Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.” Friends, life in Jesus is a power-filled way of life. You can read the gospels and see how Jesus, and those who spent any amount of time with him, were filled with power. Those of you. . . who have been walking with Jesus. . . have no doubt found your lives filled with power.
Today I’m excited to talk about Romans 5. You won’t find the word “power” in our text. We do, however, find the “powerless”. Romans 5:6 says, “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” This verse is describing the ungodly life as a powerless life. So what does it mean to be powerless, apart from Jesus Christ? What does it mean to be power-filled, through faith in Jesus?
One point of contrast is peace (v.1)
Romans 5:1, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The essence of peace is harmony. Peace is possessing a well-ordered life, a life yielded to God, trusting and submitted to Christ’s authority. I’m being careful not to define peace as merely “a peaceful, easy feeling!” The Jews referred to God’s peace as “Shalom” and would speak the blessing of God’s peace over one another. In Romans 1:7, Paul greets the church at Rome saying, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.”
The opposite of peace is chaos, turmoil, disorder. The moment a person rebels against the “God of order” their world becomes grossly disordered. Romans 1:18-32 is a picture of what a powerless, out of control life looks like. It begins simply enough. A person denies God and suppresses all knowledge of him. Instead of worshipping God as creator, a person worships created things. Instead of trusting God’s Word, a person trusts their own thinking, and becomes a law unto themselves.
Once you reject the God of order, you spend the rest of your life trying to gain control of your out-of-control life. The more out of control life becomes, the more desperate you grow. For the ungodly, life is one escalating crisis after another, and if you’re ungodly, you feel powerless to stop things from spinning out of control. When you’re life is spinning out of control you don’t have peace. So what do you do? You worry. You desperately try to control everyone and everything around you. You’re filled with anxiety and fear and get depressed. You leave a trail of destruction a mile wide!
You’re never more dangerous to others than when you lack peace. I agree with Timothy Keller, “If you love anything in this world more than God, you will crush that object under the weight of your expectations.” Friends, what are shameful lusts? It’s when you set your expectations on another human being so high, you crush them. What is violence? You get so desperate you crush the people around you (i.e. loved ones).
When you no longer trust God, you resort to every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, depravity. When you don’t trust God, you never rest! You’re exhausted! You’re defeated before you even get out of bed in the morning! But along comes Jesus and he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled; do not be afraid.” See the difference? Acts 3:19 says, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” There is nothing more refreshing than the peace of Christ! Sin sure isn’t.
A second point of contrast is grace (v2).
Romans 5:2, “. . .through [Jesus] we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. . .”
Friends, the essence of God’s Kingdom, is that we stand together in grace. And this grace is a two-way street. On the one hand, I recognize my own need for grace. Romans 3:23 says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In Romans 7, the Apostle Paul wasn’t afraid to confess his need for grace. He says, “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” “I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep doing.” We have no choice but to stand in grace. There isn’t any other place, in the Kingdom of God to stand, but under grace!
But grace is a two-way street, and I have to understand that everyone around me needs grace too. It’s never okay to be ultra-harsh against your brothers and sisters in Christ. This was the problem in Romans 2 and 3. You had these moralists and achiever religious types who thought themselves better than everyone one else. They were being judgmental and severe, acting arrogantly, being overly-punitive and graceless, boasting, showing no understanding, no love, no mercy. Some were deluded in regard to their own need for grace.
The same things Paul writes in Romans 2/3 apply to our hyper-partisan world. Why are we do deeply divided? Because we no longer have humility to say, “I can be wrong. My kind of people can be wrong. People of my race/ethnicity can be wrong. My political party can be wrong. I’m sorry. I’ve sinned. I failed.” When you can’t be honest about the severe deficits in your own politics, when you act like you’re above grace and fail to show true humility, you lose credibility, and people tune you out.
We’re also deeply divided because we no longer have the humility to forgive others. Instead of releasing people from their sin, we cling to our grievances, and the injustices we’ve suffered! We withhold forgiveness to manipulate, exploit, and try to gain advantage over others. The attitude is, “God forbid we ever bury the sins of our fathers! You must pay. You still owe me.”
Do you understand the only way two can together is by grace? Jew/Gentile. Slave or free. Male or Female. Where there is no grace, there is escalating division. Where there is no peace, there is escalating chaos and destruction. “But grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus, and we have gained access to the grace in which we now stand.
A third point of contrast is hope. (v2-4).
Romans 5:2-4, “. . . and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
Friends, I wonder if you have ever considered the power of hope. The very heart of suffering is hope. The very heart of perseverance is hope. The very heart of character is hope. Have you ever considered that the biggest problem in culture isn’t so much the lack of character as a lack of hope? When you don’t have any hope, what do you do? You live for pleasure. You live for today. You do everything you can to mitigate your suffering now. This is the psychology of our culture. This is the secular, godless air we breathe and water we drink. To the extent that we have hope, we trust God, and persevere through hard things. To the extent we lack hope, we search for the easy button, and try to eject out of our bad circumstances. We don’t have a character problem, maybe we have a hope problem?
You gotta love Abraham though. What most distinguished Abraham? “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 19 Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. 20 Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. 22 This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” 23 The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, 24 but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. 25 He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
Our resurrection hope powerfully enables a different kind of life—a life that doesn’t bypass suffering, a life that perseveres, that foster character, that exudes hope. Because we believe God raised Jesus our Lord from the dead we believe he will raise us to life. We embrace adversity because we know the road we’re on leads to glory.
A fourth point of contrast is love (v5-8).
Romans 5:5-8, “5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Notice the two ways God gives the Christian assurance of love. Experientially, subjectively, God pours out his love into our hearts through his Holy Spirit. Paul says a lot more about this in Romans 8:15-16, “By the Spirit we cry out to the God as ‘Abba… Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” The godless don’t cry out to God as ‘Father.’ They have no such sense of intimacy, or trust. They use God’s name in vain, as a hollow expression. Or they use it in fear, supposing God’s judgment is coming upon them.
But I want you to notice that Theologically, Objectively God proves His love, and out value to Himself, because “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” It doesn’t matter how unloved you feel. Thank God our feelings about ourselves are never a measure of God’s affection for us! The cross is the only true measure of God’s affection for us. Your value is what God was willing to pay in exchange for your soul—and he was willing to give his son.
Now the ungodly have no such metric. The world only talks about self-esteem. What matters is that “you love yourself, and esteem yourself.” The world also says, “Impress me, earn my applause.” Isn’t it ironic that the celebrities who preach self-esteem to the masses don’t possess it? They are hyper insecure and overly preoccupied with whether their fans love them, adore them, tweet them, follow them, buy their products, mention their name. To be loved, what do people do? They have to manufacture a false identity, photoshop their public persona, aspire to greatness because their greatest fear is if we see who they really are we won’t love them no more!
There isn’t anyone greater than God. We can be satisfied to know that we’re known and loved by the greatest. This is what we need to be teaching our children.
A final point of contrast is salvation (v9-11).
Romans 5:9-11, “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while 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! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Let me ask, does anything about Romans 5:9 strike you as odd? What about the phrase saying we need to be saved from God’s wrath? When is the last time you heard anything from anyone about the wrath, anger, or displeasure of God? If you preach anything other the absolute, unconditional, warm and fuzzy love of God you are branded a heretic by believers, and are dismissed as a hater by pop culture.
Look at Romans 5:10. Anything in that verse strike you as odd? Verse 10 declares that “we were acting as God’s enemies.” That’s why God’s angry. That’s what stirs his wrath! Here God is holding out his hand to us all day long, but what is our response? Do we blame God for being angry, or do we take responsibility for what we have done? Is it so heretical to suggest that God might be affected by us, even emotionally? I’m more alarmed that God might be ambivalent than angry. If God we’re ambivalent, he’d shrug his shoulders, he wouldn’t be moved to respond at all. But that is not what this verse says. It’s says we stirred God’s wrath. We acted like enemies. But in love, despite his righteous anger, God saved us, God reconciled us unto himself, sending his son to shed his blood, taking the penalty we deserved.
Wrath, anger is not the opposite of love. Ambivalence is the opposite of love. God just letting us go to hell, is the opposite of love. No, wrath is evidence of love. Of a holy God who is affected, but moved, to reconcile (even die) to save His enemies.
Let’s review shall we?
Apart from God, we were powerless, lacking peace.
Apart from God, we were powerless, lacking grace.
Apart from God, we were powerless, lacking hope.
Apart from God, we were powerless, lacking love, true esteem.
Apart from God, we were powerless, lacking salvation.
“But you see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, [while we were peaceless, graceless, hopeless, loveless, enemies] Christ died for the ungodly.” - Romans 5:6
Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.”