A Word in Season: The Strength of Love (Romans 5:6)

Media Gratiae

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Most of us like to think of ourselves and to present ourselves as fairly capable and competent.

00:06

Certainly weakness is very much unappreciated in the modern world. It was true in the ancient world also, to be humble, to be frail, to be weak, were often things despised more generally in society.

00:22

And yet the Apostle Paul, when he writes to believers, when he challenges unbelievers, is unflinching in his description of our true state.

00:33

So in Romans chapter 5 and verse 6 we are told that when we were still without strength, in due time

00:40

Christ died for the ungodly. Paul makes clear there that we have two fundamental problems, our weakness and our wickedness.

00:51

We were without strength when God found us, when God came to us, when

00:56

Christ drew near. And that lack of strength meant that there was nothing we could do about our wickedness.

01:04

See, our problem isn't just that we're weak. Our problem is that we are wicked and our weakness then means that there's nothing we can do about our wickedness.

01:14

We simply cannot help ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot make ourselves right with God.

01:22

We are against him and against his righteousness and there's no power in us either to will or to do what pleases him.

01:32

But it was precisely in that state that God was pleased to work toward us in mercy and with love.

01:40

Yes, when we were still without strength, when we had nothing in us to commend us and nothing that we could do to help ourselves, in due time

01:49

Christ died for the ungodly. God steps in at the appointed moment.

01:56

He comes not in a rush or in a panic, but with a measured tread as it were and his might and his mercy are magnified in his sending of his son,

02:07

Jesus Christ, to die in the place of sinners. And what Christ is and what

02:13

Christ does answers both our weakness and our wickedness. It is in his sacrifice that he addresses our alienation from God, our natural distance from him, the fact that we are under his wrath and curse on account of our sin.

02:32

Because Christ dies in our place, he takes the punishment that our sins deserve.

02:38

He receives in himself the wrath of God that we might be spared.

02:44

And it's an act of great strength. It is his might in which he himself accomplishes what we cannot.

02:53

There's a divine irony here, almost a divine paradox, you might say, that Christ became weak in order that he might display his great strength.

03:05

He was brought even to the point of death, the death of the cross, in order that he might triumph over sin and death and hell.

03:14

And so you've got this divine act, this coming of Jesus Christ, this dying in the place of the ungodly for those who are utterly without strength.

03:27

And it's this that our faith rests upon. It's this that our hearts rise toward.

03:33

It's this that our voices ought to proclaim. This is the very ground of our hope. We trust in a

03:39

Jesus who loved us and died for us, who has done for us what we cannot do for ourselves, who has answered the need of our sin -wrecked souls, our transgression, our foolishness, our iniquity, the perversion of our very nature, worked out in deeds contrary to the holy law of our holy

04:01

God. Christ has provided this for us. And we come and it's our weakness out of which we cast ourselves in faith upon Christ.

04:14

Faith is a confession that we cannot do it for ourselves. It is a declaration that we are trusting

04:20

Christ to save us from our sins. There we find that hope that because Christ has done these things, because he has died in our place, then we cannot and will not die, but must live.

04:37

And then there's the adoration and the gratitude that while we were in such a state and condition,

04:44

God should so deal with us and Christ should lay down his life for us. So let us not deny either our weakness or our wickedness, but come to and trust in Jesus Christ to make us right with God.