Romans 5:1–11
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral Trinity Sunday 12th June 2022
Today is Trinity Sunday. I was led to Romans 5 because of the way Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all active there, not only in rescuing us from sin and death, but also because they continue to be active in our life beyond our initial conversion. Paul lists some of the immediate benefits that are ours when we turn to Christ and are saved. Last Sunday I likened our salvation to being rescued from a flooded cave. We don’t have much time; our air is running out. Jesus came into the world to swim us out. There is nothing we can do except trust him and let him do this job. That is what Paul means when he says we are justified by faith.
Therefore since we are justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ …
The first benefit, then, of being saved is peace with God. The second is access to God, and access to his kindness—that’s what grace is.
Therefore, since we are justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access into this grace in which we stand … and we rejoice in our hope of the glory of God.
The third benefit, then, is our knowledge of what is coming to us when Jesus returns—or when we die. It becomes a real pleasure to think about it. The fourth thing is that we begin to value even our sufferings, because we see that they are part of what God is doing to build our character and orient us more to the future. So:
More than that, we boast of our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance character, and character hope, and hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God has poured his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.
So you see, the fifth and sixth benefits are the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the conviction of God’s love towards us, which begins to form in us through his action. Paul then expands on this theme of God’s love for us in Christ, which is the key to happiness in a Christian life, that can sometime involve a lot of trouble. Then he comes back to the seventh benefit, which is experiencing joy in God himself.
We rejoice in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received our reconciliation.
So you see the Trinity team in action: the Father sending his Son into the world on a mission of reconciliation, reconciling his Father to us through the cross, and the Holy Spirit giving us heart knowledge of all the love which is coming our way. It is all the work of one God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit.
I have rushed through this, because I want to spend the rest of our time together exploring just that first result of being saved: peace with God.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God …
Sometimes I feel like a door-to-door salesman.
“I have this cool gadget— salvation—and you need it.”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure I do.”
“But it will give you peace with God.”
“Yeah, but that’s not something I need. Why don’t you go and talk to Mr Putin.”
A lot of people wish for peace of mind, but that’s not what Paul means here; it’s bigger than that. Jesus came into the world on a peace mission. Isaiah predicted it: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the one who comes announcing peace.” (Isaiah 52.7) The Messenger at the time of his birth proclaimed it: “Peace on earth: goodwill to all his chosen people!” When Jesus went his 72 disciples on their mission he instructed them, “When you enter someone’s house, first say, ‘Peace be upon this house.’ If a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him, but if not, it will return to you.” After his resurrection, Jesus came and stood among them, and said to them, “Peace be with you.” And a bit later when he showed them the wounds in his hands and side: “Peace be with you.” (John 20.19–21) Clearly, Jesus’ was on a peace mission.
But what sort of peace are we talking about? The truth is, humans are at war with God, and he at war with us. It sounds extreme and dramatic, but it is hard to make sense of life any other way.
God once sent a flood that drowned most of the population of the world. He “nuked” Sodom and Gomorrah and two other cities in the Jordan Valley. He sent the Assyrian hordes to overrun Israel, and later the Babylonians, and later the Romans. And in our own time there was the Titanic, then WWI, then the Spanish flu epidemic, the Bolshevik Revolution—that’s about a hundred million deaths in all—and a few years later, the second world war, and now Ukraine. If you think of God as a kindly old man beyond the clouds, wishing us well, but unable to do anything, maybe you can dismiss all this stuff, but the God of the Bible, who claims to have done all these things, created the world, and his providence rules it. The Bible says he hardened Pharaoh’s heart and brought disaster on Egypt. So, he has hardened Mr Putin’s heart—we don’t know why and for what. “He creates wellbeing and disaster,” says Isaiah (45.7). What does all this mean about God and the world? It doesn’t sound much like peace. And if all these things are too far away to be bothered with, think about yourself. When Adam listened to the Devil and rebelled, God condemned him and all his descendants to death; that includes you and me. There is a serious problem in the relationship of God and human beings.
You may have been taught that God loves us, and that is true; but it is not the whole truth. It is because he loves us that God sent Jesus on a peace mission, but that is because our relationship had fallen into serious trouble. We are against him, and until that changes, he is at war with us.
You may not feel you have anything against God, but think carefully! I was talking to a couple about baptism, and trying to explain about Jesus being Lord. She understood and said, “If he should take my baby, I would hate him.” They wouldn’t go ahead with the baptism; I hope they do not try to stay clear of God for ever. Another time, I went to a hospital late at night. They wanted me to baptize a sick baby. By the time I got there the baby had died. I baptized it anyway. The nurses were worried because the mother was showing no signs of emotion. When I spoke to her, she told me she didn’t blame God. “You can,” I said. “God could have given you a healthy baby.” She let out scream they must have heard around the hospital. I do not know whether their experience resulted finally in hatred of God, or faith. With a thing like that they could hardly be indifferent. Peter Hitchens wrote a book called, “The Rage Against God.” It was an answer to his atheist brother, who wrote many books against Christianity. Many people today are saying they hate the idea of God. The truth is, when you look below the surface, there is conflict: us with God and he with us. We have to ask, who we think will win.
But Jesus came on a peace mission. He proclaimed God’s kingdom, and announced amnesty to every man, woman, and child who would cease their rebellion and join him. That is the peace Paul is talking about. That is the peace that we need more than anything else in the world: not just peace of mind, though it leads to that, but cessation of hostilities between us and God.
When our ancestors fell out with God it was over something as trivial as an off-limits tree—or that is how it seemed— but it soon escalated into murder, revenge, and slavery. When I gave that list of evils beginning with the flood and leading forward to Ukraine, I did not mean that God is responsible for the evil. Most evil, but not all suffering, flows from the hearts and decisions of evil people. But God is in ultimate control; he can stop things any time he likes. Not a sparrow falls without his decree, Jesus said. There is no evil in God, but he channels and limits the actions of men, and is driving all things to a final end. This Ukraine thing could easily escalate into nuclear conflict. If it doesn’t, it will be because God has restrained what seems so possible—as he has in mercy restrained it these last seventy years. Most of God’s work in the world is holding back what could otherwise happen, and limiting what could be much worse—Covid!
The only way I can make sense of this is that in turning away from God, humans are walking away from life. God is the author of life. He gave it, he gives it, he defines its purpose, and he says how to preserve it. It is not just that God gave it, and now it is automatic. It only seems like that to us, because it is there for us in every generation, and at the start of every new day—until God takes it away. But the whole universe holds together because of the constant will and power of God. If he stops willing it, it will cease to exist. If he stops willing the world to turn it will not turn. He doesn’t need to stop someone’s heart; if he stops willing their heart to beat, it will stop. That is what the Bible means when it says “all things hold together in him,” (Colossians 1.17) and “he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” (Hebrews 1.3) Life is impossible apart from God. That is why God warned our ancestors that if they disobeyed him they would surely die.” (Genesis 2.17) So to walk away from God is to embrace an impossibility.
“You wont die!” That was what the Devil said, and Adam believed him, and for a time it seemed like they didn’t. But they began to die the moment they broke away. The question that leaps out, is why they didn’t die at once: “In the day you eat of it you will surely die.” Why did God allow them to live long enough to have children? Why did he prolong the life of the human race for us to discover nuclear energy, and threaten the whole world? That can only be because God is doing something immensely wonderful. But what I want to underline, is that we are living an impossibility: drawing all our life from him, yet at war with him. It can’t last. If God is to be God, there must come a day when reality asserts itself. We must make peace with God or die—either return, or be banished from God’s universe. Until that day there will be war, or salvation. God makes peace with us and we with him.
This first verse of Romans 5 actually says, “Let us have peace with God.” Most translators go with the plain fact, which seems to follow from Paul’s argument: “we have peace with God.” And that is a fact; we don’t have to doubt it. But the oldest manuscripts say, “Let us have peace with God,” and if that is what Paul meant, I think he must have been looking at the enormous thing God has done for us in Christ—becoming a human being, taking our guilt on himself, reconciling God—but then looking to the world and longing that men and women should see this and come back to God. It may be that occasionally someone will die for a friend, he explains. I remember a rescue that took place off the coast of Queensland. Two men and a woman capsized in a tinny. Two were saved. The third—well sharks found them, and were swimming round the upturned boat. One man swam off to lure them away. That was their story. But there was a gut feeling among most Australians that it couldn’t be true. Even when it was revealed that the woman was his fiancée. No one would do such a thing. Such a selfless act is rare, but it does happen. God shows his love for us, Paul explains, in that while we were still enemies Christ died for us. How much more now that we are his friends, will we be saved by his life. Notice that we begin as enemies. But the reality that confronts us is that most people still turn away. Not even the Son of God dying to rescue us is enough. Paul says that when we were weak, Christ died for the ungodly. The word weak also means sick. The truth is, we are sick. God does everything to make peace: he proves his love even to the extent of dying for us, but we are not convinced. We turn our backs. We are suspicious. We think he wants to enslave us—make our life miserable. On his side God has done everything he can to reconcile, and now won’t you be reconciled? That is Paul’s thought. It takes two parties to bring about a proper reconciliation. It becomes a very personal thing. We are all of us dying people in a dying world. Can anyone be saved? Yes, God has made it possible; but will we say “Yes,” to him and allow ourselves to be saved?
And this is where the third person of the Trinity comes in: the love of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Nothing less than a heart-operation is required to enable us to believe that God really does love us. That is what Adam doubted. That is what the men of Jesus’ time could not believe. That is what our countrymen continue to recoil from. But the Holy Spirit does a heart operation and brings us to God. “Let us have peace with God.”
I do not think we will see peace in our time. Jesus was a realist. “Don’t think I have come to bring peace,” he said, “but a sword—to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother …” and so on. He came on a peace mission but the immediate effect is to bring conflict. But if you ever want to see life—if you ever want to see universal peace—you will make your peace now with God.
Article 2 of the Thirty-Nine Articles reads:
The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the true and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed virgin, of her substance: so that the two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhood and the Manhood, were joined together in one person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, true God and true Man, who truly suffered , was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but for all actual sins of men.