Pastor Ed Evans
Romans 5:1-11
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Emily Dickinson’s collection of poems includes one titled “Hope is the Thing With Feathers”:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest sea -
Yet - never - in extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
If you read that alongside Paul’s words in Romans 5:1-8 – where he mentions “hope” three times – You might be struck by the irony.
On the one hand the image of the unwavering resilience and startling strength of a fragile, feathery creature, and on the other hand, we might see ourselves, so easily undermined and weakened by the realities of suffering and sin.
With your experience in life, you might have noticed that remarkably, humankind, for all its outward show of self-assurance, strength, and superiority, is a terribly fragile thing, prone to shatter under the weight of even the slightest burden – much more like that we might expect of a tiny bird.
However, the poet’s bird – hope – is nothing like it looks. Though it appears to the observer but a “thing with feathers,” hope, says Emily Dickinson, is never thwarted and requires not even a “crumb” to endure. It is strong and self-assured. It never stops singing, no matter what.
Does anyone still watch the news, anymore? I almost hate to watch the local and network news. When I was a boy the news media was the watchdog of government; now they are the lapdog. When I was a boy the news media gave you news, not gossip; gave you news of how people were building up their communities, taking care one another; not statistics and lurid videos of murder, rape and robbery. Watching the news, you would think that is all that goes on.
And if it isn’t happening here, they’ll find a ghastly murder or rape in Bombay or Timbuktu, and share that. If it bleeds it leads, that seems to be their motto.
When someone calls them on this practice, they answer in defense that people today are scared, they are concerned, and they need to know what is going on.
Well, it is true, sin abounds. But does it abound more than in Noah’s time, or Jeremiah’s time? Is sin and evil and Satan’s activity any worse than it ever was?
You see, I contend that the abundance of sin, of evil and of Satan in the world isn’t the problem. They have always been here. I believe the real problem isn’t that we are in the midst of this storm of evil, the problem is we have forgotten whose we are.
Let me share with you three verses from the back end of Romans, Chapter 5. The scripture for today is at the front end of Romans, and doesn’t get into how Christ’s sacrificial love overcomes the reign of sin and death, how yes there is universal condemnation, but it is overcome by universal grace.
Romans 5:19-21 reads: “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous. Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Let me tell you a story from my childhood right here. If I’ve told it before, I apologize, but it fits so well here. I grew up with my grandparents in a little town in California called Mariposa. It’s right at the mouth of Yosemite National Park. Mariposa was an old gold-mining town full of played-out placer miners and old cowboys. My grandfather worked for the U.S. Forestry Service and my idea of fun at age five was going to forest fires, feeding the chickens, collecting the eggs, and throwing the ball back and forth with Wally, the teen-age son of my grandfather’s boss.
Now in Mariposa, they had a brand new high school built right next to the elementary school where I was in the first grade. And one day they announced that a magician was going to put on a show at the high school’s new auditorium. We had to bring to school a quarter, 25 cents, to attend that show.
When you’re in first grade in those days you’re sort of floating through life, so I’m not sure if we couldn’t afford that 25 cents, which was very likely, or I just forgot to ask for it. But came the show day, everybody else in class marched to the auditorium and I was told I had to go home. Home was a five mile hike out of town.
Well, I was heart-broken at this rejection. And as I walked past the high school toward the forestry camp, tears streamed down my little face. And who should see me but Wally. He ran over and asked me what was wrong. Between sobs I told him. Wally took me by the arm, walked me down to the auditorium and paid my 25 cents to his buddy who was taking money at the door. Can you even imagine how happy and redeemed I felt?!
And every time I read about the sacrificial love of Christ, about the grace of God that saves me, I feel just as full of joy as I felt that day when Wally paid my way. I just want to jump up and click my heels and shout “HALLELUJAH!”
In our text, verse 10 says, “If we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by His life?”
Friends, He loved us before we even knew Him.
As I mentioned before, our real problem is often that we forget to whom we belong. As children of the King, we often have unopened gifts – gifts of peace, grace and hope. We stand about and wring our hands, we worry when instead we should be praying, and the gifts that will be the answer to our difficulties – peace, grace, and hope – are waiting right there for us.
Ever watch one of those scary movies where the hero is about to go go down into the basement, or open that garage door, and in your heart you are saying “Don’t go in the basement! Don’t open that door!”
In my imagination, I can see us moping about in anger and frustration over issues we are not equipped to solve, and off-stage the angels are watching us saying, “Open the gifts! Open the gifts! Open the gifts!” – because peace, grace, and hope are waiting for you there.
So let’s talk about peace, grace, and hope for a minute.
Swiss theologian Karl Barth wrote, “Peace with God is … effected by a God-given transformation … through which the proper relation between the Creator and the creature is re-established, and by means of which also the only true and proper love towards God is brought into being … Peace is declared when imprisoned truth is set at liberty and when the righteousness of God is made manifest.”
Augustine is credited with saying, “The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.”
But too often, we whom God has blessed with liberty and freedom don’t turn truth loose, and we invite the wrath of God when we do that. In Paul’s first chapter to the Romans, verse 1:18, we read “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” Instead of setting the truth of God free, we hold it in unrighteousness. That means we know the truth, but we don’t care. We know what goes on in Las Vegas, but we don’t care and they brag that the city’s nickname is “Sin City.”
People know that alcohol degrades our driving ability with the first drink, but we don’t care. We drink it, we drive, and so far this year Tennessee has 542 dead people from highway accidents; 61 more than this time last year; 151 of those killed, torn from their families, were alcohol-related.
We know what sin is, but too many of us don’t care. We hold the truth in unrighteousness.
God is a just God. We are without excuse. We hold the truth in unrighteousness and invite the wrath of God.
But this lesson is about hope, isn’t it; about peace, grace, and hope. In a word the peace Paul is talking about is reconciliation. Not just the reconciling of the individual to God, but the complete and permanent reconciliation of the whole world to its sovereign Lord.
Where Paul speaks of grace, imagine a great hall, into which we have all been invited and made welcome. It is as we stand together in this great hall that Jesus grants us unrestricted access to the presence of Almighty God. We have not earned or deserved this special privilege, but we receive it, nonetheless. Just as Wally bought my way in, Jesus has bought our way in with his sacrificial love.
What Paul seems to have in mind here is a relocation of humanity’s relationship to God. This relocation happens here and now, making whatever human experience is in the present (even if it is suffering) capable of standing firm.
As regards hope, a good way to understand the content of the hope Paul i8s talking about here is to recall descriptions of God’s glory in the Hebrew scriptures. For example, in Exodus 40, verse 35, it reads, “Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”
When Isaiah describes his great vision in Isaiah 6, verse 3, and sees the Lord on His throne, he hears the two winged creatures shouting to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; / the whole earth is full of His glory.”
And then the prophet Ezekiel, in one of his visions, saw “the Lord’s glory” as it “rose from above the winged creatures and moved toward the temple’s threshold. The temple was filled with the cloud, and the courtyard was filled with the brightness of the Lord’s glory.” (Ezekiel 10:4)
With these in mind, then, we are now able to hope in the all-encompassing, fully indwelling presence of Almighty God, the kind that left Moses with a glow on his face. That is the hope that is ours, made possible by Jesus, Moreover, we should be so confident in that hope, so overwhelmed with joy that we actually want to boast about it. The boasting Paul refers to here is more akin to what the prophet Jeremiah said in his ninth chapter, verses 23-24: “Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know Me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord.”
I might note that the NIV uses the word “rejoice” instead of “boast”, perhaps since that word as we use it and understand it today reeks of self-advertisement; something we generally find distasteful.
And while we’re talking about individual words, what about the word translated “enemies” in verse 10? “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son…” Do you think it is too strong to call us “enemies” before we knew Christ?
If you do think “enemies” is too strong a word, let me share with you two other instances of the use of that word –
From Psalm 58:3 – “The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.”
And from Ephesians 2:12 – “That at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world…”
Let me ask you some questions to consider in the hope of drawing out some of your experiences with peace, grace, and hope. For example, what words would you use to describe how you have experienced the “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” that Paul talks about in verse one?
[Peace for most people in Paul’s day would have meant “pax Romana”, a tenuous civil order secured by imperial rule. But for Paul “peace” would have meant an inward assurance of our worth and God’s love. It doesn’t always mean the absence of trouble or hardship.]
Secondly, is it possible you have seen evidence of God’s grace in your life? How did it manifest itself? What did it mean to you? Think about that for a moment.
[God’s glory is grounded in God’s faithful love for all things and has always existed. It is this all-encompassing, never-failing character of divine glory that invites our certain hope that God will bring to pass the divine purpose for all creation.]
Now, as we read in today’s scripture, Paul’s perspective on suffering and the hardships of life is that they are part of the human condition; but through Jesus own suffering and death, human suffering is transformed into a channel through which God’s love flows to redeem that very suffering. Paul recommends rejoicing in our suffering and hardships, and expressing utter confidence in God’s love.
Has Paul’s chain – of trouble followed by endurance followed by character-building followed by hope -- shown to be true in your experience? What do you think?
In closing I would note that Paul is emphasizing to his Roman readers, and down through the centuries to you and I, that the death of Jesus establishes that God has a radical love that is given before we know to ask for it – while we were still weak – and in spite of the fact that we do not deserve it – while we were still sinners. Amazing -- that is what John Newton calls it in his famous song from 1st Chronicles 17, “Amazing Grace.”
We close with prayer: “God of peace, grace, and hope, grant us what we need to endure our problems and trouble with faith. Let our character be in tune with Yours. Let us never lose hope of Your glory; in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”
