Yet Another Fool: Love Before All

Romans 5:5-11

Preached 3/28/2021 (previous)

INTRODUCTION

This is my third and final message from Romans 5:1 through 11. Romans is, of course, Paul’s master treatise on the gospel. Remember that in the previous four chapters Paul discussed three subjects:

1. our need for salvation from God’s wrath, showing that all people are without excuse and in need of salvation,

2. God’s provision of salvation through the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God to make propitiation for us, completely absorbing God’s wrath against us in his own body,

3. the means by which we appropriate God’s salvation for ourselves, which is through faith. Paul shows that this is also universal: everybody saved throughout history was saved through faith.

After chapter four, Paul then switches his perspective. Starting at the beginning of chapter five, he now speaks to Christians who have already received Christ and have been saved. We see this by the words at the beginning of verse one:

Romans 5:1a Therefore, since we have been justified by faith…

This section starts at the point of salvation, and Paul now reveals the other side of salvation: what do you get when you receive God’s gift of salvation? And he does not disappoint us. Now the results are not “a million dollars, a dream home on the beach, a new sports car and whatever is behind the curtain Carol Merril is standing in front of”. Instead there is something much more substantial, something that cannot be purchased with money or our works, and also something that cannot be lost or stolen. Reading on, we see three big words: Peace, Hope and Love.

In the previous two messages we spoke of Peace and Hope and today we will talk about the final part of the trilogy. But it should be pointed out that none of these is what the world thinks of when we say those words. The concept of peace is not the absence of noise or of worry, but the end of a very real war – which we were the loser of:

Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ

As a Christian, we can experience the peace of God, but first we need peace with God. In this section Paul will remind us that we are sinners. In verse 10 he says we were enemies of God, and in verse 9 he says that we needed to be saved from God’s righteous anger, or wrath. Peace with God is also described here as being saved from his wrath (v9) and reconciled with Him (v 10, 11). One of the hardest concepts in the gospel for people to accept, probably even more than their own sinfulness, is that they have a natural enmity toward God. In fact, people emphatically deny this. But generally the God that people think that they love is a creation in their own mind – an extension of their own ego. Of course we would love that kind of God – because it is merely self-love. But the holy and righteous Creator of the universe, the absolutely just and perfect Judge – well, we pretend He doesn’t exist, and our sinful hearts reject that God and substitute a supreme Santa Claus in the sky who indulges us and doesn’t mind our discretions. But God’s word assures us that the war was real. In Ephesians we are told that Christians were previously children of wrath. But the good news is that through the blood of Christ we can be justified before God, and if we have been justified then we have peace with God. And in that peace, the grace that saved us now is the firm and safe place in which we stand.

After declaring our peace with God, Paul then talks about hope. Again, this is not the world’s concept of hope, where we make a wish and cross our fingers that we get it. The biblical concept of hope is one of assurance. Here in Romans 5 this hope comes as the results of the grace in which we stand now that we have peace with God. And as the previous sermon pointed out, our hope is two-fold. First we have an assured future. Look at verse two:

Romans 5:2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

This concept of eternal life is not just a longer life like the current one, nor is it just a magnified dead end of selfish pleasure. No! We have the “hope of the glory of God”. As John says in his first epistle, we will not only see his glory and live unashamed in his presence – we will be changed to be like Him. Think about that. This is not something that we can just in our own strength. We will be like Him because “we shall see Him as He is.” That is indeed a wonderful hope. And in that HOPE Paul says we rejoice! And remember that the word for rejoice means to exult, or even to boast of our situation. Back at the end of chapter three we read that our salvation meant that nobody could boast before God about ourselves. But here we will be correct to be boasting to others about our hope in God! (Amen?)

But this hope is not just “pie in the sky”, which brings us to the second point. We can rejoice or boast about things that nobody else can. Paul says that we even have hope in our present sufferings!

Romans 5:3-4 ³ Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

It is hard to find the good in our current tribulations, pain, anguish, sickness, grief, and difficulties in this life. This hope gives us a new perspective on all of that. Note: It does not say that we have the hope of avoiding trouble in this life. But it does assure us that anything that God allows into his childrens’ lives has the purpose of making us more like Him. No suffering is enjoyable for its own sake - the Greek word translated suffering is one that is used of squeezing grapes to get the juice or threshing grain to separate the seeds from the chaff. But we have hope because we know that anything that buffets us here has a divine and benevolent purpose. Therefore we have hope in our sufferings. As Paul concludes near the end of chapter eight or Romans, all who are called according to his purpose have the assurance that “all things work together for good” for them.

Now that second point (the hope that we have while we are suffering) is a hard one to lay hold of. How can we grab onto that hope? Of course the main answer is that we do it by faith. As the writer of the book of Hebrews put it in the great faith chapter:

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

But how can we have that conviction when we can’t see it? How is this different from “wishful thinking”? Verse five has the answer. We are given the One that Jesus referred to as “the comforter”. And Paul’s description of this should take our breath away, so let’s get into our passage for today:

I. Love Given (v 5)

Romans 5:5 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.

The wonderful thing about our hope is that we don’t have to maintain it based on wishes and sheer willpower. As believers we are all given a supernatural source of assurance. It is not just belief or faith that is granted to us by God - it is love. And that love is not given sparingly. It is not trickled into us. It is not given in installments. It is not put just outside our reach to get us to stumble forward. God is not stingy. Look at what Paul says. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts.” The word pour here is used by Jesus when describing a wineskin bursting because it is too full. R. Kent Hughes put it this way: “The idea in the Greek is that God’s love has been and continues to be poured out within our hearts. … Our hearts have been filled to overflowing with divine affection. The agent of this is the Holy Spirit, who personally represents God’s love in our hearts.” [i]

Two important lessons about our salvation come from this passage. First, we see that love comes before everything else. In other words, the first link of the chain of things that led to our redemption is none other than God’s love. As Jesus said to Nicodemus in the familiar verse John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Without God’s love at the beginning there would be no gospel, no good news, no plan of salvation. We would be condemned, with no hope. William Reed Newell was extremely biblical with his lyrics in the wonderful hymn “At Calvary”. The final verse of the song bursts forth with jubilation and praise:

Oh, the love that drew salvation’s plan!
Oh, the grace that brought it down to man!
Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span at Calvary!

John 3:16 leads us into the second conclusion from this passage: our salvation is a work of the entire godhead. All three persons of the trinity are intimately involved with our salvation.

There are some who have the misconception that God the Father is the mean, unforgiving, thundering Old Testament God hates us and that his Son came up with the plan to placate his Father because He loved us. This greatly misrepresents and dishonors our God. And it is completely unbiblical. Nobody who has actually read the Old Testament could possibly come to that conclusion. If we were to read just one chapter, we could go to Psalm 136, whose every verse ends with an expression of praise to God because “his loving-kindness is everlasting.” But God is not divided in his love for us. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit all acted in concert, in love, to redeem us:

God the Father loved us. Paul writes in this passage that “God shows his love toward us”, that we were “reconciled to God”, and that we “rejoice in God”. In his love He sent his Son to save us from our sins and redeem us for himself.

Likewise, God the Son also loves us. Paul wrote to the Ephesians that “… Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Eph 5:2) Then He rose from the dead and promises us: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:3) In our passage here Paul writes that “we have peace through our Lord Jesus Christ”, that “Christ died for us”, and that we rejoice in God through Christ! And we know from scripture that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to indwell us as believers.

We read in the gospel of John that Jesus told his disciples that He would send us the Holy Spirit. Jesus told them that the Spirit would teach them and bring Jesus’ words to remembrance for them. He said that the Spirit would testify in their hearts about Jesus and that He would bring comfort to them. Paul wrote to the Ephesians that “… when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.” In other words, the Father made the plan of salvation, the Son paid for our salvation, and the Holy Spirit keeps us saved.

So in this verse Paul is not so much saying that the Holy Spirit pours out love feelings into us but that we are given a strong sense of the benevolent purpose God has in his love for his children. Ligon Duncan writes the following about this ministry of the Holy Spirit: “The one thing that I want you to see in that glorious passage, which is worth fifty sermons, is just this point: that the Holy Spirit is given to do what? To root us and ground us in the apprehension of God’s love for us. He is the agent that God implants in our hearts that we might experience and know the love, which God has for us in Jesus Christ. Jim Phillips puts it this way: “The Holy Spirit is the executor of the Godhead. It is He who effectually applies the work of Christ to individual hearts, making it real to them. Without the Holy Spirit salvation remains merely something to hear about, never to experience. It is He alone who makes it ours.”” <![if !supportFootnotes]>[ii]<![endif]> This ministry is described beautifully by Paul in Ephesians:

Ephesians 3:14-19 ¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

II. Love Proven (vv 6-8)

This brings us to our second point. I remember a time long ago when someone who had been a friend of mine decided to abandon his family, his wife, and even his faith. I heard secondhand that while dividing up their household during the divorce that he said to his wife “I still love you”, before leaving her for another, much younger woman. When I heard that it made me so angry that I had trouble keeping my composure for a few days. I thought – “what a crock!” What good is love that does not result in loving action? It’s completely worthless. But the beautiful plan of our salvation is a proof of the love that God has for us. It is a love that produces the highest, most unthinkable generosity and sacrifice. Look at the next three verses:

Romans 5:6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Jesus is the one who originally said the well known phrase:

John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

We have all heard of times when people have done exactly this. Soldiers sometimes give their lives for the safety of the people of their country. Firefighters and Police have put themselves in harms way for their fellow citizens. Parents will jump in front of a moving car to push their child to safety. But soldiers and police and parents would prefer to go home at the end of the day. Self-sacrifice is rare – the ultimate expression of love. To sacrifice one’s own life, there must be a calculation in their minds where they put the life of the other person in a higher place than their own. It is a giving of worth to the other person. This goes against our pride and all of our strong instinct for self-preservation, and is not something that happens every day. Paul says it this way:

Romans 5:7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--

This statement is a bit hard to follow but one commentator puts it this way: it is rare that someone would die for another person who seems to be an upright individual – someone who seems virtuous. But we might be more likely to be willing to give our life for a person who has been good to us and therefore that we like or cherish. That would indeed be a proof of love. But God’s love goes farther than that, as we read in verse eight:

Romans 5:8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

In other words, when we were sinning against God and were enemies of Him, thumbing our noses at his authority and his holiness, that was when He sent his Son and when his Son gave his life – for us! In verse 10 Paul makes this point explicitly when he says that “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” Think about that – while we were enemies. That is the ultimate proof of love.

Going back to verse six three important points are revealed:

First, we see that not only were we enemies of God when Christ died for us, but we were helpless. The Greek word translated as weak in this verse is the word asthenēs which means impotent, weak, powerless, sick, or infirm. The point is that we were completely unable to save ourselves. Because of our sin we had a price to pay that was way beyond our ability. We were completely doomed to eternal damnation unless someone else paid the price of our redemption.

Second, this was according to God’s specific plan. At the right time or similar phrases appear in several places. For instance we read in Galatians: “… we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (Gal 4:3-5) This was not a haphazard plan thrown together at the last minute. This was a plan designed from all eternity. In Ephesians this plan is described as “… his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time…” (Eph 1:9b-10a)

Third, the people that Christ died for were the ungodly. The word doesn’t really mean unlike God, but instead gives the idea of being in a state of fierce opposition to Him. <![if !supportFootnotes]>[iii]<![endif]> We did not deserve to have this done for us. God had absolutely no obligation, moral or judicial, to do anything but punish us for our sins. The only thing left that can explain what He did for us is his love for us. In fact, Paul uses four different terms in these verses to describe us which become more and more pointed. In verse six he says that we are powerless and ungodly. In verse eight he explicitly calls us sinners. Then in verse ten he calls us enemies.

So in this verse we learn that God demonstrated his great love by making a specific plan to save those who hated and spurned Him because He loved them and saw that they could not do anything to save themselves.

And this is the love that the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts to give us hope. Love came before all.

Some people might reply at this point “but I don’t feel God’s love most of the time.” To that I would make two suggestions (which I make first to myself as I have more than once found myself in that predicament, as all Christians have):

1. First of all I don’t think that this is a feeling so much as a conviction of its truth that guards our hearts. Remember Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians that they would “have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge…” This is primarily something that we can know about. Our feelings are fleeting, and therefore not of much use in spiritual things. This is strength to comprehend something that is beyond our natural ability take in because it is so huge and mind-boggling. Hebrews 11:6 tells us that God-pleasing faith does not just consist of believing that He exists (a belief that the devil also has) but the belief that “he rewards those who seek him.” In other words, the Holy Spirit gives us the conviction that God has our well-being at heart and that his promises are worth relying upon. The conviction that God is good and beneficent. That is the kind of conviction the Holy Spirit gives us, and it keeps us in Him until the day of our glorification and entrance into eternal glory.

2. Secondly, the bible warns Christians against quenching the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19) and against grieving the Spirit (Eph 4:30). These passages don’t mean that we cause the Holy Spirit to leave us. In fact Paul makes that clear in Eph 4:30 (“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”) If you are a believer the Spirit is the seal of your inheritance. He does not leave us. But if we sin, we make his voice harder to hear and damage our peace and hope. In the verses surrounding the latter warning Paul speaks of anger, stealing, corrupt speech, bitterness, wrath, clamor, and malice. If we do these things we are disobeying the leadership of God’s Spirit. It is like sticking our fingers in our ears and saying “la la la la I can’t hear you!” Of course if we resist the Spirit’s speaking to our hearts it follows that we are depriving ourselves of the comfort that we get from his voice. If we lack peace it may be God’s way of calling us to listen again to and obey that still small voice of his Spirit and then we will open ourselves again to experience the love of God in a mighty way. Remember that the verb in verse 5 implies a continual pouring of the love of God into our hearts, so it follows that we need to stay connected to the Spirit to experience that love.

III. Love Assures (vv 9-11)

Now we come to our final point from this passage. They tell us that God’s love gives us assurance of our salvation.

Romans 5:9-11 ⁹ Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. ¹⁰ For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. ¹¹ More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

The argument that Paul uses here is called “arguing from the greater to the lesser”. Paul uses this kind of argument in Romans 8:32 when he argues “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” In other words, if God went through all of that trouble to get us saved, don’t you think we can rely on Him for the little things? The argument here is similar.

He is saying “if God did the impossible thing of being “just and the justifier” of the ungodly (i.e. you), doesn’t it make sense that He loves you and will honor his own promises?

But there is another point here. Back in the fourth chapter of Romans Paul wrote that Jesus was “delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.” The death of Jesus on the cross may be the payment for our sins, but it is not the source of our hope. The proof of our justification lies in his resurrection. Think about it: how many religious leaders throughout history have claimed to have the secret of eternal life? Some deny that sin exists. Some make up a fuzzy God that does their bidding and who ultimately has no moral compass. But one person, Jesus, who had never sinned, gave His life in atonement for our sin and died. Then, in a moment unique in the history of the world, he rose from the dead. Anybody could claim to be dying for your sins. If you trusted in such a person, you would have only a worldly, wishing it were true, type of hope. But by rising from the dead AFTER paying for our sins He proved that the payment had been completed. On the cross he said “it is finished” and then gave up his life. But three days later he rose and PROVED that it was finished. Therefore we say with Paul that while we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, MUCH MORE, now that we are reconciled, we shall be saved by his LIFE! There are several reasons that this gives us hope:

Rising again proves that the price was paid
Being alive means that He is there to make intercession for us eternally
Being alive means that He is returning to bring us to be with Him forever.

Therefore we rejoice in Him.

Conclusion:

To finish I want to return to the theme of this sermon – “love is before all”. To complete our study I want to draw your attention to the structure of these 11 verses. If you look closely you will see that the structure of the thoughts here is mostly chiastic. In other words, these verses form what bible scholars refer to as a chiasm. But what is a chiasm?

A chiasm is a literary device in which a sequence of ideas is presented and then repeated in reverse order. The result is a “mirror” effect as the ideas are “reflected” back in a passage. Each idea is connected to its “reflection” by a repeated word, often in a related form. The term chiasm comes from the Greek letter chi, which looks like our letter X.<![if !supportFootnotes]>[iv]<![endif]>

The general teaching I have read about chiasms is that the central point of the chiasm is also the central point of the thoughts in the text. The outer parts lead to the key idea in the middle. Now look at the verses again:

In the outer ring, we see the thought that is represented by the word “Peace”. In verse one we read that because of our justification we have peace with God. Down in verses 9-11 we are reminded that we are justified and in all three verses we read different descriptions of peace with God: (v9) saved from God’s wrath, (v 10 & 11) reconciled to God.

The next layer in talks about our rejoicing in the hope that we have. We reviewed in the introduction how verses 2-4 talk about how we rejoice, or boast, about our eternal and present day hope. In verses 9 and 10 we read about our assurance that we will be saved, and we read that this causes us to rejoice.

That leaves love as the central, and key thought. God’s love gives us hope and leaves us rejoicing.

I want to finish with a summary given by John Stott about the significance of this section:

We should be the most positive people in the world. We cannot mooch round the place with a dropping, hang-dog expression. We cannot drag our way through life, moaning and groaning. We cannot always be looking on the dark side of everything, as negative prophets of doom. No, we “exult in God.” Then every part of our live becomes suffused with glory. Christian worship becomes a joyful celebration of God and Christian living a joyful service of God. So come, let us exult in God together! <![if !supportFootnotes]>[v]<![endif]>