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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Chapter 5 The
first word we see here in chapter 5 is the word “therefore”. This
means, that in light of all that has been said, I (Paul) now have this to
tell you. The thought that
Paul expresses here is, now that we have been justified by faith, we have
peace with God. Remember the
process of atonement. Atonement
is the process by which we are made to be friends of God.
We are no longer enemies. Another
way to say it, is that we have been “reconciled” to God.
Once we were apart from God. Now
we are back in relationship with Him.
Notice
Paul says that "we have peace with God".
Notice also that Paul does not end there.
He qualifies the peace we have with God.
All religions claim to have peace with God, but Paul says that
Christians have peace with God "through our Lord Jesus Christ".
The Biblical truth on this matter is that there is only one God,
and He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is no other way to find peace with God, other than through
Jesus. This is one very important truth that is presently being eroded
away from the teaching of the church.
There is no Christian faith without this important truth.
Verse
2 says that we have “gained access into God’s grace”.
We have received grace from God, but this verse takes grace a step
further. We have actually
entered into God’s grace. We
have entered into the world of God’s grace where we find constant love
and protection. Paul says that
we stand in this grace. To me
this standing suggest that we can confidently stand firm in the world of
God’s grace. We can feel
good about being protected by His love. We, like Abraham can be assured
what God has promised, He will fulfill.
“We can rejoice in the hope of God’s glory”, Paul goes on to
say. We are like Abraham in
the respect that there is more of God’s promise to be fulfilled, and we
rejoice in this as we look hopefully to the future. I
see God's grace as being a circle.
When we give our lives to Him, He invites us into His circle of
grace. Grace has boundaries in
which we must live in. We can
step outside the boundaries of grace, but if we do, we lose any benefits
that we had while living in the circle of God's grace.
We
see in verse 3 that Paul doesn’t stay too long with the thought of a
joyous future. He gets back to the reality of the present very quickly.
He says that we don’t just rejoice in the future, but “we also
rejoice in our sufferings”. Now
why did Paul have to throw that word into the discussion?
Paul
is telling us, because we trust in Jesus for our justification, we stand
in God’s grace. If we then
stand in the grace of God, we have the ability to rejoice in suffering,
and we know that Paul did suffer. With
all of the good news of Salvation that Paul has just taught us, it did not
relieve him from suffering. A
matter of fact Paul’s suffering was on account of the good news.
So standing in the circle of God's grace does not mean we will not
suffer. We suffer because we
live in a fallen world. And we
suffer because Jesus told us that because the world hated Him, it would
hate us. In
verse 4 Paul says that suffering produces something.
It produces perseverance. We
know that Paul knew how to persevere.
Then, once we have persevered, that will bring a certain mature
character to who we are. Once
our character has been developed to this point we can know true hope. This
true hope, Paul says, will not disappoint us.
Why? Because our hope
is in God. Sometimes we stress
faith to the exclusion of hope, but we are allowed to hope.
Also, if we do hope, this does not mean we have no faith, as some
may imply. There is a
place for hope in the Christian life. Some
hyper-faith Christians put down hope.
They actually see it as a lack of faith.
They say that if you have to hope for something to come true, then
you're not really sure it will come true, and if you are not sure, you do
not have faith, and you should not expect to get what you hope for.
But once again, Paul, and it's right here in the Bible speaks of
hope as being something good. Because
of the order Paul puts these things in, it suggests to me that one who has
suffered patiently knows real hope, more than one who has not suffered and
endured. W.
E. Vine in his Expository Dictionary Of New Testament Words defines hope
as “a happy expectation of good”, or “confident expectation”.
We see a new thought being introduced by Paul here.
He has talked a lot about faith and trust in Jesus but
now he is saying that we also can hope in Jesus as well and be sure
of what we hope for. Why
does hoping in Jesus not disappoint? Because
as Paul states in verse 5, “God’s love has been poured out into our
hearts by the Holy Spirit, who God has given us”.
Here is the second mention of the Holy Spirit in Romans.
Paul is very specific here. He
says that we have been given the Holy Spirit.
Paul will speak about this later, but the fact that a true believer
has been given the Holy Spirit is vital in our discussion.
It is the Holy Spirit who unites us with God.
Hop in Christ then is connected with God's love. Verse
6 says, “you see, that at just the right time … Christ died for the
ungodly“. In my thinking God
has a time for everything, and that time is always right.
He had a time to come to earth.
He had a time to die on the cross.
He has a time to return in the future.
It’s a set time. He
won’t be one day late, or one day early, but He will be right on time.
I don’t feel that we can either hasten or delay is return.
Some people, like Restorationists, don't really believe that God
has a time table when He plans on doing certain things.
For example, they say that Jesus will return only when Christians
reach a certain level of maturity and the kingdom of God rules in the
world. Then and only then can
Jesus return. Until then, He
sits and waits for that day. I
strongly oppose that idea.
Paul
says that Jesus died for the ungodly.
He has well proved that we are all ungodly.
Some of us may think of dying for a good person, but Jesus “died
for us while we were yet in sin”. That
is real love. Note
in verse 6 that Paul says that Christ died for us "when we were still
powerless". That means if
we were once powerless, we are now powerful.
Sin had made us powerless. Justification
and the Holy Spirit has taken away this state of powerless from us.
We should know this to be true. In
verse 7 Paul makes the simple point that most people wouldn't die for a
righteous man, although some might. This is merely a point of logic that
relates to what he says in verse 8. In
verse 8 Paul says that Christ died for us while we were sinners.
He says that this demonstrates that He loved us.
The death of Jesus is a demonstration of God's love.
Paul does not say it here, but the death of Jesus is also a
demonstration of God's justice and judgment.
Because God is just, someone must be punished for our sin.
Punishment was accomplished by the death of Jesus.
Love was demonstrated because Jesus was punished on our behalf.
In
verse 9 Paul says, “since we have been justified by His blood”, we
will be saved from His coming wrath. He
hasn’t left that subject of wrath behind.
He is still reminding us that there is a day of wrath, but we will
not experience it. We will be
saved from God’s wrath. We
are saved from lots of things as Christians.
God’s wrath is one big thing we are saved from.
This salvation is in the future.
We need to note here the future aspect to salvation, but our
salvation is not all futuristic. That is to say, we have been saved, we
are being saved, and we will be saved.
Salvation is spoken about in all three ways in the Bible. Many
Bible teachers view God's wrath in two respects.
For those who believe in a time of great tribulation before the end
of this age, they see this as the time of God's wrath, and rightly so in
my opinion. God's wrath is
also seen in eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire as seen in the book of
Revelation. For those
who believe in a pre-trib rapture, they use this verse to support their
thinking. The Great
Tribulation is a time of God's wrath, an d Paul says here that we as
Christians will not experience God's wrath, therefore Christians won't be
around during the Great Tribulation.
Paul
goes on to say in verse 10, that if when we were enemies to God, He
reconciled us to Himself, how much more goodness will come our way since
we are now His friends. Remember,
becoming friends with God is what reconciliation means, and who wouldn't
want to be friends with God. That
makes all the sense in the world. We
are now friends with God because of what Jesus did.
What a truth to know. Friends
are kind to one another. Friends
don't show their wrath to one another.
In
verse 11 Paul says that we rejoice because we have been reconciled to God.
Paul surely did rejoice, and I'm sure most of the first century
Christians rejoiced as well. I'm
not sure that the modern Christian rejoices as much as Paul did.
The reason why Paul rejoiced is because he knew these great
theological truths that he has been talking about real well.
The modern Christian knows little about these truths, so how can
they rejoice.
Death
Through Adam, Life Through Christ (ch. 5:12-21) In
verse 12 Paul now begins to talk about sin and death.
He says that “sin entered the world through one man named Adam,
and death ... came to all men”. In
Gen. 2:15 God put man in the garden. God
“commanded the man” by saying he was “free” to eat the fruit of
any tree in the garden. There
was one exception. He was not
to eat from the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil”, and “when
he would eat from that tree, he would die”.
Notice
that the command was to the man, not to the woman.
The woman was deceived by the serpent.
The man was not deceived, but simply disobeyed the command that was
given to him as Paul states in 1Tim. 2:14. Note
also the way the command begins. “You are free to eat from any
tree…” Before God tells
the man not to eat from the one tree, He gives him freedom to eat from all
the other trees. God told man
that he was free. God created
mankind to be free in all
aspects of life. We can only
speculate the details of this freedom. It
is important to understand that sin entered the world through Adam, not
Eve. Yes, they both disobeyed,
but the command was given to Adam, not Eve.
He was the responsible one. Sin
entered the world through Adam as Paul says here.
For this reason, I tend to believe that the sin nature is passed on
from one generation to the next through the man, through the seed of the
man, and not the woman. I
won't get into it here, but this is important when thinking of the virgin
birth. There was no human male
in the birth of Jesus. Joseph
was not involved, and therefore the sinful nature was not passed on to
Jesus. In
the day this command would be broken, man would die.
Man did break the command and he died in at least three ways.
Although physical death did not result immediately, man did die.
He was made to live forever. Man
also died socially. This is
seen in the covering of his naked body.
Before the act of disobedience took place man and the woman lived
in innocent harmony. They were
free in their nakedness, not having to wear restrictive clothing.
They were free in their nakedness to enjoy each other
without any inhibitions. Once
man disobeyed, they lost the joy of their innocence.
They felt embarrassed for the first time and as a result had to
hide their naked bodies from one another.
It was as if a heavy dark cloud suddenly fell over them.
The whole dynamics of their relationship changed,
interrupting their perfect relationship.
Mankind died socially. Man
also died spiritually. They
hid themselves from God, as if that were possible.
God found them in their hiding place and at that moment they knew
they had lost the close relationship that they once had with their
creator. From that point on,
all who were born, were born apart from the God who created them.
You might say that mankind died spiritually at this point.
Man
died physically, socially and spiritually.
Subsequently all children born to Adam and Eve inherited the same
condition. We all are born into a world of death.
We are born dead socially and spiritually, and at some point, we
die physically. It
did not take long for sin to show itself.
The first murder came with Adam and Eve‘s children.
We have been killing each other ever since. Adam's son Cain defied
God in his heart and offered an impure sacrifice. This story of sin
has never ended. Man
took the rest of God’s creation down with him as well, according to
Romans 8:22. It says that all
of creation groans in pain. Man’s
disobedience disrupted all relationships.
Man and God were now separated.
Human relations deteriorated into factions and fighting.
Even the animals came to be in an adversarial relationship with one
another. Plants also would experience death along with the rest of us.
This
is the background to what Paul is saying here in verses 11 and 12 .
Because of one man’s sin, death came into the world.
Because of one man’s sin we all have the
ability to sin, resulting in death.
Paul
says in verse 13 and 14 that before the Law was given to Moses, sin and
death were still in the world, yet where there is no law, sin could not be
accounted for. What he is saying here is that people committed sin even
though they had no law telling them not to. God could not condemn a man
for sinning when there was no command not to sin.
Nevertheless men were sinning, resulting in death in all of its
aspects. The
last phrase of verse 14 tells us that Adam was the pattern of the one who
should come. The one who
should come is Jesus. Adam,
that is, pre-fall Adam, pre-sin Adam, was prophetic of Jesus.
This introduces Paul's next point.
Paul
says that sin and death came through one man, who was Adam.
He also says that the gift of righteousness that comes through
God’s grace can “overflow to many” as result of one man. You
may feel that Paul is wordy in this paragraph but he is saying that death
came as a result of Adam’s sin. There
is another man, Jesus Christ who as a result of His obedience, brings life
to us through His abundance of grace.
Therefore Paul says in verse 18, “just as the result of one
trespass came condemnation for
all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification
that brings life to all men”.
Paul says, because of Adam’s disobedience all men became sinners,
yet because of the obedience of Jesus many can become righteous. In
verse 15 when Paul uses the word "gift", he is talking about
salvation. Also
in verse 15 Paul uses the word "many", as in, "many died'.
Really, not just many died. All
mankind experienced death. Often
times in both Old and New Testament you will see the word "many"
referring to "all". Paul uses "many" or
"all" more once in
his writings. "Many"
is simply an idiom for "all".
In
verse 16 Paul continues his comparison between Adam's sin and Christ's
gift of righteousness. He
lists a progression. First
comes sin, then judgment, then condemnation.
That is the fate of sinful man.
That is all of our fate outside of Jesus.
Paul
continues to say in verse 16 "that the gift follows many
trespasses". You see the
word "many" again. There
many trespasses. Man's sins
just multiplied, but even though they multiplied, God's gift followed
them. There is great hope for
the sinner. Judgment and
condemnation awaits the sinner, but there is a way to escape both, and
that is by receiving God's gift.
Paul
can be wordy at times, and he is throughout this passage.
In verse 17 he is simply saying if death reigned in mankind because
of Adam's sin, how much more will life reign through Jesus, and His gift
of righteousness. That only
makes sense because Jesus is far more superior than Adam.
In
verse 18 Paul still continues to say the same thing.
Adam trespassed and condemnation came to all men.
Notice here that Paul does not say "many" men, but
"all" men. So in
Paul's thinking, many means all.
So too, the act of righteousness by Jesus has brought justification
to man. If man would accept
what Jesus died for him, God would view him as righteous, just as God
Himself is righteous. Verse
19 continues in the same way of thinking.
Adam's disobedience produced many sinners.
Here Paul uses the word "many".
We now know that "many" means "all" in this
case. Even so, by the
obedience of one man, and that's Jesus, many become righteous.
The word "many" must be seen as "many" in this
case and not "all", unless you believe that all will be saved in
the end, which I don't believe.
This is a matter of good hermeneutics In
verse 20 to the end of this chapter Paul
mentions the Law of Moses. He
says that the Law “was added” to human history so sin could increase.
This is another reason why God gave the Law.
Paul gives various reasons for the Law’s existence in his
writings. This is just another
reason. You might say that God
saw the sin in man and said to Himself, “if man is going to sin, I will
give him Laws that will make him sin even more.
The more man sins, the more I can love him and show my grace to
him”. To us that may be a
funny way of looking at things. We
might think God would want man to sin less, but it appears in this verse
that He wanted man to sin more. Why
did He want man to sin more? The
more man sinned, the more chances He had to show grace towards man.
God new that man was like children.
If you tell children
“not to do something”, they are apt to do that which you have told
them not to do. It is hard to
resist the command. God’s
grace is more clearly seen when there is more sin to compare it to. Paul
introduces the term “eternal life’ for the first time in verse 21.
Death reigned because of Adam’s sin, but now eternal life has
been made available through Jesus Christ.
There is eternal life for those who trust in Jesus, for those who
have been declared righteous in the sight of God. Paul
says that "grace reigns" This
is the age of grace that we presently live in.
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