Sunday Sermon: Have Peace With God (Romans 5:1)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Romans 5:1 and the Peace That Follows Justification

In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand. And to keep things in context here, we'll look at Romans 5, verses 1 -5. The Apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome, hear the word of the Lord.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 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.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. 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.

You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, we come to this passage today, and I pray that we would indeed be reminded of the goodness of God that has been shown to us in the message of the gospel that we have studied thus far, knowing that it is not by our works, but it is by the grace of God through faith that we have been justified.

We have been declared innocent. Our past wrongs have been wiped away, paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ. And so we stand before you as justified. We are not guilty of anything. God has placed His righteousness upon us through faith in Jesus Christ.

The world will wish to condemn. They will wish to condemn us not just for what we believe, for certainly they hate us for that. As Jesus said to His disciples, remember that when they hate you, they hated me first.

But the world also hates this concept of forgiveness. There is no grace among the worldly. They will gladly dredge up old sins to belittle you and bring you down. But we understand, as will later be said in Romans 8, 1, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And so may our understanding of this being justified by faith give us peace. We will live in that peace, dwell in that peace that we have with God, and teach us all the more today as we look into this verse, what that means and how we may abide by it and abide in your peace all the more.

It is in the name of Jesus that we pray and all God's people said, Amen. Zacchaeus was a wee little man. And a wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see. You know the old Sunday school song.

Zacchaeus and Salvation by Faith

This is the story that comes from Luke chapter 19. Jesus was actually passing through the city of Jericho. And Zacchaeus is listed as a chief tax collector. And a very wealthy man. So this was not just a man who cheated like many of the other tax collectors did.

As you know of these publicans who worked for the Roman government and collected taxes from the Jews. He would add to the taxes that he would collect from people to claim a little bit for himself. And since he had some under guys, you know, people who would collect taxes on his behalf, then they're adding so that they may get a little bit.

And then they're giving to Zacchaeus who had added so that he may get a little bit. This guy did not have a good reputation among the Jews. But he was also small in stature as it said in verse 3. And so as Jesus was passing through with his disciples going through Jericho, and as the people are kind of crowding around him, Zacchaeus can't see.

But he wants to get a view of the Savior. So he climbs up in a tree, a tree that was fairly native to the area, a sycamore tree, to see the Savior pass by. And Jesus looked up and saw him and said, Zacchaeus, calls him by name, hurry and come down for I must stay at your house today.

So Zacchaeus hurried and came down and received the Savior joyfully. And when the people saw it, they all grumbled. He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. Just like I mentioned in my prayer and I mentioned the sermon in a previous week about how unforgiving the world is.

Always wanting to hold on to past sins and bring them up and remind you of them frequently. And so the people disdain Zacchaeus because of the reputation that he had. But verse 8 says, Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.

And Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. And the way that Jesus uses that is not in the ethnic sense. It's in the very sense that we've been studying about in Romans 4 and in Galatians 3.

He is a son of Abraham because he has been adopted by faith. He believed in the Lord and showed himself to be a true child of Abraham. Believing just as Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness.

And verse 10, Jesus said, For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. This story is often thrown back at me as an example of how we are not justified by faith alone, but by faith and our works.

Look at Zacchaeus, they will say. This is a man who had pledged to give half of all that he had back, and he was going to pay back those whom he defrauded, and then even fourfold he was going to give back to those whom he had stolen from.

And I will respond to that and say, yeah, let's look at Zacchaeus and see that Zacchaeus actually had not even done anything up to that point. All he did was say he was going to do it.

He didn't do anything.

And what did the Lord say? Today, not when you get this done, Zacchaeus, when you fulfill your word and you go out and accomplish all this thing that you have said, then salvation will come to your house.

No, the Lord said today salvation has come to this house because Zacchaeus believed the Lord. Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I've defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.

And Jesus said today salvation has come to this house. Zacchaeus believed, and he was justified. And of course the Lord, being the Lord, knew the genuineness of Zacchaeus' heart that he said he was going to do it, and so therefore would do it.

And then him doing it was going to be the demonstration of the fact that he did actually have a change of heart. Anyone else that would have been present that could have heard this exchange or this conversation would have said, yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.

And they did, and they believed it. But the Lord already knew Zacchaeus' heart that he would do these things. And so Zacchaeus believing was justified. We've read about that as we've been going through Romans 4 with that key verse in verse 5 that says, to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

There is a complete and separate distinction between works and faith. One believes and is justified. One who works to confirm that belief. But it is not the work that saves. It is believing in the one who saves, by which a person is justified.

And so now, we have this summarizing statement as we come into chapter 5. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, and when Paul says that, he's not coupling faith and works, despite what others may try to say about this.

It is in the context of the statements that he's made previously in chapter 4. There's no works attached. We have been justified by faith alone. And we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now as I said, we're not going to go too deep into chapter 5 today. We'll just look at verse 1, summarizing some of those things that we have looked at already, and looking ahead at some of the things that we will see here in chapter 5.

So the way we're going to break down this verse today, the first part, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, since we have that word, therefore, there, we're going to use this to kind of summarize some things that we've looked at thus far.

And I've done that a little bit already in the sermon this morning. You might notice that I like to do recap. It makes preparing a sermon a little bit better, a little bit easier to do some recap. So we'll do that there with the first part.

The second part of the verse, we have peace with God. Understanding what that means, to have peace with God. And then finally, through our Lord Jesus Christ. And at the conclusion, also make a point to put some application to this as well.

First of all, let me give you kind of an overview of chapter 5 as we are coming into it. This chapter can basically be divided up into two parts. You have verses 1 through 11, and then verses 12 through 21.

Verses 1 through 11 focuses on the love of God. Even though the word love is only mentioned twice in this particular section, the word hope comes up more often than love does. But nonetheless, the emphasis here in this section of chapter 5 is on the love of God for us.

But then when we get to the next part of chapter 5, verses 12 through 21, we'll be focusing on the grace of God that He demonstrates for us. And there's distinctions between the two, what we mean by love and what we mean by grace.

But that is how this chapter is essentially divided up. And we have one of the most famous verses in this particular section that we're looking at, first of all, Romans 5 .8. God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Who doesn't love that verse? And so as we come back up to verse 1, that word therefore, this serves as a good bridging verse. This verse doesn't necessarily set up the whole chapter. It doesn't necessarily sum up the whole of the previous chapter, but it just sits nicely between chapters 4 and 5 to give us a summarizing of those things that we have looked at, and especially as we are going to go to explore further the love and grace of God that will be demonstrated for us in this chapter.

So since we have been justified by faith. Now remember back to chapter 3. In chapter 3, Paul had summed up the argument that he had been making from chapter 1 about the seriousness of our sin and the depravity that we are in.

Because as we understand this verse, since we have been justified by faith, it is already implied that we were not previously justified. We were previously guilty. So it's pointing back at those things, those arguments that Paul had made in chapter 3 with regards to our sin.

We were guilty of all kinds of things, and the totality of sin affected every single person and affects every single member of ourselves. There is no part of us that has not been corrupted by our sin.

It's a point I'll come back to in a moment here, even as we come to talking about the peace of God. But there in chapter 3, after Paul had laid out exhaustively one of the most comprehensive lists that we see in Scripture regarding the depth of the depravity of mankind, he summarizes it in verse 23 by saying, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

No one has given glory to God. They've glorified in themselves. That's what we saw in chapter 1. And instead of giving glory to the one who deserves glory, they exalted themselves, went after the passions of their flesh, and that includes every one of us.

All have sinned. No one is just. No one is righteous before God. And as we had read back in chapter 1, verse 18, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness have suppressed the truth.

And if left in that state, that's what every single one of us would deserve. We all deserve the wrath and the justice of God. But Paul, though saying all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, he says in verse 24, we are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

The offering of blood that was needed, that was required for us to have our sins forgiven and be made right with God was given in His Son, Jesus Christ. And we receive it simply by faith. I often wonder, as a preacher, I will try to put my mind in the minds of the people that would have been sitting there in that church when this letter was first delivered to them and they first read it out loud.

One of the responsibilities I have as an exegete is to know what the original author was saying to the original audience. And have that understanding of the text before I then bring it to you and we give modern application to today.

How does it apply to me today? We first have to understand this in its right context. So I'm often trying to put myself in the place of these people sitting in that church and listening to it read. And in that place, I wonder, how much did they understand this?

And how many of them were overwhelmed by the goodness of the gospel that's contained in just that one sentence? But how many others may have been sitting there going, not quite picking up what you're laying down here, Paul.

Some had a deep understanding of this and a deep conviction of the truth that's being explored here and others may be more confused by it but still holding fast to the fact, I'm only justified by faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus was put forward as a propitiation by His blood, meaning that the wrath of God was satisfied by the sacrifice of Christ. And how do we have that satisfaction then applied to us? By faith. None of us go to our own crosses and die on them to satisfy the wrath of God.

We couldn't do it. Our blood is tainted. It's not good. There's no one good, not even one person, as we have heard expressed in chapter 3. So we cannot justify ourselves. But the wrath of God was due us because of our sin, and yet Jesus is the one who was put forward to be the propitiation for our sin.

And that is to be received by faith. And that is just a simple, quick statement, one sentence that said, in the presence of this congregation, in the midst of these believers. And then you go on to the next phrase.

This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins. But when I read this, I want to sit there on that. Explain that to me some more. I want to know more about what it means that Jesus is the propitiation for my sins.

How deep was my sin? How deserving was I of God's wrath? And Jesus took that for me. And you're telling me that I can have the forgiveness of my sins. The slate will be wiped clean by faith? That's what I have to do?

That's the conundrum that I have trying to put my mind in their minds. When I have stood up and gone, hang on a second, read that again. I want to hear that again. I don't understand. I simply believe, and God's wrath is satisfied?

And this is the way that God has chosen. It's the mechanism. It's the deliverance vessel, if you want to put it that way. That God has ordained. He has decided all of the measures and awesomeness of His grace that He shows to us are just simply delivered to us by faith.

And like I said, we have that human tendency to just, we want to do something. Give me a box to check.

Something.

So that by the gesture of my hand, I know that I've done something and I have somehow managed to accomplish some task to have, therefore, those benefits transferred to me. There isn't a box to check. You believe by faith.

There isn't a gesture to make. You believe and are justified. And then when we got to chapter 4, we read about how this is not a new concept. To be justified by faith? It's not something that was just made up since Jesus came along, which surely the Judaizers and the Pharisees were trying to say.

I mean, we have the grumblers right there in Luke 19 when Jesus says to Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house. You already have the grace of God that's coming upon this sinner's house, and the Pharisees and the people are grumbling about that.

Does Jesus know who that man is? Does He know what kind of sinner He is? Those people wanted to be justified by their works. Here Jesus is just showing affection to somebody by grace who has not done anything to deserve it, and so they start accusing Jesus of overthrowing the law.

It's the reason why in Matthew 5, like right at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, that Jesus says, Do not think that I've come to abolish the law and the prophets. I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

Says that right near the beginning of the sermon. Because that was the accusation that had been hurled at Him and was going to be hurled at Him. Because He is preaching about grace. And the disciples and the apostles, the apostle Paul, preaching about grace.

So the accusation that is being made of them.

Is that they're overthrowing the law.

We don't even have to do anything anymore. What point is the law if you don't have to do something in order to be justified? And so the accusation is being hurled that they are throwing out the law and the prophets.

Where does Paul go? He goes to the law and the prophets. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, all that's still considered the law, and it was written by one of the prophets, by Moses. So he goes to Genesis, and he says, look at our father Abraham.

For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. 15th chapter of the Bible. We barely even started this thing, and we're already seeing our father Abraham was justified by his faith.

This isn't a new concept. This is the way that anybody was ever saved. By grace through faith in Him who saves. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. And so Paul says, now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

You get what you work for. You get what you deserve. But can we work enough to the place to deserve justification?

No.

We would work to exhaust ourselves and barely have even scratched the surface to justify ourselves before God. This is God. He's holy. It's His standard He gets to decide. And we could not by our works ever measure up to the holiness of God.

And so by His grace then we have, verse 5, to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. This is returning us back to where we were supposed to be.

As expressed in Romans 1, again, where it says that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. They by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. What condition was man supposed to be in?

He was supposed to be glorifying God. He was made to give God glory, and he didn't. He glorified himself. Though he knew God, he did not give thanks to Him. Verse 21, although they knew God, they did not honor Him or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

And so all sin comes from this heart that is ungrateful to God. That is not thankful to Him. That does not praise Him. But says, I know what I need for me better than you do, and decides to exalt a person's self rather than God.

But now by faith in Christ, we have been returned to that place where we are supposed to be giving glory to God. And God has wiped away former sins. Through the blood of Christ, we have been justified.

And that justification has been applied to us simply by faith. You've probably heard this illustration before. I may have even used it in here. I don't remember. But the word justified, a good way to remember this or understand this word is to think of it as, it's justified, never done it.

Now that's also implied in that, that I did do it. I did it. I sinned against God. I deserve judgment and wrath. But He by His grace has said, cleared, paid for, justified. To telestai, it is finished.

And that by His grace and applied to us through faith. Therefore, we have been justified by faith. Our father Abraham was justified by faith. This is the way that God had always decided that we were going to be justified by His grace, through faith.

And so we likewise get to be children of Abraham by faith in God and are also adopted into His family and become children of God. Therefore, we have been justified by faith. And remember that last statement too that we had at the end of chapter 4.

I mentioned to you last week that it was a good summarizing verse of the Gospel. Verses 24 and 25. This is counted to us also, and it will be counted to us who believe in Him, who raised Jesus from the dead, Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

This goes back again to Jesus being the propitiation for our sins. He was delivered up for our trespasses. He was raised for our justification. He didn't just die for us to be justified. He was raised for us to be justified.

So that we would know by faith in Him, we not only have our sins forgiven, but we have the promise of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And so therefore, we have been justified by faith. Paul has made the argument.

He's expressed the statement. He's not thrown out the law and the prophets. He even made the statement back in chapter 3, do we throw out the law by this faith?

By no means.

On the contrary, we uphold the law. But he's made his case and established it plainly that we are justified by faith alone. And so you have this statement as he goes into chapter 5. Again, it's a good bridging statement.

It's not a conclusive statement. He's already made the conclusive argument. So it's like he's moving on. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith. And that's the first part that we have of this verse this morning.

Faith, Peace, and Reconciliation with God

The second part, we have peace with God. Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God. Let me stop for a moment on the word faith. And then I want to define the word peace. Faith can sometimes be a complicated word.

It's trust in God. It's believing in God. We'll equate faith and belief. Belief being the action. Faith being the substance of it.

Make sense?

So like faith would be the noun and belief would be the verb. If we kind of put those two side by side. But what do we mean and what do we understand the depth of the concept of faith itself? I love Helps Word Studies, which is a book of terms that we find in the Bible.

Everything from ordinary terms to complicated words. But I love what Helps Word Studies says about the word faith.

That's what I meant to say.

It's from the Greek word pistis. And it means properly or persuasion or to be persuaded in a way to come to trust. So we've been persuaded by something to now trust in God for those things that we hope for.

That He has promised that He will do. Here's another definition still from Helps Word Studies. Faith is always a gift from God and never something that can be produced by people. I've given this illustration before.

You don't just sit there and concentrate hard enough and through your concentration manifest faith. Oh, I believe today. That's not how it works. It is a gift that God has given. Remember, it's said to us in Ephesians 2 .1, you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

Dead people don't manifest things except a stinky smell. You can't concentrate and cause yourself to believe. Deadness is dead. We can't manufacture something out of a dead heart. So faith is given as a gift of God.

Going on in the definition here. In short, faith for the believer is God's divine persuasion and therefore distinct from human belief or confidence, yet involving it. I love that, right? So it's distinct from human belief but involves it.

God doesn't believe for you. You believe it is a gift that is given that is divine but still involves the human will and conscience. It's not absent the human will and conscience. Continuing on. The Lord continuously births faith in the yielding believer so they can know what He prefers.

In other words, the persuasion of His will. As we have in places like 1 John 5, 4, or later on that we will read in Romans 12. That we may test and approve His good, pleasing, and perfect will. That's in Romans 12 too.

So the persuasion of His will we have when we have faith in Jesus. Here's another definition that's given here. In secular antiquity, faith is referred to a guarantee or a warranty. In Scripture, faith is God's warranty, certifying that the revelation He in-birthed will come to pass.

That even expresses the permanence of our faith, right? One who genuinely has faith will continue in that faith, faithfully, until the very end. Now there's our definition of faith. How about peace? Because that's the next word that comes up.

So we have been justified by faith. We have peace with God. Because of our faith we've been justified, and therefore we have peace with God. So really the statement is, therefore we have peace with God.

You get that? Like the comma, what's in between the commas, is the bridging statement from chapters 3 and 4 into chapter 5. We have been justified by faith. But the statement is really, therefore we have peace with God.

Now that Paul has made this argument and established it, we have been justified by faith, so therefore we have peace with God. Now what does it mean that we have peace with God? The word peace very simply means absence of conflict.

Do you feel at peace today? You're not in conflict with anybody? Maybe you're going to go out from this place and there's some sort of conflict you're going to have to enter back into. I don't know what that might happen to be.

But at least for now you're sitting here, and you're absent any conflict. You're at peace. There's also that American ideal of peace. I live in a house that's paid off. I drive cars that have no debts on them.

I can sit on my freshly cut grass, drinking my wonderful lemonade, enjoying the cool weather, which I know doesn't exist at this time of year in southern Arizona. But you know what I mean. The American ideal of, now I am at peace.

I don't have a burden of a debt that's hanging over my head. No debt collectors are coming to storm my house. The IRS is not coming after me. I am at peace. It's kind of a worldly sense of peace that we have.

So what do we mean by peace with God? Charles Ellicott puts it this way. This peace is the state of reconciliation with God. With all that blissful sense of composure and harmony which flows from such a condition.

Peace with God. Reconciled to God. And I love the word reconciled, because in the definition of that word itself, we have hints of the gospel. The word reconciled means to accept that which was not previously desired.

So when we were in our state of sin and rebellion, did we desire God?

No.

And again, back to Romans 1. We wanted our own way. Did God desire us? Not in that state He didn't. As Habakkuk 1 .13 says, Your eyes are so holy you can't even look upon sin. So God did not desire us in that state.

We did not desire God when we were in that state. But God sends His Son to die on the cross for us. Again, as we'll get to verse 8, God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

And then the gospel of His sacrifice and resurrection was proclaimed to us so that we would put faith in Christ. And there was a work of the Holy Spirit that was done in our hearts that changed us from being that rebel that opposed God to now we're hearing the gospel and we put faith in Christ and now we're reconciled to God.

Now with the righteousness of Christ that's been imputed to us by faith, we desire God, and He desires us. And we've been reconciled. And the action comes first from God. It's not that there was some contract that was decided up between God and man.

Hey look, if you send your Son, then we'll believe in you. No, it was all God's action. It was all God's work. But by the work of God that has been done in our hearts, by the work that He did, because being a holy God, He could not accept these unholy creatures.

He gave the righteousness of His Son to us so that we would become worthy and acceptable in His sight. And that's, again, all by His grace. He did that for us. And we've been reconciled. We desire God, He desires us.

And we have peace with God. There is no conflict between us and God. There is peace. A very common thing among people today to think that we just naturally have peace with God. There's no conflict between us and God.

There was a popular internet evangelist that he posts his videos online and gets lots and lots of views for them. His name is Bryce Crawford, a very young man, but he was just recently at Arizona State University about three months ago and was doing evangelism on the ASU campus.

And the very first question that he was asked, he posted the video online, I watched it, the very first question he was asked of the 200 plus students that were standing around him.

Was this question,.

Does God hate? Three words. That was his first question. Does God hate? What was Bryce's answer? No. I think God hates sin, but He doesn't hate people. And right away I was going, well goodness. Psalm 5 .5 God hates the wicked.

Not just the sin that they do, but the people who sin. And then later on in Psalm 11 .5 His soul hates the wicked. It's stated something like five or six times in just the first twelve psalms alone that God not only hates sin, but hates those who do sin.

There is this tendency among us to think that God just naturally loves us and we're just the ones who rebel. So He just loves us all the time. If we would just preach a gospel in such a way that would get people to go, Oh okay, so all I need to do is go back to God and He will love me like He's always loved me the entire time.

Or something. Whatever sort of Arminian, free will sort of way that they will present the gospel. It's all by our decision. It's not by God's or some cooperation between God and man. So there's this tendency among us to just naturally think that we have peace with God.

We're the ones causing all the conflict. There was a billboard that was in Orlando, Florida that said, God doesn't hate anyone. R .C. Sproul responded to that and said, God hates the people who put up that billboard.

We are under the judgment and wrath of God without Christ. God doesn't send people He loves to hell. He sends those whom His soul hates. How can we be made right with God? How can we be reconciled to God?

It's only by faith in Christ. The only way to have peace with God is through faith in Jesus Christ. Even with that statement, therefore since we have been justified by faith, I've preached a lot about the common teaching that's out there, the more popular teaching really, because it's the entire Roman Catholic sect, even Eastern Orthodoxy, to believe that we are justified not by faith alone.

They hate that expression. Sola Fide, they hate it. So they will say it's not by our faith alone. It is by faith plus works. So we're inclined to argue against that. To say it's not by faith plus works, it's simply by faith alone.

But really when it comes down to it, justified by faith plus works is not the most common teaching out there regarding our justification. Most people believe that we are justified by death. What do I mean by that?

All you have to do is die, and then you get to be with God, right? You see it all the time. Look on social media, anytime someone famous dies, where did that person go? They went to a better place. Or you'll see people say, RIP, rest in power.