Review last week John 3:16 Most Famous,Gospel in Nutshell, Believe or Parish
Today we are looking at Romans 5 and Paul is talking about Justification
• To be made right with God
Read vs 1&2
1. We have been made right in God’s sight
• Being made right means that at one point all of us were wrong
• That we have gone from a place of Disobedience to Acceptance
• Fall of mankind-- Eve Deceived-- Adam Disobeyed
2. And how have we been made right? It’s through our Faith?
• What is Faith? Faith is believing in something that we have no proof is real.
• And this is one of the stumbling blocks for nonbelievers and for some believers as well
• The World demands proof (Examples, Existence, Investing, Ghosts, ET, Bigfoot)
When we prove something what we doing is to remove all doubt.
3. And we are told that it’s through our Faith that we have Peace with God
• Definition here of peace isn’t the absence of problems,
• It isn’t Peace of mind
We think to have Peace we have to be free from Turmoil, Problems
(Kids, Stress, Job, Relationships, Money Problems)
But The Peace that Paul is talking about
• Comes from us finding harmony with God
Because of what Jesus has done we now have Peace in Our relationship with The Father
• It’s only Jesus Death on the Cross ? Resurrection
• That We are no longer separated from the Father / At odds with Him because of Sin
• Instead we are in Harmony with Him
• Life is Good!!
4. And because of this (Faith, / Being made Right) we have been brought into this place of Undeserved Privilege
• That Privilege means we have Access to the Father
• The word Access means that we can Approach Him / Be Introduced to Him
• God the Father is the One who is being Approached
• And Jesus is the One Introducing us as those who belong to Him
• And because we belong to Him we belong to the Father
And because of that we can Rejoice!!!!
Read vs 3-5
In verse 3 We see the idea of Rejoicing carries over from the Last Section
• In Verses 1&2 we Rejoiced Because we now have Peace, Access, Sharing God’s Glory
• And now we are told that we can Rejoice when we experience problems
Just because we have found Peace with God,
• Doesn’t mean that we have found Peace with those around us
• The conditions of Life, especially for believers in the middle of a hostile society,
• Are not easy or pleasant (Examples)
But since we have the knowledge that we have been accepted by God /
• That we are constantly supplied by His Grace /
• And we have the promise of a future Glory /
• This should be enough to give us Joy / to face these Sufferings
1. And Paul now Refers to this Suffering as a Chain of Events that benefit us as Christians
• How can suffering Benefit us?
• Elsewhere Paul stresses that our sufferings
• The Problems that we go through everyday
• Are an extension of the sufferings experienced by Christ in the days of his flesh,
• And now those sufferings are to be experienced by those who make up his body (Php 3:10; Col 1:24).
Phil 3:10 As a result, I can really know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I can learn what it means to suffer with him, sharing in his death, Phil 3:11 so that, somehow, I can experience the resurrection from the dead!
Col 1:24 I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am completing what remains of Christ’s sufferings for his body, the church.
2. So we see that Suffering has Value
• Suffering produces Perseverance / Endurance.
• When Problems (Suffering) come about we don’t give in to them
• We need to resist them / in the same way that Christ "endured" the cross and triumphed over suffering.
One of the things that make the Christian faith different
• Is that believers are taught to find Glory / Rejoice in the midst of suffering
• Instead of sighing and submitting to it as an inevitable evil.
And this kind of Endurance (Perseverance) develops Character
• Job understood this
Job 23:10 And when he has tested me like gold in a fire, he will pronounce me innocent.
The word "character" indicates tested value.
• The newborn child of God is precious in his sight,
• But the tested and proven saint means even more to him
• And the reason is because they are a living demonstration of the character-developing power of the Gospel.
And This helps to explain Paul's statement that character produces Hope
• This brings to a climax the items beginning with "sufferings."
• In VS 1-2 Paul described Hope from the standpoint of another series—
• Faith, leads to Peace, to Access, to Grace, and then to Hope of the glory of God.
• Here God gives Hope of sharing the divine glory, with our sufferings.
Paul is showing us that Hope isn’t just something that we wish for
• But that it is linked to the Love of God
• Human love may bring Disappointment / Frustration,
But not the love of God.
• It is supported by the divine gift guaranteeing our eternal fellowship with God.
These Verses concludes with a statement about the importance of the believer's possession of the Holy Spirit
• God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us
• The Holy Spirit is our Certification (Guarantee) concerning the future aspects of our Salvation, We haven’t received everything that we have coming yet!!
And It’s through the Spirit that God's love is "poured out" in our hearts.
• The verb "poured out" speaks of the Inexhaustible Abundance (Overflowing, Everlasting) supply of God's love that we find through the Spirit.
• All the blessings that we find in Christ are given to God's people by the Spirit.
• Looking back over the paragraph, we see that this thought has advanced from Faith to Hope and from Hope to Love
And we are told this same message-- in the same order -- as in 1Co 13:13
1Co 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
As we close today what I hope that we have seen is that the process of Justification
• Being made right in the sight of God –Is a work in Progress—Work at Everyday
