Romans 3.28-30; 5.1-11
A man fell into a pit and couldn’t get himself out.
A Subjective
person came along and said ‘I feel for you down there’
Objective - ‘Its logical that
someone would fall down there’
Pharisee - ‘Only
bad people fall into pits’
News reporter wanted the
exclusive story on the man’s pit
Confucius - ‘If
you had listened to me, you wouldn’t be in that pit’
Buddha - ‘Your pit is only a
state of mind’
Realist - ‘Yep, that’s
a PIT you’re in there, my friend’
Scientist calculated the
pressure necessary in PSI to get him out of the pit
geologist told him
to appreciate the rock strata in the pit
tax man asked if he was paying
taxes on his pit
council inspector
asked if he had a permit to dig a pit
evasive person came along and
avoided the subject of his pit altogether
self pitying
person - ‘You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen MY pit!’
Charismatic - ‘Just confess that
you’re not in a pit’
Optimist - ‘Things
could be worse’
Pessimist - ‘Things will get
worse;
Jesus - seeing the
man,
took him by
the hand and lifted him out of the pit
And this little parable takes us, I think, right to the
heart
of what
Paul is trying to demonstrate in his letter to the Romans:
which is that the way Jesus responds to the depths of the
human situation
is quite unlike
that of anyone else.
Jesus does not come along with helpful words of
encouragement,
he doesn’t
muck around with solutions that won’t work.
Rather, God’s response to human sin, to human suffering,
to our collective
and individual ‘pits’
was to reach out to us at the moment of our deepest need
by sending
Jesus on a rescue mission for humanity.
In his death on the cross, Jesus opened the way
for people
to be lifted out of their pits of isolation from God.
This is what Paul was getting at
when he
wrote his letter to the Romans.
Paul’s letter to Rome can sometimes seem very confusing,
and even a
fairly short passage such as ours for today
could
sustain multiple sermons.
Famously, Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached every week for 13
years
on the book
of Romans,
at
Westminster Chapel.
Well, I promise not to do that,
unless you
ask really nicely!
But do you remember studying poetry at school?
How you
have to keep reading same small section over and over
and how you get more from the words,
each time you read it?
I’ve always
been amazed at how much meaning can be generated
from
so few words
Well, the letter to the Romans is rather like poetry,
and on
first reading it can be rather confusing,
with
careful word choice conveying whole rafts of ideas.
But this is also what makes it so interesting,
and it
repays careful and detailed study.
So, to set the scene for our passage for today:
Paul has
spent the first part of the letter looking at the story of Abraham;
exploring how Abraham came to know
God,
and explaining how Abraham’s
relationship with God
was
not something he earned
but rather emerged from
his faith in God.
The key issue that Paul’s addressing in the opening chapters
is that of
how it can be right
for God to
deal with Jews and Gentiles on the same basis.
The children of Abraham, the Jewish people,
are the
people of God, the heirs of the covenant.
So how, Paul is asking, can it be true
that God is
now also seeking a relationship with the gentiles?
With those who have not history of being God’s people,
no story of
covenant faithfulness to define them?
To begin answering this, Paul speaks of sin,
and he
frames sin as a universal plight, experienced by all people,
regardless
of their heritage, ethnicity, or behaviour.
And so Paul issues his great statement of human sinfulness,
proclaiming
that ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (3.23).
None of us, whatever our religious tradition or faith
background,
can attain
the glory of God.
We are, each of us, whoever we are, broken people,
and our
relationship with God is correspondingly broken.
There is no-one who is righteous in their own right,
not Jew,
not Gentile, not even Father Abraham himself.
The keeping of the Covenant Law doesn’t make a person
righteous,
any more
than any other moral code.
And so we come to the next step in Paul’s logical
progression through the letter,
and we
heard it in our reading earlier:
‘For we hold that a person is justified by faith
apart from
works prescribed by the law.’ (3.28)
Whatever good the Jewish Law achieved,
and
certainly from Paul’s perspective as a Torah-observant Jew
there were
many good reasons to live within the demands of the Law,
but despite these goods, the law itself did not make a
person righteous,
it did not
make a person in right relation with God.
And this is because there is nothing we can do,
in and of
ourselves, to make ourselves right with God.
Rather, the broken relationship with God, characterised by
human sin,
can only be
mended by God’s action.
We cannot find our own way out of our own pit,
only God
can rescue us.
And so Paul says that a person is justified by faith, not by
works.
This word ‘justified’ probably needs a little explanation…
in modern
colloquial language, we would often use ‘justify’
to
convey a sense of ‘finding a good excuse for something’.
For example, I might come up with a reason to justify losing
my temper,
or being
late for a meeting.
This isn’t the meaning Paul has in mind in Romans.
Rather, I think we can get closer to his meaning,
if we think
about how we use the word ‘justify’
when we’re
typing a document in a word processor.
Unjustified text has a raggedy right edge,
whereas
‘justified’ text lines up neatly at both the left and right margins.
This sense of justify being to ‘make something right’,
is closer
to what Paul means
when he
says a person is justified by faith, not by works.
A person is made right, straightened out
in their
relationships with other human beings and with God,
by faith,
and not by works.
If ‘sin’ is a relationship with God gone wrong, with a
raggedy edge,
then
‘faith’ is that relationship with God straightened out, put right.
We are justified by faith, not by works.
And so, Paul takes pains to show that even Abraham,
the
founding father of the Jewish people,
knew
God by faith first, not by works.
And, he goes on, if this is true for Abraham
then it is
true for all people, Jew or Gentile.
None of us know God by our own efforts,
and none of
us can lift ourselves out of the pit
of our
broken relationship with God.
The only solution on offer
is that God
first reaches out to us;
and Paul’s conviction is that God does this in Jesus Christ
He makes the point three times in our passage:
while we
were still weak … Christ
died for the ungodly (5.6)
while we
still were sinners … Christ
died for us (5.8)
while we
were enemies … we were
reconciled to God (5.10)
the mending
of the broken, unjustified relationship between humans and God
must begin with God reaching out to
people in their pits of despair and sin.
What comes
next, of course, is the human response,
as people then have to learn to live
in the light of God’s gracious act of mercy.
This, for
Paul, is where the Jewish Law fitted,
it was Israel’s appropriate
response,
to God’s calling them to be a holy
chosen people.
But, as one
might say,
other appropriate responses are also
available…
Do the
Gentiles need to keep the Jewish law?
Well, Paul will argue that they do
not.
Rather,
they must live by an equally demanding ethic,
the ethic of the Spirit.
The person
pulled from their pit,
who has had their life restored to
them,
has not been rescued to then dig new pits and fall into them!
Rather they are rescued to live life
as life should be lived,
in renewed relationship with their
creator.
The result of this, says Paul, is that
“We have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ”
Compare this with the basic human condition…
Most people
are not at peace with God.
Just look at the world around us:
a world
characterised by wars, arguments, and fighting.
The sad truth is that most people are not at peace!
And this is a symptom of the underlying problem,
which is
that humanity lives most of the time in rebellion against God.
The power of Sin over
people’s lives
separates them
from God,
and creates
the context for all kinds of destructive behaviours.
Whereas Paul asserts that, through Christ
a new
relationship with God is possible – a peaceful one.
In dying for all people, Christ has broken the power of sin
to dominate
and distort human lives and relationships.
We are lifted out of the pit of conflict with God,
and have
the possibility of peace with God.
The sad truth is that as Christians,
we
frequently don’t live out the reality this relationship.
But it is still there,
and we
often need reminding of that
So Paul goes on to do just that:
He
underlines the new relationship available to those
who
accept Christ as their Lord and saviour.
Paul says that those who have the grace and peace
that comes
from this restored relationship
“rejoice in the hope of the glory of
God”
Another word for “rejoice” here is “boast”,
and so Paul
says that we ‘boast in our hope of the glory of God’.
This good news of a restored relationship with God
as
something to be excited about,
something
we can boast of!
This is a proper response to what God has done
Often we read or hear great theological truths about God:
Truths such
as:
We are saved!
We have peace!
We have grace!
And these
truths inspire us!....
to
nod politely and say “what wonderful theology!”
Well, for Paul, this is more than theology:
this is a
relationship, and a life-changing one
But Paul doesn’t leave it there (he rarely does)
Not only
are we to rejoice, or boast, when things are going well,
He also says that we are to boast in suffering and
affliction.
The point here, is that the life of faith
is not a
life of guaranteed success.
Contrary to what preachers of health, wealth, and prosperity
might assert,
in either
the first- or twenty-first centuries,
the true life of faith is a life after the pattern of Jesus,
and that
includes the suffering of the cross:
Against those who would try to shame him
because of
his sufferings for the sake of the gospel of Christ,
Paul rather asserts that such suffering
is a clear
indication that salvation is under way.
It is not a reason to renounce God,
nor is it a
contradiction of faith.
Rather, suffering strengthens patience,
and
matures character
and
leads to hope
and Paul assures his readers that this hope is not idle,
that the
process has already begun:
“Hope does not put us
to shame,
because God’s love has been poured
into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit” (v.5)
The love of God is already in our hearts through the Holy
Spirit,
and it is
this concept of ‘the love of God’
which ties
together all the various theological and ethical concepts
we find in
this passage.
Note: it’s not our love of God;
rather, it
is God’s love for us,
made known
in sending Jesus to rescue us.
God’s love is unconditional, not earned.
And this love which God has for us,
is
expressed in his gift of Jesus, which gives us peace with God,
and is
expressed in a certain hope for the future
which
in turn gives us a new perspective on suffering.
This hope, this confidence in the future, has a firm
foundation:
it is
grounded in the death of Jesus.
We have already seen what this has achieved,
as sin
ceases to be a barrier between ourselves and God,
and we
enter into a relationship with God
that would
not be possible otherwise
The death of Christ, understood in this way,
is an
expression of the love of God.
On the cross, as Jesus dies,
the love
of God is satisfied.
God’s wrath is reserved for the twin forces of sin and
death,
at work in
the world to diminish, distort, and demean humans.
Paul makes this point by building up to us:
Someone
might die for a good person
they might
even die for a righteous person
but it is
very unlikely that someone would choose to die for a bad person.
And yet… Christ died for sinners
“God proves his love for us
in that while we still were sinners
Christ died for us.” (5.8)
No-one can claim to be “good” before God,
and
thankfully none of us needs to!
God shows love for us by doing, through Jesus,
what not
one of us could do for ourselves.
We are, by God’s grace, reconciled to God,
justified,
declared righteous,
gifted a
restored relationship with God.
And this is not something that can be earned,
it comes only
because of God’s love for us.
And so Paul returns to the subject of rejoicing:
Not only in
the hope of glory,
not only in
afflictions,
but also in
God
He encourages Christian congregations
to show
their joy in their relationship with God.
“we also rejoice in
God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received
reconciliation”
Our restored, renewed relationship with God
is
something about which we can be profoundly joyful.
And as such, it should affect our worship and the way we
live.
This is not just something to try and tease out
of a rather
complicated letter
which was
written nearly 2000 years ago.
Because Paul’s letter was written to real people,
in a real
church, with real problems, facing real issues.
They were trying to share the Gospel of Christ
in a
community which was not really interested in what they had to say.
Does this sound familiar?
If so, then Paul’s message to the Christians in Rome
is as
relevant today as it was then.
If we want others to come to know the good news of Jesus
if we want
people to find the way out of the pit in which they are trapped,
Then we need to let the relationship we have with God
affect our
worship and the way we live.
What if we can grasp in our lives what it means for God to
love the unlovely,
to desire
deep relationship with those currently far off,
and to be
willing to take the first step towards reconciliation.
What if we can live these godly values into reality in our
lives?
Dare I suggest that if we allow God to work in us in this
way,
if our
worship is real and joyful
if our
relationship with God in Christ by the Spirit is all-important to us,
then others too will be saved.
