Resiliency Rooted In Hope

THE HOPE EXPRESSED IN ROMANS

The world expects us to be materially successful, independent, happy consumers with all the best status symbols money can buy. But thankfully, that isn’t what God expects of us, because God knows a much more lasting and meaningful hope can be ours, if we are just willing to accept it. That is the point from which our passage launches this morning. In the previous chapters, Paul laid out the groundwork for justification by grace through faith in the new covenant in Christ, and not through works of the law of the old covenant of Moses. In these chapters he gives the “how” and the “why” of salvation, with David and Abraham being examples of those who lived by faith before. But he doesn’t stop with the theoretical.

He now moves into the concrete to describe exactly what salvation looks like in the life of the believer. He begins with the assumption that his readers have already been justified in Christ. They have understood why they needed to be saved, and accepted the free gift of salvation. But like so many of us, they were probably wondering, “OK, what now?” After all, all of life isn’t just making that initial confession of faith, though we as Evangelicals sometimes seem to stop right there. I don’t want you to misunderstand me. It is absolutely essential that you receive Jesus if you haven’t already done so. He is our only hope for forgiveness of the sins which we have all committed, so that we can be redeemed and restored, and spend an eternity with Him.

But life is more than just the beginning and the end. It is more than just initial justification and the hope of heaven. There is a long space in between, and for most of us, that long space is going to include decades of struggle. For some, that struggle is going to include going through a divorce while trying to raise kids, or it’s going to include coping with a loved one’s drug addiction, or a friend’s suicide, or the loss of a job, or mounting medical bills, and housing and transportation costs. For many, that struggle might seem like you’re stuck in the mud, going no where, or that you’re sliding down the impossibly high hill you’re trying to climb.

It’s to Christians in the midst of that struggle that Paul is now speaking. He begins in v. 1 by speaking of the “peace of God,” which newly justified believers are party to. Though we were once enemies of God, by receiving His free gift of grace, we are enemies no longer. This free gift is accessed through Jesus Christ alone. The Greek word Paul uses for “accessed” begins to paint a picture for us, of a royal court where no one can see the king except through invitation and by exceptional merit.(7) Except that we don’t possess that merit ourselves, as outlaws and enemies of the realm, there is no way we would have been granted audience with the king. But Christ has vouched for us by his own merit and brokered a peace treaty. Now we stand firmly before the king, in the confidence that comes with a warm invitation, as ambassadors to a once hostile, but now friendly, power.(8)