Gospel Benefits (pt. 2) Romans 5:6-11 (Sermon)
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WELCOME / TODAY
Good morning, church. We are continuing our sermon series in Romans. The apostle Paul has been writing to the church in the city of Rome. Paul planned to visit on his way to Spain. He was on a mission to share the good news about Jesus. His readers heard and accepted this, but there was a way that it could transform their souls and reform their community that had not yet happened. Paul’s words bring to mind hiking a new trail into uncharted territory. After huffing and puffing, sweating and struggling, you get to the crest of the hill, and all your efforts pay off. You look out and see, extending for miles and miles in every direction, a vista more than your eyes can take in: waterfalls, snow-capped mountains, windy rivers, various lakes, and a hint of an ocean beyond. There are colors galore and a fragrance of warm spring air to welcome you on top of this peak. This Eden view is like those truths we hear about in Romans; once exposed to such grandeur, a person can get lost in the joy of meditating on their reality. And such a person could be hard-pressed never to be the same.
Is there something in you drawn to the epic?
Do you dream about a happier place?
Have you longed to experience God and his delights afresh?
If you have or have not, let’s go on a hike and discover a new God’s grace in Romans Chapter 5. And discover a tonic for an upset age of broken promises, screaming voices, and blistering shame.
TEXT
I am going to have D.W./E.S. read for us. If you are able, would you please stand with me in honor of God’s Word?
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. (Romans 5:6–11, ESV)
PRAYER
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your Word, it is light and life for us. Help us see what you want us to see and feel what you want us to feel. We want to revel in the truth of the good news about Jesus. May the stunning reality of what happened two thousand years ago change us and shape us. May we never be the same. Captivate us and compel us with your love, and may we leave rejoicing in you. We pray all this in Jesus’s name, amen. You may be seated.
STRUCTURE & MAIN IDEA
The passage breaks down into three sections:
6-8 Loved by God the Father
9-10 Saved From God’s Anger
11 And Filled with Praise
The language in these verses connects to the previous. Verses 1 through 5 state,
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. (Romans 5:1–5, ESV)
This justification gives us peace with God and access to stand in his grace; it results in a hope for today and tomorrow. A hope that flows out of God’s love by the power of the Spirit. The Father’s love reconciles and saves his people to his praise. He doesn’t save his people and then loves them. No. Our eternal God loves his mortal enemies to death and in so doing, saves them from eternal death to eternal life. The appropriate response to a gift like that is eternal gratitude. I am getting ahead of myself.
LOVED BY THE FATHER
That brings us to Romans 5:6. If you have your Bibles, follow along with me:
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. (Romans 5:6-8, ESV)
The strongest among us has had weak moments, haven’t we?
SORE THROAT
I got hit with a sore throat on Monday. So what? Well, I say that because I can become a big baby pretty quickly. I was mad at myself for being so weak. I could not for the life of me rejoice in my suffering after preaching about it a day or two before. I was (and am) a weakling in many respects. I felt like I devolved into a six-foot-tall toddler, with the voice of a frogman. Maybe you can relate, or perhaps you saw and heard me this week. We all have had our moments. In fact, we all start weak, as babies, dependent on our mother’s care. There is no way for us to live without help. As we grow and gain independence, we still have weaknesses. For some, it might be physical; for others, psychological; or situational. We might not have the energy or resources that we would like. We are weak.
SPIRITUAL WEAKNESS?
Was that the type of weakness Paul was talking about? Not exactly. He was talking about spiritual weakness. He was comparing his readers and himself to the righteous and good. The righteous were rule followers, and the good were better. The weak were the unrighteous and the opposite of the good: namely, the bad. The other word Paul used in verse 8 for them was “sinner.” In Chapter 3, Paul told us we all sin. We all fall short of God’s glorious perfection. Some of our sins are more visible and others are not. Some are things we have done that are prohibited, and other sins are good things we have failed to do. We are weak in that sense. And God knew it — and knows it —but instead of kicking us when we are down, his Son chose to die for us. He died for the sinner. In verses 7 and 8, Paul acknowledged that some people willingly die for a righteous and good person. I think of our public safety officers, risking their lives daily. Each door they knock on and car they pull over carries a degree of risk. Given the choice, most people would not choose their career; it is a calling much like pastoral ministry. Most people don’t stick their necks out there for strangers. Even if they did, it would not secure for them what Jesus secured for us who believe.
SACRIFICE THAT COUNTS
Sacrificing your life may preserve another’s, and that is good, but it could not come close to justifying them before God. It could not procure for them peace with God, hope for this life and the next, or the Lord’s affection. For those who live, they still would die another day and have to face judgment. Yet, God loved us so much that he sent his one and only Son to die in our place. John 3:16 describes this,
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16–17, ESV).
Christ exchanged his immortal life for ours. That is a historical fact. No historian worth anything denies Jesus’s existence or his death. All religions would agree that he lived. Most people in the world believe he died. We believe he died and rose. Yet, before we believed that fact, we had been Benedict Arnolds, traitors, enemies of God. He knew that would be our default theological position, and yet was willing to exchange his life for ours. The pure died for the impure. The divine endured the punishment we deserved. He loved us to death. How does it feel to be loved like that? [PAUSE]
SAVED FROM GOD’S ANGER
Not only has God loved us. He has saved us from his righteous anger. The vista changes, from love and grace to mercy, taking away the punishment we deserve. Look at verses 9 through 10:
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. (Romans 5:10–11, ESV)
Paul moved from describing God’s disposition to his gift of salvation. Our heavenly Father, the Creator of the universe, saved us from the punishment we deserve.
OUR RIGHTEOUS ANGER
We understand that punishment and discipline. As a parent, facilitating a parenting class, I see it. It is not loving to let sin go unpunished. In the Bible, when dads neglect to discipline their kids, things go horribly wrong. The Bible says that even God disciplines those he loves. That is to help shape and correct his children. Punishment is different. It is not rehabilitative, but retributive. It is to pay for the wrong. God won’t punish his children. But he will punish and bring justice in the end.
ANGER
What are we to do with the wrath of God? Wrath is not necessarily bad. Another word for it is anger. And we can be righteously mad, wrathful. The Bible says, “Be angry and do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26, ESV). Anger is not a sin in and of itself. It is what happens with that feeling that is the big deal. James says something that relates:
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. (James 4:1–3, ESV)
What God is saying in his Word is that this animosity is a byproduct of selfish desires. Anger is a symptom of something deeper. Emotions can be good or bad. Jesus was mad at those who turned the temple into a place of commerce, limiting people’s worship. That is righteous anger. Romans 1:18 tells us that God’s anger has been revealed against all ungodliness. That is righteous anger. The reality is that unless we repent of our sin and believe in Jesus’s death on our behalf, God’s anger is coming for us. However, if we repent and believe, we can have peace with God and stand before him with grace and confidence forever. We are reconciled to him by his Son’s substitutionary death.
SAVED BY HIS LIFE
But Paul also said we are saved by his life, not only his death. What does it mean that Jesus lives for us? How does Jesus’s living save us? Jesus didn’t just pay for our salvation with his death; his life is a blessing on our behalf as well. For example, he doesn’t sit idly by now that he died, rose, and ascended into heaven. The Bible says that he lives to be praying for us, right now (Hebrews 7:25). If you want people to pray for you, how much more to have Jesus praying for you. Isn’t that cool? 24/7365. Not only that, he told his disciples that he left Earth to prepare a place for them (John 14:2). What does that mean exactly? I am not sure, but whatever awaits us will be spectacular. Just consider how long it takes to build a home in 2025? We have builders at church. Maybe a year? Jesus has spent two thousand. You have to assume the finishes will be high-end. Not only that, the Bible says that the Spirit of Christ is alive and at work in us right now. We are so much better off because Jesus lives. And that fact, the fact of his resurrection from the dead, is proof positive of what is in store for us who trust in him. God has saved us, changed us, and is changing us because he lives. He makes us his servants righteous, good, but he also calls us saints and holy ones. It gets better. As we look more closely, we are Christ’s friends, but it is even better than that; God says we are his brothers and sisters by adoption. What that means is that we are royalty, saved from judgment. We are reconciled to God, and we can stand in that truth because he lives. He conquered death once and for all. Our death is just a passing from one degree of glory to the next. It only gets better for us.
PRINCE TO PAUPER TO PRINCE AGAIN
I think of a particular prince in the royal family in Britain. There is evidence that he has done things he shouldn’t. Consequently, King Charles has stripped him of his titles. He is evicting him from the royal property as soon as possible. What if that sixty-year-old profligate son hits rock bottom and comes groveling back to his family? He hates his old ways and denounces his old self. What if he declares that he is a new man? He has religion and will never do what he has done again. What if he says he will apologize publicly and try to make restitution to all those he wronged? What if all he wanted was to be a servant of the family, not even a member? Does the royal family have to give him anything? No. He burned his bridge. But what if they gave him mercy and, instead of giving him a job as a butler, gardener, or bathroom cleaner, they gave him his sonship back, his castle back, and his title back? That is what God did with the prodigal son in Luke Chapter 15. And that is what he did for you and me. We were all licentious naves, two-timing God; we don’t know the half of what we have done in our rebellion. Incredibly, God loves us to death. We forget it all too often. It is like paradise is just around the corner and up the hill. Yet we are paralyzed, in a sense, entertained by a cheap black-and-white cartoon that feeds our hatred for one another and for life itself. Let’s lift our gaze to heaven. Read in your head with me Romans 8,
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 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? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 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. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 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. (Romans 8:31–39, ESV)
My friends, God will hold fast his children. There is safety in his arms. In the midst of persecution or moral weakness, we have a God who cares for us much like a parent holds a child who is shaken up by what lurks in the dark or broken by the exposed blister of sin.
AND FILLED WITH PRAISE
And we end our eleven verses with rejoicing.
“More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (Romans 5:11, ESV).
God deserves our praise, brothers and sisters. He has reconciled us to himself. He deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. He made mortal foes into more than that; he made them family. We were the culprits, terrorists guilty of gross injustice. He was the innocent one. Yet, he did all the work to make us right. He is worthy of all the credit. What does it look like to rejoice in God?
On Sunday mornings, we sing together to the Lord. We sing about what he has done. It is one way we praise him.
We also spend time in our prayers thanking and praising him. He is worthy. Psalm 145 states, “I will extol you, my God and King” (Psalm 145:1a, ESV)
We talk about the good things God has done for each other. We proclaim who he is and what he has accomplished. He is worthy of getting credit.
But all those things —singing, praying, and talking — can be done not just at this hour, but throughout our week and our lives. Psalm 145 goes on:
I will extol you, my God and King,
and bless your name forever and ever.
Every day I will bless you
and praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised,
and his greatness is unsearchable. (Psalm 145:1–3, ESV)
Every day, we can tell our neighbors, friends, family, co-workers, and classmates that God is great. Every day, we can thank God in our prayers. Every day, we can sing to him in our hearts. He is worthy. Is he not?
APPLICATION
Friends, we have been on a journey into the land of blessing in these sentences. But the five before it were part of the same package. What draws you most in these eleven verses? In our Monday staff meeting, I discovered that Pam Klint was thinking the same way I was. There are so many blessings here for us to enjoy.
Justification
Peace
Standing in Grace
Hope
Love
Reconciliation
Salvation
This week, a little cold was like someone slidetackled me from behind. And in those moments, I forgot. Sleeping lots helped. Asking a friend to pray for me helped. But my sure foundation and hope were rooted in the reality of these verses. Which means the most to you?
Justification
Peace
Standing in Grace
Hope
Love
Reconciliation
Salvation
Church, surprise, surprise, they are all yours. All these blessings and more are yours and mine by faith. Let’s rejoice in God in song, who gives generously to all who truly trust in him.
HAVEN’T BELIEVED
If you haven’t believed in God’s one and only Son, let me encourage you to do so today, and enjoy these benefits as yours with us. It is totally worth it.
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