“Not Good Enough?”
Romans 5:1-11
This morning we are continuing our Sermon Series on Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
This letter to the early Church in Rome contains some of the Church’s most important theological writings.
At the same time, they can be challenging to understand and preach, so I will try and make them as accessible as possible.
It is essential to grasp Romans because much of our understanding of salvation by grace through faith alone is contained here.
(pause)
After I had my born again experience in college, I got in with a group of Christians who were very focused on “works righteousness.”
In other words, to stay in God’s good graces you had to do everything correctly.
It was, in a way, like going backward after I had been set free because there is no way human beings can do everything correctly or perfectly.
No matter how sincerely we try, we always fall short of fulfilling the requirements of the law, as in the law of the Ten Commandments and other laws found in the Bible.
There are always things we have done that we should not have done and things we should have done that we haven’t done.
Really, the very effort to be perfect leaves us isolated, focused on self, and often torn with feelings of guilt.
I’ve shared this story with you before, but it fits what Paul is trying to tell us.
One day I was walking across my college campus and feeling especially frustrated and down about myself.
I felt that I had missed the mark and wasn’t good enough to be saved.
I had tried and tried and tried to please God on my own terms, and it wasn’t working out.
In other words, I had forgotten about grace.
And as I was walking and feeling bad about myself--feeling as if God couldn’t possibly love me--I happened into a record store…
…for those who are under a certain age, there used to be stores that sold music on vinyl records, c-ds, and tapes.
They were called record stores.
I was walking through this record store, and the song on the speakers was Billy Joel’s “I Love You Just The Way You Are.”
And at that moment, it felt as if God were speaking to me through that song.
And God was saying, “Ken, get over yourself.
Stop being so hard on yourself.
I love you just the way you are.
I know you aren’t perfect.
I know everything about you.
I know your every weakness.
I know what you battle against.
And I love you just the way you are.
Now, I don’t want you to stay where you are, you have a long way to go on this journey, but I want you to know that I love you just the way you are.”
That brought me peace.
We cannot save ourselves.
We cannot bring ourselves into a right relationship with God.
There is nothing we can do on our own to secure our salvation.
If there were, why would Jesus Christ have needed to come and die for our sins?
“You see,” Paul writes, “at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”
“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Love can go no further than that.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Through Jesus Christ, God reveals the extent of God’s love for us.
It’s a love that suffered death on the
cross for us, even though we do not deserve this love.
And through believing this, trusting in this love, which is a gift from God—we come to understand that we don’t have to be perfect for God to love us.
We do not need to justify ourselves, which of course, is impossible for us to do.
God loves us, and that is all the justification we need.
Can we believe this, even though we know ourselves and what we are capable of?
Can we believe this despite all the bad and hurtful things we have done?
Can we believe that God loves us that much?
It’s a life-changing experience when we come to believe this, when we do accept the love and grace of God, when we do accept that this love and grace is for us just as much as it is for anyone else.
Paul tells believers that “while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.”
I remember when faith in God was more of a distant thing than a personal thing.
I remember when it was more something that other people were excited about and really, really into.
I remember when it didn’t make sense to me.
And I remember knowing in my heart that I was living as an enemy of God and not even trying to justify myself.
That is when I was truly lost.
But God, in His great mercy and love, came looking for me.
He called me.
He nudged me.
He offered me the gift of faith that would bring me into a right relationship with Him and change my life forever.
(pause)
Paul’s focus in Romans is on our relationship with God; of course this is what the entire Bible is focused on.
And it’s important to understand that all relationships come about through grace.
Just as we can’t earn God’s love, we can’t earn a person’s love.
The psychology of attraction is extremely complicated, but the emotional and motivational commitment of love—the willingness to set aside our own needs to help someone else—is always a gift.
And while hurtful actions such as betraying someone’s trust, physical violence, and neglect can destroy a relationship, what creates a relationship is acceptance of the other, defects as well as aspects of their personality that are attractive and are strengths.
All love is a free gift—unearned, undeserved.
If I paid you a million dollars to love me, you might be able to act as if you love me, but you wouldn’t necessarily love me.
And we come to love God because God first loves us unconditionally, no matter what we have done and has gone all the way to the Cross to save us and be in relationship with us.
And when we discover this and accept it, really accept it and decide that we want Jesus Christ to be Lord of our lives we discover an identity that is based on God’ love for us.
And nothing can separate us from God’s love, nothing is more valuable than God’s love and being a child of God.
And with this new identity we move away from judging our personal worth by comparing ourselves with others.
Failure and shame become symptoms of misplaced values; they are idols to be set aside.
Our motivation to do things becomes directed toward the legitimate needs of others instead of being a quest to prove our personal worth.
And because our personal ego becomes less important, we become free to take risks, to be bold, to dream of God’s healed creation and become a worker toward that end.
Openness to others becomes easier and empathy toward others is a natural response.
And we experience a peace and a joy which is beyond understanding and only makes sense through the love of Christ.
Of course, we all go through times of trial and times when we don’t “feel” all the things I’m describing.
Some of us backslide and find ourselves taking back much of the junk we have given to God.
But, we know what it is like to walk in love and relationship with God, and we can never be happy nor satisfied with anything less.
A person shared in the Upper Room this past week about sending a Bible verse to an old friend she had not seen in a while.
The verse is from John 10 where Jesus says: “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.”
Two weeks later she received a reply: “The Bible verse you sent made me cry,” wrote the friend, “I have been living far from God for a long time, and my life has become a mess. But it turns out God’s hand was always open to me.
I am the one who removed my hand.
I want to go back to holding God’s hand.”
Can you relate to this?
(pause)
We have now begun our journey in Lent.
And Lent is a time to reflect and renew our relationship with God.
It’s a time when we especially consider all that God has done to bring us into relationship with Him.
And it’s a time to repent of those things that we take back from God, those things that get in the way of our relationship with God.
It’s a time to get back on track.
It’s a time to recommit ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the love of God.
Do you have a relationship with the Living God or were you once walking with God but you let go of God’s hand.
God is always here, ready to take our hand when we extend it.
As a matter of fact, God’s hand is always open and extended to us…
…nail marks and all.
Let us pray:
Dear God, thank You for going to the Cross so that we may have a relationship with You.
Thank You that You love us that much.
And thank You for always extending Your hand.
If we have moved away from You, give us courage to return to You.
In Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.
