Answers in Romans

 

Jesu Juva

Romans 5:1-11                                            

February 25, 2024

Lent 2B                                    

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        We often view the Bible as a book of answers.  But there are plenty of questions too.  In the book of Romans, for instance, nearly one of every three sentences is a question.  And some of these questions are very well known:  Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  If God is for us, who can be against us?  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

        Now, today’s reading from Romans five contains no questions; but it does answer a few unspoken questions.  And that first unspoken question is this:  Now what?  For four chapters Paul has been laying out the most important doctrines of the Christian faith—that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by grace through Jesus Christ—and that this Jesus was delivered up to death for our trespasses and was raised to life for our justification.  Okay.  Got it.  Amen.  This I believe.  I’m a sinner justified by grace, for Christ’s sake, through faith.  But Now what?  Romans chapter five has the answer!

        Therefore, since we HAVE BEEN justified by faith, we [NOW] 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.  In other words, we are standing surrounded by grace.  That grace governs everything.  We live and work and play in a safe and secure “bubble” of God’s grace.  The undeserved love of God follows us and surrounds us at all times.  And that grace relationship is terribly important.  It means that if you get tripped-up and do something bad—something completely out of character for one who is justified in Jesus—it means that your relationship with Jesus is still intact.  Grace still surrounds you.  Your sin doesn’t automatically disqualify you.  Repentance is the route for you.

Here’s a practical example of why this is so important:  Let’s say as you leave here today with your sins forgiven and your faith fed and nourished, you have a sinful thought.  And seconds later, you are run down by an out-of-control car, and you die.  Your final conscious thought was a sinful thought and then you died.  Can that sin be forgiven?  Yes, if you are standing surrounded by God’s grace.  Can you go to heaven?  Yes, because you are in a grace relationship with the Lord.  Even the most terrible and untimely tragedy cannot undo what God in Christ has done for you.

Speaking of tragedy, today’s reading gives us another answer—an answer to this unspoken question:  What about when suffering comes our way?  Doesn’t suffering call into question the peace and grace in which we stand?  To be justified by faith is fabulous.  To have peace with God is wonderful.  To be surrounded by grace is great!  But what about suffering? 

Romans chapter five has an answer to that question:  We rejoice in our sufferings.  Few sentences of Scripture sound stranger than that one.  We rejoice in our sufferings.  This doesn’t mean that we’re delighted to suffer or happy to suffer.  It means, first of all, that we can face suffering with the confidence that our sufferings do not separate us from the love of God.  We can have joy in suffering because we have joy in Jesus, who suffered everything to save us.

We who have been justified in Jesus—we see suffering differently.  In this world, suffering is usually regarded as a sign of failure.  Even behind the question, “What did I do to deserve this?” lies the unspoken assumption, “Well, I must have done something to deserve this.”  Garrison Keillor writes about a time when the Norwegian flu was running wild through Lake Wobegon.  The Norwegian flu, he explains, manifests all the same physical symptoms as the regular flu.  But what makes the Norwegian flu different is that you’re also filled with guilt and shame for allowing yourself to get sick.  And heaven forbid you are the first one in your family to come down with the Norwegian flu—and you then infect the rest of the family.  There’s no forgiveness for that.  Expect no compassion.  (I speak from experience.) 

But those who are in Christ Jesus—we see suffering differently because we know.  We know that the God who offered up His only Son for us is in charge of all history.  He’s in charge of our sufferings too—and He works for our good in them!  We know that God is at work in, with and under our suffering.  We know, Paul writes, “that suffering is not pointless; suffering produces endurance.”  Every athlete knows this.  Every runner knows that suffering produces endurance.  No pain, no gain.  Only when we are challenged do we learn to go farther and faster. 

And what’s true for runners is also true for you:  Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character.  To have “character” as a Christian means that you’re no longer a rookie, easily flustered and insecure about every stumble.  To have character means you are able to take things in stride, marching confidently toward the finish line and the crown of glory.  And “character produces hope,” and “hope” in the New Testament is not wishful thinking, but confident expectation.  Don’t curse the suffering in your life; but rejoice in it.  With every step of suffering, the light ahead grows brighter and more glorious.

How is this possible?  How is it possible for Christian couch potatoes like us to run that marathon from shame and suffering all the way to certain hope and joyful expectation?  How is this possible?  Romans five has the answer!  Guiding and leading your every step is “the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  It’s the same Spirit who has made your body His temple.  It’s this Spirit who shepherds our suffering into endurance, and our endurance into character, and our character into confident hope and expectation.

The Holy Spirit does all this by flooding our hearts with love—with the love of God.  And know this about the Holy Spirit:  The Spirit works with facts, not feelings.  The Holy Spirit fills our hearts with the love of God by pointing to the fact of the cross, the fact of the crucifixion, the fact of the resurrection.  This is how we know what love is:  Jesus Christ laid down His life for us!  That fact changes everything.  That fact means that you know you are loved, even while you suffer—especially while you suffer.  The fact of Jesus’ dying and rising completely redefines what love really is.

Human beings may think we know what love is.  And in the accounts of history you will find instances of sacrificial love—someone giving up a seat on a lifeboat for another—a soldier falling on a grenade to spare the lives of his comrades.  Paul in these verses makes you wonder, who would you die for?  For how many people would you make the supreme sacrifice of love?  If a gunman stormed our sanctuary this morning and started shooting, for whom would you take a bullet?  Who do you love that much? 

I saw a movie several years ago about a family of four vacationing at a ski resort in the Italian Alps.  One day as they ate their lunch in an outdoor dining area, something triggered an avalanche on a mountain high above them.  At first, people are intrigued by the avalanche and start taking pictures.  But as the avalanche grew in size and roared closer and closer to the dining area, people began to panic and scream.  And just as it appeared that they were all going to be buried alive, at the very last second, the avalanche resolved.  Aside from a few minutes of white, snowy fog, no one is hurt and the shaken diners resume eating lunch.  But at that moment when it seemed like death was imminent, the husband and father of the family, rather than try to protect and save his wife and children, screamed and ran away.  He abandoned his family to save himself.  And that one loveless act changed everything for that family.  It was a failure of fatherly love—a failure of marital love. 

Our days are filled with love failures—loveless acts, loveless words, loveless thoughts.  We know the kind of love we want to receive; we know the kind of love we ought to give.  But it never quite happens.  Human love inevitably—always—fails.

But in Christ, love gets redefined.  In Christ, love exceeds all expectation—beyond anything we have ever known or imagined.  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.  While we were weak—while we were ungodly—while we were sinners—while we were God’s enemies—Christ died for us.  He loved us and gave Himself for us.  And if that’s how God treats His enemies, then what can we expect who have now been justified by faith, who now enjoy peace with God through the cleansing blood of Jesus?  Jesus Christ dared to die for you . . . and nothing can ever be the same again.

Now What?  Where do we go from here?  Now, with this love, we can rejoice in our sufferings and face each new day with a sure and certain hope.  Now, we who are weakened with temptation and who struggle with sin—we come here so that the Holy Spirit can fill our hearts full to the brim with the love of God in Christ.  Now, we can face the facts of our sin, and find joy in the fact of God’s selfless love for sinners.  Now What?  Now we can deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus, our Savior. 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.