Romans 5:16-21 - Reigning in life

Adam's sin led to all sinning and dying. The gift of God's grace is even greater in its effect. Adam's sin brought condemnation, all were brought under judgement. The gift of grace followed many trespasses and brought justification.

We all know that death is inevitable, no one in their right mind doubts it. The effects of God's grace are even more certain. We receive an abundance of grace, not just a little bit. We receive the free gift of righteousness, we are justified. And so we reign in life. See that it is not just a matter of being forgiven, and it is certainly not a matter of a "ticket to heaven". Some have said that it would be enough if God had just forgiven us. This is actually not true. God's goal is that we reign in life.

All the trouble stemmed from the act of one man, likewise all the glory stems from the act of one man. Now we need to appreciate that this is not just a matter of an automatic thing. It is Adam's sin that brought death and condemnation into the world, but we know that we have all sinned are fully deserving of the judgement in our own right. So, with Christ we all need to believe, and to live the life. 

Grace reigns through righteousness and leads to eternal life through Christ. Our being forgiven is the essential starting point of reigning in life, but it is only the starting point. It is the starting point of a new life.

Romans 5:12-15 - Sin and Death

Sin and death came to all through Adam's sin. The whole human race ever since was affected by Adam's sin. This is the fact that Paul has been establishing, and the fact that every human being needs to face up to. All have sinned, and all are subject to death. There are several possible interpretations of this verse, and it is all tied in with the doctrine of original sin. One way or another Adam's sin affected the whole of humanity. This is incontrovertible, we can see the evidence wherever we look, including at ourselves. 

At the end of verse 12 Paul breaks off his line of thought, not to resume it until verse 18. He breaks off to focus more on sin and how it works. The Law did not invent sin, rather it made it highlighted it. Sin existed from that fateful day in the Garden of Eden onwards. Now why does Paul start talking about the Law not been around for a time? Perhaps he is showing that sin had its effects without the Law. Death clearly reigned from the time that Adam sinned. Death did not come in with Moses and the Law. So in the same way as death ruled quite effectively without the need of any help from the Law, so through Christ life will reign without the need for any help from the Law. Indeed, at the end of verse 14 he says that what happened through Adam is a pattern of what will happen through Christ.

Romans 5:7-11 - Reconciled

To give your life up for someone else is a momentous thing to do, and normally there needs to be some merit in the person, the someone else, in order for that action to take place. However, God gave His Son up for us while we were still sinners. When there was no merit in us, nothing to earn God's love, He showed His love for us in the most profound way.

We really need to get hold of the idea that we contributed nothing to God loving us and sending Christ to die for us. It was an act motivated purely by God's love. There are times in our lives when we can think "how can God love me", times when we become aware of some terrible aspect of our character, some weakness in ourselves, or some sin we have committed. God has already loved us in those circumstances.

"Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him!". Now this seems strange, for surely if we are justified by His blood, why do we need to be saved from His wrath? Indeed in Rom 3:25 Paul speaks of Christ turning away God's wrath. So what is he on about? Perhaps the clue is in the next verse. The effects of the cross do not end with forgiveness. We shared in Christ's death, we also share in His life. His blood paid for our sins, His resurrection gives us new life. We are being transformed.

We are also reconciled with God. Once we were enemies of God, but no longer. The foundations of life have completely changed. We are justified, forgiven and reconciled. This is the foundation for a new life.

Romans 5:6 - Christ died for the ungodly

"You see, at just the right time ...". Paul has just said that God's love has been poured into our hearts. Now he is going to explain how this is. When we speak of heart we think primarily of our emotions, but in the Bible our heart is not restricted to our emotions, but includes both the rational and emotional. So when Paul says the God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit he is not just talking about feelings, but also about our understanding the depths of God's love for us (see Ephesians 3:18,19).
So now Paul explains God's love, and we should expect the Holy Spirit to open our minds and hearts to the truth of this love. Christ died for us at just the right time, while we were still powerless. He died for the ungodly. Why was it the right time? Well it was the right time in God's plan. We cannot fully understand why it was at exactly this point in history, but we can see some evidence that it was the right time. The Roman empire was such that there was a common language among much of Europe, namely Greek. Moreover, there was a good transport network, and the Roman empire meant there was relative order in the world. So the conditions were ripe for the good news to spread far and wide. 
"While we were still powerless". We did nothing to earn salvation. The only thing we contributed were the sins that nailed Jesus to the cross. But note that it implies that we are powerless no longer. God died for the powerless, but it is not His intention that we remain powerless. 
Christ died for the ungodly. We need to remind ourselves of this constantly. When we despair of our failings we should not think that are beyond the reach of God's love. Conversely, when we make progress and see His power at work in and through us we should be under any delusion that we somehow merit salvation.

Romans 5:3-5 - In the midst of difficulties

So, we are in right standing with God and we have the hope of glory. How does this work out in practice? Well the glory of God in our lives becomes a reality through suffering, through testing times. So we are to rejoice in the hope of glory, and to rejoice in our sufferings. 

Now we do not rejoice in our sufferings for the sake of it, but because of what suffering produces. First it produces endurance. One of the features of life is people giving up. We need to become people who do not give up. How does suffering do this? We see the truth of God's promises, the truth of His word. We see that His word is more powerful, more lasting than any circumstance or opposition. 

Suffering produces character and hope. A man or woman of character is one who knows how to get through difficult times, how to continue to be fruitful and faithful in the face of opposition and trials. We learn that God's plans actually do work out in the end, so we have hope. We have seen some things work out already, and the things that we have not yet seen, we are confident that God will complete this work as well in His time.

This hope does not put us to shame. If we say we are hoping for something, that we believe it will happen, and it never happens then we are put to shame. We look like fools. But hope in God will not disappoint us. 

How can we know this? God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Now suffering does not automatically produce all this stuff. It does so because we are justified, because we believe, and because we have the Holy Spirit, and so know the love of God. 

If we are in the midst of difficulties we need to focus our minds on the following:

• Through Christ we have been made right with God. 
• We have a glorious hope, our destiny is to become like Jesus.
• The Holy Spirit will work in our lives by revealing the love of God to us, and through us to other people.

Romans 5:1,2 - Hope of glory

Paul has spent a lot of time establishing the problem of our sin, and how we are justified through faith in Christ. Now he will move on to the implications of this for our life, and how it affects the second key aspect of salvation, namely our transformation. Remember we have two basic needs: we need to be forgiven and we need to be transformed.

"We have peace with God". Justification, being declared right with God, is essential. If we had no peace with God then all our efforts would be futile. Instead it means we can approach every aspect of life with hope. When tackling problems it is easy to be filled with despair. We think we have got things too wrong, or have failed too many times, or that we have got too much "baggage". In Christ that is no longer true. We have been justified, we are in right standing with God. 

Because of this we have gained access into grace. We stand in a place of grace. We are not under judgement, we are not under a curse, we are not at the mercy of random events. We stand in the grace of God, we have the favour of God on our lives.

We boast in the hope of glory. What does this mean? When we talk of the glory of God we tend to think of God's glory shining all around. That is part of it, but it also includes moral excellence and significance. I have said this before, and have said it again, because it is so important. We were created in God's image, we were meant to be wonderful, but sin ruined everything. In Christ the way is open for us to become all that we were meant to be, all that God intends us to be.

There should be hope and expectation in our lives that we will become what God wants us to be.

Romans 4:20-25 - Abraham's faith

"No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God". Now we need to be careful in understanding this verse, for at first glance it seems that Abraham just floated through life happily trusting the Lord. If we look at the account in Genesis we see that this was most definitely not the case. Twice he told lies about his wife being his sister. Even more importantly, he really struggled to believe the promise of God that he would have many descendants. So in that sense he was just like you and me in that there were times he found it hard to believe God. Yet despite that he continued to follow God, and so he grew strong in faith. The culmination of that was his willingness to obey when told to sacrifice Isaac. This time his reaction is markedly different from his earlier hesitancy. He obeys quickly, without argument, and knows that God will somehow or other save Isaac. So we need to follow Abraham's example. We need to keep on taking the next step, even when we cannot see where it is going, or how God is going to fulfill His promises.

Faith is the key. Faith is the key to our relationship with God. Christ died for our sins, and was raised for our justification. If Christ had remained in the tomb it would have meant that His sacrifice had not paid the penalty for our sin. But He was raised, and so we know beyond doubt that we are counted as righteous by God, our sins have been fully paid for.