Peace With God

 July 2 2023

Romans 5:1-5

         Good morning! It is always difficult to decide just what should I preach on next because there are just so many great lessons in the Bible. As I thought about it, though, it became quite obvious that the book of Romans seemed to be where I should be this summer because I just recently discovered yet another intriguing commentary on Romans. You see, pretty much every year for the last several years, I have read some kind of commentary on Romans. Last year I shook things up and instead of reading a book I watched a video series on the book of Romans done by the author, N. T. Wright. So its no surprise that once again this year I would go searching for another study on the book of Romans and I found one with the strange title, “Reading Romans Backwards”, by Scot McNight. Doesn’t that title catch your interest?! I mean, who begins reading a book by starting where the ending is? Yet, there appears to be a very good reason why the book of Romans should be started by reading the fourteenth through the sixteenth chapters and that is that here is where Paul is most clearly seen as being a pastor to a church. You see, what is often forgotten when we read the book of Romans is that this really was a letter written by a pastor to a real church, a church that had some real problems. This letter was never written to be a textbook for the history of salvation or a roadmap to help people find eternal life, even though it has been used for those endeavors. No, this was a real letter written to a real church with real problems and if we are a real church we might want to figure out just what problems they did have and what was Paul’s answers to those problems, just in case, you know, our church might some day have problems.

         So, yes, this whole reading of the book of Romans from back to front has changed how I understand just what Paul was writing about here in this letter that he wrote to a little church in Rome. It is there in the last couple of chapters of Romans that we find out the plain truth of the problems plaguing this little church but today, instead of just focusing on their problems, I think maybe we should instead focus on the potential, just what could the church of Christ really be if God had his way. This focusing on what could be and should be in the life of the church, this is what Paul is going to write about before he ever gets to the problems going on in this church in Rome because his hope is that when this church consideres the ideal Paul sets before them they just might be convicted of just how far off the mark they really are.

         The core ideals of who we are as a church that Paul writes about are all contained in a small section right in the center of the book of Romans, the fifth through the eighth chapters. Now, right here, at the beginning of the fifth chapter, we have a term that is usually understood in some abstract way, this, being, “ justified by faith”. We have probably heard about this doctrine or core belief of the church, justification, which states that we are declared righteous through our faith in Jesus Christ. Now, yes, this is a true statement about being justified by faith but to a little church at Rome, to be justified by faith was a statement about who you were willing to eat lunch with. The question that needed answered is just who is it that we should be seen eating with? How can someone justify their claim that they have every right to set their lunch tray down right here at the table of the Jesus followers? The simple answer is faith, all that was necessary to sit and eat in the community of the righteous is faith. Right here, though, we have to all get on the same page as to just what is meant by faith. Well, we don’t have to worry about defining just what is meant by faith because Paul has done that for us, as we find in the fourth chapter of Romans. The faith that God is looking for is that faith that our God is the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence those things that do not exist. In other words, our faith is resurrection faith. Or to put it another way, the power of our resurrecting God is greater than the power of death, this is what we believe with absolute certainty. This is what is meant by faith. 

         So, yes, if you had resurrecting faith because of your resurrected Savior named Jesus, you could come on in and share in table fellowship with those who knew themselves as being declared, righteous. Yet, not only did this faith make possible a persons being counted one of Jesus’ followers, they, more importantly were now counted as having fellowship with God. This is what Paul means when he says that, “…since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. Here again, we have another word with many meanings, this word,”peace”. Here though our understanding of what is here meant by this word, “peace”, hinges on this peace with God being the result of our faith, our resurrection faith. When we know God as being the God who gives life to the dead, when we know that our God has defeated the power of death, this is when we have peace with God. And this peace we have with God is ours through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who has conquered the power of death, our resurrected and resurrecting king.

         This is great news, isn’t it, that now through resurrection faith we can be at peace with God, yet we are kind of left wondering just what does a life that is at peace with God really look like? I mean, is this life where I and God are at last getting along, is this life going to be one where everything is calm seas and smooth sailing right up until we fly away to glory? Or is this life at peace with God perhaps very different than we might expect? This hint for us to expect the unexpected is found in what Paul writes next after proclaiming that now we have peace with God, because we read a rather odd statement, that through Jesus we have also  “…obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand…”. So, we could say that our faith is our all-access pass into this thing called grace. I think you have to admit, that it is kind of weird how Paul speaks of grace as being a place, as somewhere that we are now able to stand. Yet if you understand that Jesus took our place in death so that we might take his place in life, what Paul is saying grace really is begins to make sense. You see, when we have resurrecting faith then we are forever united with Christ so that where he has stood for all eternity as the Son of God, this is where we now find ourselves, held within the love of God, God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the very same experience Paul speaks of in the second chapter of Ephesians where he writes that, we of all people, we have been seated, with Jesus Christ in the heavenly places. Or as he describes it in the third chapter of Colossians, our life is hidden with Christ in God. Or as John has said of Jesus in the first chapter of his gospel, that Jesus came from the bosom of the Father, and if that is where the Son is found, then we can say that there is where we too are found. So grace is the favor of God who welcomes us into the eternal love which has always been in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

         All of this so far sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Yet, as we stand there where the Son of God has always stood, at the intersection of the Father and the Holy Spirit, we have to figure that our lives will end up being just like the life of Jesus. You see, Jesus, the very Son of God stands between the Father whose will he must do and the Holy Spirit who is the living presence of the holy love of God. It is the Spirit who flows forth from heaven to earth with the boundless, relentless, endless love of God. This is a love called agape, is a love which seeks the very best for someone no matter what the cost, it is a love that loves without expectations, a love which loves and keeps on loving no matter what. This is the love that pulsates through us through the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit. Into this most powerful moment though, comes the pounding words, suffering, endurance, a tested truth, hope, glory. Here are the sign posts for the life of Jesus. We must wonder, why, why must suffering be the headliner for this life? The answer is that all of humanity is suffering. Every person you meet, no matter where you go, is someone who at some point will experience suffering. The love of God is a love living in our hearts through the presence of the Holy Spirit which compels us to go out to the suffering of our world, to come along side of them and take their suffering upon ourselves. This is why we suffer because we are united by our love with a world full of suffering people. The suffering this world experiences comes out of the power of death and we overcome this power through the living presence of God’s holy love that pours out from within us. 

         So, yes, the holy love of God chases us out into the world, and unites us with people right at their point of suffering. The question that we have to be wondering is just how in the world does God expect us to keep on, keeping on, with our loving of this world? This call to get up every morning and carry our cross, you know, that’s hard duty. Crosses are heavy and they seem to get heavier the longer you carry them. To this Paul has a word: endure. Now the word Paul uses for endurance gives us a clue how we can remain faithful in our loving of the world. The word Paul uses is a word that means to abide, or rest under. The image this gives us is running under a roof during a rain storm. You rest under that roof knowing that it will keep you from getting soaking wet. In much the same way, where we must abide is in our Father’s arms. As Jesus was preparing to go to the cross, he tells his disciples, as found in the sixteenth chapter of John, that he is never alone because his Heavenly Father is always with him. Jesus endured the cross because he was held there by the Father. So, as the living presence of the holy love of God binds our life with the suffering of the world so that same love unites our life to the life of our Heavenly Father, the one we can abide under to weather out the storms we are called to endure.

         Paul here is sketching in broad strokes the very life of Jesus. Jesus, the living presence of the holy love of God residing within him, bound himself to our suffering humanity, taking upon himself our curse because the holy love of God would not permit him to do anything else. And Jesus endured the suffering unto death, faithfully loving with his very last breath, praying for the forgiveness of his enemies. Jesus endured because he was held safely in the arms of his Heavenly Father. What was seen in the life of Jesus is the truth, the truth that the power of the holy love of God is greater than the power of death. This is what becomes evident as we love those who suffer in a suffering world and we continue to love without conditions or limits, enduring patiently within the arms of our Heavenly Father. We have a very real need to experience the power of the holy love of God. We need to watch the victory as this holy love of God defeats the fear, the anxiety and the worry which drives people away from God. We have to have a personal knowledge of this power of the holy love of God because this is our only hope. Paul says that we should find our honor in the hope of the glory of God. This glory of God is the victory of the holy love of God over the power of death. This is our hope not because of some doctrine or statement of faith but because we have watched with our own eyes how the holy love of God overcame someone’s fear, or gave peace to counter a person’s anxiety, or watched as faith came alive in a person’s heart. These are just glimmers of a greater glory which one day will flood the earth. This is why this work that God’s love compels us to do is honorable work for this is a work that is always working towards a final victory for all the world.

         At this point we have to step back and consider just what Paul is really doing here, what is he trying to tell us as he is speaking to this church at Rome? I believe that first, Paul, is stating that the ones who are justified in their eating at the table of the righteous are indeed those who have resurrection faith. Yet, this faith has a higher and better purpose than to just serve as a badge of who is righteous and who is not. No, this resurrection faith gives us peace with God. This means that when we believe that our God can defeat the powers of death, we have bound ourselves up with the work that God is up to in our world. This resurrection faith opens the door for us so that we might know that our life is right there where Jesus the Son of God resides, right now, at the intersection of the Father and the Holy Spirit. There the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts, a vast unending current of holy love. This love compels us to go out and unite ourselves with the suffering people of our world, to make this world’s suffering our very own, to bear up that suffering and be willing to suffer ourselves for the sake of the world. This holy love of God also causes us to rest in the arms of our Heavenly Father, to be shielded under his wings, to know that with him is our ultimate security. As we allow the presence of God’s holy love to make alive this love in us, and we experience the power of this love over the power of death, we will know, in our little victories, the truth of the greater glory that is to come, the greater glory which is our only hope. So, yes, resurrection faith does mark us off as being righteous, but being righteous is not really about separating ourselves from the world so we can gather together as righteous people who stand apart from the world and its suffering. No, being righteous, rather than separating ourselves, is really rather about uniting ourselves, uniting ourselves with the suffering of our world, being united with the Father, being united in our hope and united in our glory. So, think about this: Is your faith more about separating yourself so that you see yourself as being one among the righteous or is your faith that which causes you to be united with others in their suffering, and that which moves you to find security in your Father’s arms? Can you really say that your faith in the resurrection is what causes you to be caught up in the righteous work of God, the God who calls us all to come  and experience for ourselves the overcoming of the power of death through the power of his holy love. Amen!