13. “Our Hope in Christ” (Romans 5, Part 2)

This morning, we are turning back to a passage we considered briefly about a month or so ago to dig in a little deeper. Romans 5:1-11 is about Hope. People need hope. If you have hope for the future, if you have something to look forward to, if you have an expectation that good is coming, you are more equipped to live life. You’re in a better position to handle stress, anxiety & depression, more equipped to deal with challenging life situations like disease or chronic illness.  You are better positioned to cope with challenges. We live in a world that is chaotic, where we are vulnerable, where at any given time all sorts of things can happen that all of the sudden radically change our lives for the worse.  We need hope.  

There are all sorts of things you can hope in. In the midst of a hard and overwhelming week we might look forward to the weekend and doing something relaxing and enjoyable. You might be in a really rough season of life, but you have this amazing vacation planned, you’re going to Europe or to some place really warm on the beach, and that’s coming up and it’s getting you through.  You might be really exhausted from all your job is currently demanding from you, but when you think about the promotion you’re not far from, or the kind of retirement you hope to have because of all this hard work, it keeps you going. Now, it’s not wrong to look forward to things, to a weekend, or an exciting vacation, or something in your work or family. However, the hope of a Christian, of one who believes in Jesus and belongs to him, is infinitely greater. Unlike the things we might hope for or look forward to in this world, the hope for one who belongs to Jesus is a sure and certain hope that can’t be taken away.  It’s a hope that can’t be lost.  It’s a hope that can’t fade.  It’s a hope that can’t fail to deliver.  It is unlike any hope you can have in this world.   

Three things this morning as we consider this passage, and the hope Paul writes of:  

1) What is this hope?  

2) Why is this hope certain, something we can be assured of and really know.  

3) How this hope not only lasts in the midst of suffering, but actually grows through suffering.  

What is this hope? 

 Look with me at the beginning of this passage:

Rom. 5:1   Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

We rejoice, Paul says, “in hope of the glory of God”. What does that mean?  What is the
“Hope of the Glory of God?”

“Glory of God,” sounds like one of those churchy phrases; things we say but I’m not sure I can define it.   Here’s what I think Paul means. Remember creation.  Humanity was made in the image of God.  We were made to reflect God.  We were made to be oriented toward him. We were meant to live, turned toward him, knowing him, loving him, receiving his smiling face looking upon us in love.  And from that relationship with God as his image, we were to bear that image to the world, reflect what God is like to the world in all that we do.  

We were made to reflect the divine Glory.  

But we sinned, we turned from God.  Romans 1 says that we exchanged the glory of God, we traded it in to give ourselves to things in creation.  We are like mirrors that were made to reflect the blazing glorious and beautiful light of God’s glory, but when we turned away from him in our sin, we now reflect only shadows and darkness.  We turned from God, and we experienced a dehumanized existence, A sub-human existence.  

Romans 3 continues to develop this idea. A verse that some of you may even know by heart, Romans 3:23 – “all have sinned, and fall short of God’s glory.” We have failed to be what a human being is meant to be, we are not like God, reflecting God in all the ways God made us to do that very thing.  And of course we’ve been over this, but this is what Romans 1-3 catalogs in our relationships with others, in our desires, in our thinking, in our religion. We fail to reflect what God is like. We fail to be who we’re really meant to be.  But Romans 5:2 says, a Christian, the person who has received Jesus by faith, that person can rejoice because you will reflect God fully and completely one day.   You will do the thing for which you were made.  You will as Romans 8 puts it, one day, be fully conformed to the image of Jesus. 

One day, Paul says, at the end, when Jesus returns and when God’s kingdom and new creation comes and transforms this world of death and brokenness and sadness to the fullness of what it was made for, on that day you will behold the divine glory. You will be all you’re meant to be.  

One day, every believer in Jesus will be fully their truest self. We will be whole, conformed in every way to the image of Jesus. We will reflect the divine glory. We will be fully human. That’s the hope.  

Why this hope is certain, something we can be assured of and really know  

I think there are two reasons we can see in this passage, why this hope is certain and how we can really know it is true. First, the hope of a Christian, the hope of being fully and completely restored as God’s image, to being restored into the fullness of your humanity to reflect God’s glory, this hope is certain, and you can have assurance that this is your future. Because this hope is founded upon or grounded in God’s love for us.  Love that God showed us at our very worst.  When you’re in a relationship with someone, let’s say you’re dating someone, there can be a period of time where each of you is putting your best side forward. You’re showing all your likable qualities.  But then at some point, a less likable or enjoyable part of you will show up and something not so pretty comes out.  

Some of you have heard this story before, but when Erin and I were first dating, about three months into dating on valentine’s day, she came to visit me at my college campus, and we were going to go out to dinner.  Well, she showed up after my last class of the day, I saw her, I think I was a bit overwhelmed by various changes in her ensemble and somehow my bone-headed twenty-year-old self’s first words were “you look hilarious.”   That was a really bad moment.  There was much pleading for her not to leave after that. I also remember probably about a year or so after that, we were engaged and having a premarital counseling session with our pastor, and we were working through some hard stuff.  At one point there was the question: “are we going to keep moving forward and get married or not?” Working through hard things is painful, but there can be a confidence that comes when hard stuff has come into the light and yet there is still the desire and commitment to move forward, where there is love and commitment that continues even though something ugly in us has come out.  

Think about what Paul writes in this passage. God loved us.  Not when we had a slip of the tongue and said something dumb and offensive, and not when we were having a bad hair day or were a little grouchy or a bit selfish. God loved us when? When we were weak, when we were ungodly (verse 6). Verse 8, God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  God provides evidence of who he is and what his love is like in Jesus.  It was while we were living in sin, turned away from God, that God showed his love for us through the death of his Son.  It was while we were enemies.  

Many of us may be able to think of someone we’d be willing to die for. Someone we really love in our family, your kids, your spouse, a parent, or maybe someone who is a close friend. But who would die for their enemy? It’s ridiculous! That’s the basic argument of verse 7. Who would do that? Maybe it’s hard for you to think of someone that you would call an enemy.  You might think of someone who has really hurt you. Or think of someone you really just don’t want to be around. You don’t like to think about them, you don’t like to talk to them. Their way of being, just who they are, makes you want to turn away perhaps in disgust. The way they are is just offensive to you.  It is utterly invoiceable to even imagine giving your life for such a person. God loved you at your very worst.  That’s what Paul is saying.  He loved the worst version of you, the depths of which even we don’t fully know or appreciate.  

This is what we will sing about in our last song this morning, one of my favorites.  When I was doing campus ministry it was a song that pretty much every semester, I had my students sing in our large group.  In so many ways, verse after verse, it calls to each of us to take in the truth, “My Song is Love Unknown.”  The Love of Jesus is greater and incomparable to any other love.  This is love that comes to the loveless, that they might become truly lovely.  This is love and salvation that comes to people who could care less, who are indifferent and apathetic to the Son of God who would leave glory to take on flesh and die on a cross. This is love that willingly experiences flagrant injustice.  The love of one who is the prince of life and who is willing to be slain that he might free us, his enemies who are against him and are unwilling in our sin to submit to God as our Lord. He dies so that he might free his enemies.  He leaves his home and experiences what is rightly our home, the grave and death, that we might be welcomed home.  And what this song does so well is to put us into the story.  You may think, “I don’t hate God; I hardly think of him.”  But what is underneath that apathy that would make you so indifferent to him? So indifferent and uncaring to one who gave himself completely for you?

The gospels depict so clearly the ugliness of humanity as a whole in the death of Jesus. You see it in the Jews and the Gentiles who kill the Son of God, in humanity as a whole.  You see it in the elite leaders who care more about power and control and protecting their interests rather than truth and justice as they twist and pervert justice or turn a blind eye and slay the prince of life.  You see it in the blue-collar soldiers who carry out the execution, nailing Jesus to the cross.  You see it in criminals and crowds who mock him and make fun of him as he suffers and dies.  You see the ugliness in the crowds that one day cheer for Jesus and then so quickly can shout “Crucify him.”   You see the ugliness in the disciples who leave him to die alone.  You see it in the leader of the disciples, Peter, who denies even knowing Jesus to protect himself.  You see in these people what Paul talks about here the weakness, the ungodliness, being sinners, being God’s enemies. This ugliness is in us all… it’s humanity apart from God.  

And this is who God loved.  

Now, if this is what we’re like, and if this is who God loved, do you think there’s anything that’s going to hold God back from fully saving us and bringing us to the fullness of our humanity to reflect his glory? That’s Paul’s argument in the following verses (9-10). If God loved us and came to us while we existed as sinners; If God reconciled us and restored our relationship to him while we existed as his enemies; If God could do that seemingly impossible thing… could there be any doubt he will fail to complete what he started? Could there be any reason to doubt your hope in Jesus if you belong to him?  You can have certainty of this hope because God loved you at your very worst.  

But there’s also a second reason. The reason this hope is certain, something we can really be assured of and really know is because we can taste it and begin to experience it even now.  

I remember a time about a year ago. I was talking to someone who was not yet a Christian but was really considering Christianity. In the midst of talking about Jesus and the amazing salvation we can have in Jesus, he said something like,  “yeah, but you don’t really know until the end, until you’re dead, whether any of this is true.”  Kind of like we all have our lottery ticket, we all have certain things we’re hoping in, but there’s no way to know whether what we believe is right or not. Not until the numbers are called, not until the end and we find out then whether our ticket was the right one. But that’s not actually accurate.  And I’m not even talking about really taking into account the historical evidence for the reliability of the Bible and the account of Jesus’s death and resurrection, though that too is important.  

No, consider what Paul says in this passage. Here’s what a Christian has now.  

• Verse 1: Through Jesus we have peace with God. We have been restored to wholeness of relationship with God. 
• Similarly, Verses 10- 11: We have been reconciled to God by Jesus’ death.
• Verse 2: Through Jesus we have this access, access to this new realm of existence where we live and exist and do life in a space characterized by one word:  GRACE. Our lives are lived in a new realm we’ve been brought into where grace reigns. Grace is King!  

And these objective realities of peace and reconciliation and living in grace are subjectively experienced and tasted now!  Verse 5, this hope doesn’t put us to shame. This hope won’t turn out to be something we end up being disappointed in or think, “you know, I wish I wouldn’t have put so much of my hope in Jesus… I wish I would have diversified my hope investment a bit more.” NO! Paul says this hope does not put us to shame because right now God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  

Right now, the believer in Jesus has the gift of God’s Spirit. God gives himself to us and by the Spirit pours his love into our hearts. One writer on this passage puts it like this: “As a result of being justified by faith, we are…. in a position where we are surrounded by God’s love and generosity, invited to breathe it in as our native air.  As we do so, we realize that this is what we were made for; that this is what truly human existence ought to be like; and that it is the beginning of something so big, so massive, so unimaginably beautiful and powerful, that we almost burst as we think of it.” 

Right now, if you are a Christian, you taste the salvation that will fill the world.  

One day – peace – Shalom – will fill the earth 

One day – there will be comic reconciliation, all will be put right 

One day – There will be universal access to God as we live in the new creation, knowing his love and enjoying him forever.  

These cosmic realities are so massive, so unimaginably beautiful, things that make us want to burst when we consider it and take it in. These things we already, right now, can taste through Jesus. This hope is certain. You can be assured because God already loved you at your worst AND you already taste the hope by the Spirit.   

This hope not only lasts, but grows through suffering

Unlike so many of the things we hope for in this world, this hope lasts and grows through suffering.  If your hope is in your family, or in a certain vision of retirement, or in career advancement, these kinds of hopes, and we could list many other examples, suffering can just destroy.  If something goes wrong in your career, maybe it’s not anything you’ve done, but something evil someone does to you, that hope of career advancement can be over.  If you or your spouse or your kids gets sick, receives a certain diagnosis, or suddenly dies, those hopes can just vanish.  

Because of these realities, many people have noted that our society encourages and pushes people to place all of their hopes in this world, in the here and now, rather than on God. We are one of the most vulnerable societies in history, because suffering is inevitable.  And yet the things we build our lives on and hope in are all things that suffering and tragedy can take away. But that’s not true of our hope in Christ, as Paul writes in verses 3 and 4.

As we experience hardship, suffering, and trials in this life, if you belong to Jesus, as one who knows God and knows God’s love and grace for you, Paul says you can rejoice in suffering because you know something. You know that God is at work. He is producing things in you. And he loves you. In his love he is producing endurance. The spiritual strength, courage, toughness to continue to follow Jesus. Through this endurance, God in his love is producing a tested character. God is making us into a certain kind of person. God in his love is making us into the kind of person who is growing in hope.  He is growing us into the kind of person who has greater and greater hope and confidence in Jesus and all God has promised through Jesus.   

You see this sort of thing worked out in the second song we sang this morning.  “It is Well with My Soul.” The words were written by Horatio G. Spafford, a man who lived in Chicago in the 1800’s, working as a successful lawyer and businessman.  He had a great family, a wife, Anna, and five children.  He had a great life.  But in 1871, their son died of pneumonia, and in that same year much of his business was lost in the great Chicago fire.  Loses a son, loses much of his business and wealth.  A few years later, he and his family were planning to go to Europe for some time away.  Because of some things going on in the business, Horatio sends his family ahead and plans to take another ship alone a few days later.  So, his wife Anna and their four girls are on this ship that is crossing the Atlantic from the U.S. to Europe. And about four days into the journey, their ship collides with another ship. Within twelve minutes, the ship carrying Anna Spafford and their four girls sank in the dark waters of the Atlantic.  226 people died.  Anna was the lone survivor of the Spafford family. As Horatio traveled to go meet his wife, he wrote the words to “It is well with my soul.”  

And I think you can see in song what Paul writes of in this passage. What do you hear in this song? You hear this man clinging more tightly to his hope in Christ, longing with greater confidence of the renewal of all things. Verse 4 says, Lord, haste the day, when the faith shall be sight, quicken the day when Jesus shall return to make all things new.  You hear endurance as again and again this man continues to cling to the hope of Jesus in faith, trusting God and saying, “It is well with my soul.” You hear him taking the logic of this passage and putting it into where he says in verse 2, “Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,” through all these really hard and incredibly difficult things are coming into my life, “Let this blessed assurance control, that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and shed his own blood for my soul.” You also hear the difference of knowing with 100% certainty that God is for you and you have peace with God because of Jesus, “MY sin oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more; praise the Lord, praise the Lord oh my soul.”  

People need hope. Everyone here needs hope. And we ultimately need a hope that’s greater than something in this world.  We need a hope that can’t be taken away.  A hope we can count on and know is real and true. A hope that can last and even grow in this broken world where trials and suffering will come.  And that’s the hope that belongs to everyone who believes in Jesus and belongs to him.  Do you have that?  Do you belong to Jesus? If you do, is this hope fixed in your heart and mind this morning?  Is this the hope that’s guiding you and orienting you in your life, pointing you toward your ultimate destination, everything you were made for?  Or perhaps have other hopes eclipsed the real glorious hope you have in Jesus. Wherever you are, let me invite us now to turn to God and speak to him. This is an opportunity if you’ve never really taken hold of Jesus to do so now.  Or if you have to turn to our gracious God yet again in the midst of the struggles and difficulties and ways we continue to wrestle with sin in this life, to turn to Him who loves us, confessing our sins and seeking His grace and help. So, let’s turn to a time of prayer and in a few moments, I’ll close our time of silent confession and prayer.