade, he accused me of forging my mom's signature on a

permission slip because it was bumpy, because she signed it on like a,

like a concrete table at the park.

And so it was bumpy and he was like, let me see your mom.

You need to talk.

And I was like, okay.

And he was like, he brought it up.

Did you sign this?

Mrs.

Azuma and I, she was like, yeah.

And I was like, see, I told you.

And so anyway, he was just looking for, for anything to, to get me in trouble.

That's how I felt.

Right.

I don't know if you've ever been in a class like that, but, um,

there's that tension, right, of, man, my teacher is opposed to me.

They, they're not on my team.

They're not, they're not looking out for me.

If you are.

Not following Jesus.

You are God's enemy.

There is opposition between you and God.

You are not merely ignoring God or doing things your own way.

You are actively opposing the king of the universe.

You're not just agreeing to disagree.

You're not just saying, well, maybe later I'll, I'll get on the right track.

You're telling God I don't want you.

You're not important.

You're not glorious, you're not valuable.

You're not worth following, you're not trustworthy.

You are opposing God.

If you are a Christian, that's where you were before God saved you.

You weren't just a good kid waiting to become a Christian.

You were opposing God.

You were the object of God's wrath.

God's holy anger was going to be poured out on your sin.

That's why peace with God is such a big deal.

It removes that, it removes God's anger, God's right anger, right?

So my teacher had a lot of good reasons to not like me as a student.

I talked a lot to my friends.

I messed around in class a lot.

Um, and I was very, I, I made a lot of, I made a lot of jokes.

I did a lot.

I messed around in class and whatever, right?

He had a lot of good reasons to, to be assuming the worst about me, right?

Even more so with God.

God's anger is perfectly justified towards sin.

It's the right response that he should show towards our sin.

And so the only way to get rid of God's anger is not to try to make it up to

God and try to do better next time.

It's not to, um, just try really hard.

It's not to do all the Christian things.

That's not how you get rid of God's wrath, right?

Even if you are a Christian, if you sin.

The first thing you should do isn't try really hard to not do it.

The first thing you should do is go to Jesus.

Jesus is the only one who can remove God's wrath from you, and

you need that every day of your life, even if you are Christian

closeness with God, right?

We talk about, oh, I just wanna be close with God.

Sometimes Christians say that you hear Christians say something like,

oh, I just wanna draw closer to God.

I want, I just want want to.

Feel closer to God.

I don't feel close to God right now.

Closeness with God is grounded in an objective reality, right?

A a concrete thing that really happened.

Jesus really died on the cross.

He really took away the sin of his people.

That's where closeness with God comes from.

It doesn't start with you being really good at reading your Bible.

It doesn't start with you knowing a lot about God.

It doesn't start with you serving in church.

It starts with Jesus.

You go to Jesus.

That's where you remove the obstacle between you and God.

You can't add to it.

You can't take away from it.

That's such a good thing, right?

Maybe you are a Christian and you feel terrible after you sin.

That doesn't change what Jesus did.

You can't outs sin, Jesus saving work.

So the first thing you should do is go to Jesus.

There's one pastor he calls it, he calls it gutsy guilt.

You feel bad about your sin, you're convicted.

You go to God.

You don't hide from God.

You go to God.

You say, God, I'm a sinner.

I need you.

I need you to forgive me.

Please help me repent.

I hate that I did this.

I love you.

I don't wanna do this anymore.

That's the way to remove God's wrath.

You go to Jesus.

You don't hide from him.

You don't try to clean yourself up and then come to God.

You go to Jesus to take away your guilt.

But justification by faith.

Right.

What we talked about doesn't just get rid of God's wrath.

It doesn't just stop God from being your enemy.

It also makes God your friend, and that's what we see later

on in this passage, right?

It's like you went from being the, you know, the problem

child of the class to being the teacher's favorite student, right?

You're not just a normal student anymore.

Once you become a Christian, you're actually the favorite student.

Right.

That's what we're talking about in verse two right here.

So we've been justified by faith.

So the first thing means we have peace with God.

The second thing, through him, through Jesus, we have obtained.

That means you've got something access by faith into this grace.

So this is a really interesting description of grace 'cause it's almost

like grace is like a room, right?

You went from the wrath room to the grace room.

You didn't just go from the wrath room to the neutral room.

You went from the wrath room to the grace room.

Now what even is grace, right?

What does that even mean?

Well, you're in the the realm of grace.

Another way you could translate this would be favor.

God is now

he's his.

Instead of his wrath being poured out to you, his love is being poured out to you.

God is no longer opposed to you.

He is for you.

Everything that he does is working for your good.

For what's best for you.

And the best part is there's nothing you can do to get out of it, right,

because you didn't get yourself in it.

'cause you got there by faith.

So God puts you in it by faith, and that means you're stuck.

You can't get out of it, which is a great thing.

And so you don't just trust Jesus to take away God's wrath.

You also trust Jesus to give you God's favor.

That's our second point.

Trust Jesus for favor.

From God.

The word favor has kind of been hijacked from for by some, uh, some types of

churches that will tell you that favor from God means a lot of money or favor

from God means, um, you're never gonna get sick or nothing bad's gonna happen to you.

Right.

You probably might not have run into that, but, um, your people, your

leaders might have heard stuff like that, and you might as you get older.

So what we really need to talk about is what actually

does favor from God look like?

Right?

What does it mean to experience God's goodness?

What does it mean to experience God's favor?

What does it mean that God is for me and not against me anymore?

Well, we can start with what it isn't, right?

Favor from God isn't everything you want.

And the reason is because everything that I want for me isn't always good for me.

Simple example.

I love Mountain Dew.

Mountain Dew is not good for me, right?

But I want it, right?

There's a lot of things that I want that aren't good for me, not just

physically, but emotionally, spiritually.

There's a lot of things that.

I'm like, oh yeah, that would be so great if I had that thing.

And maybe the thing itself isn't bad, right?

Maybe it's, uh, you know, you, you want to go into this type of career, or maybe

you wish you had this type of family, or maybe you wish you had this much

money, or maybe you wish you looked like this, or maybe you wish whatever, right?

Not necessarily a bad thing, but it might not be good for you to have.

So favor from God doesn't mean getting everything you want.

Favor from God doesn't mean your life is easy.

It doesn't mean a problem free life.

You think about God's favorite person in the world is Jesus.

Jesus had a really hard life.

It wasn't problem free.

It wasn't easy.

It doesn't mean a lot of money or success on your terms, right?

It doesn't mean all of your dreams will come true.

Don't say, oh, well now I'm Christian.

God's gonna help me do everything I want to do, right?

That's not what it means that God is for you.

Because if God's really for you, he's actually gonna not let you

do things that you want to do.

'cause they might be bad for you, right?

Kind of like your parents.

They're for you.

They're for your good.

And so they don't let you do certain things, or they don't let you do

certain things because they, they say that that's not gonna be good for you.

So.

Well then what is it?

What is favor from God?

Doesn't sound very attractive anymore.

You've ruined it Well.

What is favor from God?

Well, it's God's unwavering commitment to your good.

I think I've said this to you guys before, but God is more committed to your good,

to your eternal happiness than you are.

God cares more about you being happy than you do.

Maybe you've never heard it put like that before.

Psalm 16 says that at God's right hand are pleasures forevermore, the most amount of

happiness for the longest amount of time.

And God wants that for you.

And that's why he offers you himself.

He says, the way you're gonna be happiest is if you get me the, the most loving

thing for God to do is say, I want you to have as much of me of God as possible.

That's the most loving thing you forgot to do, right?

It'd be like, if I was the best chef in the world, let's say imagine I

was the, the best chef in the world and, um, you came to me and you were

like, alright, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to, you know, I've met this special

someone and I wanna take him to dinner.

Where should I take him?

Right?

I wanna take him on this date.

I wanna have an awesome dinner.

If I loved you, I wouldn't send you to the second best restaurant.

I would say, I'll make you dinner because I am the best chef.

Objectively.

I'm the, I make the best food, so I should make you the food

because if you go somewhere else, it's gonna be worse, right?

If I loved you, that's what I would do.

And so similarly, God will make you happier to satisfy you more than

anything else the world has to offer.

And so the most loving thing for him to do is say, here's how you get more of me,

more of my glory, more of my goodness.

More, here's how you experience more closeness with me, and that's the

most loving thing for God to do.

And so it's almost like, like in sports, there's always those players

that you hate playing against, right?

You're like, man, that guy, I, I really hate playing against him usually because

they're, they're really good and you don't like playing against him, and they're

really frustrating to play against.

But then when they get like traded to your team, you're

like, oh yeah, this is awesome.

This is the best.

I love this guy.

They're, they're like the best player ever.

It's kinda like that just happened when you became a Christian.

You went from being on the opposite team from God.

He was against you, you were against him.

You were hostile to him, and now he's, you're on his team.

You got traded.

Now you're on his team and now he's working for your good, right?

He's throwing touchdowns for your team.

Now he's scoring goals for your team.

And you're like, that's great.

That's what I want.

You could score all the goals you want now, right?

Because you're on my team now, or I'm on your team rather, right?

So

Jesus is the way.

You get favor from God, right?

For God to look at you and say, well done.

Good and faithful servant that comes through Jesus.

It doesn't come by your own effort, right?

So even if you are a Christian, maybe you say, great, I'm saved.

I wanna live for God.

You do that through Jesus.

You don't do that apart from Jesus.

You don't move on from Jesus once you get saved and then say, all right, now I'm

gonna try really hard and and love God.

You still do that through Jesus.

The only way that any of the good things that Christians do are

acceptable to God is through Jesus.

So you still trust Jesus.

Even in your good works, you still trust Jesus, even in how you worship God.

So we trust Jesus to take away God's wrath and we trust Jesus

to give us favor from God.

And like I mentioned earlier, um, the goal of being saved, the goal

of justification by faith is not to be justified to be saved, right?

The goal of being saved isn't being saved.

The goal of being saved is to get God.

The goal of being saved is to get God.

That's where Paul goes with this last point right here.

So you get peace with God, you get access to God's grace.

But most importantly he says, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

When you see hope in the Bible, I don't want you to think hope,

like, oh, I hope the Cowboys actually get a good defense one day.

Right?

I don't want you to think hope like that.

I want you to think hope, like I am confident that

this is gonna happen, right?

Like a, a certain confidence you have of like, man, this is gonna happen.

I know it's gonna happen, but I'm just looking forward to it happening, right?

Like I hope Winter revival is going to be awesome, right?

You're confident, you're like, I know this is gonna be

awesome, so I'm gonna expect it.

Right?

That's the kind of hope that when you see hope in the Bible, that's what that means.

So we are rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God.

One day we are going to see God.

As he is, we're gonna finally be with God and enjoy him free from

sin, free from anything that hinders your, your experience of God.

And that is the goal of being justified by faith.

The point of being saved isn't just to be saved.

The point of being saved is that you get God, you get the greatest thing ever.

You get God himself.

So that's our third point.

Trust Jesus to enjoy life's greatest treasure.

Which is God, in case you could put that in parentheses, God,

right after that, if you wanted to.

The best part about being a Christian is that you get God, that's the best part.

Hands down.

The best part isn't that you're forgiven.

The best part isn't that you're not gonna go to hell.

The best part isn't that now you're part of a church.

The best part is that you get God.

I want you to imagine that someone gave you tickets to the Super Bowl.

Like let's say they just showed up on Christmas Day and you, you opened

a Christmas present and you were like, man, tickets to the Super Bowl.

Or let's say you're a more refined sports fan.

Tickets to the World Cup this summer, right?

Way better than the Super Bowl.

Imagine that that happened.

To you, or maybe you don't care about sports concert tickets, right?

Or something like that, right?

To your favorite Taylor Swift.

No.

Um, imagine that you got surprised by, by tickets, right?

Whatever it is.

Super Bowl concert, anything like that.

And then all you did was like, you, you frame the ticket.

You're so excited about the ticket.

You're like, I have this ticket.

To go to the Super Bowl and you post about it.

You tell everyone, you, you just tell all your friends, you bring it to school with

you, you know, and it like, you've got like a bulletproof glass frame for it.

You're like, look at my ticket, look at my ticket, look at my ticket.

And then you never actually go, but you're like, guys, I have

a ticket to the Super Bowl.

Isn't that awesome?

I have a ticket that gets me into the Super Bowl.

Isn't that great?

I have a ticket for it.

And you tell everyone.

Then they'll ask, how was the Super Bowl?

They're like, oh, it was cool, but I have a ticket for the Super Bowl.

Isn't that awesome?

That's really dumb, right?

That's what it's like to be more excited about being saved than getting God

being saved is the ticket.

God is the prize.

That's what you look forward to about being saved.

That's the best part.

The best part isn't that you're saved.

The best part is you're saved, so you get God.

The best part isn't that you're made righteous.

The best part is that you get God.

The best part isn't that you're forgiven of your sin.

The best part is that forgiveness gets you God.

Forgiveness isn't primarily about getting your guilt taken away.

Forgiveness is primarily about, you get Jesus, your guilt is

gone, and now you get Jesus.

You have the ticket, and now you get to go.

That's, that's the point.

Justification isn't just about finally feeling good enough.

It's about getting Jesus going to heaven isn't about not having to go to Hell.

It's about getting to be with Jesus.

That's everything as a Christian, right?

The point of praying is not necessarily to pray.

The point of praying is you can talk to God and that's awesome, right?

The point of reading your Bible isn't to read the Bible.

It's not to do the Dbr R.

The point of praying is you get to hear from God.

You get to see God in his word.

You get to enjoy him and worship him and so him in and just man God is so awesome.

That's the point of reading the Bible.

That's the point of going to church.

The point of going to church isn't to say hi to your friends.

The point of going to church isn't just to, to do the right thing

or, or fuel up on the sermon.

Those are all good things about being in church, but the best part about church

is it's God's people and they show you a little bit more of who God is.

You get to see more of God through his people,

and all of that comes through Jesus.

You get God because of Jesus.

Jesus saves you to bring you to God, but he also saves you to

establish a relationship with God.

So you, God goes from being your enemy to being your friend, to being for you.

And then also he shows you who God is most clearly right?

Jesus shows us who God is He God in the flesh?

Where do we see the glory of God most clearly, it's in Jesus,

who He is, what He's like.

And so faith is how you enjoy God the way you're supposed to.

Faith is the way, like we talked about a few weeks ago.

Faith is the way you see things the right way.

Faith is the the way you get connected to this greatest treasure, right?

It's the ticket to the game.

And so I hope for you tonight.

When you think of the best part about being a Christian, you think

of God, and I hope when you think of all the things that Christians do,

you don't think of a bunch of rules.

You don't think of a bunch of boxes to check.

You don't think about a bunch of things to measure up to, but you think

about, these are ways that I enjoy God.

These are ways that God and I deepen our relationship.

These are ways that God, I get to hear from God.

I get to talk to God.

I get to spend time with God's people.

I get to see more of who God is and ultimately one day.

You get to go to heaven and you get to finally be with

the God that you love so much.

Let's pray and we'll go to small groups.

Father, you are amazing.

You are glorious.

You are so important, so awesome, so loving, so faithful, and I am just so

glad that you made yourself known to us.

Thank you that you love us and that you've shown us who you are in your word.

And so I pray that as we talk more about trusting you, as we talk more about, um,

these big ideas that you would help us to, um, remember that the, the best part

of everything is you and I pray that you help us to, um, not just see following

you as a, a bunch of chores to do or.

Um, things that we just have to do to, to, to make it, but rather that we would

see it as a relationship with, um, the most amazing person we could ever know.

Pray this in Jesus name.

Amen.