Romans 5:1-5 * March 8, 2009 * Lent 2 * Pastor Leyrer

Dear Friends in Christ,

I don’t know that we can say news on the national front is getting any better. What I think we can say is that it has reached the point where it is getting personal, and I believe the following can be said of each of us here today:

Someone you know has or will lose their job. Someone you know has or will deal with foreclosure on their house. Someone you know has already altered or will alter their retirement plans. To put it in general terms, someone you know personally is dealing with an entirely different set of circumstances today than they were a year ago.

Maybe that someone is a brother. Or a sister. Or one of your children. Or your parents. Or a dear friend. Maybe that someone is you.

When the dark clouds of uncertainty roll across a person’s landscape the rains of fear and apprehension and stress are usually not far behind. And maybe you or someone you know is already getting wet.

In such times it is helpful to remember that the people in the Bible, those whom we rightfully consider heroes of faith and great spiritual icons, were at the same time human beings just like us who were subjected to the same ups and downs that we go through.

Take the author of our text, for example. The Apostle Paul understood the ebbs and flows of life as well as anyone. In his letter to the Philippians he told them he knew what it was to be in need and also what it was to have plenty. In his second letter to the Corinthians he provides a listing of the persecutions and physical difficulties he went through in his work as a missionary.

Interestingly enough, he then goes on to say that one of the ongoing things he dealt with was the daily pressure of his concern for the churches (2 Corinthians 11:28). In other words, Paul understood the meaning of uncertainty as it applied to him personally as well as those he cared for.

That is why it is equally helpful to know how Paul handled these situations. What we find is this dynamic at work: The more things in life became uncertain, the more he found solace and strength in the things that were certain. While things here on this earth do change (often accompanied by fear), the spiritual realities of God do not. And the certain things of God trump the uncertain things of life, both in the confidence they bring us and the perspective they provide us.

All of this comes through in our text for today. Paul reminds us that regardless of our outward circumstance we are firmly

STANDING IN THE GRACE OF GOD

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

If we had to come up with our own definition for “uncertainty” one suggestion might be the absence of peace in our heart. When we don’t know what is going to happen it is hard for us to be at peace – with ourselves, our circumstances, maybe even with God.

But Paul suggests this doesn’t have to be. In fact Paul speaks of peace with God as already being ours as Christians. How did this come about? We have been “justified through faith,” which Paul links to “our Lord Jesus Christ.” In other words, at the root of true, personal and reassuring peace is justification through faith in Christ.

“Justification through faith in Christ.” Everything in Scripture revolves around this teaching and everything in Scripture eventually comes back to this teaching. It is a deeply personal doctrine for each one of us, because it addresses our eternal life. And it is a deeply clarifying doctrine, because it is the headwater from which all of the other promises of God stream off. As such, it is always worthy of reviewing…

The word “justify” is a courtroom term. It means to “declare righteous.” Justification by faith is God’s declaration of righteousness upon those who believe (have faith) in Jesus Christ and what He did for all mankind through His life, death and resurrection. God declares us totally and completely righteous, or forgiven, for Jesus sake…

Picture the courtroom scene. God is the judge. We are the ones before him. Our crime is sin (which the Apostle John describes as “lawlessness”); that is, we are guilty of not obeying the commands and demands of God.

To be specific, we swear… we cheat… we get angry… we complain… at times we treat God with disrespect, at other times we act as if He doesn’t exist. Despite His request that we think of others, we often take our cues from the world and become tremendously self-absorbed. Despite His request that we live in purity, our eyes gaze upon things we should not see and our feet take us to places we should not go. We rationalize and trivialize things which God has clearly spoken against.

We could go on. You get the idea. We sin. God has us dead to rights. “The wages of sin is death” is the pronouncement. And we stand before this Judge guilty as charged.

But then something remarkable happens. God says, “Yes, you have sinned against me, often and grievously. Yes, you deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law. Yes, you deserve the full wages of sin, which is eternal death in hell. But I love you. And I have come up with a plan to harmonize my love for you and my righteous justice and hatred toward your sin…”

And we know the plan. God became one of us in His Son, Jesus Christ. He followed perfectly all the commands of God and did as mankind’s substitute what we could not do. And then He suffered the death we deserve. In our place. As our substitute. Elsewhere the Apostle Paul puts it this way: “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”

The glorious result: Those who trust (have faith) in Jesus are justified. Declared righteous. Redeemed. Restored. Forgiven. At peace with God.

This is the bedrock of the Bible. If we misunderstand the doctrine of justification through faith, there is nothing left for us but worry, fear and uncertainty about our eternal salvation. But when we do understand it, there is peace.

Through Jesus Christ we are at peace with God. Through Him, Paul tells us, “we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” And where there is peace there is joy. “And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” – that is, the sure hope of sharing God’s glory in heaven.

Furthermore, when we understand the “peace” of sins forgiven that is ours through “our Lord Jesus Christ” (the past); when we stop to reflect upon the “grace in which we now stand” (the present); and when we “rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (the future), all of this combines to produce a new perspective on life. Paul takes this up next.

³ Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. At the outset of this sermon we mentioned that Paul was a realist. He dealt with the vagaries and uncertainties of life firsthand. He understood that being a Christian was no guarantee of a trouble-free life.

In fact, it will be just the opposite. Whether because of our ties with Christ, the mistakes we make ourselves or simply being caught in the fallout of existence on a sinful planet, Jesus told us that in this world we would have trouble. But in the next breath He tells us to take heart in Him and His help, because He had overcome the world.

Consequently, when Paul tells us we can rejoice in our sufferings, he is not suggesting a morbid view of life, but rather a triumphant one. He reminds us here to view difficulty and suffering not as ends in themselves, but from the perspective of the peace that is ours in Christ and with the understanding that this is part of an important progression.

What he’s telling us is that suffering and hardship are tools the Lord sometimes uses to produce within us the Godly chain reaction of “perseverance, character, and confident hope.” In other words, the difficulties we endure are a part of the deeper spiritual formation God desires for us and is working in us.

Perhaps somewhere along the line you’ve heard the story about a boy who caught a caterpillar, put it in a glass jar and faithfully attended to it. Eventually the caterpillar spun a cocoon and then, many weeks later, the long expected event transpired and the boy saw a butterfly beginning to emerge.

But it looked like it was going to take so long and was going to be so hard to get out that the boy thought he would speed up the process. So he got a scissors and carefully snipped off a part of the end of the cocoon thinking the butterfly would have an easier time of it. And sure enough, out came the butterfly. But its body was swollen and its wings were shriveled.

You see, what he didn’t know was that the constricting cocoon and the struggle necessary to pass through the tiny opening are God's way of forcing fluid from the body into the wings. Although it was intended to be merciful, in reality that snip of the scissors stunted the growth of the butterfly and it never became what it was intended to be.

The point: God knows more than butterflies. He knows us. And He knows what we need to grow and mature as believers, and sometimes it involves a struggle.

Without it, we wouldn’t be what we are or perhaps what God intends us to be. Because it is the suffering that then leads us to perseverance, which then leads us Christian character, which then leads us to keep on hoping on Him, with the promise that, as our text concludes, “hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

So what have we learned today?

While many in our nation deal with uncertainty, we’ve learned about the certainty of true peace.

To be specific, we’ve learned that true peace is attainable, comes from Jesus Christ, and is the blessed result of our justification through faith.

We’ve learned that true peace fills us with confidence and even joy.

And we’ve learned that true peace gives us a proper perspective on life, allowing us to see difficulties as tools God sometimes uses to make us spiritually strong and steadfast.

Bottom line: We’ve learned regardless of what may or may not transpire in our personal, temporal lives, we know where we are: We are firmly standing in the grace of God. Amen.