Sermon on Roman 5:1-11 "Justification"
By Revd Steve Stewart
"THE COURT OF THE KING"
Roman 5:1-11
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person-- though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. 8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. 9 Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. 11 But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. [NRSV]
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person-
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE "JUSTIFIED"?
It's a wonderful privilege to be asked to preach on Romans five this morning, a banquet so rich is hard to know where to begin: but I'm going to take the obvious point which is the start!
Unless we understand exactly what is meant by Paul's opening phrase "therefore, since we have been justified through faith", we really aren't going to get a grip on what the rest of Romans 5:1-11 actually means.
What I want to focus on is this word " justified".
It is the word absolutely critical to understanding the whole of Paul's letter to the Romans.
It is very important to understand, because throughout Romans, Paul tells us that this is what we have done to us by God. We have been justified by God.
It's a word that has a number of meanings in English, so we need to get an handle on exactly what it means in Romans.
Over the last few years, there have been a number of high profile cases in which people convicted of a crime have been subsequently acquitted by the judge. The case has returned to the courtroom, and, perhaps due to lack of evidence or corrupted evidence, the person who was once a guilty has been acquitted: that is, they have been declared not guilty of that specific crime. A classic example would be the case of Colin Stagg, accused and found guilty in the first instance of the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common. The evidence against Colin however, was found to be wanting in any number of ways, and in 2004 he was acquitted of the crime. In the language of the courtroom of Paul's day, Colin Stagg was "justified".
However, what Colin Stagg will tell us is that the shadow of the murder of Rachel Nickell will stay with him. He will say that the public think he just got off on a technicality, that suspicion will always surround him. And it is a sad fact that once somebody has been convicted in a human court, the suspicion of guilt will follow them for the rest of their lives. Furthermore, an acquittal in a human court -- somebody being justified -- only tells us that they are not guilty of that particular crime. It tells us nothing about their character or what else they have done or not done in their lives. What a human court does not do is prove somebody to be positively righteous! Being justified by a human judge is a very neutral matter.
That's pretty much how the plots of programmes like The Sweeney, and Life on Mars operate: the police didn't care what specific crime they got the guy on, because they knew he was guilty of something!
So it is critical for us to understand the difference between being justified by God, and justified in a human court of law: we need to see how justice operates in the "Court of the King" -- that is God -- compared to the frail justice of a human court of law.
How is the Court of King different from the court of man? What does it really mean to be justified by God? There are a number of differences to grasp:
1. When we stand in the Court of the King, we are most definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, utterly and absolutely guilty! God, all knowing and all seeing, would not summon us unless we were guilty. In the Court of the King, there is no possibility of a miscarriage of justice.
2. When we stand in the Court of the King, we are not on trial for a particular crime, but for all our sin that pervades our very lives. All charges are being "taken into account".
3. A third and important difference, is that in the Court of the King our crimes are not against a third party, but against the Judge Himself. We are on trial for crimes against God, "who is Judge of all and knows all the secrets of our hearts", a line from the marriage service, in fact, but comes from Romans 2:16, where we are told that God will judge the secrets of all.
So, there are 3 main differences between human court and the court of God, where justice is perfect and without the possibility of error or miscarriage: we are guilty; we are on trial for all our crimes; and our crimes are against God Himself, the infallible Judge!
And yet, with all the evidence stacked against us and our guilt never in doubt, with a judge righteous and perfect, yet we are told by Paul that we are justified! We are acquitted, we are declared not guilty, we are set free.
But that is not the end of the story: for the news is even greater than this! For, what Paul reveals to us through his letter to the Romans is that this is no ordinary judge, and this is no ordinary court: to be declared justified in the Court of the King is far more than simply to be told that you are innocent of a specific crime. For this is a court, where when acquittal comes, it is not accompanied by the whiff of suspicion; neither is the acquittal a neutral matter -- we are not simply declared innocent of the crime, but where the judge gives us the status of positive righteousness.
In a human court all we know is that one previously convicted, when acquitted, didn't do that crime: it tells us nothing positive about his character. But oh how different is the Court of the King. For here, when we are justified, we are given the righteousness of God Himself. We are not only set free by God, but declared to be good, upright, and righteous! The guilt is not only removed, but replaced with a righteousness so great and so perfect that it enables you to come into the presence of God Himself. The garment of sin is not simply removed and replaced with a cloak bearing a question mark, but with a shirt that has printed on the front and the back the words, "I am righteous"!
Hear, what Paul says in Romans 4:23-24 " 23 The words "it was credited to him" were written not for him [Abraham] alone, 24 but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness"! And this is no ordinary righteousness, but the very righteousness of God himself. This is what it means, at the beginning of Romans 5, to be justified.
To understand the meaning of justification in the Court of God is to understand the letter to the Romans!
Now all of that must have seemed to some of you like something of a tortuous journey to get to a very obvious point. But I hope you will forgive me for labouring it, since this very notion -- that in the justification of God, we not only have our sin and guilt removed, but have it positively replaced with the righteousness of God -- is an ancient doctrine, plainly taught in the Bible, but under attack from certain quarters in the church. There is a constituency in the church who would seek to destroy it and corrupt the Gospel. So it is very important for us to understand what it means to be justified by God. Because when you know what it means to be justified, you know what Jesus did for you on the cross and can have full confidence in your forgiveness, freedom, righteousness and eternal salvation. The replacement of our guilt with the righteousness of God is decisive in our view of the world, which Paul then goes on to speak of in these next verses.
HOW IS IT THEN THAT WE CAN BE "JUSTIFIED"?
But what brought God to justify us in his court in the first place?
If we stood guilty before him on all the charges of sin in our lives, how could it possibly be that not only are we acquitted, but given the righteousness of God himself? And the answer to this question is summed up clearly in the opening verse of chapter 5:
It's a wonderful privilege to be asked to preach on Romans five this morning, a banquet so rich is hard to know where to begin: but I'm going to take the obvious point which is the start!
Unless we understand exactly what is meant by Paul's opening phrase "therefore, since we have been justified through faith", we really aren't going to get a grip on what the rest of Romans 5:1-
What I want to focus on is this word "
It is the word absolutely critical to understanding the whole of Paul's letter to the Romans.
It is very important to understand, because throughout Romans, Paul tells us that this is what we have done to us by God. We have been justified by God.
It's a word that has a number of meanings in English, so we need to get an handle on exactly what it means in Romans.
Over the last few years, there have been a number of high profile cases in which people convicted of a crime have been subsequently acquitted by the judge. The case has returned to the courtroom, and, perhaps due to lack of evidence or corrupted evidence, the person who was once a guilty has been acquitted: that is, they have been declared not guilty of that specific crime. A classic example would be the case of Colin Stagg, accused and found guilty in the first instance of the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common. The evidence against Colin however, was found to be wanting in any number of ways, and in 2004 he was acquitted of the crime. In the language of the courtroom of Paul's day, Colin Stagg was "justified".
However, what Colin Stagg will tell us is that the shadow of the murder of Rachel Nickell will stay with him. He will say that the public think he just got off on a technicality, that suspicion will always surround him. And it is a sad fact that once somebody has been convicted in a human court, the suspicion of guilt will follow them for the rest of their lives. Furthermore, an acquittal in a human court -
That's pretty much how the plots of programmes like The Sweeney, and Life on Mars operate: the police didn't care what specific crime they got the guy on, because they knew he was guilty of something!
So it is critical for us to understand the difference between being justified by God, and justified in a human court of law: we need to see how justice operates in the "Court of the King" -
How is the Court of King different from the court of man? What does it really mean to be justified by God? There are a number of differences to grasp:
1. When we stand in the Court of the King, we are most definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, utterly and absolutely guilty! God, all knowing and all seeing, would not summon us unless we were guilty. In the Court of the King, there is no possibility of a miscarriage of justice.
2. When we stand in the Court of the King, we are not on trial for a particular crime, but for all our sin that pervades our very lives. All charges are being "taken into account".
3. A third and important difference, is that in the Court of the King our crimes are not against a third party, but against the Judge Himself. We are on trial for crimes against God, "who is Judge of all and knows all the secrets of our hearts", a line from the marriage service, in fact, but comes from Romans 2:16, where we are told that God will judge the secrets of all.
So, there are 3 main differences between human court and the court of God, where justice is perfect and without the possibility of error or miscarriage: we are guilty; we are on trial for all our crimes; and our crimes are against God Himself, the infallible Judge!
And yet, with all the evidence stacked against us and our guilt never in doubt, with a judge righteous and perfect, yet we are told by Paul that we are justified! We are acquitted, we are declared not guilty, we are set free.
But that is not the end of the story: for the news is even greater than this! For, what Paul reveals to us through his letter to the Romans is that this is no ordinary judge, and this is no ordinary court: to be declared justified in the Court of the King is far more than simply to be told that you are innocent of a specific crime. For this is a court, where when acquittal comes, it is not accompanied by the whiff of suspicion; neither is the acquittal a neutral matter -
In a human court all we know is that one previously convicted, when acquitted, didn't do that crime: it tells us nothing positive about his character. But oh how different is the Court of the King. For here, when we are justified, we are given the righteousness of God Himself. We are not only set free by God, but declared to be good, upright, and righteous! The guilt is not only removed, but replaced with a righteousness so great and so perfect that it enables you to come into the presence of God Himself. The garment of sin is not simply removed and replaced with a cloak bearing a question mark, but with a shirt that has printed on the front and the back the words, "I am righteous"!
Hear, what Paul says in Romans 4:23-
To understand the meaning of justification in the Court of God is to understand the letter to the Romans!
Now all of that must have seemed to some of you like something of a tortuous journey to get to a very obvious point. But I hope you will forgive me for labouring it, since this very notion -
HOW IS IT THEN THAT WE CAN BE "JUSTIFIED"?
But what brought God to justify us in his court in the first place?
If we stood guilty before him on all the charges of sin in our lives, how could it possibly be that not only are we acquitted, but given the righteousness of God himself? And the answer to this question is summed up clearly in the opening verse of chapter 5:
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand...
The answer is that it is by the works of Jesus Christ, that we are judged: not by our own works, but by his works. By Jesus we are given access into the presence of our heavenly Father, against whom we were once sinners, but can now hold our heads high as righteous in His holy presence. Paul describes it in verse 2, that we are in God's "grace": that is to say, God has given us something. We are perhaps familiar with the excellent definition that 'grace' is when God gives you something that you don't deserve, and that 'mercy' is when God doesn't give us what we do deserve. In the Court of the King, there is both mercy and grace: God's mercy is that he does not condemn us, God's grace is that he gives us his righteousness. And with that "shirt of righteousness", we can be bold in our access to God our Father.
A CHANGED WORLD VIEW, BECAUSE OF WHO WE ARE IN CHRIST:
And Paul now tells us how this full and proper understanding of what it means to be justified in Christ Jesus, affects our view of the world -- even of our suffering:
A CHANGED WORLD VIEW, BECAUSE OF WHO WE ARE IN CHRIST:
And Paul now tells us how this full and proper understanding of what it means to be justified in Christ Jesus, affects our view of the world -
2...and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
The Christian can now boast (in the sense of 'rejoice'), even in suffering. Not in a flippant or foolish way, but because every time we pass through a difficult time, when we remain in the faith of Christ Jesus we come out stronger.
But Paul doesn't say this because he's some kind of new age, self-worth guru -- but because the hope that we have is real and concrete and solid, therefore, verse 5, it " does not disappoint us": to those who trust in Christ for their justification God pours out the holy spirit, so that we know how much God loves us and we know that God has poured his righteousness into us! Our hope is certain because it is rooted in the works of Jesus Christ.
A SUMMARY OF THE GOSPEL!
And what a fine time for Paul to launch into a summary of the gospel -- explaining why it has been possible for us to be justified in the court of God:
It all rests on the work of Jesus: verse 6, "at the right time Christ died for the ungodly". The classic verse 8, "God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.". And how is it that we can have been justified in God's court? Verse 9 is our answer: we have been "justified by his blood". And the fruit of this justification, the grace in which we now stand, is that we are reconciled to God through the death of Jesus.
And in case we are in any doubt about our standing before God, any doubt about whether we are good enough (which we are not, except through the blood of Jesus), any doubt about whether we can enter God's presence with our head held high, Paul makes the point about us being reconciled (that is, no longer an enemy of God but a friend, even an adopted child of God) no less than three times in two verses! Look at those final two verses, 10 and 11:
But Paul doesn't say this because he's some kind of new age, self-
A SUMMARY OF THE GOSPEL!
And what a fine time for Paul to launch into a summary of the gospel -
It all rests on the work of Jesus: verse 6, "at the right time Christ died for the ungodly". The classic verse 8, "God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.". And how is it that we can have been justified in God's court? Verse 9 is our answer: we have been "justified by his blood". And the fruit of this justification, the grace in which we now stand, is that we are reconciled to God through the death of Jesus.
And in case we are in any doubt about our standing before God, any doubt about whether we are good enough (which we are not, except through the blood of Jesus), any doubt about whether we can enter God's presence with our head held high, Paul makes the point about us being reconciled (that is, no longer an enemy of God but a friend, even an adopted child of God) no less than three times in two verses! Look at those final two verses, 10 and 11:
10 ...while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, ...having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. 11 ...our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
CONCLUSION:
And so my message this morning is that you understand what it means to be justified: not simply to be acquitted of your crimes, but to be given the positive righteousness of God. And that if anyone tells you, or for a moment you begin to doubt, that you cannot hold your head high in the presence of Almighty God through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, then throw that thought away: you are justified! And if you are going through a time of suffering, or when suffering comes, know that God is not sending it to you to test your faith and to see if you trip and fall, but that you might rejoice and be strengthened in the certain hope that you have!
In the court of the King, there is not only mercy, but grace to be received as well: the gift of righteousness. For the Court of our God is no ordinary court, and our God is no ordinary judge! :
And so my message this morning is that you understand what it means to be justified: not simply to be acquitted of your crimes, but to be given the positive righteousness of God. And that if anyone tells you, or for a moment you begin to doubt, that you cannot hold your head high in the presence of Almighty God through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, then throw that thought away: you are justified! And if you are going through a time of suffering, or when suffering comes, know that God is not sending it to you to test your faith and to see if you trip and fall, but that you might rejoice and be strengthened in the certain hope that you have!
In the court of the King, there is not only mercy, but grace to be received as well: the gift of righteousness. For the Court of our God is no ordinary court, and our God is no ordinary judge! :
For God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
AMEN
Rev Steve Stewart © 2008