Lecture 4. Roman 5, Continued.
GOD, then, has brought me into infinite blessing. I stand before Him perfectly justified; “accepted in the Beloved,” too, though that is not so much the subject here. Yet that is the place we occupy before Him, but we are in the wilderness, we are traveling home, and the Christian’s life is not an easy one. He will have tribulation to a certainty. It is promised to him. Christ said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” But if I am rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, I am to rejoice in tribulations also, because it is the same word in the two verses―we rejoice in hope of the glory, and we rejoice in tribulations down here. We are passing through a world where troubles are on every hand for the Christian. I am speaking of the peculiar trials that beset the child of God in a world where everything is against him because everything is against Christ. And why am I to rejoice in tribulation? Because it works patience. I find that if I have my will set on anything here, God will very likely have to break it. It is a very hard thing to have all my plans that I have made for myself broken up. And yet that is what a Christian often does find. He maps out a plan for himself; and he makes up his mind to do a certain thing, and God breaks up the whole thing. It exercises our hearts and consciences often. But what is it to lead to? Patience. We go through the world patiently with subject spirits. That is a thing that the world does not understand, but the Christian learns by it. “Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope.” What is this experience that I discover from it? Is it experience about myself? Not at all. If we make experiences about ourselves, they are most humbling experiences; the experiences we make of ourselves are generally experiences in the path of failure, but these are experiences in the path of faith. I find out what God is for me; I learn all that God is in His infinite wisdom, His almighty power, and His everlasting love. I find experiences of all that God is for me in my pathway down here.
And experience worketh hope and no wonder! What I have learned in the past fills me with confidence for the future. I know that the God who has been for me by the way, no matter what the tribulation that I have to pass through in the path of faith, will be for me to the end, and I learn to trust that God, and to know that His love will lead Him to do everything and anything for me. And so we learn that experience worketh hope, and what next? “Hope maketh not ashamed.” All the confidence that has been awakened in my heart makes me face everything here with perfect boldness. What I have learned of God in the past gives me perfect confidence in Him for all that is to come; so that I can go out into the world with boldness, because the love of God is shed abroad in my heart.
I have often heard people speaking of another, and saying, “I am sure he has got the love of God in his heart.” What do they mean by that? Well, that he loves God.’ But this verse is speaking of God’s love, not of our love to God. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” All the great love that fills the heart of God is shed abroad in these poor hearts of ours by the Holy Ghost given unto us. These are the experiences which we make in our Christian path. We learn more of God―we learn how great His love is. And the place where we learn it in its fullness, is no doubt the cross of Christ, because it goes on to say, “When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” We were without strength, we were ungodly, and, still worse, we were enemies, and yet God loved us in that state. That is the character of His love.
The next verse says that man will love one whom he thinks to be good. He will not lay down his life for a righteous man, but he might for a good man. That is man’s love. He will love a man who, he thinks, deserves his love. But that is not God’s love. Look at the eighth verse, “But God commendeth His love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” “God commendeth His love,” that is a love which is altogether peculiar to Himself, a love that the world knows nothing of. Did He wait until we deserved His love? “God commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And look at the tenth verse, “When we were enemies (not only sinners), we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son”; we were all sinners, we have all sought our own pleasure in the world, and that has led us away from God. Through God’s grace we may get arrested at the very start, but the path of our own will always leads us away from God, but not only that, we are at enmity against God. The heart of man hates God, and if we want a proof of that we have only to look at the cross of Christ. It was man who put Him there. When God said, I love the world, and I will give My Son for it; man said, We hate God, and we will nail His Son to the cross. There is an example of the enmity of the heart of man. Have we learned that our nature is one which is at positive enmity against God? Have we learned that? And yet it says, “When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.”
God’s love comes to us not only as sinners, but as enemies. We hated God, and yet He reconciles us to Himself by the very thing that proves our great enmity against Him, and that is by the death of Christ. And now look at the eleventh verse, “Not only so, but we also joy in God,” and not in our blessings merely; it is the same word that is used in the second and third verses. We not only rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, but we can rejoice in the dealings of God with us in our pathway home; and not only this, we can rejoice in God Himself, and that is the very highest point that we can possibly reach.
There are two subjects treated of in this Epistle to the Romans: first of all the sins that we have committed, and then the state of sin in which we find ourselves. Up to the eleventh verse of this fifth chapter it is all a question of our sins, our wicked deeds, and how God has brought in a remedy for that; after the eleventh verse, it goes on to speak about what we are—not what we have done, but what we are; and God has a remedy for that state which it is most important for us to understand. We will not go into it to-night, it will be our subject for next week. But up to the eleventh verse it is our sins, our guilt, what we have done for which a remedy has to be found, and that is what we get in the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that I can find my delight in God’s very presence. Instead of being driven out from before Him as Adam had been, we can joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That is our portion as we pass through this world. We shall surely, when we get to heaven, joy in His presence, but what a thought that we can joy in Him even now. How often we find things coming in to hinder our joy in God―the little things of daily life for instance―but let us remember that that is our privilege.
“By whom we have now received the reconciliation, “not the atonement, of course the atonement was the work done Godward, but in this verse the word should be “reconciliation,” whereas in the second chapter of the Hebrews it should be “atonement.” “Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make (not reconciliation but) atonement for the sins of the people.” Through Christ’s work on the cross we receive reconciliation. The atonement was for God, the reconciliation is for us. And what a place that brings us into! Instead of my being afraid of God, and instead of my being at enmity against God, I am brought into His presence at perfect peace and reconciled to Him.
But perhaps you say, what about the future?
If I am on the road to the glory there is many a thing that may happen to me before I reach it, and perhaps I may not reach it at all; is it not in some way dependent upon myself? Look at the tenth verse, “If when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” ―it is a most interesting thing to notice the “much mores” of this chapter. It gives one an idea of the super abounding grace of God. It is a wonderful thing to be reconciled to God, for a man who is born at enmity against Him to be brought near to God. Who but God could have devised such a thing as that? But, He says, “Much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Why does it say, “We shall be saved?” Does not a believer know that he is saved? And yet here it says, “We shall be saved by His life.” It is perfectly true that the believer is saved by grace, and yet there is another sense in which we shall be saved. Moreover, if it be true that we are already saved through the death of Christ, yet it is also true that we shall be saved by His life. But not the life of Christ before the cross; it is speaking here of His life on the other side of death. If we were reconciled through His death; if when we were enemies, God was able to reconcile an enemy, how much more will He keep us now that we are friends! It means that we shall be saved right on through every difficulty and danger in spite of all the power of the flesh, the world and Satan against us, because there is all the power of the Lord Jesus Christ in constant exercise for us, and He never loses sight of His people―the youngest and the weakest―and we are all weak. The Lord Jesus Christ never takes His eyes off us and, with His continual intercession, His who lives in the power of an endless life, we shall be delivered from every hostile power, and saved to the very uttermost.
Is it not a wonderful thing how God has met every need of our souls! He has brought us to Himself, so that we are at peace with Him about all our sins, then He gives us a standing before Him so that we can be ever in His favor, and then He fills our hearts with the hope of glory so that we can rejoice in a dark scene such as this is, and every day experience His love and His power to give us all that we need to draw us nearer to Himself, for that is what God loves―that we should be near Him. We are perfectly near Him in Christ, but He wants to draw our hearts nearer to Himself practically. It is not merely a doctrine that we understand, but it is something for the heart to enjoy. So that every blessing that flows to us through Christ brings us closer to His peerless person. The person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ is the blessed subject of which God speaks to us in the gospel.
May the Lord lead our hearts into the enjoyment of it, and draw us closer and closer to Himself, so that we may be brighter witnesses for Him, living for Him and waiting for His coming again!