Romans 5: A Wonderful Gospel for us sinnners

 Romans 5.   .... 

    I imagine some of us through the tests of life and the storms need encouragement.   We have enough sometimes and just need a rest in God's Scripture.  The calm and lovely places of Scripture do just that. They calm our souls and refresh our spirits.  Much like a summer vacation away from the hub bub , we need such still waters to reflect and grow in this season of summer.  

The critics and legalism majors among us do not know that the Gospel is just what I am going to talk about .  It is not our behavior.  A Christian begins with something else.  No wonder people are put off by our so called rules for others.   Start with ourselves, not others.  The Critics are among us, but not of us John would say.  We can be Pharisees putting rules on others before we understand that the Gospel is not that.

   1. Romans 5:1 tells us that because of being "justified by faith" we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is not a small thing.  Peace with others is important and peace in our own lives is necessary, but to have peace with God is very needed.  Without it, we have no mooring in our life here and the life to come.  To have the assurance of God's peace now in our  lives is something we all need.

It is pardon and acceptance . With God, and He is really all that matters for this life and the life to come. " There is no place in the church for the dominance of the strong over the weak. How is this prevented? One soul is never allowed to “operate directly on another soul.” That is to say, in the Christian community we do not relate to one another “immediate[ly],” we relate to one another mediately – through the “mediation of Christ.” For that reason, we love others not directly, but for Christ’s sake. Thus when I am irritated with someone, for example, I should remember that I must see my relationship to that person through the prism of Christ’s interposition of himself between me and the one who is the cause of my discontent: he, too, is a brother for whom Christ died." from Life Together, Today-Revisiting Bonhoeffer’s Classic" By E. J. Hutchinson

I wonder how though we are to deal with those who are fighting the Gospel of God's grace.  Speak kindly , but carry the big stick of God's righteousness, not our own . We call it justification.  God has to change hearts...We cannot do that.  We can only simply, pleasantly and boldly present the good news of grace to others that they can rescued out the clutches of the devil . See 2 Timothy 2:24

2. " Through Christ we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand"  " Ro:5:2  Grace we are reminded is a gift.  We would not on our own receive it. We are as ST Paul said in Galatians dead in sin before God comes to us in grace.  We call it inability to believe.  Only the Holy Spirit can regenerate lost souls into the kingdom of God.

The follows peace and joy.  The Pharisees among us do not have these things.  We are seeking God, not rules based Christianity.  This is not the Gospel of the grace of God..  People who know that do not try and force their views on others without compassion.  They only look to nit pick.  That is not refreshing or beautiful.  That is ugly, and they are among us in this life.

An old Scots preacher put it," peace is joy resting; joy is peace dancing."  FF Bruce in his commentary on Romans

An article I came across about Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminded me of God's grace in Christ, "  Bonhoeffer’s view of common life is a distinctively Protestant view of common life, despite the fact that “much of the community life at Finkenwalde was oriented around a form of disciplined life not common to the Protestant background of the seminarians” that provoked “accusations that [Bonhoeffer] was catholicizing the seminarians,” as Geffrey B. Kelly has commented. For Luther’s disciple makes it clear in a way that allows for no cavilling (cavilling 

make petty or unnecessary objections, quibbled in other words):

"they caviled at the cost"that the Christian never looks within himself to find his salvation or his justification, but looks instead to Jesus Christ. It is only the pronouncement of the divine forgiveness in the Word that brings us aid, for in ourselves we are “destitute and dead.” This Word, and the righteousness that is ours in Christ, comes to us extra nos, “from the outside.” "   Life Together, Today

Revisiting Bonhoeffer’s ClassicBy E. J. Hutchinson 

3. Lastly, there will be suffering for Christ's followers. And " we rejoice in hope of the glory of God" vs. 2.

These tribulations vs 3 produce in us through God steadfastness experience, and hope because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

Acts 14:22 " we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God."

Conclusion in the words of Evelyn Underhill, "Obedience means more freedom not less, for it lifts the burden of perpetual choice, and in so doing actually increases our power of effective action by making us the instruments of God’s unlimited action. When the whole Church is thus obedient to him it will be what it is meant to be, “a fellowship of creative heaven-led souls” with power to fulfill its vocation of transforming the world. There is an obligation laid on each of us to do our best to contribute to this great end, and ready obedience to the human beings among whom he has placed us is a very good way of learning obedience to God."

Source: Evelyn Underhill, Fruits of the Spirit; Light of Christ; Abba (London: Longmans, 1956), 65–68.