Third Presbyterian Sunday Morning Bible Study - April 18, 2021

Below is the Bible Study written by Jim Rudiger for his Sunday School Class which meets at Third Presbyterian Church, Norfolk, Virginia. It's based on Romans 5:1-11, 18-21.

What do you really hope for?  What does hope mean anyway?  The dictionary says that hope is feeling that your desires will met.  When we hope for something we have an expectation that it will happen.  When I got married, Jackie and a lot of girls her age had a “Hope Chest.”   What was the hope?   What went into that “Hope Chest?”  All the things to make a marriage start out on the right foot. For some future mother-and-laws, that might mean the first thing to stuff in the Hope Chest was the dopey guy who was taking away her sweet little girl.  Of course, the real reason for a girl to have a Hope Chest was that they expected to get married some day.  It was betting on the future.  One of the saddest things then was if that the “Hope Chest” never was used.

You know a lot of our time is spent hoping.  We hope for rain in a dry spell.  We hope for a sunny day when it's raining.  We hope our kids meet the right boy or girl.  Hope is a good word.  It doesn’t carry with it the greed or aggressive desire  that other words might.  If I say, “I hope Johnny meets a nice girl.” that carries an entirely different meaning than if I said, “I want Johnny to meet a nice girl.”  The first implies that Johnny has some freedom in picking out his girl friend but in the second, it is implied that I will have some heavy input into his selections - his freedom is diminished.  That is what hope is - desires tempered with freedom.  Paul was big on hope.  To him hope was expecting God to do what he promised.

Paul is in full swing now as he dictates his letter to his secretary, Tertius.  His hands are on his forehead as he searches for the right words to convey his thoughts.  The church in Rome was on the verge of being splintered into Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians.  Paul has to pick his words carefully.  He knows that this letter will be read to both groups.  He has spent a lot of time going over the wrong understanding that the Jews had about the Law.  How God always intended that faith be the way to him and not works.  Paul had shown that even Abraham was proven righteous before God long before the Law was given to Moses.  And as far as circumcision being a necessary ingredient in being made right with God, Abraham was made right with God fourteen years before he was circumcised.   You see, the Law wasn’t given as a vehicle for righteousness but as a way of showing how sinful we are.  It is to define sin and righteousness.  Gentiles have a responsibility too.  And their’s is the same as the Jews.  They both have to come to God in faith.  

As Paul paces, he asks himself the same question we have asked ourselves, “How do we know we are saved?”  A long time ago I was in an evangelism program which asked the person if he knew he was saved.  Normally I got answers like, “I try to live a good life.  I pray that I am.”  Actually, when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, trying to live a good life isn’t the thing.  In fact to say we are trying to live a good life implies that we are trying to win over God with something we do.  We are trying to gain salvation by our own works.  That flies right in the face of the grace of God.  His grace doesn’t depend on how hard we are trying to get along with our neighbors or hard we are trying to please God.  So, in today’s study, Paul is going to tell us how he gets the answer to the question of how do we know we are saved.

Romans 5:1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,  2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.  3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,and hope doesn't disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

It is interesting that Paul is starting off with ”therefore”.  It is like saying, "I’ve told you all of this stuff and now you can see where I was heading. "Therefore" tells them that what he’s been telling them results in the following.  Paul says we have discussed justification.  How all of the work done to try to live up to every little bit of the law could never justify you before God.  Only having the trusting faith of accepting God at his word can justify you before the Lord.  From this justification through faith, we have peace with God.  When we realize that we worship a God who was the God and father of Jesus Christ, then we enter into an intimacy with God that works can never produce.  That intimate relationship is - justification.

It is through Jesus that we have access to the grace of God.  While the gift of God is free for us to take or reject, that acceptance or rejection is embodied in Jesus.  The word Paul uses for “access” literally refers to bringing someone into the presence of royalty.  Paul is really saying here that Jesus Christ takes our hand and leads into the Holy of Holies and introduces us to God.  And when we are standing there before God, God looks down on us and doesn’t condemn us or seek vengeance on us.  He bathes us in uncompromising, unmerited, unearned love..  We are welcomed because we have entered with His son at our side.  The hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” has special meaning here.  It is almost as if God is saying, “Any friend of my son is welcomed in my home.”  

There is another meaning for the word Paul used.  In the Greek culture, it meant a safe haven for ships.  Taking this meaning, Paul is saying that life has been like a turbulent sea that has threatened to capsize our lives.  The waves are white capped and breaking over the bow of the ship leaving us trembling with fear.  But Jesus as the captain of our ship has steered us into a safe harbor where the tempest can’t touch us.  This safe harbpr is God’s grace.  While we were out there battling the sea and depending on our own efforts to stay afloat, it wasn’t going to be long before the ship went down with us onboard.  It is Jesus who saves us from the storms of the world and brings peace and calm to the waters trying to envelope us.

Just as Paul concludes his thought with how we can hope in sharing the glory of God, we see him stop and almost say to himself.  “Yes that is true.  We are faced with all of this glory.  Being before the King of Kings.  Being on a first named basis with the Almighty.  There is a lot of glory in that.  But, with all of this glory, the fact remains that Christians don’t have an easy time in the everyday world.  Nobody probably knows that better than you Christians in Rome.  You see persecution and suffering everyday.  Words about sharing in the glory of God makes you feel good, but, what do you do in the real world when you suffer under the empire’s anger.

Paul puts their problems in the proper perspective.  Suffering produces endurance.  What does he mean when he says this?  If we give in, we loose, but, if we continue on we gain the strength to resist evil.  John McCain was beaten, teeth knocked out, legs broken but all of the punishment produced the resolve to not let his enemy win.  Many times he felt that he couldn’t go on, but the suffering that he had endured would have been for nothing if he quit then.  His suffering produced endurance.  We can look at Job and see the same kind of strength that was gained from suffering.  All of us face troubles every day.  We face the pressures of want and need, the pressure of sorrow, the pressure of being misunderstood, the pressure of disappointment and the pressure of loneliness.  As we battle these things we develop endurance.  Endurance really means the spirit which can overcome the world.  It means a spirit that doesn’t just sit there passively, but which fights and triumphs over the trials and tribulations of life.  I read about a man who was undergoing some pretty bad trouble in his life.  A friend told him, “Troubles really color life, don’t they?”  The man replied, “Yes they do.  And I propose to choose the colors.”  That is what endurance is all about - you choosing the colors and not Satan.

If suffering produces endurance, then endurance produces character.  The word that Paul uses for character refers to metal which has been melted down so that the pure metal separates from the impurities.  In steel mills, the ore is heated and slag forms on the top and is poured off.  This slag is made up of the things in the ore that isn’t iron - the impurities.  When all of the slag is poured off, a pure metal remains.  For Paul, character is like that metal which has been refined and all of the bad stuff has been removed.  Paul’s point is that the energy that went into endurance is like the fire melting the ore.  The process will purge from our lives the impure desires and actions leaving us better people.  Think of people who went through a tragic time and not only lived through it but gained strength through it.  Most of the time we see a better person emerge.  Look back at September 11 and see all of the firemen and policemen who stuck in there and even though they felt the loss of friends and loved ones, they are personally stronger and better focused on life now.

Paul is taking us up a set of steps.  The first step was suffering.  The next step was endurance;  followed by character.  Now we are at the last step.  Suffering, endurance and character has brought us now to hope.  You know, two people can experience the same troubles.  For one it will defeat him and drive him into depression.  The other person will fight it and never let it control his life.  The first person will be left with no hope but the second will see hope as a challenge to greatness.  You see, if a person meets life head on, then he is used to facing troubles and battling the troubles so he is conditioned to fight when the next trouble arises and that conditioning is his hope - hope that God will do everything that he has promised.  The hope we have as Christians is not based on an illusion but on the steadfast love of God.  And when our hope is in God, we cannot be disappointed.  Remember that God’s everlasting love is backed up by his everlasting power.

Romans 5:6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person --- though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.  8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.  9 Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood , will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.  10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.  11 But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul pauses.  How do we know that God really loves us?  The fact that Jesus Christ dies for us is the final proof that God loves us.  We have read about soldiers who sacrificed themselves to save their buddies.  Men who fell on grenades to spare their friends.  But acts like that are rare and usually happen under very special circumstances.  A lot of time it is a spur of the moment decision.  No debate.  No alternatives considered.  Maybe, if given some time to think about it, the act wouldn’t be committed.  So Paul can say with some assurance that rarely will someone die for a righteous person.  But contrast that to Jesus.  Christ dies for you and I while we are still sinners.  While we were still alienated from God.  Before we were ushered into God’s living quarters.  The importance of this act to you and I is that it was not good men that Christ came to save.  It was bad men - sinners.  You and I.  And it wasn’t God’s friends that Jesus died to save.  In fact we were enemies of God at the time.  There was actually no logical reason for Christ to die for either you or I, but he did.  And he did it because we are important to His father and loved by His father.

Paul goes on the say that because of Jesus, our status with God has changed.  Although we were sinners, we were put into a right relationship with God.  Our status changed from sinner to righteous.  But it wasn’t enough that our status with God changed, our state of being - our lifestyle - was changed.  You see, as sinners who have been saved, we can’t continue to let sin control our lives.  Our state changed from sinner to good man.  Christ’s death on the cross changed our status with God because it removed the stamp of sinner from our lives.  But Christ’s resurrection changed our state.  The best part is that Christ is no longer dead, but, alive.  And he has given us someone to help us with the troubles of the world.  A person who knows us like no other knows us and has our best interest in mind.  He stands beside you and I offering strength and encouragement.  He knows that we will face temptations as long as there is an evil one in this world and sometimes we will slip.  But, he will give to us the same love that Christ demonstrated and God has promised.  And who did Christ give us? The Holy Spirit - Christ’s seal on our lives.

The bottom line is that when Christ changed our status, it was justification.  When Christ changed our state, it was sanctification.  It is under sanctification that our saving process continues.  It isn’t a one time thing.  As we grow, there are changes in the way we view things.  To deny that we change is to deny reality.  So we have to deal with new experiences, new trials, new tribulations and when that happens, we need help.  Sanctification ends only when we meet Jesus face to face.  You see, our Christian experience is a dynamic thing, a work in progress.  We continually have to test our limits and fight Satan.

Paul is very clear in how important this point is.  The whole saving process, the coming of Christ, the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ is the proof of God’s love.  Folks, it all happens because God loves you and I.  That's what we sing every Sunday. This wasn’t a situation where there was a kind loving Christ and an angry vengeful God.  Sometimes, we think about our salvation as Christ changing God’s mind about us.  Changed God from wanting to spank us to wanting to love us.  As a child, I spent a lot of my time trying to convince my grandmother not to switch me with a willow branch when I broke one of her commandments.  Most of the time I wasn’t successful.  But, sometimes my Aunt Irma would pull my grandmomma aside and plead in my defense.  Neither would say a word to me, but, grandmomma would break the stick in two and throw it into the wood stove in the kitchen.  But, Jesus didn’t act like my Aunt Irma.  Paul wants us to know that he didn’t have to.  It was because of God and not in spite of God that we have salvation.  God’s attitude about us has always been founded in love.  Jesus came to prove unequivocally to men that God is love.

Romans 5: 18 Therefore, just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.  19 For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.  20 But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.  21 so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul now tackles why there is sin in our world.  The Jews knew full well the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.  Adam couldn’t resist Eve wanting him to eat of the tree of Good and Evil.  I guess if we boiled down these verses, we could state them in one sentence.  “By the sin of Adam all men became sinners and were alienated from God; by accepting Christ, we became righteous and are restored to a right relationship with God.”

The basic ideas that Jews gets from these verses are very important.  The Jew never thought of himself as an individual.  He was always a part of a clan, a tribe, a family or a nation.  Apart from that association, he was nothing.  If one man from a tribe murdered someone from another tribe, it was the duty of the murdered man’s tribe to retaliate.  It was no longer a quarrel between two people, but, a feud between two families.  We saw this in the Hatfields and McCoy feud.  In the book of Joshua, there is the story of a man named Achan.  Now at the siege of Jericho God had instructed the Hebrews that all of the spoils be destroyed.  Achan didn’t do what God had instructed and hid some of the spoils for his own use.  Achan’s greed had caused him to sin.  The next battle was the siege of Ai.  This was supposed to be a piece of cake.  The Hebrews were supposed to march in with little resistance.  It didn’t work out that way and it proved to be a terrible defeat for the Hebrews.  The defeat was blamed on Achan’s sin.  Since Achan was a part of the nation, the sin of Achan became the nation’s sin.  With the nation being branded a sinner, it was punished by God.  The nation wasn’t considered a collection of individuals where Achan was one of the individuals but a solid mass.  It is kind of like a rotten apple spoiling the barrel.  That is the point Paul makes with Adam.  Adam was considered a member of mankind and not an individual.  Because Adam was one of mankind, then all of mankind shared in his sin.

This is very difficult for us to deal with.  It just doesn’t seem fair to brand everybody because of Adam’s actions.  After all, if we get down to the basics, it really was Eve’s fault.  So how do we come to grips with this question?  Suppose that our connection with Adam is a physical connection.  Then we have no more choice with it than we do in picking our parents.  We are connected to Adam through physical descent and can neither choose nor reject it.  We are just saddled with a black sheep in our family tree.  On the other hand, our connection with Christ is voluntary.  Our uniting with Christ is a matter that we control - we can either accept or reject Christ.  So our connection with Christ is far different from our connection with Adam.  We grouse over our family tie to Adam.  We can argue whether it is fair or not.  Or even if it is just a fable.  But the fact remains that we all sin, regardless of whether it was Adam's fault or not.  That is just a fact and now the horse is out of the barn so it's too late to shut the door now.  We have to move on.  It is completely true that man was ruined by sin, but equally as true that man was rescued by Christ.

So what do we hope for?  Is it a pile of linens folded neatly in a cedar chest?  Like the old hymn suggests, “Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”  That says it all, folks.  Everything in the 5th Chapter of Romans is summed up in those words and everything that brings us to a right relationship with God is found in those words.

Prayer: Father, it was through your tender love for us that you gave your son to die for us at a time when we didn’t deserve it and were alienated from you.  With this precious gift, now may we grow stronger through our suffering looking to the time when we come into your presence.  Amen