Romans 5:1-5

Peace and Hope
1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we [a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we [b] boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we [c] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.


Dig Deeper
One of the things that I love to do early in the morning before everyone else wakes up is go for long runs. There is nothing quite so relaxing and peaceful for me in the whole world. For a long time, I just ran by myself and spent that time with God. I never translated my running into an occasional race nor did I ever pay much attention to how fast I was running. In the past few years, however, I have continued to spend my peaceful morning runs with God but I have entered a few half-marathons and full marathons. As I did that, though, I realized that it would be beneficial to pay at least a little attention to working on getting faster and running better. One morning I was out for a run and I saw what looked like a rather experienced runner on the road up ahead of me about an 1/8 of a mile. My goal was to catch up to him and then try to stay with this runner as long as I could. It would push me and make me a better runner, I reasoned. So I sped up and caught up to him, determined to stay with him even though his pace was a little faster than I would normally run. I was so happy to have caught up to him but another thought hit me quickly. Now I had to stay up with him. It was not comfortable. It was not fun. I had already gone about ten miles that morning and now I was pushing myself at a pace faster than I would normally go. It was going to take sacrifice and a little suffering in order to keep up in this other runner’s footsteps and become a better runner than I was. It is times like that that the old saying “no pain, no gain” doesn’t really offer much solace. Pain is pain, but it is bearable if you realize that it serving a larger purpose.

I know many people, we all probably do, who live their lives in estrangement. Some people lived estranged from their own family members. I knew someone once that had gone over twenty years without speaking to her own sister and would not reconcile although they had both long forgotten why they initially came in conflict with one another. Other people live estranged from God. They have every opportunity to know the truth of his existence and worship him but they refuse. Paul has already talked in 1:18-32 how this is the standard state of most of human cultures. Sadly, most humans reject God and lived in estrangement from him despite the dehumanizing effects of such a decision. Yet, Paul has already laid the foundations to show that God has promised to do something about that plight rather than just leaving humans in their separation. In this section he will begin to fill in the brush strokes of a picture of an existence which fulfill the promises of God, an existence where humans can be reconciled in their relationship with a personal and loving God.

Paul, having laid a foundation for the idea that all humans can be brought into God’s promised family, being justified in the present age, he now begins to introduce and describe that life in a section that will last all the way through chapter 8, but which is still intimately connected with the preceding four chapters as well as what follows in chapters 9-11. In fact, in short Paul will begin to describe aspects of the reconciled life, culminating in chapter 8 where he will show that the point of this life goes far beyond just our own individual reconciliation and involves God’s great restoration project for his entire creation. In chapters 9-11, Paul will return to the idea of where this new life made available to all who have faith in Christ’s life leaves the ethnic Jewish nation. Finally, in 12-16 he will describe how these issues play out specifically in the life and unity of the Roman church.

Paul says, in a line of thinking that is quite typical for him, that our justification, while happening in the past, has a present result and a future fulfillment. We have been justified or declared to be in the covenant family of God through faith in the life of the Messiah over and against our own lives, something that Paul will describe in detail in the next chapter. This justification through faith brings us peace with God not just because Jesus did something that we couldn’t (although that is also true) but because we can die to self and enter into his life, being justified through our Lord Jesus Christ. But this peace that we have is far more than we tend to think of when we hear that word. For most of us, the word “peace” means something like the absence of conflict. Paul uses this term, however, in the very Jewish sense of Shalom which carried the meaning of wholeness. Being brought into the family of God and being in the process of being restored in Christ to the image of God (2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:22-24) reverses the dehumanizing effects of sin and the separation from the true family of God. But Paul also appeals to the Old Testament prophets who used the term “peace” to describe the salvation that God would bring during the days of the Messiah (Ezek. 34:25; Isa. 54:10; Jer. 37:26). What Paul wants to make clear, above all else here, is that peace with God comes only through Jesus Christ. There is no other roadmap to peace.

By being in Christ through faith, we have gained access, says Paul into the grace in which we now stand. Paul here uses the word “access” which was the word that was used for coming to the altar in the Jewish Temple with a sacrifice. We can, in other words, approach God’s presence through the life of Jesus Christ and can enter into the holy room, to use Paul’s own metaphor, of grace. He pictures grace in this section not so much as an action of God taken on those undeserving of it, but as a state of being into which we are transferred by the power of the resurrection of Christ. This anticipates 5:20-21 where he will begin to speak of grace as an actual realm or state in which humans can now live.

As a result of this justification that we have available in Christ, a justification that brings us peace and moves us to a realm of grace, we boast in the hope of the glory of God. We tend to think of “boast” as a largely negative word, but by it Paul means what we put our hope or confidence in both in the present and for the future. But what is the hope of the glory of God? Paul is only introducing his thoughts here but makes that clear in 8:18-27. Because of sin, man surrendered the glory of God (3:23), but now through the Messiah the entire creation will be reconciled and restored. Thus, our great hope is the age to come where we will not only be resurrected and formed completely to the image of God but God’s whole creation will be renewed and put back together under the unending lordship of God himself.

Paul’s point is that through Christ, we have made it. We have been justified and brought into a state of reconciliation and peace with our creator, reversing the state of the human race that he has described in the first three chapters. Yet, this reconciliation is not just a personal invitation to heaven as though God were giving out get-out-of-hell-free cards. This justification is an invitation to share in his great reconciliation project (see 2 Cor. 5:11-21). We have been allowed to run next to Christ, to use the metaphor from the opening paragraph, but now we must keep up with him. We have entered into his life, and it brings incredible peace, but there is also much challenge that goes along with living that life. It is free but it is demanding.

Jesus warned quite clearly that his way of life would involve suffering and death in order to bear the fruit of the glory of God (Jn. 12:23-26) and this is what Paul is envisaging in the life of those who enter into Christ’s life. Christ set the tone and the example as one who suffered for the benefit of others and whose work was made complete in that suffering (Heb. 5:8-9). Notice, though, that Paul is not so far removed from the real life of pain, hurt, and hardship that he says anything so trite as “we glory about our sufferings.” Suffering and trials for the Christian are just as real and painful as they are for everyone else, but we glory in or through those times because we know that they are not pointless. Pointless suffering came seem unending and unendurable but suffering for a purpose brings perseverance which develops the true character of a tested and reliable person (see also 1 Pet. 1:6-7; James 1:2-4; Heb. 12:7-11). Out of that perseverance and character, come the hope of the age to come and the work of our being made complete in the life of Christ. This may all look like foolishness or something to be ashamed of in the eyes of the world, but in the hope of the resurrection announcement of the gospel, there is no shame (Rom. 1:16). We can live this hope and cling to it because God has given us both his love in our hearts and has filled our hearts with love for him and others. This has all been done through the work of the Holy Spirit just as God promised through the prophet Jeremiah when he declared that, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Jer. 31:33).


Devotional Thought
Do you have your eyes on the final outcome of being like Christ and sharing in his glory that you can truly rejoice in suffering because you see that it is a necessary part of your transformation? How does clinging to this perspective help you get through difficult times?