Romans 5:1-11

The key idea of Romans is this phrase: “The righteousness of God.” That means both that God is, in Himself, righteous and that He imparts righteousness. He is the source and definition of all righteousness, all right-ness, all moral goodness.

In an earlier article, I made a distinction between ACTUAL righteousness and LEGAL righteousness. This is a strange concept, and perhaps it will be clearer if we think of an analogy. Every person has an actual state of health; their body is in a certain state with all the organs in some sort of condition. If all their organs are functioning well and there are no pathogens infecting the body, then we can broadly say that the person is healthy, that is, they have ACTUAL health.

But if they go to a doctor and get a check-up, then the doctor issues a clean bill of health. The doctor gives a pronouncement that states and makes official the preexisting fact of their health. To call that LEGAL health might sound a little odd, but there would be times when it would make sense. In the Old Testament, someone who exhibited certain symptoms of leprosy had to be examined by a priest who, after certain tests, would declare whether the person had leprosy or some other, harmless disease. If they were declared healthy, then they could go about life as before. But if they were declared to have leprosy, then that had legal consequences. They had to remain outside the camp and comply with other regulations to make sure that they did not infect others.

Of course, since medical science was still very primitive in OT times, there were almost certainly times when this declaration was wrong—when people were declared healthy when they were actually sick and declared sick when they were actually healthy. But the whole system was intended to differentiate, from a legal standpoint, those who were actually sick and those who were actually healthy. <Insert covid reference here.>

So when dealing with justice and morality, we also have this distinction between actual righteousness and legal righteousness. In a trial, a man who is already either guilty or innocent is brought into court so that, after deliberation, the jury and judge can make a formal, legal declaration that states his guilt or innocence. This declaration may be erroneous, but its purpose is to discover and state the actual state of the man—whether he is truly guilty or innocent—just as a medical diagnosis's purpose is to discover and state whether a man is truly sick or healthy. And if a man is pronounced guilty before the law, certain specific legal consequences follow, just as, in some cases, a man who has been declared sick must face certain legal or social consequences.

Now, we come back to Romans. In the last part of Romans 1, Paul pictured extensively how mankind fell away from God and began committing sins of various descriptions. In the next chapter, we have this comment regarding those sins: “But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.” (Romans 2:2)

Mankind had sinned; as Paul says later, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. They were ACTUALLY unrighteous; they were guilty. And so the judgment of God was against them; God declared them LEGALLY unrighteous, and certain consequences followed from that, specifically the wrath of God which is revealed from Heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men. Because this is the judgment of God, and the judgment of God is according to truth, we know that it is accurate.

So far in Romans, we have been looking at the LEGAL side of this problem; the question is, how can man receive pardon and reconciliation; how can the guilty verdict which stands against mankind be rescinded? How can man escape the wrath of God which is revealed from Heaven? And the answer to that is that legal righteousness comes through faith in God which provides justification. When we accept the provisions God has provided through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we find legal righteousness, that is, the forgiveness of sin, the removal of guilt, and the mitigation of punishment. 

But then what of the ACTUAL state of man? Given that man was actually a sinner, what is God's solution for dealing with that? 

On a human level, we recognize that changing the legal status of a man does not change his actual status. Granting a criminal a pardon does not necessarily turn him into a model, law-abiding citizen. Giving a sick man a clean bill of health does not make him healthy. In most cases, to deliberately make the legal state of a thing to be different from its actual state would be dishonest, dangerous, and despicable. 

Speaking of sickness, I mentioned before the treatment of leprosy under the Jewish law and how it had a LEGAL as well as an ACTUAL side. Someone who had leprosy was declared a leper by the priest and forced to live on the outside of society. But if he recovered, if he ceased actually to have leprosy, then he could go to the priest, who would examine him and then perform certain rituals which would declare him legally pure and able to enter into society again.

Now, in Luke 17, we read that a group of lepers came to Jesus and asked to be healed. And this was His answer: “And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.” (Luke 17:14) It's easy to miss how strange that sounds. Jesus told these men, who were still sick with leprosy, to go before the priest and seek for the recognition that they were cured. I imagine it must have seemed odd for them, for men perhaps very far gone and covered with the symptoms of disease to walk into the doctor's office and ask for a clean bill of health. But we see what happened... as they went, they were cured. In other words, Christ told them to seek for LEGAL health and en route, they received ACTUAL health.

Now, it would be easy to say that Jesus told them to look for legal health because he knew that they were going to be healed. But the truth is actually a little more subtle than that. Look at what Jesus said to one of the lepers who came back after his healing: “Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.” (Luke 17:19)

The reason that ten sick men headed off to be pronounced cured was that they had faith in God in the person of Christ. And the reason why they were cured was that they had faith in Christ. It was the authority of Christ that sent them after LEGAL health, and it was the power of Christ that gave them ACTUAL health. Only God can honestly call a sick man healthy because He is the one who can make sick men healthy. Only God can truly look into the darkness and say: “Let there be light.”

And this is a somewhat rough analogy for what we see in Romans. In Romans 1-4, we see how we receive justification; that is, legal righteousness, removal of the guilt and some of the punishment of sin. And the way we do that is through faith in God. In Romans 5-8, we see how we receive TRANSFORMATION, that is, actual righteousness, a change of nature, of heart, and of life. And the way we do that is through faith in God. 

I use the word TRANSFORMATION to capture the broadest possible meaning. For our purposes, TRANSFORMATION means all that God does to change a believer in their nature and life—that means what God does in the soul at salvation, what God does in the soul at entire sanctification, what God will do to both soul and body in the Resurrection, and what God does in and for the soul and life of the believer in-between these points. Transformation is the practical outworking of justification. But it is not a simple byproduct or result. It is, just like justification, the result of God's power and our faith. That is why these two things, though logically distinct, are intrinsically interconnected because they are both built upon the foundation of faith and accomplished through the power of God. Both are, in different ways, the righteousness of God being revealed from faith to faith; both are the just living by faith.

Verse 1 of chapter 5 begins with the word "therefore" which is a connecting word; it connects this section with all that has come before, specifically Romans 4:23-25, where Paul summarizes the idea of finding justification by faith. But it is not merely by faith but by faith in the death and resurrection of “our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” (v. 11) 

This is a point we have to emphasize very strongly. It is very easy to fall into the pattern of thinking that initial salvation is by faith, while our continued Christian life is by works. But for Paul, the foundation of both justification and transformation was the atonement on God's side and, therefore, faith on our side. That doesn't mean we have no other part to play, but the foundation and efficient cause must be faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But there is something very strange about Romans which is made clear in this passage—at least, something which seems strange to me. It is stated in a stark way in verse 1: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have...” and then Paul goes on to list the things we have and enjoy as Christians. There is a very definite sense of sequence here. First, we have justification, and then, on the basis of that, we have transformation. We clearly have a logical, if not a chronological, sense of progression.

And just on the face of it, this sequence seems wrong. You would think it strange if you went to a doctor, and the doctor told you: “You're sick, so I'm going to give you a clean bill of health, and then we'll start treating your disease.”Just on the face of it, it doesn't make sense--and in human affairs, it would usually seem dishonest.

You would think, in the abstract, that it would make more sense for God to make us actually righteous and then, after that, declare us legally righteous.  But Paul quite clearly seems to indicate a logical sequence that goes the other direction.

But strange as that seems initially, it begins to make sense as we look at the passage. The key to understanding it is one specific word, but to get there, we have to think of an illustration.

Imagine a young man who is a student in a college. As a student enrolled in college, he has many advantages and privileges that come with being a student. He goes to classes and gets a chance to learn. He is working towards getting a diploma which will give him the recognition to go into some profession. And along with this, there are other things—companionship with other students, the advice and counsel of their teachers—these are the advantages that come with being a student.

But suppose the day comes when he starts falling behind on his tuition, until, finally, he is out of money and has to leave college.

At that point, he is no longer a student. He is no longer attending classes. He may still be learning something here and there, but not in the way he was before. He will not earn a diploma. He no longer has the advantage of the fellowship of other students or the advice of teachers. The privileges and advantages he had as a student are no longer open to him.

But then suppose someone with money decides to step in and pays off his bill, giving him the money to return to college. Now he is no longer behind on his tuition, and he can be received back into college and become a student once again and once more enjoy all the privileges and advantages that come with being a student.

The word for that is RECONCILIATION-- it is when two things or people who were at odds are able to be brought back together when they are made at one. It is at-one-ment. We usually use the word atonement to refer to that by which reconciliation is possible—in our illustration, the payment of the debt. But the origin of the word in English, and the word translated atonement in verse 11, is focused more on the fact that the two have been brought back together. The same word—or a form of it—is translated reconciled in verse 10.

This is the point. God's declaration of LEGAL righteousness is a statement of reconciliation. It is a statement that the banished can be returned, that the outsiders may become insiders--that, as Paul says in Ephesians, those who were far have been brought near. Verse 2 says that by Jesus, we have access into grace. The word access can also be translated introduced. The picture is almost that of someone who is introduced or presented to a royal figure for an interview. By the propitiation or atonement, provided by the death and resurrection of Christ, we are brought back into the presence of God. On this verse, Adam Clarke comments: “We have received this access.  It was only through Christ that we could at first approach God; and it is only through him that the privilege is continued to us.  And this access to God, or introduction to the Divine presence, is to be considered as a lasting privilege.  We are not brought to God for the purpose of an interview, but to remain with him; to be his household; and, by faith, to behold his face, and walk in the light of his countenance.” That is justification, the removal of the barrier between us and God. And because the barrier is removed, and we have come in the presence of God, we have access to God's grace, which brings about transformation.

Another metaphor Paul will use later in Romans is that of Adoption. Adoption is a legal act by which a stranger becomes a part of the family. And because they are part of the family, they gain access to both the legal and the personal advantages which come with being part of the family. That brings with it certain privileges and changes. 

That's the idea here. Justification or legal righteousness allows us to come into God's presence and gives us access to God's grace—and that is what allows for and brings about transformation.

We saw before that the phrase “the righteousness of God” can have two different meanings, and there's debate about what Paul means when he uses it in Romans—I think it's a little bit of both. The righteousness of God can mean what God possesses or what God imparts. We recognize that those two things—possessing and imparting—don't always go together in human affairs. Suzanne Schlosberg tells the story of working in a gym. And one of the trainers working in the gym was a very muscular, very athletic man, and she noticed that a lot of people really flocked to have him as a trainer—it seemed their subconscious thought was, 'Someone who's in that good of shape physically will be able to help me get in good shape.' But she says that he really wasn't that good of a trainer, and those he trained didn't do very well. He had a certain quality, but he didn't have the ability that quality to others. 

But the Righteousness of God doesn't just mean that God is, in Himself, righteous—it means that He imparts righteousness to us. That only happens by faith, and I don't want to trivialize it—but in a sense, it's automatic. You can't be around God without either becoming righteous or turning away from Him. A mirror brought to the light must reflect that light and become brighter—or turn away and become in shadow.

That is the explanation for this sequence. Justification or legal righteousness removes the barrier between us and God so that we can come into His presence and therefore receive actual righteousness or transformation. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. 

Several commentators point out the importance of this phrase in verse 1—it is not the peace of God, but peace WITH God. This is not talking about how God can help give us peace in difficult situations, of how God can calm our spirits and give us hope in dark times. That's true, but that's not what Paul is talking about here. This is a political peace--as when we speak of two nations being at peace with each other. It's not an experience or a feeling but a fact about a certain relationship. We were enemies under the wrath of God; now we are at peace, reconciled, at one, with an introduction to the grace wherein we stand. Justification brings peace or reconciliation. And that forms the foundation for transformation.

A lot of people in the world have this objection to Christianity—if God is so loving, if God is so forgiving if God wants to forgive us so much, then why did He bother with the plan of salvation, why does He bother with religion, why doesn't God just say: “I forgive you” and leave it at that. Why does this have to be so complicated? Why do we have to have this propitiation and introduction into His grace? And there are a lot of answers to that. But the point here is that we can't become what God wants us to be without coming to God. C. S. Lewis put it this way: “If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.” (“Good Infection” in Mere Christianity) 

Salvation isn't something like an insurance policy that we get and hold unto until we need it. It is the gateway into a new relationship, a new mode of existence. And Romans 5-8 show us what it is that we have, as those who have been justified and given access to the grace wherein we stand. 

If you're reading in the KJV, verse 1 reads: “We have peace with God.” But there are a few translations or commentators who render it: “Let us have peace with God”--in other words, there are some who make this a command or exhortation rather than a statement of fact. And that follows through with some of the other statements Paul makes in this passage. I'm not going into the debate about these different versions or which is right, but I do want to say that there is an element of truth to both ideas.

If we are Christians, if we have received justification, then we have peace with God; we have all the other privileges and advantages Paul talks about here. But we also have a choice to enter into that peace; to make use of it, to internalize it—to make it ours. It is God's will and God's nature to impart righteousness, and we have everything we need to receive it, but we do have a part to play. And that is a part that Paul will come back to in later chapters—showing why this transformation is necessary, why we can't just rest on our laurels of justification without moving on to the rest of what God has for us.

But even though we do have a part to play, it is not by our own power or on our own merits. Look at verse 2. The thing we stand by as Christians is “this grace.” It is God's grace, God's favor, God's self-giving which allows us to stand in His presence. That is the point of this passage—to show us what it is that we have as a result of our justification; what it is what God's grace has done, is doing, and will do for us. This passage is like an observation room with windows opening on the past, the present, and the future of God's grace and work of transformation.

We now have our foundation. God has provided a means of reconciliation, has made peace with us, has brought us into His presence, giving us justification so that we can be brought into a relationship with him. It is God's gracious gift, and we have access to all that by faith. The rest of the passage builds on that foundation. 

Ephesians 2:9 is a brief statement about salvation by faith. “Not of works, lest any man should boast.” We talked about this before when we talked about Abraham. If Abraham had been justified by works—if his actions had been so good that God had been forced to recognize him and give him justification—then he would have had something to boast about; he would have been a celebrity with prestige, with something to boast about. 

But there is a reason why this is important now. Because the word translated boast in that passage from Ephesians is the same word translated rejoice in verse 2, glory in verse 3, and joy in verse 11. Because we have been saved by faith, we have no room to boast about our own good works. But we do have some things to boast about; we may not be celebrities, but we do have things to celebrate. We are free of the terrible burden of pride, and yet we have something to be proud of. It is not what we have in ourselves, however, but what we have by grace.

We rejoice, exult, celebrate, boast of, and are proud of the hope of the glory of God. The idea of the glory of God is an important one in the New Testament and can mean a lot of different things, but since it is connected here to HOPE, it seems to refer to the glory which God will bestow on His people in the Resurrection. We have something to look forward to; something to hope for; we have Great Expectations.

Many people go through life living one day at a time with no higher goals or dreams than making it through another day. Some people have a few basic long range goals but no more. Some people have huge dreams of something they want to achieve in the future, something they want to do before they die. Some people have dreams to create something that will outlive them; some work big and important enough to continue even after they have passed away. And I think it is very good to have some sort of dream or goal. It helps us prioritize and gives us motivation to face the daily grind of life. But there is a very definite boundary to it. The best and greatest that man can dream of either receiving or achieving is limited. We can only accomplish so much in our life, often only a fraction of what we would like to accomplish, and even if, perhaps, something outlives us it will not last forever. But the Christian has a hope which is focused upon something beyond this world.  And this point will become very important in a moment.

In verse 2 Paul says that we rejoice, exult, celebrate, boast of, are proud of the hope of the glory of God. That sounds reasonable enough. But then verse 3 comes as just a bit of a shock, as just slightly incongruous when Paul says that we rejoice, exult, celebrate, boast of, are proud of tribulations also. To whatever extent the world has hope, they recognize hope as something valuable, something good. Troubles, problems, and tribulations are generally not viewed in that light by the world.

And I think that incongruous note is intentional. I don't know this for sure, but I think as Paul was writing, this probably came into his mind. In verses 1-2, he connected the life of Christians with peace and rejoicing and hope and glory. And it probably struck him how often the actual life of a Christian in the first century would stand in stark contrast to those ideas. Certainly, the life of Paul as a Christian up to this point had been filled with trouble and problems. Probably, for many Roman Christians, the same was true. Even though the full-scale persecution of Christianity had not yet begun, there was still a lot of opposition and danger that Christians had to face. And that along with the ordinary trouble of life which everyone faces, Christian or not. And that is why Paul makes a point of saying: “Not only so, but we glory in tribulations also.” 

Peter told his readers: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you.” (1 Peter 4:12) The point is that troubles and trials aren't something strange or unexpected. If you go intertubing down a river, you are going to get wet. Getting wet may not be the reason you go intertubing. You may only be trying to get down the river quickly. And you might try to stay as dry as you can. But you wouldn't find a little water surprising or think that you were doing something wrong if you did get wet. Living as a Christian is going to mean facing tribulations. Nobody becomes a Christian specifically to experience tribulation, and it is reasonable to try to avoid as much of it as we can. But we shouldn't find it surprising or let it make us think that we're doing something wrong.

But Paul's point is actually more than that. Tribulations are more than simply an occupational hazard of being Christian or a sort of accidental inconvenience. Paul says that we glory, joy, exult in tribulations. He doesn't say enjoy—he doesn't say that we like or have pleasure in tribulation. If you enjoyed a trouble then it wouldn't be a trouble. But there is something in tribulations that make them an occasion of rejoice and exultation. Tribulations can be regarded as something good--not because they are good in themselves, but because of what they can accomplish, because “tribulation worketh patience.” 

There is a joke that circulates in the church based on the verse. The joke is that you should never pray for patience because that is the same as praying for tribulation. But I think that joke misses the point Paul is making here. The more accurate way to say it would be that you OUGHT to pray for tribulation because tribulation worketh patience. Of course, we all face plenty of trouble without praying for it, and the Bible makes it clear that there is no virtue in going out looking for trouble. But Paul's whole point is that patience is the important thing and that tribulation is something to rejoice in or glory in BECAUSE it brings patience.

Patience can be defined as enduring difficult or unpleasant circumstances without deviating from one's course. It is staying in the kitchen despite the heat. It is taking a lickin' and keeping on tickin'. We usually use it to refer to waiting for something—enduring the wait without giving up—but the Bible uses it in a broader sense; it is enduring any sort of trouble. But it is more than merely enduring. G. K. Chesterton said that the trouble with advice to 'grin and bear it' is that if you merely bear it, then you do not grin. Mere endurance does not produce joy or happiness. Patience is the attitude that is able to stand strong in the face of adversity and find strength and victory in the middle of it. Strong defines it as “cheerful (or hopeful) endurance, constancy.” (#5281)

It is one thing to merely endure troubles. But how can you do it cheerfully and hopefully? Because patience worketh experience. There is some division about what experience means here. Most of the commentators I looked at defined it as test or proof or certainty. In other words, as God enables us to face troubles with patience, it shows us in a concrete way the power of God; we see firsthand what God is able to do in us. For God to reveal Himself to our hearts in a church service is a good thing. But when God reveals Himself to our hearts in the midst of tribulation, that increases our confidence both in God and in what God is doing in ourselves.

But some commentators and most of the other translations render it as “character.” As we experience troubles and face them with patience, it creates a deeper character; it develops us as people. We grow stronger and more capable to face life.

And out of this grows hope; the more God does in us, the more we are able to have hope in what God is going to do, both in this life and the next. 

You could spend a whole lesson looking at each of these individual words, but I want to make sure we grasp the thrust of Paul's argument. For the Christian, there is something to celebrate or appreciate even in tribulation because God uses tribulation to help us grow. I said before that there was a contrast between verse 2 with its words about hope and verse 3 with its focus on tribulation. But the point is that tribulation, despite being something different from and far away from hope, does end up being a source of hope. And I think you could argue that it goes the other way as well—that as hope grows, it enables us to be more patient in tribulation so that this becomes a self-feeding and ever-increasing loop.

Muhammad Ali is often considered to have been the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time, with a record of 56 wins to 5 losses. And this is what he said about the training he went through to become a boxer. “I hated every minute of training, but I said: 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'” And when I read that, it reminded me of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 9:25. “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.” If men are willing to endure and even seek out tribulation because of their hope of something as fleeting as fame, we as Christians ought to be able to endure it because our hope is not of something in this world but the hope of the glory of God—we have a hope is anchored in something beyond this world.

But hope is a tricky thing. Many people have hope in things that never materialize. To return to the athletic metaphor, many people train in order to achieve something athletics and yet are never able to actually achieve it. Many run in a race, but only one receives the prize. Hope and confidence are important, but they cannot actually guarantee victory. But the hope that a Christian has “maketh not ashamed.” It does not disappoint; it does not fail; it does not bring disgrace or dishonor. 

How can this hope be so certain? How can we face tribulation and know for sure that patience will come out of it? How can we cheerfully endure trouble? And how do we have confidence that character will come out of it? In other words, what Paul is picturing here is something almost like a machine; a machine that takes in the raw material of tribulation and runs it through a wheel of patience and character and hope, working to produce a final product. But a machine has to have fuel. If we are to rejoice in tribulation, we must know for sure that the machine is going to run. There has to be some other component at work here.

And that is the second half of verse 5: “Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” The patience, experience, and hope of which Paul speaks here are not the result of human determination and willpower. They are the result of the work of the Holy Spirit who is given to the Christian and who pours out the love of God into our hearts. It isn't clear whether “the love of God” means God's love for us or our love for God, but it doesn't really matter since those two things are so closely connected; our love for God is directly based on and results from God's love for us. But the point is that it is God--at work in our hearts through the medium of the Holy Spirit--and love--the blazing power of God--which fuels this process of patience, experience, and hope. 

How can we be sure that this will work? “But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.” (1 Peter 4:13) “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.” (Hebrews 5:8-9) Jesus has already been through this process of suffering, patience, character, and hope. Therefore he can help us.

As part of the peace, the reconciliation, the new relationship we have with God, we have God at work in our hearts through the medium of the Holy Spirit. Just as because we have peace with God, we rejoice, boast, exult in the hope of the glory of God, so because we have the Holy Spirit, we have this process of patience, character, and hope. Justification or initial salvation is a foundation on which other things are built. Again we go back to the structure of Romans--Justification, then transformation.

Earlier, I brought up the question, why is justification first? It would make more sense for actual righteousness to come first and then legal righteousness. Partly, as we already saw, this is because justification has to exist first as the foundation of transformation. But there another part is this--justification is an event; transformation is a process. It involves specific events, but it is a continual process that goes on from initial salvation until the Resurrection—because it is something that is capable of change and degrees. In a strict sense, there are no degrees of justification. You can't be partially justified; you either are justified or you are not. You are either guilty or not guilty. And yes, there are a few situations in which that wouldn't be true, but generally speaking, and especially in the context of spiritual things, you cannot be half justified; you either are completely justified or completely guilty.

But transformation is a process. If you want, you can put it this way: it is like biological life. There is a point where a person is conceived, where something comes into existence that did not exist before. But from that moment until the day it dies, that person will be continually changing. In spiritual life, there is the moment of regeneration, where God first puts His Spirit into the heart, but from that moment, there is a continual process of transformation that goes on until the Resurrection and perhaps even beyond.

Then, with verse 6, we have what feels almost like an abrupt break. I said before that Romans 5 is like an observation room, with windows looking out on the past, the present, and the future. So we see how God is at work in the present, giving us patience in the midst of our trials; we see in the future the hope of the glory of God. But here we are looking to the past, to what God did for us in the past, specifically that God gave the life of His son to save us. This is the message of the gospel; this is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And the emphasis here is on the fact that we were unable to help ourselves and unworthy of being helped by anyone else.

There is an interesting progression here. In verse 6, Paul refers to us as being “without strength”--weak, unable to help ourselves. Then, at the end of verse 6, Paul calls us “ungodly”--those who do not recognize or worship God. Then, in verse 8, he calls us “sinners,” morally corrupt and degraded. And finally, in verse 10, as “enemies” of God—not merely away from God but actively working against Him. These terms together give us a picture of the state of man on his own, what man is without God's intervention—and they all point us back to the picture of sinful humanity which Paul painted in the first three chapters of Romans. This is the unrighteousness and ungodliness of man against which the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven.

This passage brings up a slightly morbid but deeply thought-provoking question. Who would you be willing to die for? Who is there that you would be willing to sacrifice your life for? Putting aside all considerations of affection or duty, who is there that you would look at and think, on the basis of their character, you would be willing to step in front of a bullet for? Thinking not of someone who is weary or tired of life but of someone strong and in the prime of life—who would they be willing to give up that life for? 

Paul says you would not do it for a just man; a just man seems to mean someone who is honest and respectable; someone who pays their bills and keeps their promises; a normal, good person. That kind of basic, normal goodness is not enough to inspire sacrificial devotion. You are not going to look at a normal, respectable person and be willing to die for them.

But you might be willing to do it for a good man—someone who goes above and beyond, someone who is truly unusually, remarkably good; saintly. A good man may also have the idea of benevolence; not merely an honest man who does no harm to others, but someone who goes out of their way to help others; someone who gives of themselves—they are the kind that might inspire someone to die for them. But even that isn't common, and it isn't likely.

There are a lot of stories of people being willing to sacrifice themselves for their family or for their friends, or for their country. But for someone to sacrifice their life for another human being solely on the basis of that person's merit—it has to be a very unusual degree of merit to inspire that. Life is a precious commodity, and one people will not part with easily.

And yet Christ was willing to lay down His life for us—when we were without strength, ungodly, sinners, and enemies of God.

A couple years ago, I saw a post on Facebook making fun of the Easter story and of the idea of Jesus dying for us. The argument was that it was meaningless to say that Jesus gave up His life for us because He came back to life a few days later. It made a statement to this effect that Jesus didn't give up His life; He just gave up the weekend.

But the fact is that even if that were the full truth, it would still be something remarkable. There are many people in this world who won't even go a mile out of their way to help a stranger or, sometimes, even a friend. For someone to willingly give of their time to help their enemies, to help those from whom they can gain nothing—that is something remarkable by human standards. Still more when that help involves pain and humiliation as it did for Jesus. Even getting professing Christians to give of themselves to help other Christians can be a struggle. As Paul says in Philippians, the general human attitude is for men to seek their own and not naturally to care for others. In other words, putting aside for a moment the whole question of dying, it is somewhat unusual for people to give up anything in order to help others. For scarcely for a righteous man will one take any effort: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to experience some inconveniences; but God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ gave us His time and attention. For Christ merely to come to this earth at all, in order to serve His enemies, would have been a monument of love, even if it hadn't ended with His death.

But in relation to His death, this is the point we have to remember.  Jesus took up his life in order to lay it down. We are all born into this world without our will, and we are all going to die. We all belong to this cycle of life and death; it's part of being human. Jesus willingly entered into this cycle. Jesus didn't merely make the decision to be willing to die on Calvary on Good Friday. He chose to be a dying person, to enter into this world of life and death and take on a nature where death was possible. He didn't merely experience pain and humiliation—He freely and voluntarily took on a nature that was capable of experiencing pain and humiliation—solely in order to experience pain and humiliation for us. Jesus' whole life was in order to die.

Earlier I used the example of an athlete who willingly suffers all the pain and inconvenience of training and competition in order to win fame and recognition. Of course, they do all that with the realization that they may lose. That's just part of playing the game. But who would go through all that training and pain specifically and solely for the purpose of losing? But that is what Jesus did. That is why His death is more significant than the death of any other martyr or hero—because His death was truly voluntary. And therefore, it commendeth or exhibits the love of God because that is what God was willing to do for our sake.

Now, that's obviously important on its own. This is a good passage just to talk about the Gospel, about what God has done for us. And it's important for Romans because this fact that we were without strength, we were enemies of God, shows that we could do nothing to save ourselves. That is why salvation is by faith. This is a restatement of the message of Romans 3-4. We could not save ourselves, but God has provided salvation for us. That is why we must look to God in faith. In fact, in light of what God has done for us, trying to find salvation through our own good works is almost insulting. It is, at best, in bad taste. It is ignoring the sacrifice which Christ made and trying to replace it with something of our own devising. It is thinking that our own efforts can somehow equal the sacrifice of Christ.

But that is all looking back at the first four chapters of Romans; it is all looking at the relation between the death of Christ and justification. But I do think there is a connection between all this and the idea of transformation. And the connection is this: God did provide the plan of salvation because we were worthy of salvation. Justification does not come because we deserve justification. And by the same token, transformation does not come because we deserve it or because we are worthy of it. A lot of time in our Christian life, it is easy to be discouraged because we are not making as much progress as we should. And it is important not to lag behind God's will. But we have to remember that God doesn't work in our life because we deserve His help. Transformation, though it does involve our own effort, is not based on or grounded on our own efforts any more than justification is. If we are not living up to what we should be, that is a problem, but it doesn't change the fact that the ground of our hope which is the blood of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit.

One of the commentaries I read used this illustration. They told the story of a family that adopted a boy—he had been just a homeless waif, living on the streets, but he was adopted and brought into this family. A few years after they adopted him, he got sick and required some very extensive medical care in order to treat his sickness. And writer put it this way--if the family was willing to take him in and give him a place when he was a stranger and had no relation to them, then of course, they would be willing to help him now that he has become a loved and accepted part of their family. 

Just so, if Christ was willing to lay down His life for us when we were His enemies, then He isn't going to be too quick to give up on us now that we have become His people. If you want to put it that way, God now has an investment in us. “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6) God laid the foundation for our life—both in creation and in death of Christ by Whom we have now received the atonement. And God has begun to work in us with justification. And therefore, He will continue to work in us until He has brought that work to completion if we will only let Him.

We have been speaking of the idea of someone being willing to die for someone else. One of the most famous fictional accounts of such a sacrifice is in Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities, which is set during the events of the French Revolution. During the course of the story, one of the main characters, Philip Darney, is accused of crimes against the revolution. The revolution, being somewhat trigger-happy, sentences him to be beheaded at the guillotine. But Darney's friend, Sydney Carton, determines to save his life, and so he goes to the prison where Darney is being held and switches places with him and is able to fool the official into thinking that he is the condemned man. And so he goesto the guillotine, and Darney goes free.

It is a very heroic and inspiring moment. But that's the end of the book; certainly it's the end of the story so far as Sydney Carton was concerned. His final words are: “It is a far better thing that I do than that I have ever done.” But it is also the last thing he ever did. If Darney and his family had gotten into more trouble as they tried to escape France, Carton could have done nothing more to help them. He gave up his life, and he had nothing more to give.

And that is where any such story of human sacrifice differs so strongly from what Christ has done for us. I said earlier that there are some who think that Jesus' resurrection takes away from the sacrifice of His death—that His death means less because it wasn't permanent. And you could argue that as a point of literature if this were merely a story. But because this is a reality, because it is part of a plan, we understand that the Resurrection is vitally important to that plan. Look at the end of verse 10: “Being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” Jesus died for us. But He is still alive, and therefore He lives for us. He is still operative in this world, and His life is our life. It is the life of the living Christ which, through the medium of the Holy Spirit, is operative within the heart of a Christian, allowing the whole Christian life to be possible. And this is a point to which we will come back to later in Romans, but the point to remember for the moment is merely the fact that Jesus is still alive, and we live through him.

This, then, is the message of Romans 5-8. God did not do the bare minimum for us. He did not merely save us from the worst of sin or give us a milder sentence for our crimes. He has put in motion a process which, if we will let it, will change us so that we are filled with the glory of God, saved by His life.