Romans 5:1-5

Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church iconCoram Deo Reformed Baptist Church

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Verses 1 through 5, starting in verse 1.
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Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
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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.
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Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.
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And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the
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Holy Spirit who has been given to us. In chapter 4,
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Paul teaches us about Abraham and him being the exemplification of justification by faith alone.
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In chapter 5, we're starting with the wonderful benefits of that justification.
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Verse 1 says, Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Firstly, Paul speaks of our justification as something that has been done.
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This is something that I constantly repeat, because it needs to be repeated. It's done.
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It is a completed work. Completed by Christ on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead, which we discussed last week, was not only the vindication of who
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He said He was, by the Father, but also the acceptance of His sacrifice.
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You were justified the moment that you believe. There is no other work that need be done in heaven or on earth, or a fictional place called purgatory.
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It is finished. As Paul says, because of our justification, we have peace with God.
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We are no longer under His wrath. He sees us as blameless in Christ.
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We have peace with Him, having been reconciled to Him. Can you think of any greater miracle than that?
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We were, in one moment, enemies of God, deserving of eternal punishment.
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And in the next moment, because of the work of Christ, in a state of peace with our...
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who was our enemy, we were His enemy. We were as rowdy rebels, rebelling against our
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King, clanging our shields and waving our swords. And in the blink of an eye, our weapons were gone.
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Our hatred, gone. And not only that, but the weapons were used against us.
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They were turned from being weapons used against God to weapons being used against that which
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He hates. There is no...
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It is not a light matter, the fact that we are at peace with God. The small fraction of humans that have existed throughout time who have been at peace with God, called saints.
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But rather than continue in the plethora of sermons that can be written about this subject, we'll go to verse 2.
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Through Him, we also... Through Him, we have also obtained access by faith into His grace, or into this grace in which we stand.
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And we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Through our
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Lord Jesus Christ, we have obtained access, as Paul says, meaning that we did not have access to this state beforehand.
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This is an argument, even today in the church, that before our justification, we did have access.
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We had the ability of access. The issue is that we had to be brought, as Paul says, into this, this state of grace, which, by necessity, dictates that we were before, outside of it.
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Right? This is Martin Luther's first argument in the bondage of the will, in part.
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In our natural state, we have no access to God. We are born in a state of total depravity, not meaning that we are as evil and depraved as we could be, meaning that our minds, our bodies, our souls, are corrupted through and through.
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Because our minds, our bodies, and our souls are corrupt, our desires and our decisions, based on those desires, are also corrupt.
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This is why we have no access to this state of grace that Paul is talking about.
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We are under God's wrath because of this, because of our sin nature.
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But through Christ, through our faith in Christ, we are brought into this state of grace.
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Paul says, similarly, in Ephesians 3, verse 11 and 12, this is through...
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Oh, I'm sorry. Skipped ahead of myself. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus, our
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Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him.
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So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.
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Matthew Henry says on this matter, this is through our
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Lord Jesus Christ, through Him as the great peacemaker, the mediator between God and man.
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The saint's happy state is a state of grace. Into this grace we are brought, which teaches that we were not born in this state.
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We could not have... Old English. We could not have got into it ourselves, but we were led into it as pardoned offenders.
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Therein we stand, and posture that donates perseverance.
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We stand firm and safe. In the state of grace that we are in with God, Christ says that we are in His hands.
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He keeps us there, and His hands are kept by the
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Father's. There is nothing that can remove us from the state in which we are right now.
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As you no doubt will read in Job, when you get to the later chapters,
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God questions Job. First of all, I like that He tells him to gird himself as a man.
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If you're not familiar with what gird means, please look it up.
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It's about war. But He questions
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Job in such a way as to ask Job, who can do anything to me?
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Who set the tides? Who built the universe? As I said before in a sermon, the
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God who created the universe with His Word, who can prevail against that?
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There is nothing that can remove you from the state of grace that you are in.
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John, in chapter 14, it says, I'm sorry, verses 5 and 6.
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John, chapter 14, verses 5 and 6. Thomas said to Him, Lord, we do not know where you are going.
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How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, the life.
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No one comes unto the Father except through me. Christ is the narrow gate, which
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Scripture is referring. There is no other way. This is an exclusive statement.
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In one verse, the idea that many hold of pluralism is done.
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Pluralism is the idea that there are many different ways to get to heaven. It's not always the same heaven.
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But Christ deals with that here. Now, done. We the saints have passed through that very narrow gate and stand firm and secure in a state of grace with God from which we cannot be removed.
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In this we can rejoice, for not only is the work completed by God Himself, but it is protected by Him also.
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And at the end of all things, He has promised that we are heirs with Christ in the promise and that we will be in the presence of our
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King for eternity. Verse 3.
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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 out in our hearts through the
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Holy Spirit who has been given to us. As Christians, because we are justified, we have been given a new heart and a new mind.
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With that comes the ever -growing understanding that because our hope is in God and not ourselves or anything else, we can find joy in our sufferings, knowing what they will produce.
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The suffering to which Paul is referring are not the small inconveniences that might possibly come to mind.
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I've forgotten my keys. I locked myself out of my house.
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I don't have this, and I don't have four cars in my driveway.
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But the sufferings to which he is referring is real suffering, abject poverty, persecution, beatings, being thrown in jail, all manner of other things that the saints may endure for the sake of Christ, disease, true hardship.
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We can have joy even in these things, having the knowledge of the fruit that it will produce in us.
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The first of which Paul says is endurance. Any amount of suffering produces the ability to endure more suffering.
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The endurance of the crucible of pain, as Sproul says, this produces character in God's people.
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Character is the moral quality of a person, and better character produces hope, as Paul says.
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Like a muscle, it is not made stronger by easy living and convenience.
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For a muscle to become stronger, it has to be stressed. You have to work it to the point that it begins to break down and then stop.
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What happens is that the muscle grows back bigger and stronger and able to endure more than it could before.
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In the same way, once having suffered, our hope becomes stronger, becomes larger, knowing that no matter what the world can think up to do to us, it cannot take away the wonderful assurance of our justification and our salvation in Christ Jesus.
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Nothing can take that away. As many times as Paul himself, who absolutely had an abundant life, he did.
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Full life, sharing the gospel, and being persecuted for it.
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He was thrown in jail multiple times, he was beaten multiple times, bitten by a snake, shipwrecked, thrown in jail and ultimately beheaded.
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And in doing so, in living through these things, we read in Scripture that at the end of his life, he was joyful about having endured all of it.
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It produced in him a hope that was unbreakable. As James says in chapter 1, his epistle, verse 12, blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which
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God has promised to those who love him. Paul says that our hope in God will not put us to shame or bring us to a disappointing end.
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One of the things that plagues us as human beings from childhood is dealing with disappointment.
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We have a hard time with it. We have expectations, we expect them to be met, and time and time again they're not.
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There can be expectations in a task, a business, a person. This is evident in children, when they expect something and they are told no, what generally happens?
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Do they say, okie dokie, I'll do something else? No. Not usually.
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Ultimately, the world can only produce disappointment. It ends in death.
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I mean, it doesn't matter what you do, right? Nothing in this world, no worldly thing that you can accomplish ultimately, matters, because you cannot take anything with you.
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We all end up in the same place, standing before the judgment seat. The only thing that matters is being in a right place with God, in that state of peace with him.
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In Luke 9 .25, Christ says, for what does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits himself?
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One of the worst things, I believe, that a teacher can fail, or can do, is fail to teach why
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God saves us. Why? I've had plenty of people ask me why.
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The answer to this question is very old. The question itself is very old.
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God saves us for himself. For his glory alone.
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This is a fundamental doctrine of Protestant, of the
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Protestant movement. Fundamental doctrine of the church, of Christianity itself. Sole Deo Gloria.
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For the glory of God alone. The wonderful knowledge that God saves us for himself, for his own glory, is because he doesn't do it for us.
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This is a task that he does for himself. To glorify himself.
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He does not trust us with it. God does not trust us with his reputation.
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The knowledge of which should produce in you hope, faith.
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He cannot lie. He does not need or trust us with his plan to bring himself glory.
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He will do it, and there is nothing that can stop him. He needs nothing.
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He needs no permission. He needs no choice to be made. It is as the psalmist says in Psalm 135, verses 5 and 7,
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For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods.
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Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deeps.
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He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes the lightnings for the rain, and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.
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As Paul says, God does not let us endure on our own either.
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We have been given a gift, a helper, the Holy Spirit, and while we may fail in our flesh time and time again, we see his work in us always, sanctifying us through every trial, every hardship, producing in us a stronger faith.
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The Holy Spirit, who has poured out in us the love of God, and when we have that love, and know that it is sealed with the
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Holy Spirit, it does not matter, as I said before, what the world does, it cannot be taken away.
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The Holy Spirit cannot be removed from the saint. Through this, we can have hope.
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I would also like to mention that we can see clearly from this passage that Christians are not promised an easy life.
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We are not promised health or wealth, as some teachers, some false teachers proclaim.
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They say, if you only give money to the church, only do this or only do that, you will be given peace and good health.
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Everyone experiences suffering and trials in their life, all of which are sovereignly ordained
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But Paul here explains why they are, for our good, for the good of his people, to produce endurance.
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Also, endurance has a note of patience as well, does it not? You have endured, you can certainly count on not getting instant gratification, but being more patient, more content.
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This will teach us to wait upon the Lord and rely on Him for us to grow so that no matter what it is that we face, we can say, as Job did,
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I will be done. He came into the world naked, we will leave it naked.
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The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the
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Lord. Even though we do not understand, in a moment, why we are enduring or going through trials, we can endeavor to continue to praise the
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Lord and rely on Him. He knows
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His plan. As Charles Spurgeon said, I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the rock of ages.
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May the Holy Spirit not only teach us to endure, but also to rejoice in suffering.
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I'll leave you with this, the words of the late R .C. Sproul on this passage.
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Salvation is not like receiving just one gift under the Christmas tree, but gift after gift all wrapped together.
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The first package we find is our justification. And when we open that package, we find inside another.
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Peace with God. Inside that package is access into His presence.
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And inside that gift is the ability to rejoice in glorifying the glory of God.
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Inside that package we find there is joy in the midst of tribulation. And that very tribulation gives us another gift, perseverance.
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Tear off the ribbon from that gift, and there is another one, which is the character that perseverance gives us.
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And within that gift there is hope that will never embarrass or disappoint us.
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Finally, we open one more, and it is the love of God poured out profusely in our hearts by the grace of God.
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All these are the gift of our justification. We wonder then at the doxological writing of the
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Apostle Paul who rejoices in these things over and over again.