Dan Herold | Romans 5:6-11 | 3/12/2017
There’s a famous saying that says, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” That saying reminds us that big things, like the establishment of the Roman Empire, don’t happen overnight or without any effort. The Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, and all those other famous landmarks of ancient Rome didn’t just spring up overnight. It took years of hard work first to make preparations for them to be built and then more years and more work in order to actually build those famous buildings.
Take the Colosseum for example—the famous building where gladiators once fought. It took 10 years to build the Colosseum and its construction spanned the rule of 3 emperors! That’s just one building in the empire. The empire itself lasted almost 500 years, but that was after over 500 years of work on behalf of the Romans to build up their city and put it in a position to be the greatest in the world.
Just like Rome wasn’t built in a day, the United States weren’t either. Establishing what we know today as the United States took over 150 years from the time we won our Independence to the time the last of the current states joined the union. And just like those in Rome, our famous landmarks didn’t just spring up overnight either. It took 8 years to build the original White House and it has been almost constantly undergoing updates and additions since. It took 14 years to carve the faces of four of our past presidents into the rock at Mount Rushmore and almost 40 years to complete the Washington Monument.
It goes without saying that history would teach us that things that are worthwhile don’t just happen by chance. They are designed, worked for, and much care is given to their establishment. So then, logically it follows that with something of much greater worth than any earthly empire, building, or monument the same sort of care would be taken.
Since he is the author of history, this is a principle by which God works as well. It certainly would have been within his power to send a savior immediately after Adam and Eve fell into sin, but he didn’t. He had something else in mind. Instead God set in place his master plan to save us. He chose to use a particular nation of people to demonstrate how he interacts with his people and deals with them. Just like any earthly building project God’s plan needed some preliminary work. So, God established a nation with whom he would communicate and interact as he enacted the plan of salvation. We heard about that preliminary work in our Old Testament lesson today when God called Abram and told him to move to Canaan and that God would make him into a great nation through which all people would be blessed.
Then, just like the workers who labored to build the Colosseum or Mount Rushmore carefully went about their work day by day, God continued to build piece by piece. Then, at just the right time God put the final piece of his plan in place. He sent his son, Jesus, to be born a man and fulfill all the promises which God had given his chosen people. Everything that God promised became true in the person of Jesus Christ. Just like death was the result of Adam and Eve’s sin and righteousness was the result of Christ making atonement for our sins, reconciliation is the end product of God’s promises.
The Apostle Paul works very carefully in these verses to tell us just what it means that God has declared us righteous. He paints us a picture to show us what it means to be made right with God—what it means to be reconciled with our Almighty Lord.
Paul writes in verse 6,
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”
So, Jesus died for us at just the right time to make the point he was trying to make. As you read the account of Jesus being arrested and executed in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John it’s easy to get the impression that Jesus wasn’t in control of it at all, but it happened at just the right time. God was in control the whole time and made it happen so that Jesus would die at the right time to show us what his love for us is really like.
Paul says that Jesus died for us while we were still powerless. We were the ones who were powerless! We were the ones unable to help ourselves, and Jesus came and did for us what we were unable to do. And then Paul gave us this example to show us what that all means. He said,
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“Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.”
What that means is that what Jesus did for us was unlike what any other person would have most likely done.
Paul says that very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man. I think we’d have to agree. Very rarely would you find a person who was willing to die for another person because they have demonstrated their faith and that they are of good character. However, you would be more likely (Paul says) to find someone willing to die for a “good man,” or someone who does good things. In other words, a person would be more likely to die for another if they feel that the other person has earned it somehow. That’s the beauty in what Jesus did for us—he died at just the right time while we were powerless!
“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us,”
Paul writes in verse 8.
God planned out how he would save us down to the very last and most minuscule details. His plan of salvation wasn’t thrown together overnight. It isn’t in any way haphazard or shot from the hip. It is carefully and skillfully planned and executed. He planned it out so that at no time during the whole process could we ever logically argue that we had any part in saving ourselves, but instead the credit belongs entirely to God. You could never argue that we earned our redemption because Jesus died for us while we were still sinners—before we could do anything good to earn his favor. He had no reason to die for us, but he did because he loved us and he loved us so much that he reconciled us to God. Jesus did what was necessary, as difficult and painful as it was for him, to wash away all our sins so that it’s like they never existed and restore our relationship with God which sin had broken.
And all that is done. Jesus made full payment—full atonement— for our sins and they are totally removed from our record forever. There’s nothing more that needs to be done for us to enter into heaven and we receive all the benefits of what Jesus did simply by trusting in the fact that he did all that for us. That leaves us with one big question then. If heaven is won for us and there’s nothing more to do, and we are still here on earth living out our lives, what are we doing here? And that’s where we find the application point of Paul’s lesson on Reconciliation.
In verses 9-11 Paul writes to us with a view toward how Christians should live out our lives on earth, knowing that our place in heaven is a certain and accomplished reality. First, Paul says,
“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!”
So the first implication for us here and now of our justification which is done and completed is that we no longer need to fear God’s wrath. We never have to wonder if God is angry with us or happy. We never have to wonder what we can do to make him happy. And we never have to wonder what’s going to happen when this world ends because we already have those answers. That’s the blessing that comes along with being reconciled to God. We know that right here and right now we are right with God. We know that full payment for our sins has been made so when God sees us he doesn’t see sin. He sees Jesus covering us so he has no reason to be angry with us. We know that God is incredibly happy with us because he views us as his own dear children who have been forgiven, and we know that for us heaven is a certainty because God has promised it to us.
Paul drives that point home in verse 10 where he points out that God did all these wonderful things for us—like sending Jesus to die for us and washing away all our sins—while we were still sinners. We didn’t do a single thing to earn what God has given us and he gave it to us anyway. So if he was willing to do that, how much more is he going to bless us now that Jesus has died for us and all our sins have been paid for? So, another blessing that comes along with our reconciliation is that just like children rely on their parents to provide for them, we can rely on God to provide everything we ever need. We never need to look anywhere else or worry about anything because God promises to provide for his children.
And the last thing Paul says that we can do right here and now today because of our reconciliation with God is rejoice. He says that we can rejoice in our earthly lives because of all that God has done for us—for sending his Son to die for us and for providing all that we need. Now, in the coming weeks we are going to see just what was required and what Christ did for us so that we could have that peace and joy. When we see Jesus suffer and die it is hard to be joyful, but there’s a reason the Friday before Easter is called “Good Friday.” It’s the day when God’s promises were shown to be true.
Your life may not always be easy. You may often wonder why things are the way they are. You might even prefer that some things were different. But no matter what, you can rejoice that you have been reconciled to God through faith by the work of Jesus your Savior. Things may not always go the way we want in this life, but one thing is certain and that is the foundation upon which we as Christians build our faith and our lives—that Jesus Christ, our Savior, secured a place in heaven for each of us. There’s nothing we can do to earn it, but it is ours. It was given by the promises of the Almighty and is received through faith. Now, that is certainly a reason to rejoice.
Amen.