Romans 5:1-5 – Romans

Our reading today is from Romans 5, verses 1 to 5, and we're using the ESV translation.

Romans 5:1–5

And while you're turning there, we thought it would be good to have a question for everyone, especially the children.

So do follow along in your Bible, and as you do, try to listen for or find the answer in the passage, and you can whisper it to your mom or your dad.

So this is our question.

What does Paul tell us to rejoice in?

And there might be two things.

So what does Paul tell us to rejoice in?

You got it?

Okay.

So our reading is Romans 5, 1 to 5.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through him we also have 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.

And so we've got the word.

We don't believe that the resurrection is just the happy ending tack-on to the crucifixion, like they were writing the story and it ends in death.

And so they thought, oh no, hold on.

This ends in a very downbeat note.

Why don't we just add on something more positive and make it a more of a heroic myth?

That's not what we believe about the resurrection.

We believe that it's true.

We believe that it actually happened.

We believe that it makes best sense of the evidence surrounding the empty tomb.

Now, lots of Easter talks, and we've done this before, lots of Easter talks focus on the evidence for the resurrection and why the tomb was empty and uh and all of those things in order that you might have greater uh confidence that that is the best possible explanation.

That's not where we're going to go today.

You can look online in uh places like gotquestions.org if you want to do a deep dive in that.

I want to focus uh this morning on this passage that Sarah read for us from uh Romans chapter five in order to see what some of the effects of the resurrection are.

Why does the resurrection matter?

What does it do in our lives right now?

Because I think it actually has profound effects for how we live, how we uh view our day-to-day and how we move towards the future.

You see, the resurrection of Jesus is not just something that has happened and is consigned uh to the past and to the history books.

It's something that affects our present and impacts our future.

And those three tenses of past, present, and future are in a sense inseparable in the Christian mind.

They all kind of hang together because of this past event, it has impact now and transforms our future.

But what are those things?

I'm gonna give you three things this morning because I'm a good Christian pastor and they don't rhyme or anything like that.

Uh I'm not that good.

Uh, but I'm gonna give you three ways that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead uh transforms your life.

First is it transforms your status.

Second is it transforms your future, and thirdly, it transforms your present, transforms your status, your future, and your present.

First one, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead transforms our status.

Paul, if you're just new here, let me bring you up that we're going through the book of Romans.

We haven't just picked this one, this passage for today.

We're in a series in the book of Romans.

And Paul has uh been showing us what human nature is like apart from God, that actually we don't by nature uh love God the way that we ought.

In fact, we're quite hostile to him.

We don't like the idea that he would make a claim uh over our lives, that he would want to rule over us.

We we bristle against that.

And maybe you're here this morning, and actually you're still bristling against that sort of claim.

Paul says that we exchange, we swap out the glory of God for the glory of other things.

We uh we look at God and think, no, no, I don't I don't want that.

I'd rather have I'd rather have this.

I'd rather value and treasure.

That's what glory is.

I'd rather glory in this thing, uh, this earthly thing, whether it's a relationship, money, sex, power, career, comfort, all of those things.

But we would rather glory in anything but the God of glory.

And so we we reject the truth about him, we choose to follow our own desires.

And in doing so, we end up harming ourselves and we harm one another.

And that problem isn't fixed by religion.

That problem isn't fixed by moral goodness or ritualistic observance.

No, it's a problem that both the religious person and the non-religious person has.

But Paul says at the end of chapter three, God has acted.

God has done something to solve the problem that we could not solve by our religious goodness.

He has acted by stepping into human history, by living a perfect life, and by taking into himself the punishment that was due for our rejection and our turning from God.

That is why the death of Jesus matters.

That's why Good Friday is good.

If you were here on Friday night, that's what we were looking at.

Why do we call this horrific event Good Friday?

Well, because it's the day upon which Jesus absorbed the wrath of God into himself on our behalf.

And that is why it is good.

And his resurrection from the dead is the great confirmation that that work is finished and that forgiveness is possible.

And that the way that we embrace that forgiveness, Paul's been saying, is by faith alone.

It's not by participation in some religious ceremony for the Jew.

It was not being circumcised or observing the food laws.

No, it was simply by trusting in the promises of God.

And in chapter 4, he has been showing us that actually it's always been this way.

Sometimes we can wrongly think uh that God saved people one way in the Old Testament and a different way in the New Testament.

We can think Old Testament was uh was law and works and sacrifices and uh and all of those things.

But now God's kind of chilled out a little bit, and it's and it's faith and it's grace, and it's just trusting the promises of God.

No, it was uh faith all the way, and he builds that case, Paul builds that case in Romans chapter 4 by looking at Abraham, the great father of faith, or David, the great king who uh had God had promised to establish his throne forever, and the risen King Jesus is that Davidic king.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

And so he begins now, having established all of that, to move on and to spell out what all of this means for the Christian life.

That's why he begins with the words, therefore, it's good for you to have uh Romans 5 open in front of you so that you're able to follow along.

So he says, 5 verse 1, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, that is, since we have been declared righteous in God's sight by trusting in his promises, therefore we have peace with God, that's a transformed status.

Because remember what we've just been saying, that actually our relationship with God was one of hostility.

It was not a positive one.

Some people, and forgive me if uh this is something that you might say, but people often say something like, Oh, I I don't really I don't really have a relationship with God.

I'd want to encourage you to see that actually that's not true.

Everyone's in a relationship with God.

It's just some people are in a more positive one than others.

That actually our relationship with God by nature is one of hostility, it's one of enmity.

And what God has done in the sending of Jesus, in Jesus' death and resurrection, is that He has created peace with God.

That it is possible no longer to live in that place of hostility and animosity, but now possible to be at peace with God.

Now, don't confuse this with what people call the peace of God.

Uh you know, people uh might point to Paul's letter in Philippians, where he says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, with prayer and supplication, bring your request to God.

And the peace of God that transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

That great, imperceptible, unexplainable sense of peace and rest that the Christian enjoys because we know that our uh our God is our Heavenly Father and that He loves us.

No, before there's the peace of God dwelling in our hearts, we need peace with God.

We need the establishment of a new status between us and God.

That is what the death of Jesus achieves.

That because Jesus absorbs the right, righteous anger of God, we no longer live as enemies.

And so we have peace with him.

No more hatred, no more negotiating with him, bargaining with him, trying to twist his arm.

No, simply peace.

But Paul goes on and says that with this peace comes access.

Therefore, so we're still in verse one, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, through his death and resurrection.

Through him, we have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

Here's some peace agreements that might be signed.

I suspect that in some of our countries that you heal from, there has been conflict and warfare, as indeed where I grew up in Northern Ireland.

There's communities that were hostile to one another.

And sometimes what can happen is that a peace can be established, but it's basically a peace which says, well, you go your way and I'll go mine and we'll stop killing one another.

But we're just going to remain separate.

It's possible to have that sort of peace, a kind of uh an agreement not to continue hostilities, but no real positive love or affection, no real desire to be in that community's company or that person's company.

Maybe you've had that in your in your own life.

Maybe you have that in your family where it's like, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep peace with this person, um, but I'm not really uh going to spend any time kind of investing in that relationship positively.

We're just gonna stop arguing.

We're just gonna keep peace.

But that's not what's going on here.

See, God doesn't just end hostilities between us and him.

No, he draws us close.

He brings us into friendship.

This word access that Paul talks about means to be brought near, to be, to be introduced to our Heavenly Father.

There's a I'm gonna try and illustrate this with a joke, and it may just fall may just fall flat.

But there's a joke that I enjoy because I'm married to an English person, to an English woman, right?

And so it says you two Irish men and two Scots uh and two Englishmen are marooned on a desert island.

And uh and after a year, the uh the two Irishmen have killed one another, um, because you know they haven't established peace.

The two Irishmen have uh killed one another, the two Scots have uh have established a distillery and they're having a nice uh little bit of scotch, and the two Englishmen uh are still waiting to be formally introduced.

Ah, excellent.

So you get that's uh, you know, uh won't you introduce me to your friends?

Yeah, but that is what is happening here.

It is as though, if you can picture it in your mind's eye, it is as though Jesus reaches out with his nail-pierced hand and takes your hand in his and says, Come with me.

And he brings you into the throne room and he introduces you to his heavenly father and says, Here is Peter, here is Ben, here is Danny, here is Ross, here is Lizzie, who I have died for.

Love them as your son or daughter, adopt them into your family.

It is that sort of introduction.

He grants you access.

And Paul says that we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

Do you see that?

Present tense, not future tense, not a and one day we will stand in that heavenly throne room.

No, Paul is saying that you, believer, one who's trusting in Jesus, you stand there now.

That's why it's transformed status.

Peace with God, brought near to him, introduced to the God of heaven and earth.

That wherever you go and whatever you experience, you have peace with him.

Wherever you go and wherever you stand, you are standing in the throne room of heaven.

You're standing in that grace, the kindness of God, never to depart from it again, never to be sent away.

What security there is in that that you will never again, because of what Jesus has done and what we celebrate today, be banished again from the presence of God.

You have a transformed status.

The second is that we have a transformed future.

And you see the how the two link, that because we have a transformed status, never to be sent away from the presence of God, well, of course our future is transformed.

Things can only get better.

You know, it has often been said that for the uh for the Christian, life on earth is the closest that the believer in Jesus will ever get to hell.

Things can only get better.

The converse is true that uh that for those who are not yet trusting in Jesus, this is the closest that they will get to to heaven.

Paul talks about this transformed future all the way through these next three chapters through Romans 5 to 8 that we'll be covering between now and the end of June.

That because Jesus has done, finished his work upon the cross, we have this unassailable hope for the future.

Listen to what he says.

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

That was the first thing, by the way, that uh uh Sarah wanted you to pick up on that we were rejoicing in.

We're rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God.

We no longer simply rejoice in who we are and what we can do.

We no longer rejoice in our goodness.

No, we rejoice not in our own glory, but in the hope of the glory of God.

This word hope can throw us a little bit, can't it?

Because hope sounds a little bit weak.

Certainly, that's the way that we use the word hope.

We use the word hope as a kind of a vague aspiration.

Uh I hope it won't rain later today.

Good luck.

Uh you know, I I hope that I will have steak for dinner.

Sorry, vegetarians.

Um, those those sort of aspirations may or may not happen.

That's how we we tend to use hope.

But that's not what hope means in the Bible.

Hope in the Bible is a certain conviction, it is something that has been established by Christ in the past through his death and resurrection, and that because he was actually physically, literally raised from the dead, that is just as true as that is, so it is true that our future access is secure.

It is a certain conviction that as certainly as Christ has saved us by his death and resurrection, and as certain as we have peace with him, so we are equally certain that we will see him one day in the fullness of his glory.

And this really is a transformation because remember back to Romans 1.

Remember what I was saying at the start is that by nature we don't like the glory of God.

We swap it out all the time for anyone and anything.

One of the things that changes in the Christian's life is that we begin to hope to see more of his glory.

We actually want that thing now.

If you really if you notice that that since you've become a believer in Jesus, if indeed you are one, that one of the things that happens, you feel like you've got new desires, you want different things.

You want to see more of the glory of God.

That that thing that didn't really make sense and you were turned off by Him, why would I want to pursue that?

Now actually, you sit here and you think, oh, it is as though, it is as though when we gather here and we reflect on these things and we sing and we worship, it is as though we get a just a little foretaste of his glory amongst us.

And what that does is it wets our abiting.

I I can't wait until the day that I drink deeply from that.

I can't wait until the day that I slake my thirst at the fount of living water, and I behold with all the fullness of my being, and that I am able to contain within myself all of his glory.

Your longings have changed.

Paul is saying that that is the future that you're going towards.

The Christian life, because it's lived out spiritually speaking in the throne room, creates in us these longings.

For the spiritual experience that we have to join with the physical experience of beholding Him face to face.

I'll never forget a church that I work for in Northern Ireland had a number of wonderful older saints and i'm sure that uh that many of us have been uh blessed by uh by people who have continued to follow jesus through through decades and you kind of see something almost of of jesus written on their on their face and there was uh there was two in particular that uh that stood out um there was clive clive was a uh a godly um pastor for years and years and years and uh and he um he retired to this church that i was working for and um when i was uh an apprentice an intern there he would uh he would call me up more most mornings at 8 a.m just to make sure that i was out of bed um and i used to have to run down the stairs because it was back when you had a landline i didn't have a mobile phone right that's how long ago this was and so he would ring my landline uh and so I'd be running downstairs straight out of bed having only woken up kind of trying to warm up my voice kind of going la la la la la la la and then I pick up the pick up the phone and be Clive and Clive would go are the saints rejoicing in their bedmark uh and he on one level I look in those moments he was a pen but actually the things that he invested in me and the things that he taught me really resonated.

Then the other was a was a lady called Helen um uh you may know her her name is Helen Roosevere Helen Roosevere was a uh was a missionary to uh uh to Congo for for years and years and she's written biographies of her life she was captured during the Civil War there and uh and abominably treated and she loved Jesus more than I I could ever hope to love Jesus it feels like uh and Jesus just radiated out of her and I remember uh going maybe six or seven years ago now it's a Clive's funeral uh and uh we were rejoicing for the life of Clive and Helen was there and I sat beside Helen and uh and I asked her how she was doing and Helen must have been about 92 at this point and Helen looked at me and she says I'm so jealous of him I'm so jealous I said why because Clive gets to see the Lord Jesus and I'm stuck here probably because she was talking to me but you see that that as we mature in faith that that certain hope that longing gets it gets deeper doesn't it that the more we kind of taste and foretaste the glory of God amongst us spiritually speaking the more we long for it physically and I I I kind of I want to get to my place or to a place where I'm able to to say the kind of things that Helen said there.

I don't feel my my heart there but one of the things that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead does is it firmly secures that hope that that longing will be realized.

Helen had no doubt that Clive was more alive than she was at that moment.

Do you see that he was beholding the fullness of the thing that he had labored and longed for all his long years.

And so she looked and she was jealous of him what a thing to know that your future is secure in that sort of way that nothing can thwart or jeopardize your hope not our sin not death not even suffering that we have a transformed future that he will keep us to the end and bring us into his glory forever if you're trusting in Jesus Jesus who rose from the dead from you today your future is secure.

And thirdly that means that you have a transformed present that not only does the resurrection transform your status peace with God access into his glory transforms your future that ever increasing hope of his nearness to us but it actually transforms our present and in particular it transforms how we suffer.

Because you know life is a never ending cycle really of ups and downs isn't it and any any one of you can say well I'm on a I'm on an up or I'm on a down or maybe I'm on a down slope or maybe actually I'm coming out of a season.

But you can plot in your mind where you are in the kind of the undulating ups and downs of life.

Maybe you're here this morning and the sun's shining down on you and you are aware of the blessings of God in your life welcome.

Talk to everyone we need your help and maybe there's others who are like oh do you know I really didn't even want to come to church this morning I'm not really feeling it I'm not where I want to be I'm not even sure that I buy this it's like the storm clouds have gathered Paul says that because Jesus died and rose again that we can have joy even in suffering joy is better than happiness isn't it happiness comes and goes happiness um goes with those waves of up and down but joy joy is a constant through those things happiness is often placed in circumstance or based on circumstance when things are going well I am happy when things are not going well I am sad.

That's why one of the one of the things that if I could advise you you should not chase in your life is happiness because happiness comes and goes happiness is a chip paper emotion to you know it's disposable it's like the Tupperware of emotions.

It's great if it's there but sometimes it can be gone.

But joy joy is something else joy's something core something stable and what Paul is saying is that you can have joy even when you suffer.

How is that possible?

But Paul is not saying that that we delight in the suffering that you know we can't wait until uh we get some pain we're not masochists and indeed God hates the pain that this broken world inflicts upon us but he is so worked in the world he is so worked through the death and resurrection of Jesus that the Christian can have joy in suffering in the midst of it because it is a joy that cannot be shaken by suffering.

Why?

Well because of what I've just been saying you have this future hope of glory and if you're if you have this future hope of glory clear in your mind you think I will get there God will not let me fail he will not banish me from the throne room my status isn't going to change he's not gonna suddenly say no no I need you to go now nor is he going to say oh well actually you you've continued to mess up so I've changed my mind no no he's never going to do that and so if you have this unassailable future then you see how actually you can go through whatever it is the ups and downs of life through at you and you can still have joy because your joy isn't rooted in the ups and downs it's rooted in the future hope of glory do you see but actually what Paul is saying is more than that and I think it's more wonderful than that it is that if Jesus has taken our sin then no suffering is punishment we can think that can we think why is God doing this am I being punished for something what did I do?

No if you're trusting in Jesus your suffering isn't punishment how did I know that Mark because Jesus has taken the punishment God's just doesn't punish sin twice it's not punishment and because Jesus rose from the dead suffering is not punishment rather it is now purposeful.

So Paul says that actually what happens is that suffering in the Christian life kind of begins a sort of chain reaction that is used for our good what is this chain reaction?

Well Paul says it verse three we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance perseverance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who he has given us so what is this chain reaction?

Well suffering produces endurance or perseverance what does that mean?

Well one of the things that suffering does and we kind of experienced some of this during all of the COVID lockdowns and things didn't we is that actually suffering clarifies our priorities it refines what we value it focuses our attention on what's really important and more than that it focuses our eyes on that future hope.

If every earthly thing is kind of crumbling through our fingertips and think well what is there to grab onto then the Christian goes actually I grab on to that solid future and I look towards that that's that's perseverance that is growing perseverance in the Christian life.

And then Paul says that that perseverance that endurance produces character in a sense we could kind of go back to Clive and Helen couldn't we that over all the long years the Christian life is extraordinarily ordinary it's about long obedience in the same direction and over that endurance character is produced a strength a depth of faith immaturing saints are like oak trees that have endured many storms over many winters and they're weather beaten and maybe even kind of gnarly but they're hardy and they're not easily moved that's what I want for us I want oaks of Christian maturity that even though waves of suffering have come and have beaten over your back that actually they have made you firm secure immovable grounded in the past in the resurrection of Jesus roots deep down into that future hope of glory and that as we suffer and as we see God's persevering with us and help of us and his bringing through those various seasons we become ever more assured that he is the one who will keep us to the end who will bring us into that heavenly home that the the spiritual experience of that heavenly throne room will one day match with the physical experience of that heavenly throne room and so that character produces hope or rather that character strengthens and deepens hope.

Because we've already seen that actually hope comes to us at the start of our Christian life.

Paul says that objectively because Jesus is raised from the dead you have hope for the glory of God in the future and you might be sitting here maybe you are a young Christian you kind of think we have a long way to go what suffering does is it makes that hope more precious more sure hope comes to us at the start of our Christian life and it and it sounds good but it feels far off suffering brings that hope to life it deepens our desire for that promised future every time God carries us through something it deepens our assurance that he will bring us to the end if you're someone here maybe you wouldn't call yourself a Christian you're still trying to figure it out trying to make your way for yourself and by yourself in your own strength trying to justify your existence with your own performance then suffering suffering will shatter you why because you have no grounded confidence that you will in the end be acceptable you've no grounded confidence that God loves you but if you've been justified by faith as a gift of his grace God has given you his spirit the Holy Spirit as Paul says here in verse 5 as a guarantee in space and time that guarantees you of what?

That you're loved that you're loved by God and so you will not be put to shame in the end our hope therefore is not misplaced it will not shame us rather it is grounded firmly in God's love for us expressed at the cross confirmed for us by the empty tomb and experienced now by the power of his spirit this is the same spirit that transforms us now.

It is by his spirit through faith that we are given this new status peace with God access to him that we have this transformed future the certain hope of glory and we have a transformed present joy in everything even through suffering knowing that suffering only serves to deepen faith and fixes our eyes on those joys kept for us in heaven the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the most significant event in all of human history it shows us where all of human history is going and it is the means by which we are transformed and kept until we see him face to face sermon.

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