Text: Romans 5:1-5
Date: June 12, 2022
Event: Holy Trinity Sunday (Confirmation), Year C
Romans 5:1-5 (EHV)
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2Through him we also have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice confidently on the basis of our hope for the glory of God.
3Not only this, but we also rejoice confidently in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces patient endurance, 4and patient endurance produces tested character, and tested character produces hope. 5And hope will not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who was given to us.
Our Triune God Justifies and Sanctifies
It’s useful, but not always pleasant to admit that you cannot do something. Acknowledging your weaknesses, your limits, can actually help get things done because you will ask for help when you need it and even hand something off completely when you can’t deal with it at all.
But, it’s not pleasant because we don’t like to admit that we can’t do something—or can’t do something well. Maybe we feel like we’re burdening someone else with a task if we ask for help, rather than giving them an opportunity to serve. For some this is easy to do, but for many it is not.
But what if you had the task of building a complicated wooden table but didn’t know how to use a saw? And what if your neighbor was a master carpenter? Doesn’t it make sense to ask for help when the person who has al the answers and more in his head and hands is right there?
This Sunday of the church year, the first Sunday after Pentecost, specially focused on the work of the Triune God. It gives us an opportunity to see the Triune God’s work in a special light, how Father, Son, and Spirit work together to accomplish what we could not: reducing us from sin and giving us eternal life. Again, it’s not pleasant admit that we need help, but in this case especially, when we are TOTALLY powerless and our God who loves us is right here ready and willing to save, why would we continue to struggle to save ourselves?
Our Second Reading specially serves almost as a creed, a confession and summary of faith in itself. And we will do well to use it to spend a few moments reviewing and renewing our love of what God has done for us—rescuing us when we were completely helpless.
As Paul wrote to the Christians living in Rome, he was writing to people he had never met. Paul would eventually make it to the capital city of the empire, but he hadn’t yet when he wrote these words. And his letter to them, that we’ve come to know simply as “Romans,” is a beautiful summary and defense of the Christian faith. The first 2 1/2 chapters or so serve as a harsh summary of the reality of our standing before God. Whether people were Jewish believers or Gentiles who knew nothing of God’s Word, Paul shows how all have fallen far short of God’s expectations of perfection. Every single person on the face of the planet stands under condemnation for their sins with no hope of ever fixing it.
But Paul doesn’t leave his readers (or us) in this hopeless state because that’s not where God has left us either. Paul assures us that there is a solution in God alone. He rejoices to tell us that we are freely justified (we’ll get back to that word in a moment) by God’s love for us, shown in Jesus. That in Jesus, every sin is forgiven and every threat of hell has been undone. And Paul moves on to explain how Abraham’s faith, his trust in God’s promises, is the same as ours. That just as Abraham trusted in God’s promises and received what God promised, so too we trust God’s promises and receive what he’s promised.
Which leads us to the beginning of Romans chapter 5, from where our Second Reading is taken. This really serves as kind of a summary of all that has come before. Echoes of the middle of Romans 3 greet us in verse 1 of Chapter 5: Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul uses that word justified. We probably don’t use that word often, or at least not in the same way that Paul uses it. We might use justify in a negative way if someone is trying to argue that the wrong or hurtful things he is doing is actually ok. He’s justifying his actions. And that’s related to how Paul’s using it, but not in exactly the same sense. “Justify” is at its heart a courtroom term. If a judge justifies you, he declares you not guilty. And if the “not guilty” verdict has been issued, it doesn’t matter if you actually committed that crime or not—there will be no punishment, no consequences, nothing bad comes to you after that.
And so it is with God. We have sinned—that is an undeniable fact. And that sin should carry with it the sentence of eternal death in hell. But Jesus undoes all of that. His perfect life was sacrificed for us. Jesus suffered hell on the cross and he did that in our place. So the payment for those sins has already been made. Jesus’ suffering replaces our suffering.
And what are we left with? Our sin was war and conflict with God but now, because of Jesus and only because of Jesus, we have peace with God. Paul says that because we also have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice confidently on the basis of our hope for the glory of God. God’s forgiveness, his justification, changes everything. We sinned, yes, but that sin has been forgiven. We deserved punishment, yes, but someone else—Jesus—has taken that punishment in our place. We had hell coming as our eternal destination and Jesus has totally reversed that to being with him in heaven.
So we have the hope for the glory of God, or if we felt like speaking Latin this morning, the hope for the gloria Dei. That glory of God is the eternal life that is waiting for us. But hope here is not a hope the way we might use that word. In modern English we use hope attached to a great deal of uncertainty. We hope for something that we just don’t think will happen or we think is a good chance will not happen. But Paul uses hope differently. This hope is confident, certain. There is no doubt about this happening. Jesus’ finished work, his resurrection and ascension, confirm that everything we needed is done.
I know that today is Trinity Sunday, but we won’t spend a lot of time this morning trying to explain the Trinity—how God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit can all be completely and fully God, while at the same time there is only one God. It’s a teaching of God’s Word that defies understanding. In fact, almost every year in Catechism classes I offer the kids that if they can explain the Trinity so that I have no questions about it, they can be done with the class, receive an A+ for everything, and be confirmed the next Sunday. In 14 years of teaching Catechism, I’ve never had anyone even try because the true nature of God goes beyond our reasoning and understanding.
But here in these few short verses from Romans 5, we see the Triune God at work. We have peace with God the Father because of the work of God the Son. And then, as Paul continues, we have the love of God the Father because of the work of God the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit’s work is often called sanctification. Like justification, maybe hearing that word makes our eyes glaze over with “church speak” or maybe we have flat back to our time in Catechism or Bible Information Classes. But in short, sanctification means to set apart as special, to make holy. And that’s what the Holy Spirit does, he sets us apart from the rest of the world. He makes us different by making us part of God’s family, something we couldn’t have done on our own. His work in us is God’s love [being] poured out into our hearts.
And that change from sinner to saint, from one who is condemned to hell to one assured of eternal life in heaven, makes a big change in our lives. It gives us a perspective we would not have had otherwise, a perspective so wildly different of what we have by nature, that it seems almost nonsensical. Paul describes this change this way: “We also rejoice confidently in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces patient endurance, and patient endurance produces tested character, and tested character produces hope.”
The certain hope of eternal life means that we look at even bad things in our lives here as something that can be understood as positive. Perhaps being shut out from that opportunity will lead to a different, better one down the line. Perhaps going through this hardship today will make me more resilient to face a different hardship later, or be in a position to support someone going through something similar down the line. Or perhaps that suffering is just a reminder of the very temporary nature of this life.
When we have the certain hope of eternal life in Jesus’ work for us, we can begin to have God’s eternal perspective and be reminded that the suffering we have here will not be forever. There will be relief from it, probably in this life, but even if not, certainly in the life to come. That’s the patient endurance and tested character that Paul refers to.
The Holy Spirit’s work in our lives and in our hearts remind us not only that Jesus lived and died to forgive all of our sins, but that God always has our eternal best interests in mind. That work gives us a peace even in hardship and suffering that we probably would not otherwise have. That’s part of the sanctification that the Holy Spirit works, producing a life and an attitude in us that is lived out of thankfulness to God, trusting in the certainty of God’s promises.
Our eternal well-bring is what links the work of the Triune God together. We could do nothing and needed him for everything. Thanks be to God that he has a single-minded goal of rescuing us from hell so we can be with him in eternal life. And by his grace and his work for us, on us, and in us, that’s exactly what we will have.
May these truths that we confess and the hope that God gives be the focus and joy for us all our lives. Amen.
