Romans 5 – 6
“Therefore since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” What a great start to the reading this morning! I mean think about it, you have faith that this guy who walked the earth some 2000 years ago is the son of God and represents the redemptive sacrifice for all our sins. Today people continue to try to debunk this story without success. So faith by people who have seen and heard firsthand accounts of Jesus is much easier than today. But once you experience the love God fills in you when you accept this story, there is no denying it.
Verse 3-5 touch on the suffering of Christians:
3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 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.
During the time Paul was writing this, Christians were being jailed, tortured and even killed for their beliefs. While that happens in a few places around the world, for the most part our “suffering” is the occasional ridicule from non-believing friends. My friend David often posts some comment when I “Facebook” pictures from church like “drinking the Kool-Aid.” (search the Johnstown massacre for the reference, it’s awful) But I have never been jailed, beaten or for that matter know of anyone who has endured any suffering for Christ like this.
Sure we suffer in life, but I believe our aches, pains, illnesses, financial difficulties and the sort are all just a result of life in a non-perfect world. Sure God may use our calamities for His glory, but the suffering here, I believe, is Paul talking about more direct suffering from our faith than life. We may apply it to other suffering, but in all honesty most of my suffering has been at my own hand! All my financial ills were compounded by the economy, but if I had followed God’s basic financial principles turns in the economic landscape would have a less dramatic effect. My aches and pains are all results of something I did wrong, from not tuning my suspension, to running the wrong “ratios”, to going into a corner too “hot”. Non has been because of my faith in Jesus, but all have strengthen my faith.
Chapter 6 starts with a great question and answer:
1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
This is something I struggled with for 10 years before starting our family. My approach during those times was I could sin since grace abounds. Jesus died for ALL my sins therefore it didn’t matter what I did not under that umbrella of salvation. Verse 15 answered my assertion:
What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
I wish this would have sunk at 18 like I has at 50! Just because we are given the “E-Ticket” to heaven, doesn’t justify us being hell on earth. No Paul is clear that our salvation should have us desiring to do the right thing, not allowing us to do wrong. I had a gnawing desire to do the right thing throughout my life which eventually took control when mama’s was pregnant with Vern. We started to terminate the pregnancy, but changed our minds at the last second and decided to defy logic of the time and start a family.
Paul ends in verse 23 with:
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
When you think about that it’s amazing. See we enter this world destine to die from our sins, that was forced upon us from Adam. Yet God sent Jesus as the perfect sacrifice for everyone’s sin, the only thing we must do is accept Jesus in our hearts, believe He is who he said and confess our sins by symbolically placing our hands on Jesus’ head and transferring our sins. (You need to go to the OT and look at how sin was transferred to the lamb to really understand this reference, Lev 1:4). So where we are burdened by sin at birth, our accepting the gift releases us. All we have to do is act!