The Benefits Of Salvation

The Personal Results of Justification
(Romans 5:1-11)

So far in his letter to the Romans Paul has shown that all human beings have sinned, but that God has made a way for us to be forgiven through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. In this passage he shows the practical benefits that come to those who believe in Jesus and accept what he has done for them. Rob Yule preached this sermon on salvation at Greyfriars’ Classical Service on 13 May 2007.

So far in his argument in the letter to the Romans Paul has demonstrated that all people have sinned — both Jews and Gentiles — and fallen short of the glory which God intended as their destiny. None of us can become right with God by our own efforts. But, seeing our plight, God has revealed his solution. Through the death of his Son Jesus Christ on the cross, God has judged sin, so that we can be justly acquitted and forgiven. Accepting what God has done for us is faith — trusting Jesus Christ for forgiveness and salvation.

The opening word ‘therefore’ connects what has gone before with the consequences that follow. ‘Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have….’ (5:1). Since God has made us right with himself, a number of consequences follow. Paul lists five results of justification, five benefits of our salvation:

1. Peace with God (5:1)

Many people today peace view peace in individualistic terms — it is the absence of interruption, or what Francis Schaeffer called ‘the pursuit of personal peace and affluence’.

But peace in the Bible is relational: it is the restoration of a right relationship with God. You can only have inner harmony when your guilt before God is removed. Guilt expresses itself in doubt, insecurity, furtiveness, even hostility towards God. Not until you have experienced salvation, been justified by faith, can you experience true inner peace, the quiet of a conscience that is no longer disturbed by guilt.

‘Peace with God’ was a favourite emphasis of evangelist Billy Graham. It is the inestimable benefit of knowing that our sins are forgiven.

2. Access to God (5:2a)

The picture here is of a person being invited into the presence of someone of high social standing — like access to a royal person. We should never take access to God lightly. It is not to be taken for granted. By faith in Jesus Christ you and I are given an audience with the King of the universe!

Approach to God in the Jerusalem temple was carefully regulated because of God’s holiness. Gentiles were forbidden, on pain of death, to go beyond the outer court, the Court of the Gentiles. Jewish women were not allowed further than the Court of Women. Men had access to the Court of Israel. Only the priests could enter the Court of Priests. And only the High Priest, on the Day of Atonement, could enter the Holy of Holies.

When Jesus died the heavy curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place in the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51). Through the death of Jesus we are given access to God’s very presence. Our sins are forgiven. Now God has an open door policy to those who believe.

3. Hope in God (5:2b-4)

Because of what Jesus Christ has done Christians have a distinctive, hope-filled attitude to circumstances. Indeed, this attitude is not mere hope. It is a hope filled with joy, or a joy-filled hope. This quality has two aspects: joy is its expression in the present; hope its confidence in the future.

G. K. Chesterton says joy was the currency of the early Christians. It was a powerful evangelising characteristic, in a society marked by fatalism and despair.

It is the hope of sharing God’s future glory (more of this in chapter 8) that gives Christians joy in their present sufferings. Christians have a distinctive attitude to suffering. Hope makes us cheerful in face of persecution from a hostile world.

Paul sees suffering as a preparation for future glory. His argument goes like this:

• Suffering (persecution or tribulation) trains us to endure…

• Endurance or perseverance builds character (just as fire and water harden and temper steel)…

• Character strengthens hope or tenacity (helping us to hang in there and not give up)…

• Hope seeks God’s glory…

• Glory is our ultimate destiny (a share in God’s life and splendour)

Suffering without meaning or purpose crushes the spirit, destroys character, produces disillusionment and bitterness. But suffering with purpose has meaning.

There is something challenging, powerful, about the character of a person who has suffered. Soviet Christians used to pray, before the fall of Communism, for the complacent Christians of the West. Paul’s chief point is that, like Christ, the Christian must first suffer, and then enter into glory (Luke 24:26).

4. Love of God (5:5-8)

Christian assurance is based on the love of God. God’s love is both subjective and objective, something we experience and a fact of history:

(a) Love is based on God’s character: the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (5:5)

As a result the righteous status conferred on us as believers in Christ who have been acquitted and forgiven, God can draw near and indwell us by his Spirit, pouring his divine love into our hearts. Believers in Jesus become ‘participants of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4, NRSV). God’s nature is love, for ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8, 16).

(b) Love is based on God’s conduct: the incarnation of Jesus Christ (5:6, 8)

God proves his love for us by the fact that he sent Christ to die for us when we were mere sinners, with little in us to attract him. We know the love of God, says John Stott, ‘rationally as we contemplate the cross…, and intuitively as the Spirit floods our hearts.’ (Men Made New, p. 22).

We can understand God’s love best if we think of the three different kinds of love:

Eros (attraction) is love for the more attractive: aspiration after beauty, being drawn to higher or nobler qualities.

Philia (friendship) is love between equals.

Agape (selfless or sacrificial love) is love for the less attractive and the unlovely, beautifully expressed in Samuel Crossman’s 17th century hymn ‘My Song is Love Unknown’:

‘love to the loveless shown
that they might lovely be.’

This is the love that God has shown for us in Christ.

5. Reconciliation with God (5:10-11)

God has refused to let estrangement and enmity be the last word in humanity’s relationship with himself. God has taken the initiative to restore the broken relationship and end estrangement — to put and end to enmity and create fellowship.

This puts us under the obligation, in turn, to seek to overcome estrangement wherever we find it. Hence Christians should be reconcilers and peacemakers in conflict situations. Our experience of reconciliation becomes in turn an outreaching, missionary motivation, reaching out to others. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:18, ‘God reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.’

Paul’s whole desire in this passage is to demonstrate that justification is not just a past accomplishment; it is a present reality and a future hope (5:9-10). Just as the death of Jesus achieved our justification, the life of Jesus will achieve our glorification. ‘The risen life of Christ is going to complete in heaven what the death of Christ began on earth’ (John Stott, Men Made New, p. 19).

An earnest Salvation Army girl once asked Handley Moule, the saintly Cambridge evangelical scholar and later Bishop of Durham, ‘Are you saved?’ He replied, gently, ‘I have been saved. I am being saved. I will be saved.’

Rob Yule, 13 May 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church