Spiritual Friendship: God Makes Friends Out of Enemies (Romans 5:1-11)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

At Newsong Church, we want to see Jesus lifted high in Port Perry, Ontario, as we worship, grow, and serve.

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The second lesson is taken from the book of Romans, starting in the first fifth chapter on the first verse, 1 to 11.

Therefore, we sit since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.

Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand.

And we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory.

We can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that we have that they help us develop endurance.

And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.

And in this hope, and this hope will not lead to disappointment, for we know how dearly God loves us because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

When we were truly utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.

Now most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might be perhaps be willing to die for a person who is specially good.

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation.

For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his son, while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his son.

So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God, because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

The word of the Lord.

So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we can only be here because you've invited us to be here.

And Lord, we believe that you invite us deeper into this reality of spiritual friendship with one another and chiefly with you, Lord.

So we pray, catch us up in this holy mystery.

Enlighten our hearts, open our eyes, expand our horizons, catch us up in the very heart of friendship that you have for us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I was really struggling not to bring up my Humphrey Bogart impression doing that, but it's hard not to say that line without a Humphrey Bogart impression.

Do we recognize that line?

I think some do.

Maybe some are just a little bit foggy on that, and that's appropriate the fog.

But uh this is a line from perhaps one of my all-time favorite films called Casablanca.

Yeah, is that clicking now?

There you go.

Rebecca's giving me a big nod.

Thank you, Rebecca.

I knew you would catch that.

Um Casablanca is a terrific film.

If you haven't seen Casablanca, please do yourself a favor and give that a watch.

It's been out for like 80 years now, so I don't feel too bad about spoiling it for you guys.

But um but this is a film about um well it's a film about uh chiefly about sacrificing for the greater good and the implications of everything that is.

And it's set in 1941 in uh in in the city of Casablanca, and we meet uh Rick Blaine, who's a cynical American.

He's had uh an idealistic past, he's fought for freedom in the past, but now he's kind of resolved himself to be uh uh uh neutral and cynical in the conflict playing out around him.

And then we also meet uh Louis Renault, who's kind of the local police constable, and he's um uh just wantonly uh corrupt and self-serving.

But over the course of the movie, these two characters who come into collision, who are such, have a uh uh, you know, find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict playing out around them, the struggle with fascism in Europe in the 1940s, who f who at the beginning of the film were on opposite sides of this conflict and clashed with one another, find themselves in the outcome of sacrifice and through uh through adversity, they find themselves drawn together in a common vision of the good.

And this is the big line at the end of the film, having done the heroic deed, so to speak, Rick turns to Louis and he says, Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

And off they walk into the foggy evening.

The amazing thing about friendship is it has a power not just to tie together to a certain degree of mutual affection towards one another, it has a power to bring together those who are hostile towards one another, those who would be otherwise counted as enemies.

Friendship has a power to cross that uh uh gulf, as it were, and to make friends out of enemies, and what a beautiful thing that is.

I think, in a way, the way Paul is, the Apostle Paul is presenting the gospel in Romans chapter 5 should make us stop and think that the gospel, the good news of what God has done for us in Christ, is all about friendship.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

And insofar as it's all about friendship, it is a beautiful thing to behold the gospel.

So this morning, I want us to continue our journey understanding this thing we call spiritual friendship, these this ties of friendship that knit together souls with sweetness and with affection towards one another.

I want us to catch a glimpse of the gospel as friendship.

It is the good news of this beautiful friendship with God in Christ.

And we started to catch a glimpse of that last week when we looked at John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

What does Jesus say to his disciples?

He says, I don't call you servants, I call you friends.

Because I'm making known the very heart of my Father towards you.

The Gospel is all about being caught up with God as his friends.

And the thing Paul wants us to catch in Romans chapter 5, the remarkable thing about the good news of the gospel is this that God makes friends out of enemies.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Enemies is a strong word, but it's the word that Paul uses in Romans 5, verse 10.

Romans 5:10

Apart from God, we are counted as enemies.

We're going to talk more about that.

But Paul wants us not to walk away feeling condemned and hopeless.

He wants to offer us good news.

The good news of God's truest heart towards us.

Good news that gives us assurance, that gives us confidence, that draws us closer to our Heavenly Father and to our brother Jesus in friendship.

Romans is all about, it's a letter all about what it takes, or what it's taken, I should say, to make us right with God.

And that's the phrase that we see in verse 1.

I've quoted here the uh, or I've included the New Living Translation.

We usually take from the uh ES English Standard Version, which is the our Anglican kind of standard text, but reading through different versions, different translations is so helpful in any given passage to get a sense of uh how these different translations illumine one another, get a wider sense of the meaning.

And when I read the New Living Translation, when I read this verse, it hit me in a way it never really hit me before.

The phrase used in the New Living Translation in verse 1 is this phrase, uh, we're made right with God through Christ.

In the English Standard Version and other translations, you might see this word justification.

And this is what the book of Romans is all about.

In the first uh three chapters, two and a half chapters or so of Romans, Paul is laying out the need for uh that we have to be made right with God.

Apart from Christ, on our own, we're utterly helpless, is what Paul's gonna say.

And then in Romans 3 to Romans 4, Paul wants to lay out the means of our justification, the means by which we're made right with God, which is through Christ's substitution and sacrifice.

And now we land ourselves in Romans chapter 5, which talks about the uh the objective of our justification or the outcome of our justification, and why are we made right with God?

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Why are we justified?

It's to enjoy friendship with God.

Sometimes this phrase justification, it can be such a theological term, it seems so abstract.

In reading the New Living Translation, seeing that word friendship stand out, it goes, yeah, that's the reality, isn't it?

God wants to rescue us, those who would otherwise be counted as enemies, and bring us into his friendship.

Shower us with his love.

And love and friendship, don't they have everything to do with one another?

I want us to catch a few things about God's friendship here, the kind of friendship that uh God extends to make friends out of his enemies.

I want us to catch a few things about God's friendship, because I think Paul wants us to catch them.

I think God's friendship we see in verses six to eight is proved by the cross.

I think God's friendship in verses nine to ten certainly saves us.

And finally, God's friendship is cause for our rejoicing.

God's friendship is proved by the cross, it certainly saves us, and it is our cause for rejoicing.

So if you have your Bible, if you have your bulletin with you, open with me to Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Let's have a look at this for ourselves and catch with, I hope, sheer wonder, the fact that God is calling us to be his friends.

God makes friends out of his enemies.

God's friendship is proved by the cross.

Let's look at verses 6 through 8 here.

Let's start with verse 6.

Paul writes that when we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.

Utterly helpless is how Paul describes us apart from Christ.

Elsewhere he describes us as, he uses words like sinners and ungodly, he uses a word like um like enemies in verse 10, apart from God, we are uh powerless.

Some translations have weak, but it's like so weak that we can't do anything to help ourselves, which is a pretty dire situation to be in, I think.

I can't read this verse without uh without um uh Alcoholics Anonymous coming to mind.

I I suspect all of us have a connection one way or another, you know, to a 12-step program.

Maybe we've been involved in a 12-step program, maybe we have a loved one who's been a part of the 12-step program.

And when I was getting familiar with a 12-step program, I was really struck by step one.

Those who know it know it.

The step one is this it's not um acknowledge that I have power over alcohol that I'm not using and I'm gonna double my efforts.

That's not step one.

What's step one?

I am powerless over alcohol, and my life is unmanageable.

Step one opens the door to the rest of the steps that follow, which is I can't do it.

I need a higher power to do what I can't do for myself.

That's the spiritual mechanics of the 12 steps.

So when I read we are utterly helpless, that's what comes to mind.

We're cooked, we're toast on our own efforts, is what Paul has to say.

We're cooked, we're toast when it comes to pulling ourselves out of this condition of sin by which we're counted as enemies of God.

We count or we catch a glimpse of this in our Hosea reading, the one I selected for us this morning.

But we catch a few other interesting things too.

Here's what we catch in terms of our utter helplessness.

Verse 2 this is God addressing his chosen people, his covenant people Israel, through the prophet Hosea.

This is what God has to say to his people.

He says that the more that Israel was called, the more they were called, the more they went away.

I kept calling them back to myself to enjoy that abundant life that our colic talks about.

But the more I called, the more they went away.

They kept sacrificing to other gods and worshiping idols.

And then in verse 7, here's where he lands the prophet Hosea, the word the Lord speaking through Hosea says, My people are bent on turning away from me.

It's like my people are permanently inclined towards that which is which I don't desire for them, towards their own deterioration, towards their own self-destructive self-interest, and they don't have what it takes to bend themselves out of that and into the abundant life that I desire for them.

When it comes to justification being made right with God, it's like scripture makes no ends about it.

We're toast unless a higher power does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

We're utterly helpless, is what Paul says.

We're cooked, we're toast.

And when that was the case, he says Christ came just at the right time, which suggests that God has had the sovereign plan all along.

He is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and how does he do it?

Christ died for sinners.

A substitution took place.

Christ took our place as the sinner and paid our penalty so that we could enjoy the abundant life that is his through his resurrection.

If the wages of sin is death, as Paul write in chapter 6, then that's what we deserve.

But Christ has taken that upon himself to settle that debt so that we could be made right before God.

Why did he do that?

That's an important question.

Verses 7 to 8.

Paul makes this observation.

But here's the remarkable thing: God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

When we were at our very worst, God still loved us with an unfailing love.

He didn't look at us and say, gosh, they're trying their hardest.

Gosh, they're really doubling up their efforts.

When we were still sinners, enemies, helpless, powerless to do for ourselves what needed to be done, God loved us enough to take the initiative and in Christ pay the penalty for our sins so that we could enjoy friendship with Him.

That's the remarkable thing about God's love.

God's love loves sinners to death.

Literally.

Let me read this quote from pastor and scholar John Stott.

The more the gift costs the giver, and the less the recipient deserves it, the greater the love is seen to be.

Don't we know that to be true?

Maybe we've experienced a gift like that in our own lives.

I hope we have.

This is the ultimate gift, isn't it?

The remarkable thing about God's love is he loves sinners to death, and this is also what we catch in Hosea.

Let's not miss God's overwhelming heart of love for these people who are so bent to turning away from him.

In verse 8, he says this God is asking, How can I give you up, O Ephraim?

Which is like a really intimate name God has for his people.

It's like, I don't know what an analogy would be.

It's like, only I get to call you this because I know you this so well.

How can I give you up?

How can I hand you over?

Gosh, if we know someone who has been through addiction, it's like we know what that kind of love is like.

It's like I don't want to give you up to this.

That's God's love for us.

And then he goes on to say, my heart recoils within me.

I feel this so deeply.

My compassion grows warm and tender.

So this is the remarkable thing, right?

Here's God's people bent on turning away from them, utterly helpless to change.

And what's God's heart towards them?

Warm and tender.

Is that what we expect?

Like when we commit that sin that we've said we wouldn't do like a hundred times, do we expect God to be warm and tender towards us when we turn ourselves back to Him to say sorry?

Like if you're like me, you're probably expecting more of a tut-tut-tut kind of response, right?

Like at best, a tut-tut-tut.

That is not what God says to his people here in Hosea.

Far from it.

My compassion grows warm and tender to the sinner who turns to me for that help that they need that they can't provide for themselves.

And that leads us to the cross, doesn't it?

That leads us to the friend of sinners that we read about in Luke chapter 7.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

It's a bit of a strange reading.

I'll grant you that.

We can talk more about it sometime.

But here's an accusation thrown at Jesus like an insult.

You are a friend of sinners and tax collectors.

You associate with all the wrong people, but here's Jesus turning that right around as if to say, exactly.

Right?

Because my heart grows warm and tender to those who turn to me.

That's the heart on the cross.

That's the heart that wants to take our sin upon himself to do away with it.

So why would we ever shrink back from God?

In our sin when our guilt is at its heaviest.

What a freedom to know that his heart is warm and tender towards us, to look on the cross and see an objective reminder that God's love is so great that he's willing to die for us.

Not at our best, but when we were utterly helpless and his enemies.

That's what we need to be reminded of every time we look at the cross.

That's God's love for us in Christ.

It is his friendship, his loving friendship is proved by the cross.

God's friendship is proved by the cross, God's friendship certainly saves us.

Let's look at verses 9 and 10 together.

Paul goes on to say, since we have been made right in God's sight, since we've been justified by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation.

For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his son.

So there's a few interesting things, I think, going on here.

Paul is making a sort of argument that says, if the greater, then it's reasonable to think the lesser.

Or he's sort of starting to get into the territory of that already not yet tension that we're used to seeing throughout Scripture.

What's Paul saying here?

He's saying, if God has gone this far, surely he will go that much further to save us.

We are made right, he says in verse 9, justified, just like he says in verse 1.

And I want us to notice the tenses of these verbs here.

That's a past tense, completed verb.

Period.

You are made right with God.

If you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are made right with God, not because you've done anything exceptional, but because of what He's done for you.

Period.

Completed.

Rock solid.

Take it to the bank.

Oh man, that's assurance, right?

Sometimes we need to be reminded of that when our guilt hangs heavy.

Okay, that's past tense.

Friendship is restored past tense.

We walk in that.

Now, restoration says that it was lost at a certain point.

And in our first week, when we looked at that huge 30,000 feet tour of the story of Scripture, we we saw our first parents created to endure.

Joy, friendship with God, in perfect communion, and friendship with one another, and we lost that through disobedience and rebellion.

And here we are bent towards our own sin ever since.

But now, through what God has done in Christ, this friendship that was lost is restored, past tense, completed.

God has done for us what we can't do for ourselves.

But notice there's a couple of future tense verbs here.

This is so interesting to me, and maybe it's only interesting to me because I'm a bit of a nerd, but it's so interesting to me because I never caught this before.

And it's just going through this scripture this last week that I've caught this, I think, for the first time, at least kind of consciously.

Anyway, here's some future tense verbs.

Notice this.

God in Christ will certainly save us from God's condemnation.

And then again in verse 10, we will certainly be saved through the life of his son.

So that's an interesting thing.

Have you ever been asked the question, when were you saved?

That's a kind of past tense question, right?

Like it happened.

And you know what?

That's a fair question.

Like we know what we're asking when we ask that question.

We're asking, like, when did you give your life over to Jesus?

When would you become aware that the Holy Spirit renewed your heart and made you this new creation that we read about, etc.?

I mean, it's a fair question for all it is, but if salvation is only in the past tense, we're missing a component that Paul is bringing out here in Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

There is an already to salvation for sure.

We're justified, friendship restored, period completed, and yet there remains the fullness of our salvation to be realized.

Here's again what John Stott has to say.

Salvation has a future tense as well as past and present tenses.

If we are asked by some brash evangelist whether we have been saved, it would be just as biblical to say no as yes, although the correct answer would be yes and no.

For yes, we have been saved through Christ from the guilt of our sins and from the judgment of God upon them, but no, we have not yet been delivered from indwelling sin, you know, what we're bent towards, or been given new bodies in the new world.

What's John's thought saying?

He's saying there yet remains the fullness of our salvation to be realized.

And that might sound like a really unresolved chord to us, but friends, I think that's good news for those of us who've ever had that dark night of the soul, which I think is a component of all kinds spiritual maturity at one point or another.

We have to go through that dark night of doubt and despair and wrestling with God.

Anyone who's ever asked that question, perhaps in the middle of all that, is this all there is?

It's good news to hear, no.

There yet remains a greater glory to be realized, a fuller friendship with God to enjoy, which we talked about in the first week when we looked at Revelation 21.

This is where all of history is heading, an everlasting, perfect friendship and union with God in Christ and with one another.

There yet remains salvation to be realized.

We are saved and are being saved and will be saved all through the grace of God, because He desires us to be His friends.

So we're still on this pilgrimage, right?

The Christian life is a pilgrimage from this age to the age to come, from things on earth to the things of heaven, and seeing those two things become one.

We're still in our pilgrimage, and as they say, the best is yet to come.

So we keep.

What's the verb?

Pilgrimaging?

Striving, walking.

Thank you.

Fill in your own verb if you'd like.

So God's friendship certainly saves us.

God has done this incredible great thing, dying for us on the cross when we are his enemies, surely he will do the next thing, which is to bring his friends into eternity.

We can count that for sure.

God's friendship certainly saves us.

And here's where I want us to land God's friendship is proved by the cross, it certainly saves us, and that it is our cause for rejoicing.

Here's verse 11.

Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God.

This word for rejoicing here is an interesting one because you can also translate it like boasting or glorying.

Have you ever gloried in something?

I was thinking earlier this week, the first time I ever remembered like glorying in something, I must have been no older than like seven or eight, and I was a member of Christian Service Brigade, which was kind of, if you if you know it, it's like a Christian Boy Scouts almost, evangelical Christian Boy Scouts.

So try and wrap your head around that.

But here I was, seven or eight, and there was this annual event, it was my first year there, it was this annual event, and it was uh kind of like a wood block racer derby.

So they give you these wood blocks with wheels and we've done those before, yeah.

You know, and you're supposed to sort of carve your car out of this wood block, and then we send them down the track, right, for multiple runs and yada yada yada.

So, you know, I get this wood block and I come home and I'm explaining to my parents, and my dad says, I've got an idea.

And my dad gets to work.

And he shaves down this perfectly aerodynamic, you know, car and he and he paints it silver because it's the silver bullet, and you know, and he gives this to me, and then he says, But I've got something else in mind too, but you can't tell anyone about it.

This is the first time I'm revealing it to the world.

So we get there, we get to the big, you know, track event, and what does he do?

He takes his trumpet valve oil, because he's a trumpet player, and he puts it on the axles.

No one said he couldn't, right?

And I'll tell you that car went zipping down the track like no one's business.

And I effortlessly took home that first place trophy.

And at like seven or eight, I remember holding this thing and glorying in it.

You know, it's like this like plastic, you know,$5 trophy, but boy, that that was just everything in that moment, right?

And the thing is, I kind of get home and I'm just like glowing.

And you know, my parents are just they're so glad, and even my dad is just so proud, right?

Because that's what dads do.

They do all the work and then they're still proud of you.

Good dads do that.

And so, you know, so I get to think about this trophy because I just like that was my experience of glory.

Just like, this is just such like it's rejoicing, it's boasting, it's glorying, it's just like soaking in all this stuff and pouring it out.

And then I kind of stopped to realize, like, I really did none of that.

Right?

Wasn't the trum the you know, the the the woodwork was not my, you know, it might surprise you from my very you know, dainty fingers that I don't do a lot of woodworking, and you know, but that was all my dad, and the valvoy was not my idea, that was my dad.

You know, this was a total gift, you know, but I got to glory in it.

And maybe you can see where I'm going here.

God's friendship is a cause for our rejoicing, not because we've been such good boys and girls that we've earned his friendship, but because he's just given it to us.

Wood shaving and valve oil and all, he has done it for us.

We just get to glory in it.

We just get to boast about it.

We just get to soak it up, and we get to open up our mouth and speak words about Jesus, who's done everything for us that we couldn't do for ourselves.

He's reconciled us, which is how the ESV renders this word friendship, which is a great word, reconciled.

That's what we're talking about when, you know, Rick Blaine and Louis Renault, they are reconciled with one another, and thus begins a beautiful friendship.

God reconciles us to himself, he restores a harmony that was lost, and he does that for us.

So we rejoice in this wonderful new relationship because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

How do we rejoice in this wonderful new relationship?

Well, if we expand our view, we've kind of zoomed in on verses 6 to 11.

We see the word rejoice pop up a couple of times in our reading.

One, we rejoice, verse two.

Um pardon me.

We rejoice.

Do you see that?

I'm totally missing it.

Verse three.

Um, yes, I do see verse three as well.

Okay, maybe I was reading a different translation, I don't see in front of me.

Anyway, pardon me.

But, you know, the the verb does pop up a couple of times.

And one, it pops up in relationship to we rejoice in the hope of glory, right?

The hope of glory transforms our best day and our worst day.

The hope of glory is looking forward to that Revelation 21, the fullness of our salvation, that God will certainly save us.

That hope that, yes, we'll be drawn into the fullness of his friendship in his time.

But rejoicing doesn't just happen at the best of times, it happens at the worst of times.

And I can see it right here in verse 3.

We rejoice too when we run into problems and trials.

Oh, here it is.

Sorry, verse 4, the confident hope of our salvation.

So we hope or we rejoice not just in good times but in bad as well when we figure problems and trials, sufferings and thorns and thistles.

We don't rejoice because of them, but we rejoice in them, just like James tells us to do.

And why do we do that?

It's because we don't walk this path of suffering alone.

God has not forsaken his friends.

God might be calling us by a difficult road, but he walks it with us, and we know where this road is going.

We're not left without hope.

So we have reason, you know, not to be, yay, you know, trials and sufferings.

But we have reason to rejoice nevertheless, knowing that this leads to a greater glory and a greater hope and a greater friendship.

God's friendship is cause for our rejoicing.

So, friends, the good news of the gospel is God makes friends out of his enemies.

He does for us who are sinners and helpless what we could not do for ourselves, and it's proved by the cross, and his friendship certainly saves us to the uttermost, and it is certainly cause for our rejoicing.

Friends, the cross is for us that once-for-all beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Draw near to the cross.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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