We live in dangerous times. September 11 and the Bali Bombings have changed our national psyche. We realised there were humans walking on God’s earth who hated westerners so much that they are prepared to kill themselves to kill us. The Kosovo terrorists said to their 900 captives in a theatre, “We want to die more than you want to live!” That is the world in which we live. And when memory of these acts of terror fades, there will be other horrendous acts to ‘terrorise’ us.
One of the New Years Eve fireworks display on the Harbour Bridge simply said, ‘Peace’. Neville Chamberlain held a paper from Hitler and called it, ‘Peace in our time’. Sadly, that proved to be only wishful thinking. But in dangerous times the heart longs for peace. We are told Australia might be a target. We need to be alert but not alarmed, but it’s hard to distinguish those two states of existence.
It is danger that prompts our desire for peace. But in this present danger, how many of us long for peace with God? How many yearn that God be graciously disposed to us? For our passage today tells us of another hostility, another conflict between warring parties. For we all have been at war with God—and the terrifying fact is, God, who we’ve made our enemy, has highly organised operatives everywhere, unsurpassed intelligence, and weapons of mass destruction. And the good news is that this God has offered us terms of peace—wonderful, incredible terms—and given an impeccable demonstration of his good faith.
Verses 1-2:
1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we [let us] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
On one understanding, here is a declaration of peace with God. What? I didn’t realise we were at war! But that is what Paul has assumed. And indeed the whole of Romans 1:18-3:20 has taught us this—we had made God our enemy.
Now our NIV has this as a simple statement, a declaration: “Since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God”. And this is true. Indeed verse 2 says the same thing in different words. Verse 2 again:
through [Jesus] we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
This is peace with God. We have been offered and by faith in Christ gained an access all areas pass to God’s grace and loving kindness. And there you are, standing there in the sunshine of God’s grace, basking in God’s love towards you.
But do you see in your NIV footnote. It suggests that perhaps we should read verse 1 as “let us have peace”. In fact, that is probably the best way to read verse 1[1].
Since we’ve been justified by faith, let us have peace with God.
So what Paul is saying to you who trust Jesus is this: through trusting Jesus you have access to a wonderful standing of grace. God has washed away your sins. God loves you. God graciously looks upon you and doesn’t impute your sins against you. God regards you with tenderness and love. God hears your prayers, he is your Father and you are precious in his eyes.
So have peace with God. You’ve got peace, now reach out and take it, and enjoy it.
How often do we silly Christians need to be told to take hold of what we already have. God loves you. So stop moping around telling yourself he doesn’t. God loves to hear your prayers, so pour your heart out to him and enjoy the peace he has given to you. Cast your burdens on him, because he cares for you. You have peace with God. You have a standing of grace, remember. Remind yourself of God’s promises to you, for you have peace with God. Rejoice, don’t despair, you have peace. Be happy. We have peace with God.
Peace with God is something to talk about, more than that, to rejoice in, even more, to boast about. Look at the last part of verse 2.
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
You see that word ‘rejoice’? It’s actually stronger than ‘rejoice’. It’s the same word that was used back in Romans 3:27 and 4:2. It is the word for boasting. But earlier we saw boasting was excluded. Chapter 3 verse 27 said “where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of works of the law? No, but on that of faith.” And chapter 4 verse 2 said: “If Abraham was justified by works he had something to boast about – but not before God.” And Abraham didn’t have anything to boast about, because he was justified by faith.
But now we boast in the hope of the glory of God. In fact, it might even be stronger than that. Paul might be saying “let us boast upon the basis of the hope of the glory of God.” Paul may well here be commanding us to boast.
Why should we now boast? Because we have peace with God. We have been justified by faith. But we boast not in ourselves, in our works, for all that sort of boasting is excluded. But we boast in the future God has prepared for us because of Jesus.
How many people get so upset when you say “I know I’m going to heaven. Heaven is my home. God is my father. I’m an alien and stranger here. After I die I will be with Jesus, which is better by far.”
How many people think that is so arrogant and boastful. How can you say that! No-one can say that! I believe Billy Graham said that once on TV to Mike Willesee, and Mike thought it very arrogant. And it would be, if it were said out of anything except faith in Christ.
For faith excludes boasting about ourselves, but faith demands boasting about Jesus. Faith demands boasting about the glory of God that Jesus won for us, and the future that God has in store for everyone who longs for Jesus’ appearing. Boasting is excluded, except about God and his Son, Jesus Christ. As Paul say in Galatians 5:16, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…” So we can boast about our future, because Jesus won it for us. And so our boasting becomes evangelism. For we boast about Jesus, and all he has done for us.
Verses 3-4:
3Not only so, but we also rejoice (lit boast) in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, 4perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Various troubles surround us. Pain and suffering is part of our world. Grief and loss meet us. And the longer we live, the more hurt we will experience.
Paul had made pain his friend. In another place, he was driven to boasting about his sufferings (2 Cor 11:16-12:10), because in all the insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties, then Christ made him strong in his weakness (2 Cor 12:9-10). And here again Paul boasts in sufferings, for sufferings enable us to hope for heaven.
A friend at mine at College used to say “I can’t wait for heaven”. And I wondered why I don’t naturally think like that. And I think it’s because I don’t hope for heaven because my life is pretty good. I don’t really suffer much. I am pretty comfortable. But suffering raises our eyes to a place of no more mourning, crying, and pain, where the old order has past away. Suffering forms and conditions us. The pain will change us, and we will never be the same after it. For some, it will make them bitter towards God and others. For other, it will drive them to God. A lady I used to go to church with once said, “Suffering is wasted on the Non-Christian.” And she was reflecting on this truth, for suffering combined with faith produces perseverance. It will work a faith that keeps on keeping on: a robust, solid trust in Jesus in spite of circumstances. Such a faith can only produce character. Literally, it produces “that which is approved after testing”. For suffering is the test that enables our faith to be shown genuine.
How do I know whether I really trust Jesus? Well, does my faith survive the test of hardship, and more than survive, but grows stronger through the hardship. Such a preserving faith is just like those big muscly guys who pump iron. The way they get so muscly is that they keep lifting weights until their arms are exhausted and they get a burning feeling in their muscles. And that means the muscle fibers have snapped under the strain, and then while they rest, the muscle fibres knit back together, this time double the strength.
Perhaps you’ve experience suffering that has tested the very fiber of your being. Perhaps you feel it has snapped you. Know then that you’re in God’s gymnasium. And God as a loving trainer is giving you a work out, not to destroy you—that’s not his aim—but to make you stronger.
I do not feel very well qualified to talk to such a group as you are about suffering. So many more of you have experienced so much more of it in your lives than I have. Some of you have buried your children. Others perhaps still grieve over dead husbands or wives. Many of you have lost friends. Others have had painful illnesses or accidents. Some have seen first hand the horrors of war. Others know the stress of financial difficulties, retrenchment, constant alienation and conflict with loved ones, bodily pain, and frustrating and debilitating conditions. Many of you carry in your body the scars of many years of suffering. What for you is past for me is future.
But can I encourage you with this: know that in Christ, not one tear has been wasted. Know that suffering mixed with faith produces a rich hope that will never disappoint. For hope looks to the things promised by God, things firm and sure, though not yet received, sealed in the blood of his Son. And therefore they will never disappoint, because they constitute an eternity with Jesus and without pain.
But God does not just point us forward, for he is also with us now. Verse 5:
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
God loves us. He is our Father. And he doesn’t keep his love for us secret. He is not a distant father, always away, forever distracted, never quite there, who never tells his children he loves them. No. "God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children (Rom 8:16). He gives us his very Spirit. And the Holy Spirit testifies to us that God loves us.
Well, for many of us, words are cheap. We realise its an easy thing to say ‘I love you’. For some, it’s too easy. We need some evidence, something more real than words. We need a demonstration, a token, of love. And the God who knows us better than we know ourselves has already provided us with what we need. Verse 6:
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.
Whether it comes to an off drive, or to an off joke, it is all in the timing. And the time that Jesus died matters. God worked out the best time for Jesus to die. God looked at us, analysed our weakness and our powerlessness, saw that we could not help nor save ourselves, noted our ungodliness, that we were without hope and without God in the world, and God said, “Now, now is the time. They are just right. Now I show them my love.”
God loves the unlovely. Is not this real love?
Not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10)
God loved us when we didn’t love him. But that wasn’t our biggest problem. No, it was that God loved us at the same time that he didn’t love us. God loved us when at the same time he was angry towards us[2].
He was not stupid or naive. He knew we didn’t love him. We were ungodly, sinners, enemies. And that reality caused God pain and anger. We drew forth God’s anger, and yet he loved us. As Calvin says, “in a marvelous and divine way, God loved us even when he hated us.”[3]
Such a love is perverse or bizarre. It is against nature. It is beyond our experience. And Paul will scratch around for human examples against which to contrast it. Verse 7:
Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.
A while ago, I read in the paper that Kerry Packer needed a kidney. And Kerry’s Helicoptor Pilot said ‘I’ve got two, so you can have one’. And naturally Kerry took it. Here is Kerry, a rich benefactor, and here is a generous act by a loyal servant. It rightly makes the paper. For it is remarkable. I heard recently of a loving brother who gave his bone marrow for his sick brother. That is a rare demonstration of brotherly love. That deserves remark and being written up in a magazine. We hear of such things occasionally.
Now compare them to what God did. Verse 8:
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
God takes his Son, who is of his very essence, who was with him from eternity, who always pleased him, and God handed him over to death—not for a brother, not for a kind benefactor, not for a righteous man—but for the ungodly, for the weak, for the enemy, for the sinner. You see, it’s all in the timing. When we were at our worst, God gave us his best.
Such a love is beyond nature. It transcends the natural ties of affection.
Kent Hughes[4] tells the story in his commentary of a Christian minister Peter Miller. Peter Miller lived during the American civil war. And Peter Miller lived near a neighbour who hated and ridiculed him. This neighbour was later found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. And hearing this, Miller set out on foot to try to obtain a pardon from President George Washington. And President Washington listened to Miller but then said that he didn’t feel he should pardon Miller’s friend. To which Miller replied. ‘My friend. He is not my friend. In fact, he’s my worst living enemy.’ To which Washington replied. ‘What! You have walked 60 miles to save the life of your enemy. That in my judgment puts the matter in a different light. I will grant your request.’
What Miller did was a reflection of what God had done for him. For God practiced what he preaches. When God tells us love our enemies, he is only asking us do what he has already done for us. When we were God’s enemies, he sent Christ died for us. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us.
For Paul, God’s past acts assures our future in Christ. His argument takes this form: if God has done the harder thing, how much more will God do the easier thing? And he states it twice to emphasize it. Verses 9 to 10:
9Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath though him! 10For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
God has done the harder thing in the past. God justified and reconciled us in the death of his Son. In the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we were justified. Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification (Rom 4:25). We have that now. Since we have now been justified by his blood. All the benefits of the past come to us now. So we now have peace with God. We now have a gracious standing before our father.
And the past not only changes our present status. That same past guarantees our future. God has already done the harder thing. He has already reconciled us, his enemies, to himself. Now nothing stands in the way of God doing the easier thing. God will finish the job. God will finally save us from his own wrath. God himself will save us from himself.
You see, Jesus did not stay dead. He has risen to the right hand of God. He is there now, as we sit here, clothed forever in his scarred human body, now glorified. And what does the risen Jesus do there?
Well, he remembers our names. He shows the Father those same pierced hands and feet. He intercedes for us. He says, "Yes, I purchased them". Jesus lives forever to plead for us. And on the last day he will claim all who trust him as his own. He won’t forget us. He lives to always intercede for us. And so we will be saved through his life: his resurrection life that he now enjoys and that he will one day share with us.
And because Jesus lives, we too will live. For his life is the guarantee of our life. He is dead no longer. And as he lives, so will you.
So Paul boasts a third time. Verse 11:
Not only is this so, but we also rejoice [lit boast] in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
As a Christian, I am an Australian for Reconciliation. Here is the first and foremost reconciliation we must have in Australia—not that between Aboriginal and European settlers, however important that may be, but between God and man. This is a reconciliation God already achieved in the Christ, and it is a reconciliation that now can be enjoyed by faith.
It is no wonder that in verse 11, Paul boasts again about God and Jesus. Nobody can stop the boasting. That’s why evangelism is as natural for us as breathing. We have a God we can boast about. We have a Son we can brag about. Don’t boast to your friends about what your son has done. He got this mark in the HSC, his working for a big company, he’s a doctor. Big deal—boast about God’s Son. He lives. And he will save us. There’s something to boast about.
Let’s pray.
[1] The strongest external evidence suggests the subjunctive, not indicative. Cf J Murray, Romans, 159: ‘May not the exhortation here, as in other cases, presuppose the indicative … since we have it, let us have it’; contra Moo, Stuhlmacher.
[2] Calvin, Institutes II, XVII, para 2 (Vol 1 p530).
[3] ibid II, XVI, para 4 (Vol 1 p506-7).
[4] R Kent Hughes, Romans: Righteousness from Heaven (Wheaton: Crossways, 1991), 110.