Peace and Joy
Romans • Week 3
Adam Barnett teaches on Romans 5 and gives a word of encouragement in response to recent events in our community.
MESSAGE NOTES
Introduction to Paul
Romans • June 5, 2022
Teacher: Adam Barnett
--
First Feature of the Gospel – God has the power to save his human creation.
Romans 5:1-11 NIV
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. 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. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Second Feature of the Gospel – its impact on the lives of those who have been justified by faith.
Lt. Kurt Zehmisch
“How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way. Christmas, the celebration of love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as friends for a time.”
R.T. France
“Our sin has put hostility and wrath between us and God, and a mere ceasefire will never suffice. We are not meant to live under the cloud of an uneasy standoff with God based on self-righteousness or cheap grace. Instead, Jesus became incarnate, died, and rose so that believers might be adopted into God’s own family and eat at the table with him in unbroken fellowship forever!”
We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ!
Like our resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ, we will one day experience the incorruptible state of “glory” in which God himself dwells.
Hope in our suffering doesn’t eliminate our pain. It reminds us of God’s promise.
Romans 5:5 NIV
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.
Romans 8:35, 37-39 NLT
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.