Peace With God (Romans 5:1-5)

Alright, Romans chapter 5, verses 1 through 5.

Romans 5:1–5

Let's stand for the reading of God's word.

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

We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand.

And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance.

Endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope.

This hope will not disappoint us because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Lord, we thank you so much for the book, well, for the Bible, but for the book of Romans specifically, all the things that you're teaching us as a church.

Lord, I pray that you would help me to rightly divide your word here this morning.

That we would come to you with openness to the things that you want to change, Lord, the way that you want to mold us and shape us to be more and more like Jesus.

So God, I pray that you would have your perfect will and your perfect way in each one of our hearts this morning.

That you would be the one speaking and that you would accomplish much just through these five verses that we're gonna be going through here this morning, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So I want to start off with a question.

Who here would like the attributes of proven character and hope?

We have three.

Okay.

I would hope we would all want those things for ourselves, wouldn't we?

But at the same time, as you're gonna see as we kind of go through these verses, we need to be careful what we wish for.

Because we're gonna see exactly how God wants to do that in us.

You know, and I'm gonna ask that question at the end as well.

We'll and we'll compare kind of how we're feeling about those things at the end of the sermon.

But I want to give you a heads up before we start to break down this text that as we spoke about when we introduced the book of Romans, back when we were in Romans chapter 1, Paul uses a lot of history.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

He uses a lot of Old Testament references in the book of Romans.

He sometimes will even just casually reference things that his original audience would have known right off the top of their head.

But we in 2022 might need to look some things up and get a little bit of background to kind of understand some of the things that Paul is referencing.

All that to say, I've never given a sermon with so many cross-references as I'm going to give today.

So if you're taking notes, be ready to ready to go because there's just a lot of Old Testament and New Testament things that we're going to be bringing up as we go through just these five verses.

And that's partly why we're just doing five verses this morning for the sake of time because we have to look at a lot of other things to kind of bring this all together.

But I really felt like it was necessary for this text in order to reinforce and understand what the original audience would be understanding from Paul's writing.

So there's your heads up.

The first word that we're gonna see here in verse 1 of chapter 5 is the word therefore, which means we need to remember what came before, really, in the four chapters that Paul has been building up here before chapter 5.

Because Paul's been building this case that the righteous will live by faith, that Jews and Gentiles alike are on the same playing field before God and before Jesus.

That God cares more about surrendered hearts than he does about us keeping rituals.

And that it's by faith through grace that we are saved, and it's not of our own works.

He's been building this case for the last four chapters.

And then at least it's reading the Bible.

It wasn't ringing.

And if you look at the last verse of chapter four, it says, He, so verse 25 of chapter 4 says, he, meaning Jesus, was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

And then look at verse 1 of chapter 5.

It says, Therefore, considering everything that we just said, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

So we've been defining justified or justification as the act of God declaring men free from guilt and acceptable to Him.

And we've been talking the last two weeks specifically about being justified by faith.

Being credited or imputed righteousness by grace through faith.

And now Paul tells us why that's important.

That's what we're gonna get here this morning.

Why it's important that we need to be saved from sin.

And the answer is peace with God.

Not the peace of God that surpasses understanding.

We get that too.

But this is specifically talking about peace with God.

And I think that begs some questions.

Like, what is peace with God?

And why is peace with God important?

And how did Jesus bring us to a place of peace with God?

Which makes us really go back to the very beginning.

Not the beginning of Romans, but to the beginning of the Bible.

When Adam and Eve were created.

See, I told you we agree with the mother.

So yeah.

When Adam and Eve were created, they were at peace with God.

They were in perfect relationship with him.

They're able to talk with him, they're able to walk with him in the Garden of Eden.

And when they chose to sin and eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil, that disobedience, that first sin, led to separation in their relationship with God.

They lost that direct access that they had with God.

And they got kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and because of their sin, they were cursed.

And I want to read you first the curse that was given to Eve, Genesis 3.16.

It says, I will intensify your labor pains.

You will bear children with painful effort.

Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you.

And then in the next verse we see Adam's curse in Genesis 3, 17 through 19.

And that says, The ground is cursed because of you.

You will eat from it by means of painful labor all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from it, for you are dust, and you will return to dust.

So we are living in a cursed world.

We are still under that curse.

And it's filled with plumbing issues and countless trips to the hardware store, working under sinks and cleaning out pea traps.

Those are my thorns.

Plumbing, that's the worst for me.

That's the every time I'm doing it, I'm thinking about the curse that Adam got.

Working in toil.

You know, I can't even tell you how many times that I've done marriage counseling, and it's come down to this curse.

You know, the wife desires her husband, wants him home more.

And when he is, she wants him to be more mentally and emotionally present.

And the husband is consumed with work and the hours of the job, and then he comes home and he collapses on the couch, or he gets sucked into sports or video games so he can get his mind off of the toil of his work.

See, the woman's desire will be for her husband, and the man is going to struggle in his work.

And I'll just look at that couple and I'll say, Yeah, that's normal.

And it has been all the way back since Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

It doesn't make it okay, but you're not experiencing anything new.

That's part of that separation from God and that curse that we now live under.

You know, ever since then, we have not been at peace with God.

And I want to add, on our own.

And then the verse right after Adam's curse, it says that God made clothes out of animal skins.

And that's important to our text here this morning.

The first record of death in the Bible is an animal that was sacrificed to cover the nakedness of sinners.

It was a covering symbolically of their sin.

We then see that Abel brings animal sacrifices to God.

We see Noah does the same thing.

Abraham starts it as well, and this was something that began in the garden by God.

Then God gave Moses the law with great detail on how to sacrifice, both daily and yearly, as a temporary forgiveness and casting out of sin.

And there's a specific holy day that I want to talk about this morning that God gave to Israel through Moses, and it's called Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement.

And that's really important to our text here this morning.

So I want to talk about it really quick and kind of give you a quick summary and overview.

If you want to read it more in detail, it's Leviticus chapter 16.

Leviticus 16 · chapter mention

If you want to read that on your own time.

But it's where God gives instructions on what the high priest is to do.

It starts with a washing ceremony that the high priest has to go through.

And then from the washing ceremony, there's specific undergarments and outer garments that he's supposed to put on as he's ministering in the temple or the tabernacle at the time.

And it starts with that, the washing and then the special clothes.

He's then to offer up a bull for his own sins and then the sins of his household as well.

He'd then take two goats, and then he would cast lots to see which one would be killed and then which one would be set free.

He'd then kill the one that lost the casting lots.

And as a sin offering for Israel, that would be the sacrifice that was made.

Now, in the tabernacle, and then in the two temples to follow after that, there was this inner room called the Holy of Holies.

The place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, which had the mercy seat, and it was a place where God's glory would dwell.

And only the high priest had access to that room once a year into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement.

Yom Kippur.

And while he was in there, he would burn incense and he would sprinkle the blood from the bull that was for his own sin offering, and then he would sprinkle the blood of the goat for the sin offering for all of Israel.

He would sprinkle that blood on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.

And Hebrews 9 7 says, But the high priest alone enters the second room, and he does that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people that they had committed in ignorance.

So here's the kicker with all this.

If the priest took this too lightly, and if he did anything not designated by God, or if he entered the Holy of Holies at any other time of the year, he'd be struck dead.

He was the only one that could pass through the veil into the Holy of Holies, and then it was still only once a year that he could do that.

And then after he had done all of that, he would come out of the Holy of Holies, and I won't I'll just read it to you, it'll be easier that way.

This is Leviticus 16, verses 20 through 22.

Leviticus 16:20–22

It says, When he has finished making atonement for the most holy place, the tent of meeting and the altar, he is to present the live male goat.

So Aaron, he was the high priest at the time, will lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the Israelites' iniquities and rebellious acts, all their sins.

He is to put them on the goat's head and send it away into the wilderness by the man appointed for the task.

The goat will carry all their iniquities into the desolate land, and the man will release it there.

And this is symbolic of God casting out our sins as far as the east is from the west, being cast out from the presence of the people.

The sin going out from the presence of the people.

And if you go down a bit in that chapter to verse 30, it says, Atonement will be made for you on this day to cleanse you, and you will be clean from all your sins before the Lord.

And I'm gonna add, until you sin again.

This was a process that had to be done over and over and over.

This was a yearly sacrifice.

They had daily sacrifices that they were doing and special sacrifices that people could do at any time.

But this was a process, like I said, that had to be done over and over again for the forgiveness of sin.

And a priest had to be the intermediary between us and God back in this time for Israel.

Because as Hebrews 9.22 tells us, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.

And if you remember in the Gospel of John chapter 1, when John the Baptist sees Jesus coming, you might remember what he says: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

John 1 · chapter mention

The perfect spotless Lamb to end all sacrifices was Jesus Christ.

A sacrifice that could finally bring permanent peace between God and all people that believe in Jesus Christ.

So we're gonna skip ahead just for a moment into next week's sermon, but look at Romans 5.10.

So just down a little bit from where we are today.

It says, For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life?

And I read you that verse because we were enemies of God.

We were enemies of God, that is, before we put faith in Jesus Christ.

There was no peace with God, there was just separation before we came to Jesus.

And here in verse 1 of chapter 5, Paul is saying, we finally have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That's verse 1.

Verse 2, we have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand.

And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

So something no Jewish person had at any time was unhindered access to God's presence.

Even the high priest, he didn't have unhindered access.

He had specific times and specific things to do once a year when he went in.

When Jesus breathed his last on the cross, remember the veil in the Holy of Holies of the temple of that time was torn from top to bottom, signifying that we now, as we see in verse 2, have obtained access to God through faith in Jesus.

What only the high priest could do once a year, enter into God's presence, is now open to all that believe in Jesus Christ.

And for us today as believers, that's all we've ever known is direct access to God.

As soon as we gave our life to Jesus Christ, we immediately had that direct access to God.

But for Paul's audience, specifically the Jews that are in Rome, this would be mind-blowing.

This changes everything about everything for a Jewish now believes in Jesus Christ.

Direct access to God through Jesus, who is now our high priest.

They gotta wrap their heads around this now.

And Jesus made it so that we now can become the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Because 1 Corinthians 3.16 says, Don't you yourselves know that you are God's temple and that the Spirit of God lives in you?

Talk about a complete flip of the script for the Jews that Paul's writing to you in the Roman church.

From one guy having access once a year to every believer in Jesus Christ having the Spirit of God now dwelling inside of them.

It would be like if I told you that starting tomorrow, everybody in the United States is gonna start driving on the left side of the road.

So today you drive home on the right, but tomorrow you're gonna drive on the left side of the road.

Think of how unnatural that would be.

All the signs and all the traffic signals would be on the wrong side of the road and facing in the wrong direction.

You'd have to think about driving in a very different way, wouldn't you?

You know, I could imagine these first Jewish Christians having so many questions and having so much confusion about this flip of the script.

You know, do I need to take a bath first and wear special clothes if I'm gonna be the temple of the Holy Spirit?

You know, because that's all that they knew beforehand.

You know, if I do something wrong now that God is dwelling inside of me, am I gonna be struck dead if I do something out of order?

You know, maybe we should continue the animal sacrifices just in case, because they just didn't know anything different.

Which is why I think in Hebrews 4.16, it encouraged all Christ's followers to approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.

Because I think they needed that encouragement, you know, to enter in with boldness.

You don't have to be afraid, you don't have to do all of these ceremonies, you don't have to offer all of these sacrifices.

It's through the blood of Jesus Christ that we have access and can boldly come into God's presence.

You know, if we grew up Jews, if we grew up Jewish and under the law, the thought of the Holy of Holies now being inside of us would probably really freak us out.

That's the place where people would die if they approached God in the wrong way.

And now that's inside of us.

But that's why grace and mercy are mentioned so many times.

And Paul assures us that we now have this permanent peace with God.

It's not based on how we did that day, it's based on what Jesus did for us.

You know, Jesus could have just provided that peace with God for us, and that would have been enough for us to be thankful forever.

But God wanted more than just that peace.

He wants us.

He wanted a relationship with us.

So he took it a step further and not only gave us peace, he gave us access into his presence.

And look at the very next verse, verse 2, he says, We boast in the hope of the glory of God.

Your translation, your holding, might say, rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

So what are we boasting and rejoicing in?

That's the question.

I think the answer is that we've been justified by faith.

We have peace with God.

We've obtained this access to God.

Our right standing before God is in and through grace.

We can now rejoice because of those things and in the future glory that awaits us that we get to experience with God in all of eternity.

We can place our hope right there.

That's what we can boast and rejoice in, all because of Jesus.

And let's continue on in verse 3.

And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions.

So let's be honest.

You know, it's way more fun to talk about rejoicing and boasting in our right standing with God and hope in heaven than it is to rejoice and boast in our affliction, isn't it?

It's like affliction.

Yay! We know it's good, but we don't like it.

And this affliction isn't talking about having a hard day.

This is talking about anguish, a literal pressing together.

And Jesus experienced so much of that.

He experienced so much affliction.

Paul experienced affliction and shipwrecks and stonings and riots and imprisonments and so many other things.

And if Jesus and Paul experienced it, I think we should expect it.

I think we so often think that, you know, if we're experiencing affliction, that we're doing something wrong.

But if Jesus experienced it, he would, I think we would be fools to think that we can avoid it to some extent if we're truly abiding and walking with the Lord.

John 16, 33, Jesus actually says, I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace.

You will have suffering in this world.

Be courageous.

I have conquered the world.

You know, as followers of Christ, I think we need to stop looking at suffering and affliction as these horrible things that we should be able to avoid if we're doing things right.

You know, as Warren Wearsby says, trials work for us, not against us.

Think about that.

Because I think I think as Christians, oftentimes we have the opposite.

View of that.

But trials work for us, not against that.

I want to talk about that a little bit.

You know, so often I think our mentality when we're suffering is God, get me out of this as quickly as possible.

Please, Lord, just get me out of it.

When in actuality, I think God wants us to realize that He uses trials and tribulations to mold us and to shape us and to refine us.

You know, with that being the case, I think our attitude when we come into tribulation needs to be, God, please show me what you would desire to do in this trying time.

Help me to participate in the changes that you want to make inside of me.

You know, I don't know about you, but there's nothing like a trial to revitalize my prayer life, to revitalize my dependence upon the Lord.

Or to humble me in a way that I need humbling that maybe I don't even know I need humbling in.

You know, trials and affliction, I think they're God's chisel that he uses for sculpting.

The hands he uses for molding and shaping.

I think it's the furnace that he uses for purifying us.

I think it's the clippers that he uses for pruning us.

And what verse 3 is saying is that if God is molding us and shaping us through these times, we should rejoice that he's still working in us, that he's not finished with us yet, and that we get to actually share in the sufferings of Christ.

1 Peter 4 12 says, Dear friends, don't be surprised when the fiery ordeals come among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you.

Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed.

I think we need to rejoice that we are counted worthy to share in the sufferings of Jesus Christ.

And I know that's hard to do when we're in the middle of it, but that's what we're told to do.

Because our hope isn't in circumstances, our hope is in what awaits.

Our hope is in Jesus Christ.

Look at the second half of verse 3.

It says, Because we know that affliction produces endurance.

Endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope.

So let's start with that first one.

Affliction produces endurance.

Just like if you're gonna go to the gym, you inflict small amounts of pain on your body, and over time that builds up endurance.

And really, if you're lifting weights or something like that, what you're doing is you're making little tears in your muscle so that they heal back stronger.

And then you tear them some more, and then they heal back even stronger.

You afflict them with pain consistently, and they build endurance for bigger things ahead.

You know, it's no different in our spiritual life.

We go through seasons that are painful.

But if we walk through it with the Lord, what he's doing is he's strengthening our faith.

He's strengthening our endurance for bigger things that he has ahead for us.

Then it says endurance produces proven character.

So if you can make it through the tough times of endurance, the result of that is going to be proven character.

You know, we see in multiple places in scripture where God says that he refines us with fire, or that trials are like a refining fire.

You know, the gold refining process is something that's really interesting.

You take the gold, whether you get it from a mine or you pan it from a river, but there's things in that gold that shouldn't be there.

There's impurities that are within that gold that need to be removed.

So they take that gold and they place it under extreme heat until it's molten and then they let it cool.

And then the impurities come to the surface and then they're removed.

They're wiped away by the person that's doing the refining.

And if you want a more pure gold, you go through this process again and again and again until those impurities all come to the surface and then are removed are removed.

Now, modern day they use chemicals and they speed up the process, but in biblical times, they would do this over and over again and try and get all of the impurities that they could out of the gold so that the character of the gold became more and more pure and more and more valuable after every step.

And I think it's no different in our faith.

The heat of trials is something God uses to refine us, to bring out the impurities that we're hanging on to, whether knowingly or unknowingly in our own life, whether willfully or unwillfully.

Heat brings things to the surface that we didn't even know were inside of us sometimes.

Have you ever been there?

Something happens all of a sudden, something comes to the surface or comes out, and like, where did that come from?

Like, I didn't even know that was down inside of me.

And I think God's sitting there saying, that thing's been inside of you this whole time, and it's time that that came out.

It's time that that surfaces and that you and me take care of this together and remove that impurity from your life.

That's really what the sanctification process is.

It's becoming more and more like Jesus as God allows those things to come through.

Thankfully, he doesn't do it all at once.

Because if all of that stuff came to the surface at once, I think we would probably explode.

But he does it just a little bit by a little bit, refining us and refining us.

Just like Warren Rearsby said, trials work for us, not against us.

I think so many people that I admire in the faith have walked through some of the gnarliest trials that I can even imagine.

But on the other side of those trials, you find these people that have been so refined and so shaped by God in such amazing ways.

And God used those horrible things that they had to walk through to purify them and to make them more like Him.

And it turns out at the end that you have these incredible people of character.

But that whole process starts with affliction and then enduring through those afflictions, and that is what leads to proven character.

And then he finally says, proven character leads to hope.

You know, as we talked about earlier, the hope that we boast and rejoice in.

You know, hope that uh joyful uh, hope being that joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation.

And verse 5 says, this hope will not disappoint us.

Because God comes through on his promises.

We will be disappointed when we place our own expectations on God.

Every time we place our own expectations on God, we're gonna be disappointed.

We can only have expectations on God where He has given us a promise and nowhere else.

Otherwise, we're gonna end up disappointed.

But what we're looking at here is that we can have hope in God's promise of salvation.

This hope will not disappoint us.

As verse 5 finishes, it says, Because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us.

Poured out in our hearts.

The access we have to God is both ways now.

We can come boldly into his presence, but that access also means the Holy Spirit comes to live in our hearts and now dwells inside of us if our faith is in Jesus Christ.

And that is how God has poured out his love in us.

Think of that access that nobody experienced before Jesus.

If you want to know what it would be like to believe in Jesus and not have the Holy Spirit, just read the Gospels and take note of the disciples.

Look at all the foolish things that they did and all the foolish things that they said, and then read Acts and see the difference once they are filled with the Holy Spirit.

They still weren't perfect, but they were changed men.

And it was incredible to see the difference from the Gospels into the book of Acts of what the Holy Spirit did by living inside of these apostles of Jesus Christ.

Because the Holy Spirit was dwelling inside of them, and it was acting as their counselor, as their helper, comforter, as their guide, as the revealer of truth in their life, and the seal of salvation.

And here in verse 5 it says, He is the way that God pours out his love in our hearts.

And as we close out these five verses, I just want to point out the three persons of the Trinity in these five verses that we see.

It's Jesus that brings peace and access to God the Father.

It's God's grace that gives us right standing before him.

And it's through the person of the Holy Spirit that God pours out his love on his children.

And if that is how we are living our life, there's no affliction that can overcome us.

It doesn't mean it's going to be easy for us, but our joy doesn't come from our circumstance.

It comes from our right standing through God's grace and the hope that we have in Him.

You know, I asked you in the beginning, who here would like the attributes of proven character and hope?

I think most of us would prefer, God, can you just download that for me?

Right?

Put the thumb drive in my ear and then it'll just become a part of who I am or whatever.

But that's not how God does it.

You know, if instead I asked you in the beginning, who would like more affliction in their life?

Would anybody have raised their hand?

I'm pretty sure it would have been crickets in here, wouldn't it?

We want the end product of endurance and character and hope in our life, but I think so often we don't want to go to the gym.

Remember, trials work for us, not against us.

The last thing God wants us to do when we fall into various trials is to cower and run away.

He wants us to maintain hope, as James says.

He says, consider it great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.

God wants us to be joyful in our trials, recognizing that He is not finished with us yet.

And I want to leave you with this reminder and this encouragement that comes directly from Jesus.

He says, You will have suffering in this world.

Be courageous.

I have conquered the world.

If we remain in Christ, nothing in this world will defeat us because Jesus has already defeated it, whatever it might be.

Please pray with me.

Lord, I pray that you would help us to be courageous in the face of various trials, whatever we might come across.

Lord, you have already won the battle.

You have conquered the world, and we're so thankful for that.

But Lord, in the midst of the affliction, when things are hard, and it's hard to have the same perspective maybe that we have here this morning, where things just seem too heavy and too weighty and too strong.

Lord, help us to remember that we don't fight these battles ourselves.

That you are the one that fights these battles.

And you've already fought the battle and you've already won.

So, Lord, help us to have that perspective when we fall into various trials.

That you are doing your perfect work, that you are shaping us and molding us and refining us in ways that we might not understand or might not even think that we need to be.

So would you give us your perspective in the midst of trials?

Lord, would we depend fully upon the Holy Spirit living in and through us in those times?

And Lord, help us to not allow trials to steal our joy.

Our joy is in Jesus Christ and the salvation that He brings.

Our joy is in the eternity that awaits us, where we get to be face to face with you, away from the sins of this world, away from our own flesh, Lord, that battles with us daily.

Help us to take our hope and our joy from those things and to remember those things and to place those things as a higher priority in our thinking than the direct circumstance that's affecting us right now.

Lord, give us an eternal perspective when we fall into various trials.

Help us to ask the right questions instead of, Lord, why are you doing this to me?

But asking the question of, okay, Lord, what do you want to teach me?

How do you want to refine me?

How do you want to mold me to be more and more like you?

Lord, we need so much help in this.

We all struggle with this.

We're all so weak in this.

Lord, would you strengthen us and would you grow us each individually and as a church to be able to walk through these things with the joy that you can only give, with the peace that you can only give.

Lord, we thank you so much for the peace that we have with you right now.

That we can be talking directly to you, that we can come boldly into your presence, Lord, with thanksgiving, because of the grace and the mercy that you have showered on us just in such incredible ways.

We love you, God, so much.

Be glorified and honored in all that we do, we pray.

In Jesus' name.