EXPOSITORY THOUGHTS FROM ROMANS CHAPTER 5

(Scripture quotations from the NEV)

1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,  And we  rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 

Paul now assumes that everyone accepts the truth that we have been justified through faith.   There is a qualification for that though.   1.  We must know and accept that we are hopeless sinners in ourselves, justly deserving God's wrath and condemnation. 2.  We need to know and accept that Jesus Christ died on the cross to take our sin upon Himself, and believe that God raised Him from the dead to make our justification possible.  3.  We need to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour.  4.  Then we need to undertake with the Lord to be on the pathway to progressive sanctification.    As soon as we accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, we are instantly justified before God.

What we have to know, is the difference between justification and sanctification.   Justification happens instantly we confess that we have accepted Jesus as Saviour, and our belief that God has raised Him from the dead to be our Lord.   Sanctification is our agreement with God that we will obey the leading of the Holy Spirit in dealing with our sinful habit patterns and for our mind and attitudes to be conformed to the mind of Christ.  This starts by our confessing all our known sin - that is, discussing our sinful habits with the Lord and asking for His help to remove them so that the life we live before the world is glorifying to God and a good testimony for Christ.  After we have confessed the sins that we know about, we then ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the ones that we have forgotten about over the years.  Along the way, we will also learn that some things we thought were good and appropriate actions are in fact sinful and not edifying for us.   While justification is instantaneous, sanctification is progressive, and will take up the rest of our lives.    Sometimes we will think we are taking three steps forward and two steps back, but over a period of time we will see our progress as it develops.

The result of justification is that we are no longer at war with God.  We are no longer viewed by the Lord as rebels.  We have made peace with God.   The peace spoken about here is not a feeling of peace and wellbeing that we often have when everything is right with the world and we feel no stress.   It is a state relative to God.  Before we were in conflict - at war with God, as rebels.  But accepting Jesus as Saviour and Lord changes our status with God.  We are now at peace with Him.   The war is over.

2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

This has happened through Jesus Christ.  It is Jesus who has died for us and was raised from the dead to secure our peace with God.   Therefore, as long as we continue to acknowledge Him as Lord, we will maintain our status with the Father.   This is a continual walk of faith.  Jesus has opened the way of access to the Father through His death, resurrection, and the offering up of His blood in the heavenly Holy of Holies.

It has come through God's grace.  We did not earn it;  nor did we deserve it.   Our faith and resulting justification is the product of the grace of God which formulated the plan of Salvation which was designed from the foundation of the world.  If we try to do anything to earn our justification, then we cut ourselves off from the grace of God.  We remain in the grace of God as long as we know that we did not deserve the good things that Jesus made possible for us in God's plan of salvation.

3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope.

What gives us such joy as we walk the Christian path is that we are looking forward in hope to the day when the full glory of God will be revealed in us.  There will come a time when Jesus will come again, and this present age of grace and living in faith will end.  Then we will be brought into the presence of Christ where we will see Him as He is.   We will have direct fellowship with Him.   Then, He will present us to all to the Father and to all the host of heaven as the pure and spotless bride of Christ.  All those who rejected him, who are standing before the great Judgement Throne of God will also see us and will weep and mourn because they neglected the great plan of salvation that was offered to them.   They will weep, but we will rejoice.

It is true that we have times of suffering while we pass through this life.   Accepting Jesus as Saviour and Lord does not make us avoid the sufferings that we are to experience as part of being in this world, but not of it.   And yet we rejoice in our sufferings because they actually help to build us up in our most holy faith.   It is suffering that forges in us perseverance - that quality to keep on going and not give up.  When others all around us become discouraged and give up, we keep moving along with joy and hope.   We know that in the midst of our suffering that at the end of it there will be an open door of rest and peace in the Lord.   We know that our suffering will be temporary; that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end to suffering.  Therefore, we will persevere right through the different stages of our suffering experience.

But it doesn't end there.  Our perseverance produces character in us.  The best characters in the Christian faith are those who have gone through real and deep suffering.   But the ones who give up in the midst of suffering are not the ones who achieve the strong Christian character;  it is the ones who stay on the "roller coaster" to the end, whatever that may be.

The end result of a strong Christian character is hope.   Hope is defined as a clear, settled, vision of our future.  We live our lives trusting in that vision.   Faith is acting on the basis of hope.   Hope is the expectation;  faith is the resulting action.   We read the Word of God, we see the promise in the midst of our suffering, we gain hope through it, and then practice what the Word of God tells us.  The practice is what we call faith.   Faith is always based on hope.   A sick person may be persevering through the throes of his sickness.  Through it he is developing character.   He then gains hope that either he will get well, be healed, or go to be with the Lord.  According to the leading of the Spirit, he will act on the promises of the Word which the Spirit shows him.  The action then brings the desired result in the will of God for him.   His hope keeps him confident that the Lord is faithful to bring him through to the resolution that is planned for him within the purposes of God.

5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

This is the great attribute of the Christian life.  We will never be disappointed in the purposes of God for us, whether we live a peaceful and happy life, or we live a life full of suffering;  whether we live a long life, or whether it is tragically cut short through accident or sickness.   Others may conclude that God has short changed a person whose life is prematurely ended, or that most of it was spent on a sickbed, or that the Christian was blind or crippled.  But when we are all revealed on the last day as the pure bride of Christ, everything will be reconciled and we will not be disappointed with what has happened to us.

The catalyst is God's love that was revealed and poured into us by the Holy Spirit.  God gave us the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost to be our encourager and guide.  This is another act of God's grace.   The indwelling of the Spirit is God's gift to us.   God's love is what constrains us - keeps us on the straight and narrow, and motivates us to do things for Him and others which we would never do before we became Christians.   There is a particular quality about true Christians;  they radiate the love of God - for Him and for others around them.

This love is not an outward love.   It has been poured into our hearts;  therefore when we love others, we love them from the heart.  We don't have any ulterior motives for doing good things for others;  we do them out of a desire for their greatest good because we feel that way in our hearts toward them.  This is what enables us to love the unlovely.  Jesus said that it is easy to love those whom we would normally love - the loveable;  but it is much harder to love someone we could not naturally love.  This is where the love of God in our hearts wins out.  We can love anyone, sincerely and honestly, in a way that makes them know that they are genuinely loved, because it is the love of God - that attribute of His character that has been poured into us.

The sense of "pouring" shows us that the love of God has not been carefully measured out to us.   God has tipped the great container of love upside down and poured the contents into us so that we are full and overflowing with the love of God.  There is enough to fill us right up and to overflow to those around us.   If we allowed ourselves to receive the full measure of the love of God poured into us, we would not have to learn or be reminded to love others;  we would love them without hesitation, and they would know it.

 6You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God never does things by accident.  The verse says that Christ died for the ungodly at just the right time.  It was all part of God's plan of salvation.  He did not wait until we had any virtue in us that might have given him an indication that we might have some ability to save ourselves in some way, or that we had any merit at all.  He waited until He knew absolutely that we were as powerless as we could be.  We were in the lowest depths of rebellion and condemnation.  We were totally unlovely to God.  That is when He sent Christ to die for us.

Soldiers who risk their lives for others are to be greatly respected.  They are prepared to die for their comrades.  This is because they see some virtue in their comrade that is worth dying for.  But they might be a little hesitant to die for someone if that person was a filthy, flea infested beggar sitting in a muddy ditch.  Other would say, "Why would a person with all the potential of life before him want to die for a dirty, hopeless beggar like that?"

A righteous person is one who has qualities in himself.  Paul thinks it is rare for someone to die for someone like that.   A good person is defined as someone who is good to others.  There is a slightly greater possibility that someone might give his or her life for a person they think could do a great deal of good in the world.   The person in the world thinks what he could get out of doing something like that.  Possibly it is the satisfaction of giving his or her life for someone who appears to be better or have more potential in life.

But God has a different idea.   When Christ died for us, we had no redeeming virtues at all.  We were sinners and rebels against God.   There was a war raging between us and God.  We were enemies of God.   No-one in this world would be motivated to die for an enemy.  But God has a totally different attitude to anyone in the world.  This is the great demonstration of God's love - its unique quality - that while we were still in a rebellious and unacceptable state before God, He sent Christ to die for us.

It has been said that Jesus, when he came to this world and went to the cross for us, He was acting in faith.  There was no indication that anyone would give their lives to Him.   Every human being was in rebellion with no hope of natural redemption.  Jesus acted in faith.  He believed the word of the Father who sent Him.   If the Father told Him that He would be the first born of many brethren, then He believed that, and willingly volunteered to lay aside his glory, become a man and die on the cross for us.    Even after spending three years training His twelve disciples, at the point of his death they all ran away from Him.  Peter denied Him.  Jesus died alone with no natural prospect of anything positive coming out of His death.   He acted in faith on the word of the Father.

9Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! 10For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Justification is a present experience for us.  This has happened to us in this life.  Note that Paul says that we have been justified by his blood.  He is saying that the blood of Jesus that He offered up before the Father in the heavenly Holy of Holies was accepted as the final and permanent sacrifice for our sin.  Therefore, through that blood we are fully justified.   This is quite consistent with the truth that we are justified by faith;  but it is not faith in just anything.  It is faith in the truth that Jesus offered up His blood as the sacrifice for our sin.  We decide to believe it although we only have the Father's word for it in the Scriptures.

Being saved is a future event.  This is why the popular term "being saved" is not quite accurate.   What is accurate according to God's Word is that we are justified before God;  that is, made right with Him and able to stand before Him without any consciousness of sin, fear, or inferiority.  But we will be saved from God's wrath at the time when He is to judge the world on the last day.  That's when our salvation will be completed.  But it is an assured event for us, because if we are now justified through the offering of His blood, then we have a greater assurance that when the critical time comes, we will be saved from God's wrath on Judgement Day.

Paul extends the argument supporting his premise:   He is saying that if we were at war with God and were His enemies and while we were in that state we were reconciled to God through the death of Jesus on the cross, then there is a much greater certainty that when we reach the time when God is going to finally judge the world, we will be saved through the life that Jesus will have when we meet Him.   We will not be meeting a dead Jesus. because He rose again and is well and truly alive, seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven.   The world would like to believe that when Jesus died on the cross, He remained dead.  This is what many "modernist" Christians believe as well.   But the Word of God says that God raised Jesus from the dead, and that He is alive;  and it is the fact that He is a living Jesus that will secure our final salvation at the Day of Judgement.

This is the basis of our assurance of salvation.   We have our justification before God, and with it, the assurance of our future salvation.

We not only have a mental assent to this, but the truth is well and truly in our hearts, causing us to rejoice in a future event we know is going to take place for us.   We are at present living inside a body which has the sentence of death in it.   We are all going to die one day;  but we have the settled assurance that because we are presently justified before God in spite of this dying body, we will rise again in newness of life on the last day.  This is what causes us to rejoice in spite of our present state.

12Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— 13for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. 14Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.

Sin entered the world through one man, Adam.  Through his disobedience, sin came in and corrupted everything in the world.  From the moment that sin entered the world, the whole world was made subject to decay and death.  Plants, animals and humans began to die.  The effects were not seem immediately, but over the passage of time, decay and death became apparent.   Death was unknown before sin.  It became a feature of this world after sin arrived.   No one escaped the sentence of death.  Even though it took Adam many years to die, it happened eventually.

Along with the curse of death that accompanied sin into the world, the principle of sin entered the human heart.  The spirit of man died as soon as Adam sinned and fellowship with God was lost.   All men and women then developed sinful habit patterns, because the principle of rebellion and sin was in their hearts.  They could not avoid sinning even if they wanted to.

Paul makes the point that before the Mosaic Law was given, sin was present in the world and in the human heart.  But those who lived at the time before the Mosaic Law were not accountable to God for their sinfulness because there was no Law to reveal their sin to them.   The only punishment for sin in those times was physical death.   Some who were closer to God realised that something was wrong inside of them and they developed sacrificing offerings to God as a reflection of their desire to have some sort of standing with Him.  Sacrifices offered from the heart were accepted, but those offered say for the sake of duty were not.  This is the example of Abel, whose offerings were accepted, and Cain's were not accepted.   Abel had a heart desire to be righteous (acceptable) before God, but Cain did not have the same heart.  This is revealed when he murdered Abel.

So death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses.  Paul points out that even those who led a sinlessly perfect life, and there must have been those who were able to achieve that in those times, were subject to the same sentence of death as those who broke commands in the same way that Adam did.  It is interesting to note that Paul states that Adam was "a pattern of the one to come", pointing toward the Second Adam, who is Jesus Christ.

15But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

But the gift of God is in another league to the original trespass.   It has a greater effect.  The disobedience of Adam brought death to all who followed him in the world.  The grace of God and the gift of life that came by Jesus Christ not only secured eternal life for all those who accepted Him as Saviour and Lord, but were able to give eternal life to all those who had died previously.  Peter states in his letter that Jesus went down into the depths where all those people who died between the time of Adam and Moses were held, and preached the good news of the gospel to them.  For those who believed in and accepted Him there, eternal life was given to them.  Therefore the effects of what Jesus did on the cross is greater in its positive effects than the effects brought about by the sin of Adam.

Paul repeats the truth.  He says that the gift of God is not like the result of Adam's sin.  Adam's sin brought death to the whole world, but the gift of God through Jesus Christ has brought eternal life to all those who believe in Him.   Adam sinned once, and brought judgement and condemnation on to the world, but the gift of Jesus Christ came after many sins and brought a good standing before God for those who believe in Him.  

Paul emphasises by repeating the same principle to convince his readers of the truth of what he is teaching.  If the effects of the actions of one man, Adam, brought the reign of death, how much more will those who accept the sacrifice that Jesus made reign in life through the grace of God and the gift of righteousness?  One man brought death to the world, and another man brought eternal life and righteousness to those who accept Him.

Notice that righteousness is a gift;  it is not earned.  There are some who strongly believe that we must earn our way to favour with God by the life we live and the rules we keep.  This is not the Righteousness that is taught here.  It is self righteousness and therefore unacceptable to God.   The only acceptable righteousness is the gift of righteousness that has been given to us through our acceptance and faith in the work of Jesus on the cross for us.

 18Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Paul is develop a set of truths here that have come through the revelation of God's great plan of salvation that was given to him by the Holy Spirit.   Paul's ministry was to reveal the risen Jesus to the Christian church.   As part of this he is comparing the effects of Adam's action, and the more positive effects of Jesus' action.  Adam's action brought condemnation to all people; but the result of one act of righteousness that Jesus did by dying on the cross for us was that we were made completely right with God.  Potentially, this brings eternal life for all people who are living in the world, but as we know, there is a narrow way that people need to negotiate in order to receive it.

Paul calls the action of Adam disobedience, which made all men sinners;  but the obedience of Christ in doing the will of His father makes many righteous before God.  Note here that Paul says that people are "made" righteous.  They do not develop righteousness through any good works that they do. They are made righteous through the bestowal of a free gift from the Father.

20The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This then is the purpose of the Mosaic Law, to increase the awareness of sin.  Sin was always in the heart of man, but many did not know the extent of it before the Law was given.  Once people had the opportunity to know what the Law was all about, then they realised how full of sin their hearts were.  When the Law was given, men and women became acutely sin conscious, and realised that they were under condemnation.

But where the consciousness of sin increased, God grace increased to compensate for it.  It was God's grace that He was able to accept the yearly sacrifices for sin that the Jewish priests made for the people.  But it was a temporary stay of condemnation that lasted only one year.  Then another round of sacrifices had to be made.   For the people who had faith in the sacrifices and the necessity to keep the Law the best they could, God's grace was given to them.

The full extent of the grace of God was seen in the life and ministry of Jesus.  He came to show the Jewish people what the Father was really like, full of love, grace and truth.   It was a preparation of the Jewish people for the time when He would go to the cross and take their sin in His own body.  This was the grace of God in action through Christ.   Therefore, for a believer in Christ, sin no longer reigns.  It is the grace of God that reigns in his life  through the righteousness that has been bestowed on him or her that brings the assurance of eternal life.  This assurance is so strong that believers can say that they have eternal life already, long before it will become a reality to them on the last day.

But it is through Jesus Christ our Lord.  He is not just "the" Lord.  His Lordship is intensely personal to us.  We are part of the family of God, therefore we have a personal relationship with the Father and Jesus.  In this sense, God is "our" Father, and Jesus is "our" Lord.

[End of Chapter 5]