The Blessings of Salvation, Part 6

It not only echoes, but trumpets
really the truths of the passage before us this morning. We come to Romans chapter five
once again, which chapter we have been enjoying as Paul is
laying out and really exulting in the blessings of salvation. We have spent no little time
in this passage. And what Paul is doing here is
is really enumerating Those blessings that flow to the believer because
of what Christ has accomplished. This is this is no minor blessing. These are the great mercies of
God coming to us quite undeserved and. More glorious, the more time
that we spend meditating upon them. If you want to go all the
way back to chapter five and verse one, we’ll take a running
start at the passage before us this morning and I’ll summarize
as we go. The first blessing of salvation
that Paul points to is that the believer now enjoys a life of
peace with God. He enjoys a life of peace with
God. Romans five one says, therefore,
having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our
introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand. That
certainly wasn’t the only blessing that the Christian enjoys, but
an overwhelming one to begin with. The Christian also enjoys,
secondly, a life of confident worship. A life of confident
worship there at the end of verse two, we exalt in the hope of
the glory of God. That exaltation we spoke of almost
talks of a boasting. We boast, as it were, in God
and in what he has accomplished in our lives. The third blessing
that we considered begins in verse three and courses all the
way down through verse eight. A life of divine assistance,
and we spent no little time on this looking at the need of divine
assistance in the process that the Christian undergoes the assurance
of that divine assistance, the agent, none other than the Holy
Spirit and the foundation who is. The Lord Jesus Himself. Look at verse 3. Not only this,
but we shall also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation
brings about perseverance, and perseverance proven character,
and proven character hope. And hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For while we were
still helpless, At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a
righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would
dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own
love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us. And you might even stop there
and say, enough, God, enough is enough. We now enjoy a life
of peace. We now live a life of confident
worship. We now enjoy a life of divine
assistance. Enough of the blessings, Lord,
enough. But God’s not done. God’s not
done. And in verses 9 through 11, we
come to the final blessing that Paul deals with here. I’m not
suggesting to you in the least that this is an exhaustive list
that these are the four blessings and there are no more. These
are just four that Paul pointed to and therefore great blessings. Overwhelming. If these four blessings
were the only blessings that the Christian enjoyed, it would
be more than enough. The fourth blessing that we want
to consider this morning. And I think it quite appropriate.
That it falls on the day when we observe the Lord’s table.
That we now as Christians, those who have placed their faith in
Christ, as Paul points out numerous times throughout this passage,
those who enjoy justification by faith, those who enjoy the
righteousness of God now, not having any righteousness of their
own. Those Christians, those who put their faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ, now live a life free from the wrath of God. If there was only one blessing,
if that one blessing could be this particular blessing, it
seems that all else would fall into place. We would have a life
of peace with God. Consummately, we would live a
life of confident worship. If all we enjoyed was this life
free from the wrath of God, it would be a life of divine assistance,
and yet Paul separates this out. It’s something, once again, to
focus upon. What Paul has already done is
describe the nature of God’s love for us in the immediate
verses preceding. And now he wants to return again
to the great subject of the fact that our hope will not be disappointed
in the end. Life is a struggle. Life is difficult. Life is frustrating. But in the
end, Paul wants to point out once again the certainty of the
hope being fulfilled. Go back with me, if you would,
to verse 9 where Paul lays out this fourth blessing When he
says, much more than having now been justified by his blood,
we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his
son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
Not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus
Christ. through whom we have now received the reconciliation. We now enjoy a life free from
the wrath of God. We spent no little time considering
the wrath of God in weeks and months past. The wrath of God
is that terrible result of sin. It is God’s response to sin,
not only in the moment, but into eternity. It is God’s hatred
of sin, and it doesn’t make God, you know, as one perceived as
flying off the handle. It is all justified. It is a
just God responding to ungodliness, to sinfulness. A.W. Pink said the wrath of God
is his eternal detestation of all unrighteousness. The wrath of God sadly, but surely
rests upon everyone ever born into this world. The wrath of
God is already abiding on them. It is already their penalty. Just by virtue of the fact that
they were born because they’re born under the sin of Adam and
everything they do keeps on more of the wrath of God because of
the sin that they commit. The wrath of God abides on the
ungodly, and it’s only because of Christ that it’s ever removed.
But look at the truth. The Christian lives a life that
is free from the wrath of God because Paul says much more than. If it’s even possible to add
to this list, this incredible list coursing through verses
one through eight, much more than he says. We shall be saved
from the wrath of God. Through him. It was Paul’s purpose to encourage
us along the way, to encourage us that there was help and hope
in the course of our Christian progress. Not an expectation
of perfection right away, but the hope of progress and ultimately
consummation in glory. That’s what Paul’s goal has been
as Paul tried to encourage us through those trials and troubles
that no doubt would come trying to encourage us with the fact
that God has already shown his love towards us. And here once
more, he promises us once more, we shall be saved. What Paul
essentially does is used what’s called He uses reasoning that builds
upon arguments that he’s already proven. And what he does is essentially
say, if one thing is true, how much more is the other? What Paul begins to do here is
use a description on the negative side, the wrath of God. He’s
talked about the positive side. He’s talked about the righteousness
of God. He’s talked about glory. He’s
talked about the love of God. He’s talked about what Christ
has done on our behalf, but he hasn’t talked much about the
wrath, not since introducing the concept back in chapter one. Now he turns to the negative
side and he basically says that salvation takes into account
that negative side as well. It takes into account the wrath
of God. The wrath of God, as it is now,
Consists in in every even believers heart as sin. It is it is the
result of sin and that sin brings not wrath upon the Christian,
but it does bring a chastening. A form of that wrath. But it brings a chasing that
is designed to urge us to repentance. It brings a chastening that urges
us to remember that we are free of a life of wrath. We will not
face the wrath of God in the end. This justification that
we enjoy doesn’t remove or doesn’t completely obliterate the conflict
with sin and evil. And so it continues to reveal
God’s attitude towards sin. And this grace enables us to
engage in conflict with sin, given that hope we can battle
against sin because we know the wrath of God does not abide on
us. As one pastor said, the word
wrath, of course, means the effects of wrath or punishment, those
sufferings with which the divine displeasure visits sin. This salvation is a preservation
from all the causes of destruction of the deliverance from the evils
which surround us here or threaten us hereafter and an introduction
into the blessedness of heaven. We already are enjoying a life
free from the wrath of God. The Christian who has placed
his faith in Jesus Christ alone as his hope for salvation is
already enjoying freedom from the wrath of God. The wrath that Paul points to
here is the wrath that one day will be poured out in full upon
the ungodly and all of those who do not know the Lord Jesus
in the day of judgment. Revelation 6. Check that one moment, Romans
2, 5. Paul’s already addressed it in
Romans 2, 5. He says, because of your stubbornness and unrepentant
heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath.
They’re heaping it up. Every day is a day of sin, and
every day of sin is a greater heaping of the wrath of God upon
the ungodly. Revelation 6 says that one day,
no more waiting. They will say to the mountains
and to the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the presence
of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb,
for the great day of their wrath has come. And who is able to
stand? There will be a day of great
wrath. But for the Christian, by God’s
grace, God is not going to have us endure
his wrath. God has granted us escape, freedom
from that wrath by way of the Lord Jesus. That wrath that is reserved for
those who do not know Christ, we will not face. And Paul’s point is that since
God has already done the really difficult thing, Justifying sinners. Justifying
the ungodly, dying for the ungodly. And thereby justifying him, we
can be absolutely sure, since he’s already accomplished the
difficult part, that he’s going to do the easy part by comparison
in preserving us from the day of wrath. That part is easy for
God. We are free from that day of
wrath. The day where Paul spoke to the
Thessalonians, God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining
salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that
whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with him. Those who those of us who’ve already been pronounced
righteous by God, not because of anything in us, but purely
because we came absolutely empty-handed to Christ and said, I have no
righteousness of my own. I am desperate for the righteousness
of God, which is available through Christ. For us, we’ve already
been delivered from the wrath of God, not only in the here
and now, but absolutely in the future. Look at the condition
in which this rests. I just alluded to it in verse
nine. Again, Paul says much more than
having now been justified by his blood. We should be saved. From the
wrath of God through him. This justification by blood,
we don’t know it is that yet. We know it is justification by
faith. This turn of a phrase Paul uses
by design points us to something that we don’t even like to talk
about, even in our the hymns that we’ve sung already this
morning and will sing throughout the day. That’s kind of distasteful,
even to the Christian sometimes. It’s a unpleasant thing to discuss. The blood. To what does it refer? It doesn’t have to necessarily
be talking about literal blood here, because what Paul is doing
is using that to point to the death of Christ. It points to the fact that He
laid down His life as a sacrifice for you and I. It’s synonymous
with the phrase, the death of His Son in verse 10. It goes
hand in hand with that very verse. Hear how Paul uses this little
phrase, the blood. In Romans 325, he spoke of God
who publicly God. He spoke of Christ, whom God
publicly displayed as a propitiation in his blood through faith. He gave his life. Jesus Christ
gave his life. First Corinthians 1016 is not
the cup of blessing which we bless the sharing in the blood
of Christ. Speaking of this very Lord’s
table. When we come to the Lord’s table, it’s not grape juice and
it’s not literal blood. We partake of the life and death
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the death shed on our behalf. Ephesians
one seven in him, that is in Christ, we have redemption through
his blood. None of us have ever seen it.
None of us have ever touched his physical, literal blood.
But if you are in Christ, you’ve all been touched by his life
and by his death. Hebrews nine, which verse I asked
Dave to read, in addition to the lengthy verse that he had,
that it wasn’t through the blood of goats. Those things were,
as Dave so clearly pointed out, those things were precursors
to Christ and imperfect ones at that. It wasn’t through the blood of
goats, but through his own blood. Through his own life given for
us. How much more of the blood of
Christ, how much more indeed? One commentator in responding
to this phrase, which we normally consider justification by faith,
he said. This shows that when we are said
to be justified by faith, faith includes its object. And imports
that we are not saved by faith as a virtue. You see, there’s
a lot of people that want to talk about justification by faith
and they swell with pride because they believed. Well. We don’t have any cause to be
proud of anything that we’ve done, including our faith. The justification goes to the
object and the object is the blood or the death of Christ. And that’s why Paul calls it
justification by his blood. He goes on to say, it shows also
that Christ’s death was not that of a mere witness to the truths
which he declared, but that it was for sin. And in order that
we should be saved from wrath through him, all men by nature
are children of wrath. And without the death of Christ.
Without the shedding of his blood. We are hopeless. We are hopeless. His blood, as I mentioned, points
to a sacrificial offering. It points to exactly what Isaiah
53 pointed to. The sacrificial lamb, it points
exactly to what Jesus mentioned in John chapter 10, when he said,
I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for
the sheep. He was willing to give his blood,
he was willing to give his life. It’s exactly that to which Peter
referred in first Peter two. You’ve been called for this purpose
since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example to
follow in his steps who committed no sin nor was any deceit found
in his mouth while being reviled. He did not revile and return
while suffering. He uttered no threats, but kept
entrusting himself to him who judges righteously. And he himself
bore our sins in his body in the cross so that we might die
to sin and live to righteousness. As one Puritan said, the salvation
of the Christian from wrath is said to be future. In reference
to the time of general execution of wrath in the day of judgment,
But it is evidently implied in the expression that they who
are justified shall never be punished. Justified by his blood
gives us a most awful view of the infinite evil of sin. That’s
exactly what blood was supposed to do on the Hebrew altar, right? It was supposed to show the Jews
the horrible nature of sin. That’s his point. It gives the
most awful view of the infinite evil of sin, the strict justice
of God and of his faithfulness in carrying into execution of
the sentence. The day in which you eat of this
tree, you shall surely die without the shedding of his blood and
entering into the holy place, Christ could not have obtained
eternal salvation. For those who had sinned, And
so this phrase, which to us initially is distasteful and perhaps something
to read past this justification by his blood is our hope. It is our life. Consider also verse 10. Paul
says, much more having now been justified by his blood, we shall
be saved from the wrath of God through him. And he gives us
a little argument. For if, while we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more
having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” It’s essentially
a repeat, but a strengthened repetition of what Paul has already
said. He amplifies what he’s already
told us. That if God gave Christ As a
sacrifice for sinners, he will surely preserve those centers.
We’re not going to be lost during the course of history. Ephesians to 16 to rather 11
through 16 echoes these things, but now in Christ, you were formerly
far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. by what
Jesus has accomplished. But look who it is. You know,
last week, as we were considering it, was the helpless, the ungodly,
sinners. Look who’s in view this week. We who were enemies. And I want to pause there for
a moment. This word enemies, enmity, We
so often look at it as a one way street. We were enemies with
God, but, you know, it’s a two way street. It goes both ways. We set ourselves up as enemies
towards God, and he returned the favor. He is at enmity with
the ungodly just as they are with him. If you are outside
of the Christ, you outside of our Lord Jesus Christ, you are
already positioned as an enemy of God. And God is a eager participant,
a participant for that particular battle. God’s not going to turn
a blind eye to someone taking up such an evil cause. And so this word, which can be
taken either in an active sense, in the sense of enmity towards
God or in a passive sense, enmity from God, in essence, it’s both. It’s perfectly vague. It’s a
mutual estrangement from one another, it’s a mutual battle. It’s not only our enmity towards
God, but it’s God’s return enmity towards the Christian, the non-Christian. One commentator said, had we
discovered any symptoms of willingness to obey him or any degree of
love to him, his love would not have been so astonishing. But
it is in this light only that the proud heart of man is willing
to view his obligations to redeeming love. He will not look upon himself
as totally, totally depraved and helpless. He desires to do
something on his part to induce God to begin his work in him
by his spirit. In other words, the average person
longs to somehow earn God’s favor first. But the Scripture says it was
an absolutely hopeless proposition, because at that moment we were
enemies with God. We were at enmity when we were
reconciled to Him. He goes on to say that Christ
died for His people when they were the enemies of God. He calls
them to the knowledge of Himself when they are His enemies. Here,
then, is the love of God. At the time when Christ died
for us, we were not his friends, we were his enemies. And to those enemies, God reconciles
them. There isn’t there’s a huge misunderstanding
here from our use of the word and the way things usually play
out. You know, if two people are having a discussion, an argument,
a fight bubbles over, it gets bigger and bigger over time. Somebody comes along, they begin
the counseling process, they work together and iron things
out and they are reconciled to each other. That’s not the way
it works here. It’s not that God needed a mediator to come
and sit down and help God work through his little tiff with
sinners. God is the one that does the
reconciling. God is the one that reconciles
us to himself. Not himself to us. This word
is always used of reconciling, not as being reconciled. It’s a it’s a new term for Paul
here in Romans. The thought he’s already given
in verse one, he said we have peace with God, but here he’s
he’s going to expand upon that little point. We have peace with
God because we have been reconciled to him. The hostility that was once there, our being estranged from God
because of our sin, has been removed because of what Christ
accomplished on the cross. And now we are reconciled to
God, we are at peace with him. As one said, this is a movement
of God towards man with a view to break down man’s hostility.
To commend God’s love and holiness to him, to convince him of the
enormity and consequence of sin, it is God who initiates this
movement in the person and work of Jesus Christ. If you come
to the Lord’s table today, you come because you have been reconciled
to God. You are at peace with God and
he with you. You were made to stand in peace
by God’s grace. You’re given the very peace of
Christ himself. Who is one with God. Word so often is used in relation
of God and. Particularly in relation of God
and men only in Paul’s epistles. And it typically expresses the
restored quality of a relationship. You know it well from 2 Corinthians
5. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things
are passed away. Behold, new things have come.
All these things are from God who reconciled us to Himself
through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That’s
what He does for us. He sends us out and says, come
to God. Be reconciled to God because
of what Christ has accomplished. Paul said it likewise. Perhaps
a less familiar passage to many of us. Colossians 1 says it was
the father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in
him that is Christ and through him to reconcile all things to
himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross. Through
him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven, And
although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged
in evil deeds, yet he has now reconciled you in his fleshly
body through death in order to present you before him wholly
and blameless beyond reproach. This was all accomplished through
his son. Saved by his life, the argument
goes on through the end of the passage. And as I said, as God
has already done the more difficult thing in reconciling us to himself
and setting aside his wrath, we can be absolutely confident
that he’s going to do a comparatively minor thing. Save us from that
wrath who are his friends. He dealt with us first as enemies.
Now he deals with us as intimate friends. If God had that kind of power
and that desire in the beginning to redeem us
in the very first place, He will keep us. He will maintain
His grip upon us and not we upon Him. Paul closes This great section. These blessings of salvation
with these little words in verse eleven. And not only this, but we also
exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we
have now received the reconciliation. And as many have wrestled with
this passage. Because there is no main verb
in that verse, verse eleven. If you’re a technician, it’s
a participle. Exalting in God, having exalted
in God. There is no main verb, and so
it has to tie to something. Some tied it all the way back
to verse three, some tied it to the verse immediately preceding,
and I think that’s probably the best thing. It would read something
like this. We shall be saved. which itself is an echo of verse
9, we shall be saved. We shall be saved exalting in
God. We are all ready in the here
and now to be exalting. We don’t wait until the end of
the ages to exalt in God, to praise God, to thank God, to
humbly fall before Him and express our gratitude to Him for what
He has accomplished in our lives. We are already in a condition
of exulting in God because of the great truths that He has
communicated to us. As one said, glorying knows no
restraint and cannot be exaggerated when it is in God through our
Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, he says the only
reasonable response to the truth set before us that we now have
peace with God, a confident worship, divine assistance, a life free
from the wrath of God. No wonder we’re rejoicing. No wonder we’re worshiping. It
is not only that God is the object of this glorying, it is not only
that he is the ground of it, it is in union and fellowship
with him as our own God that the glorying is conducted. In
other words, we boast. We boast in all of these things,
all of these blessings that he’s given to us. But in the final
analysis, we boast in the God who gave them. We glory in him.
And in him alone. I close with one additional Puritan
statement on the matter. When he said it was before declared
that believers have peace with God, that they have access to
him and that they rejoice in the hope of his glory, but now.
The apostle represents them as having arrived at the fountainhead,
looking through all the blessings conferred upon them and rejoicing,
boasting and glorying in God himself as the source of them
all. The Christian’s joy is all in God. He exalts in his prospects
that all are ascribed to God and not to anything in himself,
God, even his own. Is the great and ultimate object
of his joy? Is he yours? Is God the ultimate
object of your joy? Let’s examine our hearts before
him. Our merciful God, we humble ourselves
before you. And we do exult in God. We thank you for all of the blessings
that you have poured out upon us. All of these that we have just
read through and recited and been reminded, not the least
of which the fact that we have been spared from the wrath of
God, a well-deserved wrath, a destructive wrath. Father, we thank You and
praise You. We fall on our face and humbly
express our gratitude to You. for the salvation that we’ve
come to enjoy purely by Your grace. It’s in Jesus’ name that
we pray. Amen. There is a fountain filled with
water from Emmanuel’s feet, And sinners once redeemed have come
to us all their guilty state. Lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains. And sinners plunged beneath the
flood Will lose all their guilty stains. There stands my faith,
I saw the street. You’re flowing through supply. Redeeming love has been my theme
and shall be till I die. and shall be till I die, and
shall be till I die. Redeeming wondrous in my faith,
and shall be till I die. I will simply trust that if you
are preparing to partake that you have properly prepared your
heart and we will dispatch with any further preparations other
than our prayer. Just prior to partaking the bread,
I would share just a little bit of I guess information Sharon
approached me several months ago about the prospect of. using
unleavened bread and because of so many wheat allergies, several
other things. And so Sharon has baked the bread
today. We had originally designed that we would have both our normal
bread and this bread that Sharon has baked in God’s providence. That’s not how it worked out.
So we’re all going to get to taste what it’s like to have
a wheat allergy. We’ll let that be that. you So, This is the allergy-free thread
that Sharon used. Oh, dear. You can’t do both threads. Something happened.