The Price For Peace With God Series

The Price for Peace with God

Romans 5:12-21

If you've been with us the first two Sundays of 2013, you would know that our church's theme for this year is "Peace-making." Peace rarely describes our experience in the hurried and diverse world we live. So knowing how to make peace is vital.

I've had occasions to visit people in the hospital who were near death. I would ask for permission to talk about how to experience total peace. With their permission, I would explain that total peace involves peace of mind, peace in relationships, and peace with God.

I trust as we go through 2013 together, we will learn to experience total peace. And the foundation for total peace is peace with God. That's what we will continue to study this morning.

Last week, we saw that peace with God means to live as a friend of God, rather than an enemy of God. But the Bible tells us that all of us have offended God. We disregard God and His ways. That's the bad news.

Here was the good news from last week's Bible text, Romans 5:1-11: Peace with God simply requires that we trust God to make things right between us. And the Bible tells us that God paid for our offenses against Him. He did this by coming in the form of a man, Jesus Christ, and dying on a cross.

What follows is a common question: Couldn't God have done it some other way? Aren't there more than one way to peace with God? The price of peace with God seems so incredible.

Our text this morning explains why. We continue with Romans 5:12-21. (READ)

The text we read explains the problems we have and the price God paid for our peace with God. Paul jumps back and forth in these verses, from Adam to Jesus and from the problems to the solution. Let's look together.

First, what are our problems? We see these described in vs. 12 to 14, 17a,18a.

The Bible tells us we have three problems and two causes. We have the problem of death, that is the penalty for Adam's sin. Adam is the cause. We have the problem of our own sin, that is we disregard God and His ways. We are the cause. And we have the problem of condemnation, that is God's judgment of our sin.

The first problem sounds unreasonable. You can read about this in Genesis 3. Adam, our first ancestor, sinned against God. As a result, death entered the human race. The assumption then is that before Adam's sin, humans could be immortal.

As Jim Rohn pointed out, "We don't have to like what we learn. But the wise will learn, even what he doesn't like." For instance, when I go to the doctor, I'm asked to fill out a family health history. If my parent had colon cancer, guess what? My chance of colon cancer is increased. If my parent had heart problem; same thing.

I don't like it, but I'd be a fool to ignore it. Death is passed on from Adam. That means we weren't made by God to die. Death is not God's plan; it's mankind's problem.

The second problem our sin. Our sin is the thoughts and deeds we think and do that violates God's law. Without getting into specifics, someone noted, "If I wrote down all the wrong thoughts and deeds I've thought and did in my lifetime, you would think that I am a monster." In our own private and honest evaluation, many of us may agree.

And here is our third problem, God's judgment for our sin: Guilty. A holy God cannot let sin go unpunished. We may not like it. But the wise will learn of this and ask, "What must we do, then?"

Nicky Gumbel tells the story of two really good friends who went down different paths in life. One became a judge and the other a criminal. One day, the criminal appeared before the judge. He committed a crime and pleaded guilty. The judge recognized his old friend and faced a dilemma.

The judge had to be just; he couldn't let his friend off. Yet, he didn't want to punish his friend, because he loved him. So he fined his friend the correct penalty for the offense. That was justice.

Then the judge came down from his position as judge, and wrote a check for the amount of the fine. He gave it to his friend, saying that he would pay the penalty for him. The friend was left with a choice to accept or decline the offer.

That story parallels what the Bible says God, the Judge, did for mankind. But the price was not a dollar amount. The price was God's life in exchange for our lives.