Good morning. If you turn with me to Romans 5, we’ll look at the first eleven verses today in our continuing study on Romans. I’ll read these verses from the Darby translation.
Therefore, having been justified on the principle of faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ;
by Whom we have also access by faith into this favour in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.
And not only that, but we also boast in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works endurance;
endurance, experience; and experience, hope;
and hope does not make ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Which has been given to us.
For we, being still without strength, in the due time Christ has died for the ungodly.
For scarcely for the just man will one die; for perhaps for the good man someone might also dare to die.
But God commends His love to us in that we, being still sinners, Christ has died for us.
Much rather, therefore, having been now justified in the power of His blood, we shall be saved by Him from wrath.
For if, being enemies, we have been reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much rather, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in the power of His life.
And not only that, but we are making our boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom now we have received the reconciliation.
Father, we thank You always for Your Word. We know Your Word is truth. We know Your Word is life. We know Your Word can quicken. We know Your Word can cause us to walk in the fullness of life in Christ Jesus.
So we plead with You this morning, as we come: do what no man can do. Open Your Word, anoint Your Word, and cause it to live as we consider it this morning. Cause us not just to be hearers of the Word only, as James said, but doers of the Word.
We want this Word to affect our life: where we live, where we go, how we act, how we relate. We want this to be the living Word in us—that is Christ Jesus, our Lord. All these things we ask in Your precious name. Amen.
Well, I think everybody knows that we’re dealing with these first eleven verses—only eleven verses. When you get into the study of the Word, try to break it down into sections. I think it will help you. If you break it and limit it to certain sections, it will help you understand the writer’s thought. If you try to take in too much, you might take too many thoughts at once. So that’s why we’re dealing with these shorter sections.
I was struck by the last word in this section, in verse 11: reconciliation. It’s an enormous word. If you don’t understand reconciliation, you can never live the Christian life. Reconciliation is something that is most important to a believer. It’s our starting point in justification. It’s through reconciliation that we come into all that God has for us.
So I borrowed that last word in the title: “The Justified Boast in Full Reconciliation.” Some of you may not have seen the email or read the email, but if you haven’t, this is what we’re dealing with.
This section ends in a glorious boast of those that were justified, realizing all that God had done. And it’s a boast not just in reconciliation; it’s a boast in full reconciliation.
I want to read, perhaps to help you understand the importance of this word reconciliation, some verses from 2 Corinthians 5:18-20. I think these are very important words for understanding full reconciliation.
And all things are of God, Who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and given to us the ministry of that reconciliation.
That’s the first thing. Think of that: all things are of God, Who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ. Very important thought about reconciliation. And He has given to us the ministry of that reconciliation. This is our ministry.
When we speak of God, we must speak of reconciliation because, with Paul—and not just with Paul, but with you and me as believers in the Lord Jesus—we have now been given this ministry of reconciliation.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning to them their offenses, and putting in us the word of that reconciliation.
We are ambassadors. Did you know you were an ambassador? I always think it’s kind of humorous when a president is elected: he appoints all of his ambassadors, and usually who gave the most gets the best ambassadorship. That’s usually friends. I’m not sure they’re all qualified, but they did give a lot of money.
We are ambassadors, therefore, for Christ, God, as it were, beseeching by us. We entreat for Christ: be reconciled to God.
This is our ministry. This is our calling. This is what God was doing: He was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. So this is an enormous subject Paul takes up in these eleven verses.
I don’t know if you know this, but the word reconciliation is only used by Paul in the Epistles, and only four times. You might be interested in writing these down and looking at them later:
So what we’re going to be dealing with this morning is how God reconciles us to Himself in Christ. If you see that, you begin to discover a wealth of power, grace, and favour that has been poured out on you, that you now, because of this reconciliation and through this reconciliation, can live the Christian life. It’s the only way possible.
I want to read you a word about reconciliation. This really spoke to me. This is a book I recommend, if you don’t have it, to help you in your study: W. E. Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words.
I don’t want, for a moment, you or me—unless you have the great ambition to do it—to turn into Greek scholars. I always liked what Brother Knoch said: it wasn’t necessary that we do that. But certain words, certain times, you need to know what the biblical meaning is of a word, and this book is very helpful when we study such words.
Vine said that reconciliation properly denotes a change, an exchange—of persons—to change from enmity or enemy to friendship; to reconcile. With regard to the relationship between God and man, the use of this and connected words shows that the primary reconciliation is what God accomplishes.
That’s the one thing I want you to focus on in his definition: primary reconciliation is what God accomplishes, not what we do.
He went on to say that God exercises His grace toward sinful man on the ground of the death of Christ in propitiatory sacrifice, under the judgment due to sin. This is what we need to know, brothers and sisters: God’s reconciliation is a thing that He accomplishes for us.
We are the beneficiaries. We get the grace, the favour poured out on us, but we didn’t do anything. All we can do is look up and say, “Lord, You did all of this.”
This is the secret in Romans 5: God, through Christ, has brought us into full reconciliation. He made it possible, and this is our testimony.
When we look at these eleven verses, there are four things we need to consider:
If you don’t know those divine, eternal facts, you will underestimate this full reconciliation. Once you know them, you see how full the reconciliation was. We’ll look at divine facts, not human facts.
The second thing is God’s work of reconciliation. Not only does He show us the facts of reconciliation; He does the work of reconciliation—all of Him. How wonderful that is. And we receive from that work.
Third, there is God’s power for reconciliation. He doesn’t just give the facts. He does the work, and He grants the power for reconciliation. If you understand those three simple things, then you can begin to realize the fullness of reconciliation.
And if you understand those things, you come to the fourth point: our boast in full reconciliation. Paul was outside of himself, boasting in what we receive through this great reconciliation.
First of all, the eternal facts resulting from reconciliation. It’s only in Romans 5:1-2 that these eternal facts are included here, but verses 1 and 2 are so full that you can hardly imagine the depth of this reconciliation.
We sometimes read casually. But if you read these two verses and don’t focus, you’ll not understand how full and deep that reconciliation is. I hesitate to say “blessings”; it’s much more than blessings. And I certainly don’t want to use “results.” Results is too common a word.
These are not merely results of reconciliation. These are immutable facts. Blessings may change; they may come and go. Results you may experience or not. But divine facts are changeless. You cannot change them.
The word immutable means you cannot change it. These are, if you let me put it in even a stronger fashion, divine guarantees. This is what the Guarantor has done. He has given us these essential divine guarantees, that we can know how full His reconciliation is.
I think of starting with the encouragement that is there. It says in the phrase, “Therefore, having been justified.” Notice that’s the starting point. He didn’t say He hoped to be justified. He didn’t say He might be justified.
The Apostle Paul is very deliberate in his choice of words. He said, “Therefore, having been justified.” Brothers and sisters, this is what we need to know at the beginning of our walk. This work was so great that we are completely justified.
This is the beginning. It’s a glorious fact—the first glorious fact Paul wanted to communicate to the church in Rome, and to all that would ever read this letter following: you have been justified.
This is past tense. This is wonderful to know as we begin our life in the Lord. Now, when you think about this marvelous fact, you have to go back and think about what happened in Romans 1:18 through Romans 3:20.
I know I’ve beat you up with those verses, but in those almost three chapters, we see how impossible it is for us to be justified. Man is totally corrupt. Sometimes we make the mistake and say, “Well, we’re not so bad.”
You cannot read Romans 1:18 through Romans 3:20 with any divine light whatsoever and come to the conclusion, “Well, we’re not so bad. We just need a little tweaking, a little adjusting.”
It’s like your timing is off in your car and you bring it in. They used to put a light on it—I don’t know what they do now. There are computers in these things, and you can’t work on them anymore. But when I was a kid, we would climb under the hood, get down in the engine, and work on them. We would tweak them, and with just a little tweak they were running better.
It isn’t true when it comes to being reconciled. When you are reconciled, you can’t just be tweaked. God has to do a lot more than that.
Now, if you notice, he begins with the word therefore. This is a very important word. As a matter of fact, if you study the book of Romans, I would like you to notice the word therefore. Paul uses this word sixteen times in the book of Romans.
He uses it very often, if you’ll look for it, at strategic points where there is a turn of events, where there is some important point he wants to make clear. He begins, “Therefore.”
“Therefore, having been justified” is a marvelous fact. Think of Romans 12:1 as an example:
I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God, to give yourselves a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable service.
You might not have thought of giving yourself as a sacrifice to God. To the uninstructed, it may sound kind of crazy. But if you see the full reconciliation of God, you won’t think it’s crazy at all. You will arrive at the very same conclusion that the Apostle Paul came to: it is your reasonable service. It is your intelligent worship, as other versions say.
Paul looks back over those eleven chapters of Romans, and he comes to this grand conclusion:
Therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
Now, when you look at that first phrase in verse 1, “therefore, having been justified,” you notice it is in a certain tense. Tenses are important. You know I’ve said it enough: I’m not an English major. I happen to be married to one who was on that path, and I’ve learned enough from her. She’ll always tell me when I didn’t get it right, by the way, and I appreciate that.
It took me forever to get the “I’s” and “me’s” straight, being an engineer, in a sentence. But finally, with the help of my dear beloved wife, I was able to get it right in my mind, and most of the time it comes out.
So notice: “therefore, having been justified.” This is in the present perfect tense. Do you understand that? That’s very important. “Having been justified” means this is completely done. You can’t do better in English, at least as far as I understand it, than the present perfect tense.
It’s an accomplished fact. It’s a fact that you can’t change. It’s an immutable fact, as I’ve already said. This is what is so important.
Brother Darby spoke of this present tense, and I like the way he put it. He said, “We have obtained it and possess it.” That’s what it needs to be.
Have you obtained this being justified? You did not attain it. You couldn’t attain it. It was not through your works. You obtained it. And have you possessed it? Is it your own? Can you say, like the Apostle Paul in this most important beginning, “Therefore, having been justified”?
That’s the first fact. That’s very important.
One brother said this: justification by faith is being declared righteous by God because of believing God. And he said, “It is a fact that has happened.” Don’t ever forget that.
I think some people live in their feelings so much—particularly, and maybe it’s Americans. I’m American. I live in this culture. I know this culture fairly well, not so much other cultures. But we often say, “Well, I don’t feel justified. I got up this morning; I’m not feeling it.”
You know, isn’t that what young people use? “I’m not feeling it.” This is nothing about feelings. This is about facts. If you forget the facts and only live in your feelings, your Christian life will be destruction.
Goodwin Thomas said justification is an immediate gift. Isn’t that beautiful? An immediate gift. It comes through faith. The moment a man believes, it is received, not accomplished; obtained, not attained.
You can go to school, work hard, and study hard; or you can open a business and work hard. Through all of your efforts, you can say, “I attained this.” But you will never be able to say that in full reconciliation.
No believer is a self-made man or woman. We are God-made men and women. It was all His doing, and how wonderfully superb that is.
The moment you believed, God declared you righteous—and He will never change His mind. If we live not in the facts but in our own feelings, we might wake up tomorrow morning and say, “I wonder, did God change His mind about me?” That’s how people think.
Brothers and sisters, this is the exhortation of the Apostle Paul: live in the facts—not in your facts, not in your truth; live in the divine facts. If you live in the divine facts, you will be an overcomer. It’s that simple.
There is another fact: we have peace with God. Our brother Steve already talked about that at the table, but how wonderful this is. This is the peace with God. This is what the King James Version translates: “We have peace with God.”
How wonderful that is. We’re no longer at war with God. We’re no longer the enemies of God. We’re no longer the outcasts of God. We now have peace with God. That’s a fact. You can live in that fact.
Now, you may still sin, because we all do. As long as you’re living in the flesh, as long as you operate under that old life, you may sin. You may temporarily lose that peace with God. But all you have to do is come back and confess, and He will restore that peace in you. It’s a divine fact. Live in it.
In the early chapters of Romans, you see there was no peace between God and man. You see how anti-God man was, and how God, in His righteousness, could not tolerate it. There was absolutely no peace. But now we have peace with God.
Total peace. Peace can rule in your heart. Peace can rule in your mind. Peace can rule in your experience, because this was the fact declared in full reconciliation. The animosity and enmity between God and man have been completely removed in full reconciliation.
What a wonderful thought that is. How we as believers need to embrace that thought. We need to wake up in the morning and say, “God, we have peace with You through our Lord Jesus Christ.” That was the only way it was possible. Otherwise, we were in conflict; we would be in conflict all of our life.
Now, when you read this, you understand there is a difference between the objective reality and the subjective experience. We need to live in the objective reality. That’s truth. That’s fact. But then we begin to learn how to walk in the subjective experience.
How is this peace with God to be made possible in experience? How is it even able to be done? Later it says it is because the Holy Spirit has been shed abroad in our hearts. This is how we are able to go from the fact of peace with God to the experience of the peace of God.
All because He has put something in us: the Holy Spirit, that we can live the Christian life. This is how He makes this possible. The divine order is important. If we mix these two things up—experience and fact—we will be confused in all of our Christian life.
The fact is justification. The experience is sanctification. Justification goes through Romans 5. When we finish chapter 5, Paul will have dealt thoroughly with full reconciliation and justification.
When we come to Romans 6, 7, and 8, Paul begins to deal with a living experience: how do we live as a Christian? The topic in Romans 6, 7, and 8 is sanctification. Don’t ever confuse these two.
The only way you’re going to go from the objective, immutable fact of peace with God to the experience of the peace of God is when the Lord does His work in you by the Holy Spirit. It becomes part of your experience.
This is what the Lord said in John 14:27:
Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
He gives something to us as the Holy Spirit works in us, where that peace is manifest in our experience. But it is always based on the fact that we have peace with God. Don’t ever change the order.
You may look at your experience and say, “I have no peace.” You need to look at the fact, and that’s where you discover the peace. It says in Philippians 4:7:
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.
How is that possible? How is it possible to go from peace with God to that kind of peace that passes understanding? It is only as the Holy Spirit brings us into that experience. It’s the only way.
And then there is a verse—I love this verse. You probably know it: Isaiah 26:3. It talks about perfect peace. Do you understand that perfect peace is possible in the Lord Jesus?
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee.
How marvelous. Brothers and sisters, we begin with the inalterable divine fact: enmity between us and God is gone. But then this chapter goes into our experience, and our experience is that the Holy Spirit works in us until the reality of the peace that passes understanding—the peace of God, perfect peace that guards our hearts and minds—is our own experience.
While we stand in the objective, eternal truths, we begin to yield our lives to the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, to be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus. This is the fuller working of the peace of God.
The third fact is astounding to me. It could never even be considered in the Old Testament. It is access. If you look at Romans 5:2, it says:
By Whom we have also access by faith into the favour in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.
Do you understand that we now, as believers, because of full reconciliation, have full access to God? It’s not limited access.
You can remember the story in the Old Testament. The high priest, either in the tabernacle or in the temple, could only go into the holy of holies—the holiest of all, where the presence of God was—once a year. He could only go on one day: the Day of Atonement.
And only then did the holiest person, appointed as the high priest, have access to God. Can you imagine if our Christian life were like that? If on March 15, that was the one day you could get into the presence of God, the one day you could have access by faith?
How terrible the Christian life would be. But the fact the Apostle Paul is bringing to us is that we have full and unlimited access to the living God. That is wonderful, brothers and sisters. That is wonderful.
I think of Hebrews 9:7-8, speaking of this high priest:
But into the second, the high priest only, once a year, not without blood, which he offers for himself and for the errors of the people;
the Holy Spirit showing this, that the way of the holy of holies has not yet been made manifest while as yet the first tabernacle is standing.
What they had in the Old Testament pales in comparison to what we have in Christ Jesus. You now, every moment of the day, every minute of your life, every year of your existence, have full and free access into the holiest of all.
I think one day, when we’re in eternity, if any of those high priests—and I believe there will be high priests who will be saved because they believed—come up to you and me, they’ll say, “What you had, we couldn’t even think of. We couldn’t even comprehend. We couldn’t even approach with such a thought.”
What you have is beyond anything that man could believe: that every human being, the great and the common, has full, unlimited access to God by the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus. This is the third eternal fact. Don’t ever forget that.
Hebrews 10:19-20 says:
Having therefore, brethren, boldness for entering into the holy of holies by the blood of Jesus,
the new and living way which He has dedicated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh.
That’s how we’re instructed to come. It’s not ashamedly, if that’s a word. It’s not being ashamed to come. It is to approach boldly, knowing that this was the provision of full reconciliation: that you and I can come into His presence beyond that veil because His body was rent on the cross.
And when it was rent, that veil was torn in two from top to bottom. Now, do you know that veil? That’s not a minor thing. When the Lord offered up His spirit on the cross and He gave up the ghost, it immediately says that the veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom.
Do you know what that did? It gave you complete access. Complete access. Now, that was no small feat. If you read carefully in all the facts in the Old Testament, the veil was forty-five feet tall. That’s the biggest curtain I’ve ever seen—forty-five feet. That’s four stories of curtain.
And another fact about it: the veil was a handbreadth in width when it was made—three and a half inches. Now, Philip’s a contractor. He knows that’s a two-by-four stud: three and a half inches. It was that thick.
Yet it was torn, not from bottom to top to give us access, as if man could do anything to get that access. It was torn from the top to the bottom by the divine hands of God. And now you have free and unlimited access to God.
I always think of the book of Esther. It’s one of my favorite books. You remember Esther, when she wanted to approach King Ahasuerus, would have to wait until the king held out to her the golden scepter. If he did not hold out the golden scepter, she never could come into his presence.
Do you understand what limitation that was? I can’t imagine how many times she must have walked up to the court, saw the king on the throne with his golden scepter, and he never extended it to her. What must it be like, being his own queen?
But brothers and sisters, one day he extended the golden scepter to her. She went up, and Esther says she touched the top of the golden scepter.
We are able, because of full reconciliation, to touch the top of the golden scepter—the real golden scepter, not Ahasuerus’s golden scepter, but God’s golden scepter. Now, this is the story of Esther: we have full, complete, unlimited, and unbounded access into the holy of holies.
Then it says something else—the fourth fact: “We boast in hope of the glory of God.” Do you know you have hope? Real hope.
When I read the news—and I probably read too much news—I’ll congratulate Linda on this: she’s cut down my news watching. She is the news police. If I’m turning on a news channel, she exits the room with a little bit of fanfare: “I’m out of here. I’m out of here. You look at your news.”
But when you look at the news, you’re so hopeless. What hope is there in this world?
But in Christ, the fourth fact that Paul wanted to impress upon the saints in Rome—and us forever—is that we boast in an eternal hope. We have a hope that the world doesn’t know.
We have a hope regardless of what happens to us, regardless of our daily life, our trials, and our difficulties. We have a hope that is forever. It can’t be taken away because it’s not conditional. It’s a fact.
Peter said in 1 Peter 1:3 that this is a living hope. God the Father has brought us to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It’s a living hope, not wishful thinking.
Paul wrote to Titus—in Titus 2:13, I think—of the blessed hope. This is the blessed hope. It’s the most blessed hope that could be imagined. We will be with God for eternity.
I don’t know what you think of time. Time is a speck of dust. I told some of my colleagues—I went to a celebration with a firm the other day, because they invite the old guys once in a while—and they said, “What are you doing?”
I said, “Well, I’m enjoying retirement. This is wonderful. I like this very much.” They know what I’m doing with different things, and this hope that we have is so tremendous.
We’re not hopeless like the world. They say, “Well, what do you really want to do?” I say, “Hey, I’m enjoying retirement. I’m enjoying being with God’s people and traveling and knowing the Lord and studying the Bible more.” I’m so thankful for that.
This is the hope that we have. It will never fade away. This is our unfailing hope that cannot be taken away.
Hebrews 6:18-19 says:
We have strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us;
which we have as an anchor of the soul, both secure and firm, and entering into that within the veil.
Underline that in your Bible: we have that hope. We’re not looking for that hope. This is the hope of the glory of God. Isn’t that tremendous? Can you imagine more hope than that? It can never be taken away.
This is what we boast in. It speaks of an anchor to the soul. Now, if you have a boat—and I don’t have a boat, and I never will have a boat, because I understand the first day you get it is the best day of your life or the worst day of your life. However, John will tell me this: the last day, when you get rid of the boat, is the best day of your life. I’m sorry, Mr. Fisherman.
But this is about being anchored. How are you anchored to God? It’s through the hope. It’s through the hope.
I remember an old story I read years ago about the Royal Navy in Britain. The Royal Navy defeated one of the most powerful navies in the world, the Spanish Armada. I think it was in 1588, in the Battle of Gravelines. The history teacher will have to correct me on this.
But they knew something in that navy that was profound. They developed an anchor that would never fail—or rather, had never failed. They would test it. Why were ships losing their anchors and drifting to destruction? How can we correct it?
The royal family appointed a special research group to make an anchor that would never fail. When they tested an anchor and found that anchor would never fail, they put the royal seal on it. It’s only the anchor with the royal seal that never fails.
Do you understand? That’s the hope. I hope you know that hope.
The second thing we want to talk about is God’s work of reconciliation. All these eternal facts we must know; they are what we have. But we must also know that full reconciliation is based on His work alone.
If you look at Romans 5:3-5, it makes it very clear:
And not only that, but we also boast in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works endurance;
endurance, experience; and experience, hope;
and hope does not make ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Which has been given to us.
Now, this goes beyond the fact. We’ve already mentioned this one time. This is the work of God. What He does for us is unthinkable: He puts the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the divine Trinity, in us.
You remember when the Lord said, “I’ll go to the Father and ask for the promise of the Father.” You remember what He said in John, in those lovely chapters: “He will be with you.” And do you remember what else He said about the Holy Spirit? “He will be in you.”
Can you imagine? God the Holy Spirit in us. That’s how we go from fact to experience. That’s how we can boast in tribulations. That’s how we can come into endurance. That’s how we can come into experience, because the Holy Spirit brings us into that reality.
Brothers and sisters, I cannot think of anything more powerful than that. Just think if the Lord Jesus had left and said, “I leave you with My Word.” Where would we be? Could you do it? Could you live the Christian life? Could you overcome? Could you do all that He required? There’s not a moment’s chance you could.
So He did something no one could have imagined. He said, “I’m going to the Father, and I’m going to ask of the Father that He would give you what He called the promise of the Father.”
That Holy Spirit would come and be with you forever. That’s a long time. And that Holy Spirit will be in you forever. How marvelous is the work of God.
This is how we’re conformed to His image. This is how we’re brought from justification to sanctification. This is how we live the Christian life: not just by fact, but by His work. This is what’s essential.
If you look at Philippians 2:12-13, I think this can be a fearful verse if you only read the first half:
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
I think a lot of Christians, that’s the way they read that verse. Full stop. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” What a miserable Christian life that would be. I think I would give up. You couldn’t do it. No man could do it.
But thank God the verse doesn’t stop there:
For it is God Who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
Isn’t that good news? This is the work of God. He’s working in us. What does the first part mean? There is effort. There is giving yourself to God. There is saying no to the flesh. There is trial in life.
But you know, in the end, it is all completely dependent on the work of God alone. It is God Who works in you to will and to do for His good pleasure. That is the first secret of His work.
Then you look at Romans 5:6-8:
For we, being still without strength, in the due time Christ has died for the ungodly.
For scarcely for the just man will one die; for perhaps for the good man someone might also dare to die.
But God commends His love to us in that we, being still sinners, Christ has died for us.
How marvelous this is, brothers and sisters. We need to notice, when we read these verses, how wonderful this is. It says, “We being without strength.”
Now, it doesn’t say when you were saved, all of a sudden you had strength to live the Christian life. It says, “For we, being still”—notice that word—“without strength.” Christ died for the ungodly.
One day you had no strength. It wasn’t as if the day after you were saved, you had strength to live the Christian life. When Paul talked about full reconciliation based on the work of God, he said, “For we, being still without strength.”
I think this is revelation. We need to confess we don’t have the strength to live the Christian life. We need to confess that we never had this strength to live the Christian life. We need to be upfront with God and say, “Unless You work in me, I can never be that man or woman of God that You want me to be.”
It’s utterly and completely impossible. The tense is very strong here: “For we, being still without strength.” This is what we need to see. We were powerless, and then God works.
If you look at 2 Corinthians 12:9-10—everybody knows this, Paul’s thorn in the flesh—it says:
My grace suffices thee, for My power is perfected in weakness.
Most gladly, therefore, will I rather boast in my weaknesses, that the power of the Christ may dwell upon me.
Isn’t this marvelous? You don’t have to agonize over your weakness. As a matter of fact, the Word of God makes it very clear: you are still without strength. Now, what can you boast in? The power of God that is upon you. That’s what makes the Christian life possible. That’s the only thing that makes the Christian life possible.
And he said, “In the due time Christ has died for the ungodly.” Listen to this:
For scarcely for the just man will one die; for perhaps for the good man someone might also dare to die.
But God commends His love to us in that we, being still sinners, Christ has died for us.
Did you notice that? It’s almost the identical phrase: “We being still sinners.” It’s impossible for us. But yet God’s work is so complete that we’re able to live the Christian life. How marvelous it is. How grand it is.
Someone might dare to die for a just man. Can you read the first three chapters of Romans and find a just man? Can you read those chapters and find me a good man?
The rich young ruler came to the Lord Jesus in Luke 18 and said, “Good Teacher.” That was the issue the Lord had with him. He said, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God.” Yet he still insisted he had kept all the commandments from his youth.
I think that’s such deception. Brothers and sisters, how we need to know the Lord in His work of full redemption. He did something far more than die just for the ungodly and die for sinners.
He exceeded even His own definition of greatest love. Do you remember when He was speaking in John? He said, “I no longer call you slaves, because a slave doesn’t know what his master is doing. I call you friends.”
Do you remember before that He said:
Greater love hath no man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friends.
To me, that is the definition of greatest love. Can you imagine someone laying his life down for you as a friend? This was the Lord’s own definition. This wasn’t Peter’s definition. This wasn’t Matthew’s definition. This wasn’t John’s definition. This was the Lord’s definition of greatest love.
But when you come to Romans 5, He laid His life down for the ungodly. When you come to Romans 5, He laid His life down for sinners. We were still sinners; He laid His life down.
How tremendous that is. It exceeds every definition—the highest definition of the greatest love. This is the work of God. May the Lord help us to see how great this love is.
We can’t live the Christian life without knowing that when we were still without strength, He died for the ungodly. I want you to underline that phrase. And when we were still sinners, He died for us. That is the work of full reconciliation.
Now, I want us to think also about God’s power. Not only did He give us eternal facts that we need to live by; not only does He do the work in us by the Holy Spirit and give us strength that we can live the Christian life; but when you come to the last part, we see the power that He gives us.
There are two phrases I want us to consider in Romans 5:9-10:
Much rather, therefore, having been now justified in the power of His blood, we shall be saved by Him from wrath.
For if we, being enemies, have been reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much rather, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in the power of His life.
There are two phrases I want you to recognize. In the King James Version, it is “much more.” If you read Romans 5, you will discover there are four “much mores.”
What God is saying is, “I have done all this. I have given you the divine facts; they will never change. I have gone beyond the highest standard of love and saved you while you were without strength and while you were still sinners.”
Now in the last section, Paul comes to this point where he shows us the power that makes it possible for us to live the Christian life. Notice that “much more.” Underline it in your Bible.
He gives two powers. One power deals with all of our past, and one power deals with the whole of the Christian life.
The first one is that we have been justified in the power of His blood. Brothers and sisters, there is nothing more powerful than the blood of Jesus. It can erase every sin, every fault, and everything you’ve ever done. Only the blood of Jesus. Only the blood of Jesus.
I think last week we sang that wonderful hymn about there being power in the blood. I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, but I remember when I was saved in this little chapel in Bethel Assembly of God in 1972, February 4.
I remember we sang, “There’s power in the blood,” and I wept and I wept. I discovered that night that I left that place a changed man. I couldn’t believe it. I went on singing, “There’s power in the blood, wonder-working power in the blood.”
How powerful it is. All of your past is erased. And even if you fail as you walk the Christian life—because you’re still human—the blood never loses its power. Think of it.
1 John 1:9 says that if we confess our sins, He is able to cleanse us from all unrighteousness—not just some. You may say, “Well, there are certain sins. You don’t know me. There are certain sins, if you knew, you would be ashamed.” But the Lord can cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
What the Apostle Paul was trying to get us to see is the absolute power in the blood of Jesus. “In the power of His blood” was the phrase.
He had something else to say. He didn’t just cleanse our past and leave us to ourselves, but He had another secret. That secret was: much more, now being justified, we shall be saved in the power of His life.
Notice that phrase. Very important phrase. It’s a great secret of the Christian life. You’re given a life in you—the life of God. In that life in you, you can now live the Christian life.
Understand what the Apostle Paul is saying: all of your past is dealt with. Any of your future sins, there is provision for it in the power of the blood. But this life that you’re called to live, which is utterly impossible for you, you can only live it one way: through the power of His life.
Do you understand that? That’s astounding. That’s the secret of this. This is what the Apostle Paul wants us to see. If we see it, it will make such a difference.
The last thing: our boast in full reconciliation. If you read Romans 5:11, it’s very clear:
And not only that, but we are making our boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom now we have received the reconciliation.
How marvelous this is. We have received this full reconciliation. If you read the early chapters of Romans, you see very clearly that man has nothing to boast of.
You can’t boast in the law. You can’t boast in your righteousness, because you have none. You cannot boast in your acts. There’s nothing you can boast of.
But when the Apostle Paul came to Romans 5, he said there is something you can boast in. You can boast in the Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom we have received the full reconciliation.
Notice that word, “now.” Through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom now we have received the reconciliation. Salvation from death and wrath was through Him. Salvation by His life now is in us. We have what is absolutely clear: full reconciliation.
Now we can boast in the hope of the glory of God, as it says in verse 2. Now we can boast in our tribulations, until all that becomes endurance and becomes experience, because we are in the Lord Jesus and the Lord Jesus is in us.
Our boast is in Him. He is our full reconciliation.
Well, I hope this makes sense. This is the justified boast in full reconciliation.
Christ has been made unto us wisdom and righteousness, sanctification or holiness. All these things He has been made unto us. He is our only boast, and this is how we can live in full reconciliation.
Do you understand the eternal facts? Do you understand it’s God’s work? Do you understand it’s God’s power? If you do, you have something to boast in. May the Lord open our eyes to full reconciliation.
Lord, we just commit to You those things in Your Word that are so precious. They can change our life.
Those things in Your Word can open our eyes, and we no longer need to walk in our own strength or struggle in our own nonexistent power. But we can live in the fullness.
How we pray we would begin to live in the facts. How we pray that we would begin to live in the understanding that You did the work and You’re doing the work.
How we need to understand, in the end, that it’s all through Your power: the power of the blood, the power of Your life. This is the secret of our boast.
This we ask in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.