The Justified Life

Grab your Bible and we will remain standing for the reading of God's word. Romans 5:1-11. As we seek to give the Lord the greater glory for what he's done for us at the cross. We're going to come really to the happiest part of this whole series that we've called "Good News" from Romans 1:1-5:11. And it's one of the happiest and most triumphant texts in all the Bible. So let's eagerly listen to it this morning. 

My family watched a new movie the other night called Young Woman and the Sea. Maybe some of you have seen it. It's about the first lady to ever swim the English channel between France and England. It's over 20 miles. And the closing scene of the movie is one of the happiest, most joyful I've ever seen before, because it's New York City throwing the biggest ticker tape parade for a single athlete in the history of that city. And this young woman is coming off the boat after the whole world has been glued to their radios following this treacherous journey she made through these waters all by herself. Nobody thought it could be done. The water was freezing cold. It was dark. So many people had lost their way. So many people had lost their lives doing this kind of thing before. But she made it all the way to those shores of Dover. And now, she's coming back on her own soil, her own home territory, and the entire city is going wild. Even the 1926 New York Yankees were out there cheering for Trudy.

And she gets into this open cab of the car with her sister and with her coach. All these people have supported her. And her immigrant parents are there with her. And she has this moment in the sun where everyone is rejoicing. And there is so much glory in that moment. And there's so much glory for the person watching the movie, because you know how dark, and grim, and hopeless it seemed just a few minutes earlier when she had lost her way out in the shallows before she ever got to the shore, and nobody was with her. Now, all of a sudden you come out of that into all of this light, and joy, and celebration.

And that's kind of the mood of Romans 5:1-11. It is one of the happiest passages in all the Bible. And some of you say, "well, I've been waiting for it for a long time, because we had to swim through some dark, cold, dangerous waters to get here. Paul spent the first several chapters of Romans diving deep into our sinful condition apart from Christ. And what we learned there is that the gap between sinful human beings like you and me and our holy creator, God, it is so great that we could never swim it. We could never bridge that gap. No matter how heroic our spiritual or moral efforts might be. We could never get to the other shore and make it to God. But Christ has done it for us.

Now, we find ourselves in Romans 5 in the cab at this great ticker-tape parade with all this glory coming down, all these benefits flooding into our lives. And we didn't do a thing, Jesus did it all. And because we've simply trusted in him, now we receive the riches of justification by faith in Jesus Christ. And it's such a wonderful passage for us because it's very possible as we walked through Romans 1-4, you may have asked yourself or asked your spouse or your neighbor,  "what difference does all this make?" Because we've learned all these really technical terms, like "justification" and "imputed righteousness" and "redemption" and "depravity," and all these different terms. And it can feel a little dense. And it can feel a little abstract. It can feel a little bit removed from our own daily experiences and struggles. And at some point we may ask, "Why are we learning all this? What difference does it make in our lives?"

And Romans 5 is Paul's answer. Because Paul is now speaking to all of those who have believed this gospel that he's been unpacking so carefully in chapters one through four. And he says, let's talk about what we now have in Jesus. Did you notice that use of "we" and "us" all through this text? Paul says this is something that every Christian shares because we're hidden in Christ by faith. Justification by faith makes all the difference in the world. And that's what Romans 5:1-11 is about.

Look at that very first word if you would in the passage. What's the first word in Romans 5:1? Therefore! This is one of the three great "therefores" in the letter to Romans. There's Romans 5:1, there's Romans 8:1, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And there's Romans 12:1, "Therefore, I urge you by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice." Those are the three great "therefores" in the letter, the turning points. And this is the turning point where Paul now explains to us in verse one, since we've been justified by faith, since God has done this for us, since he has clothed us in the righteousness of Jesus, and our righteousness and our standing before Him is now complete, and finished, and perfect, and settled once and for all, not because of us, but because of Jesus alone, now that we can't add to it or detract from it, now that we've been justified by faith, it changes everything, everything about our lives every single day.

And so what Paul does in verses 1-11 is very practical. He just unpacks what we believers now have if we've been justified by faith. He's unearthing the riches that are ours now because we belong to Jesus through faith. And on our way to the Lord's table, I want to share with you what we have as justified believers. And if you are not justified by faith in Jesus Christ, if you're still trying to justify yourself by your own works, and your own doing, and your own contributions, consider this your invitation to lay your sins down, and to lay your doing down at the cross, and enter into the justified life. So what do we have as justified believers?

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Now peace with God is different than the peace of God. The peace of God is wonderful and the Bible talks a lot about it. But the peace of God is this personal sense that we have that God is with us. It is a feeling that comes and goes based on a lot of different circumstances in our lives. That's the peace of God. Peace with God is different. Peace with God is not a subjective feeling. It's an objective reality. It's outside of us. It doesn't have anything to do with our emotions. It doesn't have anything to do with our feelings. It's a fact. It's a status that God has given to us through Jesus and it never changes. Peace with God never changes if you are justified by faith in Jesus!

And it was costly to do it. He did it at the cross. We learned about that in chapter three. At the cross, God took his own son, our Lord Jesus, and put him forward as a propitiation. Y'all remember that word? Propitiation: a sacrifice that sets aside wrath, a sacrifice that satisfies the righteous demands of a holy God. Jesus, God's son in the flesh, became our substitute, and he received in himself the wrath of God that was due to me and due to you. And Jesus, to use the words of the Gospels, drank the cup of God's wrath down so that there was nothing left in that cup for you and me. If you are in Christ, now there is no wrath left in God's heart towards you because Jesus has paid it all. And he not only forgives you, but he justifies you. 

Justification is so much better than forgiveness. Forgiveness is great. But as one writer said, forgiveness means you can go free. Justification means you can stay, you can come here, you can come close. That's what justification does. We have the righteousness of Jesus. We have the status of Jesus by faith. To use another word from verse 10, we are reconciled. It means to take a relationship that was torn apart and to bring it back together again. And that's what God has done. Notice he hasn't just made reconciliation possible. He's made reconciliation. He has repaired the relationship. It is complete simply because of what Christ has done, not because of anything that you contribute. So that means if you are justified by faith, if you're trusting in Jesus, you have peace with God. You don't have to wonder where you stand. You don't have to try anymore to placate him. It's not like God is in heaven really mad, really wishing he could zap you. But Jesus got in the way and so he can't. But boy, if you slip up one more time, he's really going to get you. That is not God's heart towards you. He made peace with you through Christ. It was his idea. There is no wrath left in his heart, whatever displeasure God has to act on in your life, to discipline you, and to make you more like his son Jesus, it does not come from a place of wrath. It comes from fatherly love and care. You don't have to wonder where God stands with you. If you're justified by faith in Jesus, you have peace with God.

Your enjoyment of that peace may go up and down based on your behavior, your choices, your sin, your nearness to the Lord, your enjoyment of that relationship. It may change. But the reality of that relationship, it is settled through the work of Jesus. And so if you trust in Jesus today, you don't have to make peace with God. He has made peace with you. If you're justified by faith, we have peace with God.

"We have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand." I really like the kind of positional language in that verse. I was playing this little game that I have with the kids yesterday afternoon. It's this pirate ship that teeters on a small point and each person on their turn will stack a different little character or object or item on that pirate ship. And you're trying to balance it. Of course, if you put something on the right side, well, then it's gonna dip down. So the next person really needs to put something on the left side. And everyone's being just so careful. And you're so tense, and you're so anxious that you're gonna tip it over and the stuff's gonna fall off, and then you have to start all over again.

That's the game. It's called Don't Rock the Boat. And many people are living their lives before God like that. Right? You're always tense, always on eggshells, always trying to balance the good stuff that you can do with all the bad stuff that you know that you've done. And you're always insecure. And you're always uncertain. You don't know where you stand with God. Maybe even you've come to church today to try to get some standing with God. Do you think that's going to put your feet under you a little bit? If you sing some songs, maybe give some money, maybe take the Lord's Supper, you think that's going to give you standing with God. Justification by faith says that's not how it works anymore. That's never worked. In fact, you'll never get standing with God that way. No, because apart from Jesus Christ, there's only one place you stand: under sin, under condemnation, mouth closed in front of the judgment bar of God.

But when God justifies you by faith in Jesus, he changes your position. He brings you out of condemnation and into a place the Bible calls grace. Grace is God's favor, God's acceptance, unmerited, unearned, unsought, unconditional. And if you are justified by faith in Jesus, that's where you live. Now, you stand in grace. You didn't work to get there. And you don't work to stay there. If you're justified by faith in Christ, you are not on trial with God anymore. You are not under performance review. You don't have to qualify. You never could. You don't have to measure up. That's not ever gonna happen. You don't have to impress him. You are never going to impress God. Instead, you stand in grace, his freely given favor because of Jesus. You stand in grace. So it's firm and stable like the ground under your feet.

I love the way that the English minister, John Stott, talks about it. Standing in grace tells us that it's not sporadic, but continuous. You're continuously standing in grace. It's not precarious. It's not like I don't know if I'm gonna tip over or if I'm gonna lose my balance. No, no, no. You are secure, standing in grace. If you are justified by faith, it does not change based on your sanctification, based on your Christian growth. Christian growth is important. Sanctification is important. Paul is gonna say a whole lot more about it in the letter to the Romans, but your sanctification should never be mixed up with your justification. Sanctification is gonna change. It's gonna be a process over time. Justification is a once and for all thing. It's settled by the declaration of God over your life. And because of justification, my position, my standing in grace, it doesn't change based on my obedience. It doesn't change based on my passion. It doesn't change based on my service. It doesn't change based on anything that I do or don't do. Justified people always stand in grace. Isn't that amazing?

So what that means is on Tuesday when you were crushing the sanctification game, and you read your Bible, and you listened to one of my awesome sermons, and you sang Shane and Shane all the way to work, and you were sweet and patient to your children, you served your spouse, and you honored your parents, when you did everything right, you know where you stood with God at the end of the day? In grace. 

And on Wednesday when you were a dumpster fire, and you ignored your Bible, and you'd rather take a beating than talk to God, and you listened to all that bad music, and you were hateful to your children and your spouse, if you are a justified man or woman, do you know where you stood with God at the end of that day? You stood in grace.

And if you hear that and you say, "Man, this is awesome! I can stand in grace, and I can be evil and as selfish as I want," that's a pretty good sign that you actually don't stand in grace and you've never been justified. Because when the justified man or the justified woman hears "I stand in grace because of Christ and nothing that I do or don't do can move my position," that makes you long to obey this God and present your life as a living sacrifice to him. That's the fuel of your obedience. It's not nervous anxiety that if I mess up God's gonna get me. That has never made anybody one bit holier. No, it's only the settled assurance that I stand in grace no matter what because of Jesus. That's what makes people want to try. And that's what makes people wanna grow in holiness. It is true. And if you've been justified by faith, you have peace with God and you have position before God.

"And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." Now, there's been a lot to grieve about the Olympics. We were all set to watch that opening ceremony on Friday night, but we got some tips that that wasn't a good idea because Romans 1 was on full display at the Olympic opening ceremony. So we didn't do that. We watched the English channel movie instead. But since then, we've watched a lot of Olympic competition. And one of the hardest things for me in this Olympic Games is seeing these athletes who have worked so hard their whole lives and especially the last four years to get to this one moment where they can show all that they've labored for, and show what they've got on this world stage. And there are all these expectations from family, and from their nation, and all that kind of stuff, and they choke. The worst thing is when they get disqualified or when they perform just way, way, way below their standards. I mean, it feels like such a loss and such a waste. It's so sad to watch.

And Paul has told us that the human story is really one big story of waste and loss apart from Christ, because we were made for glory. We were made to share in the glory of God, to shine like the sun in the kingdom of our father, to be little mirrors of the beauty and goodness and wisdom of our God, our maker here on earth. And y'all, we blew it. Romans 3:23 is such a tragic verse. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." That's what that means. We have absolutely ruined this destiny that God intended for us. But that's what makes the gospel so good. That's what makes Romans 5 so good. Because when we had blown our shot at glory, when we had fallen so short, God justified us in Christ, and he promised he would recover our destiny because of Jesus.

This is our prospect now! No longer is our prospect shame and condemnation forever, but now God is going to restore his broken image in us. God is going to resurrect and redeem our bodies that we are groaning in right now. Romans 8, God is going to reverse the curse of sin that clings to this entire world and make all things new. And we're gonna stand on that renewed earth, and we're gonna see the face of God. And our souls are going to be satisfied. That's glory. That's what we were made for. That's what we had forfeited. That's what we had blown. And God gives it all back to us and more through Jesus because we're justified by faith. Nothing that we do or contribute. All that Jesus has done. And this is our hope in the Bible.

This hope is not a wish. You know, "I hope team USA wins that medal." "I hope we don't get rained out for this event." "I hope it does rain so my grass doesn't look like a brown piece of turf." We have all kinds of things that we say we hope for, but it's a "maybe not" kind of thing. That's not biblical hope. Biblical hope is a confident expectation. Believers are so confident that we will share in God's glory that we sing about it now like it's already happened, like we're already there, like we've looked into the book of Life, like we've been to heaven already. And Romans 8 says, if you've been justified, it is as good as done! He will glorify you. "Those whom he predestined, these he also called, those who he called, these he also justified, those he justified, he also glorified. It's past tense in the mind of God. That's pretty secure. That's a good hope!

And so we have this incredible hope and it shapes how we suffer. Look at verses 3-4. Not only that, not only do we rejoice that glory is on the way, but we rejoice in our sufferings right now. Knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. This is a spoiler for some of y'all. But Christians actually have to suffer like everybody else. We are not exempt from that in this broken world, this side of the return of Jesus. But the justified man, the justified woman knows something in that suffering that changes our perspective that nobody else has. We know that not only will God bring us into his glory one day by and by. But we know that he's taken charge of my life today and every day until he brings me into glory. And God in his wisdom and power and grace is using everything that comes into my life between now and stepping into glory, to fit me for glory, to conform me to the image of his son, to mature me and to fashion me so that I am ready to receive this eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 5, Romans 8).

And so what does the non-justified man or woman think when suffering happens? We think God is mad at me. God is punishing me. God is getting me. What does the justified man or woman say? Well, we know that God's not pouring out his wrath on us. He emptied that out on the cross of Christ, and he's not gonna punish me for what he already made his son pay for. So when I suffer, when my life is hard, it is not punitive. It is not God's judicial wrath on my life. And we know that when I suffer, when life is hard, it is not purposeless as if God is unaware of the hard circumstances that I am enduring, that he does not hear my groaning. We know my suffering is productive. That's the word that Paul uses here. We know that God our father is now shaping us, maturing us, producing in us virtues like endurance that you can't get any other way than by going through some hard stuff. Endurance. The ability to get up and keep going. Proverbs 24, "The righteous man falls seven times but gets up and keeps going." That's what God is putting in us between here and glory. And over time, this endurance of continuing to trust God and put one foot in front of the other no matter what, across the miles through the seasons, that endurance in time produces something called "tested character."

And God burns out so much of that dross and immaturity and self absorption and all that stuff that's still clinging to all of us after we get saved. He's burning it out. And on the other side through years of seasoning and trials and trust in God and we've been purified, we come out of that thing like gold. And when we do that, that character, it produces more hope. How does it produce more hope? It's one thing to believe that you're saved, to believe you're on your way to heaven and that you're right with God five minutes after you pray to receive Jesus. It's a whole another thing 40 years later after you've been through the meat grinder to say, "I still believe it's well with my soul." "I still would rather have Jesus than silver or gold." "I still prize him above everything else." When your heart is saying stuff like that, that ought to produce some deep hope because you're really saved. You're not just using God to get something from God, you actually love God. And that kind of hope won't put you to shame. So if you're justified by faith, you've got this prospect, this hope, this future that's coming!

Now you hear all this stuff about glory in our future, and you say, "Well, that sounds great. But can I really count on it?" Maybe you've got trust issues with God? Will this hope that you're talking about, will it let me down in the end? I mean, how do I know that I won't do something to lose it or ruin it? I seem to destroy everything that I touch everywhere else in my life. How do I know I'm not gonna destroy this hope that God's given me? And that's where verses 5-10 come in. It deserves 20 sermons. You're gonna get, you know, five minutes. Paul tells us that our assurance is not grounded in us, in our commitment, in our goodness, in our purity of heart, it's grounded in God and His love for us. And that's a really good thing. And in these verses we're told God communicates his keeping, saving love to us in two main ways.

#1 - God communicates his assuring, keeping love to us by the Holy Spirit inside of us (v5). "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." This is the first mention of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in Romans. (Sidebar: we're gonna spend all of Wednesdays this fall talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. So I hope that you can make it for that)! Back to Romans 5, when God justifies you and declares you righteous, he gives his Holy Spirit to you. It's the greatest gift he could give you. He gives his own Holy Spirit to live inside of you. You want to know what humbles me more than anything? It's to think that every moment of every day since I've been saved, the Holy Spirit has lived in this body. And all the times that I have grieved him, and ignored him, and treated him like he wasn't even there, and he has endured with me. We have a gracious God. He has been so patient. And what he does, despite all my grieving of the spirit, what the Holy Spirit does is he ministers the love of God to my heart and into your heart.

If you're a believer, that's one of the primary roles of the spirit. It's to give you a personal sense of assurance that God loves you and he's never going to stop loving you. He pours the love of God into your heart. He floods your heart with a sense of God's love. He spreads it abroad. Some of your translations say this is exactly what Paul is talking about in chapter 8. When he calls the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of "sonship." It's the spirit of adoption. The Spirit himself bears witness with my spirit that I'm a child of God. There's something inside me that knows when I hear the gospel, this is right, this is true and this is mine. God loves me. He is real. He is with me. He is near to me. The Holy Spirit ministers that to believers.

Now that is a subjective feeling and sometimes it's stronger and sometimes it's weaker. One reason why it's so darn weak and some of our lives are so sloppy at obeying God is because our subjective sense of assurance that we are God's children and our ability to enjoy our relationship with God, that actually is contingent on our nearness to the Lord and our obedience to him. And so if you spend all your life ignoring God and rebelling against God as a believer, how assured are you going to feel from one moment to the next? Probably not real assured! And so assurance is a precious gift God gives to his Children. We want to protect that thing. We want to nurture that. Some of y'all feel real loved by God right now. It's because you're just walking closely with God. And so he blesses you with these little moments where the spirit sheds its love abroad in your heart, and it's so real and so intimate and it's so precious. That's a good gift. So one way that God lets believers know that we are loved and we never stop being loved is through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

#2 - God communicates his assuring, keeping love to us by the gospel outside of us (vv6-10). 
Again, this deserves a year's worth of sermons because here's the deal, if you're a Christian, especially in a lot of what I just said, the feeling of being loved by God is not always there. Can I get an amen? It ain't always there. If you are suffering intensely, you're probably not feeling the love of God as a believer. If you have been sinning and sloppy and careless, you're probably not feeling the intimate love of God. And in those moments, God has provided the place for believers to look outside of themselves and their feelings where they can see something solid and objective and unchanging that tells them beyond a shadow of a doubt, "You are loved by me. And I will never let you go in spite of your foolish self."

Where does God tell believers to look to get that kind of solid, unchanging assurance? We got two big ones up here on the wall: the cross of Christ. That's what verses 6-10 are unpacking. Whatever your feelings are, you may say, "I haven't felt a feeling in 18 months. I'm just numb. I'm going through life numb." Great. There's a place for you to look to know that God loves you and will never stop loving you. It's the cross of Christ. We always find assurance there because it is the supreme display of God's commitment to sinners who don't deserve it. It is the supreme display because God loved us at the cross, not because we were so strong and so Godly and so obedient, but just the opposite! At the cross, God loved us when we were weak (v6), ungodly (v6), when we were still actively sinning against him (v8), when we were his enemies (v10), that's when God loved you. That's when God gave his son for you. That's when Jesus bore the wrath of the Father for you when you least deserved it. That's when God loved you extravagantly.

Now, you might lay down your life for your best friend. You might be willing to make that kind of sacrifice for someone who is righteous, and good, and who loved you, and who'd been there for you. But you would never do that for an enemy. But God shows his one-of-a-kind love for us in that when we were at our worst, he gave his son for us.

Now, here's the logic of verses 6-10. If God loved you like that, when you were still a sinner and a rebel against him, then now that you are justified, now that you are reconciled, do you think he's gonna let you go? You think it's gonna stop him from loving you? Now you don't ever have to doubt the love of God when you look at the cross. And that's why we serve the Lord's supper the last Sunday of every month. So that you have to run into the cross at least one Sunday a month. At least one day out of the month you are going to run into the objective truth that the body of Jesus was given for you and the blood of Jesus was shed for you because God was demonstrating his love for undeserving sinners. Does that make sense?

So if we're justified, we have this promise from God. Y'all, if you could lose your salvation, you would have done it three seconds after you got saved. But we have this promise from God that he loves us and will love us to the end, which leads to this as we close.

"More than that, we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ." The justified life is the joyful life. Why? Because only justified by faith in Jesus can I say, "I have a perfect and permanent righteousness before the Lord. The verdict over my life is not in process, it is not under dispute, it is already settled forever." That means there is nothing left for me to earn. There's nothing left for me to prove. There's nothing left for me to achieve. There's nothing left for me to fear. There's nothing left for me to dread in the deepest sense. As a justified man, I know I am ok. All hell may be breaking loose in my personal life, but in the deepest sense, I am ok. And I'm gonna be ok, because I've been declared righteous in Christ already.

The verdict has already come down. And that gives me joy. And that's why joy just runs through Romans 5:1-11 because I'm justified! Verse 3, "I rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." And verse 4, I can even rejoice in my sufferings as God prepares me for that glory and produces Godliness in me from day to day. And verse 11, best of all, I just rejoice in God. I just rejoice in God himself. That's what I was made to do. But because of sin, I want to run and hide from God, or I want to perform and put on a show for God, or I want to use God to get the little goodies of this life that I think I need so bad. Or I want to grind my way through some religious duty like some of y'all are doing this morning because I think that's what God demands. But no, only the justified man or woman can enjoy God. We were made to glorify him and enjoy him forever. Even now, the earthly joys that I experience every day as a justified man, I trace those back to the joy-giver and I rejoice in God more still.

And so this is where we end our series in Romans. This is where we end the good news with just this overflow of joy. Paul wants you to know in the same way he went all over the Roman world letting people know: there is no joy in sin. It is so fleeting, and so deceptive, and there is a rusty barbed hook in that thing. There is no joy in the world. And it's applause, and its approval, and its kisses, and its embraces, that is cheap and fleeting. You can't count on it. There is no joy in spiritless Christ-less religion, just checking the moral boxes doing the religious deal, doing what you're supposed to do, doing the right thing, gritting your teeth, there is no joy in that, but there is joy in Christ. There is joy in a holy God declaring you righteous through nothing that you've done, but all that his son has done accepting you fully and forever by grace. There's joy in that. That's a place where you can stand. That's a place where you can move out into the rest of the world and the rest of your life from strength, and assurance, and with energy and vitality because the most important matter of life has been settled for you.

Can you imagine living like that? Well, you don't have to imagine it. It's the life God has given you in Jesus. I should embrace it and step into it. Psalm 16, "The sorrows of those who run after other gods are many, but God, in your presence, there is fullness of joy, and at your right hand, there are pleasures forevermore." The justified man, the justified woman, the justified teen, the justified child, we can start diving into the pleasures of God right now.

Sermon by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church