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“If you’re able, please stand.” Reading Rom. 5:1–11. “Thanks be to God.”
There are times when we receive something valuable, and we instantly know it.
There are times when we receive something, and it’s valuable, but we don’t even know it.
This morning we’re looking at the treasures of our justification. These are infinitely valuable. The goal is for us to grow in our understanding and appreciation of them!
Sermon series: Better than you think. The gospel is better than you think. This morning we’re diving into the depths of the reasons why this “good news” is so good!
We’re in Romans 5. This morning and for a few weeks.
The apostle Paul writing Romans—through his amanuensis Tertius (16:22).
As we begin chapter 5, we need to remember the flow of the argument so far and see how it fits:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” (Rom 1:16–17)
Today we’re at the opening of this great chapter 5. This powerful treasure chest that is ours because we are justified by faith in Christ.
Justification is like being given a key to a treasure chest. You open it up and it’s filled with heavenly treasure. It takes a while to appreciate all of it, to understand all of it.
Our passage gives us three of these treasures of our justification. Because of justification in Christ (1) We have Peace with God (2) We are Standing in Grace, and (3) We are Rejoicing in Future Glory.
The goal is to live in the good of these ideas. Not to just understand them, but to live in the good of them.
Prayer
Read Rom. 5:1.
The first glory of our justification is that “we have peace with God.”
This is true “since we have been justified by faith.”
God’s wrath has been satisfied.
Our opposition to him has been overcome.
Before it was a mutual hostility, but now there’s a mutual peace.
The relationship between this OBJECTIVE PEACE and our SUBJECTIVE PEACE.
Peace with God leads to the peace of God.
Read Rom. 5:2.
The second benefit Paul describes as “grace.” But he refers to it in an unusual way. He speaks of it as a place we have entered. A state or a realm. A place where you can “stand.”
As if we ask, “Where am I? Grace. How did I get here? Grace. What guarantees that I will stay here? Grace.”
In this place of “grace” we have come to “stand.” “Standing” is also a verb in the perfect tense. It began in the past and continues to be true now.
We can STAND HERE permanently in this realm of grace because we have obtained ACCESS!
There are a lot of places we can’t go. We pass gated communities all the time and know we can’t go in there. We don’t know anyone. We don’t have the code for the gate. The houses are all protected by security systems.
One of these communities is on Lake Tillery near Uhwarrie outside of Asheboro. Big gates on both main entrances.
But last summer, a friend said we could use their lake house in that community during my sabbatical. This was a great gift to me and my family. It even had a jet ski!
I could get in because of my friend. He gave me access to the community by giving me the code to the main gate. And then he gave me access to his house by giving me the code to his home. We were completely legit.
“Through him”—through Christ the Mediator—we have our “access.”
“Have obtained” is a verb in the perfect tense. In this case the perfect tense is a reminder that something happened in the past that continues to be true. With our justification “we have...obtained access.”
Our “access” to God is something we gain because of Christ. Just like we have “peace with God” only “through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1), so it is also “through him” that we have “access.”
You can imagine this access in two ways. One way is by thinking of the tabernacle of Moses or the temple of Solomon. At the center of these places of worship was “the holy of holies” or what the ESV calls “the Most Holy Place” (Exod 26:34). In that Most Holy Place was the ark of the covenant, the cherubim. It was completely closed off to everyone. Only the high priest could enter, and he could only do it on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16).
Without Christ the way into the Most Holy Place is closed to us. But when he died, the curtain in front of the Most Holy Place was torn in two from top to bottom (Mark 15:38), a divine miracle that was a sign that because of Christ we now have “ACCESS” into the Most Holy Place!
We can go into the holiest of places, into the very presence of God—through Christ our Great High Priest!
But you can also think of “access” in a royal setting. Imagine that scene in Isaiah 6 where the prophet sees Yahweh in a vision:
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isa 6:1–3)
Isaiah is stunned. He cries out, “Woe is me!” because he knows how sinful he is and how sinful his people are.
But Paul in Romans is telling us, “There’s no more need to say, ‘Woe is me!’ Christ shed his blood for you and paid for your sins. He has given to you his righteousness. You are justified because of Christ.”
“Since we have been justified by faith...we have...obtained access”!!!!
“Through him,” through Christ the Mediator we have “access.”
We can hear this in Ephesians:
For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Eph 2:18)
This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. (Eph 3:10–12)
John Stott:
Justified sinners enjoy a blessing far greater than a periodic approach to God or an occasional audience with the king. We are privileged to live in the temple and in the palace. The perfect tenses express this. Our relationship with God, into which justification has brought us, is not sporadic but continuous, not precarious but secure. We do not fall in and out of grace like courtiers who may find themselves in and out of favour with their sovereign, or politicians with the public. No, we stand in it, for that is the nature of grace. Nothing can separate us from God’s love (8:38f.).
John Stott, The Message of Romans[1]
Application: REMEMBER WHERE YOU STAND!!!! “IN THIS GRACE”!!!!!
Read Rom. 5:2.
Paul ends these two verses with “rejoicing.” Because we have been justified by faith, we are “rejoicing.”
“Rejoicing” is a loud and confident word. It can be translated as “boast.” Not the proud, silly boasting sinners do. But it is the joyful, confident boasting in something truly amazing and worthy of praise.
In this case our “rejoicing” isn’t about something we have now but something we will encounter in the distant future—or maybe not-so-distant! “The glory of God.”
We are rejoicing in it! But we are “rejoicing in hope,” which means it’s something ahead of us that we haven’t experienced yet. “Hope” is a word that speaks to something not yet attained. As Paul will say in Rom. 8:
For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? (Rom 8:24)
That’s just common sense. We don’t call it “hope” when we have the thing and see the thing. But when we haven’t seen it yet or haven’t obtained it yet, but are looking ahead to it, we call it “hope.”
It’s good to see here a kind of Golden Chain: Justification leads to peace with God and standing in the realm of grace and this is all leading to future glory.
Let’s think about this future glory. It has many dimensions.
First, when we see Christ face to face at our death or his return, we will be changed into something glorious. We will be “like him” (1 John 3:2). Not gods, of course, but yet transformed into his glory in some mysterious ways.
Romans 8:
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Rom 8:16–17)
Our resurrection bodies will not be like our current bodies. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory” (1 Cor 15:43).
Second, the creation itself will be renewed and transformed into something “glorious.”
Romans 8:
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom 8:20–21)
But these aspects of “the glory of God” are nothing compared to the great source of glory, God himself.
What we are waiting to encounter as God’s people is “the glory of God” himself. Seeing him in an entirely new way.
And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. (Matt 17:2)
Those words are saying a lot! But you can also tell that words are failing the storytellers.
We get more of a picture of God’s glory in places like Isaiah 6 and Revelation 4 and Ezekiel 1—lots of mentions of thunder and lightning, a sea of glass before him, a rainbow over him, a robe that fills the temple, fire, creatures worshiping the Lord.
But you notice in these scenes there aren’t really details about God himself. Only the general sense that he is so glorious.
It’s like describing a beautiful sunset.
Or a woman you truly love.
As soon as you put words to it, you realize how much greater the reality is than the description.
But the great prize we receive “since we have been justified” is God himself. We will experience “the glory of God” in a new and endless way.
For now we are “rejoicing in hope” as we consider it.
Peace with God, Standing in Grace, Rejoicing in Future Glory: All these are ours “since we have been justified by faith.”
Which presents us with the question: Have you been justified by faith?
If your faith is in Christ, then you are justified. And these treasures are yours!
If you haven’t put your faith in Christ, do that today! We know our today is here. We don’t know about tomorrow.
The good news about the treasures we talked about this morning is that nothing in this world can rob you of them.
I’ll close with one of the great passages on assurance in our Bibles. The close of Romans 8:
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:31-39)
Prayer
Close
[1] John Stott, The Message of Romans (InterVarsity), 140.
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