2-24-08

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for today’s sermon is the Epistle lesson read earlier from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.

One of the reasons that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome is to clarify the doctrine of justification. Justification according to the Tyndale Bible Dictionary is a declarative act of God by which he establishes persons as righteous—that is, in right and true relationship to himself. The church at Rome contained both Jews and Gentiles and there were some who believed that works were necessary for justification. This idea that works are necessary for justification is still debated today almost 2000 years after Paul wrote this letter. Paul clearly refutes this idea in his letter. Paul states in verse 1 of our text that we are justified by faith and this is what we in the Missouri Synod believe. We have been taught this in Sunday School, in Confirmation class, in Bible studies, and from the pulpit.

Justification by faith is an important doctrine of our church and it is necessary that we teach and preach it often. Often times when we preach justification by faith we fail to preach what justification means. The meaning of justification is one of the points that Paul is making in this section of his letter to the Romans. Listen to verses 1 and 2 again: ¹Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ²Through 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.

The first thing that justification means is that we have peace with God. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden they hid from God because they were afraid of God and what He would do to them because of their sin. Throughout the Old Testament we have examples of God punishing His people because of their sin. God destroyed the earth and it inhabitants with the great flood because of the peoples’ sin, Moses didn’t enter the Promised Land because of his sin, the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years because of their sin, and the Israelites where taken into exile and removed from the Promised Land because of their sin. Since we have been justified we have peace with God. We don’t have to be afraid of our sins or be concerned about God punishing us for them.

Justification also means that we have access into God’s grace. Grace is the underserved love of God. What kind of love is this? God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The creatures that God had created in His own image had disobeyed His commands and therefore became ungodly. Every one of His creatures was a poor, miserable sinner who deserved nothing but the wrath of God. But God’s love for us was so great that instead of wrath, He sent His only Son to earth to die for the sins of all mankind. Paul tells us in verse 5 that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. It is important to note that the Greek verb tense here implies an action that has taken place in the past which continues to happen in the present. God’s love continues to be poured out through the Holy Spirit. This takes place through the Word and sacraments. The Holy Spirit uses them to create and build in each one of us a saving faith that rests solely on the saving work of Jesus Christ.

Through the saving work of Jesus Christ, we also rejoice in hope of the glory of God. The word that is translated as rejoice can also mean to boast, brag, or glory in. Not only are we to celebrate the fact that someday we will taken to heaven to be in the glory of God but we are to brag or boast about this fact to others. There is no greater hope than the hope of heaven and eternal life, how could we not boast about the hope that we have.

Many see peace, grace and hope as a future blessing, they are wondering how justification affects their daily life. Many preachers and TV evangelists are teaching the ideas of justification and strong faith leading to earthly wealth and healing from diseases. These ideas just simply are not Biblical. Let’s look at verses 3 and 4 of our text: ³ More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Paul doesn’t state that faith will lead to earthly wealth or healing but what he does say is that we will have sufferings, troubles and distresses. These can come in many forms such as illness, the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, etc. Paul tells us that we should rejoice or boast in these times and we do this because we know that God uses these times of suffering to draw us closer to him. God uses these times to bring us into His word, through personal Bible study and through the divine services held in His church. God also uses these times of suffering to build up our endurance or perseverance and this leads to the production of character. The Christians who have built up character are strong and mature, they have been tried and tested, sufferings have come and gone, but yet they remain strong in the faith. Finally, this character produces hope which brings us back to verse 2. We boast in the hope of the glory of God which we have through Jesus Christ.

In summary, what Paul is saying here is that because we are justified by faith we have the hope of sharing in the glory of God in heaven but until our time comes for us to be called to heaven we still live in a world of sin. God uses times of suffering to strengthen our faith which eventually leads to greater hope in the coming glory of God. I think that this illustration might help us to see the point that Paul is making: There once was a family that lost three of its four children within just two weeks from an awful disease. One child was left, a four year old boy. The family had buried the third child just two weeks before Easter. On Easter morning the parents and their remaining child went to church. The mother told her Sunday school class about the resurrection of Christ. The father read the Easter story in the adult Bible class as he led the devotions for that morning. People who knew of their great loss wondered how they could do it. On the way home, a 16 year old youth asked his father, “Dad that couple must really believe everything about the Easter story, don’t they?” “Of course they believe it,” said the father, “All Christians do.” “But not as they do,” replied the youth.

Sometimes we get so caught up in our daily lives here on earth that we lose focus on the big picture, the promise of eternal life in heaven. We focus on how we are going to pay the bills or our employment situation or for some of us even how are we going to feed our family instead of focusing on God and his promise to provide for us. We focus on earthly wealth and keeping up with the purchases of our neighbors instead of focusing on the source of our wealth and the percentage that he asks from us in thanksgiving. We focus on our aches and pains, our illnesses and the illnesses of our loved ones instead of focusing on the one who heals. We focus on our own comfort level and our pride instead of focusing on all the lost who don’t know Jesus as their savior. Sometimes we even focus on the loss of a loved one and not the eternal life that Christ has earned for them.

That right there is our big picture (the cross). Focus on the cross where Jesus Christ purchased and won us from all sins, from death and the power of the devil, focus on the cross where Jesus Christ has redeemed us lost and condemned creatures, focus on the cross where Jesus Christ sacrifice was the price of our justification. In this justification we have peace with God, we have access into the underserved love of God through the Holy Spirit, and we have hope in the glory of God in heaven and our faith which is strengthened in the trials and sufferings of this world guarantees it.

Amen.

Go in peace and serve the Lord. Amen.