ROMANS | Lesson 5 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points
GOD’S GLORIOUS GOSPEL
Romans, chapter 5
The Gospel: Peace With God
I | CONTEXT AND CONNECTIONS
As you begin to read Romans, chapter 5, the first word you read is ‘Therefore…’ As we always say, “Anytime you see ‘therefore,’ you need to know what it’s ‘there for.’ Therefore means, ‘this is the conclusion or consequence of what I’ve just said.’ So, Paul’s Therefore is a consequence of what he’s been teaching just prior to this: ‘Therefore, since we have been justified by faith…”. What he’s been teaching is that the only way we can be justified before God is by faith in Jesus Christ! Justified means ‘to be credited with / declared / made righteous before God’ [3.21-22]. And the only way we can be made righteous before God is by faith in Jesus Christ—by trusting, relying, depending on Christ’s righteousness that was demonstrated by His death on His cross and by His resurrection again from death [4.22-25]. Paul has elaborately drawn this out in the extended previous section, chs 3.21—4.25. Now, Paul will begin to tell us what the consequences or effects are…
II | vv 1-5 | Here are some benefits of Grace we enjoy ‘since’ and as a ‘therefore’ consequence of ‘having been justified by faith’ in Jesus Christ
1 / We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ‘Peace with God’ means that the previous state of hostility and enmity has come to an end. What was this previous state of hostility, enmity, and warfare? This verse takes us back to ch 1.18: For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men… We need to connect these two verses. The wrath of God was His just and inevitable sentence and judgment against our unrighteousness. But, when we are justified by faith before God, then God’s holy and just warfare and hostility against our sins has been satisfied by the death and resurrection of Christ [3.26]. How? and Why? Because God’s wrath that our sins deserved has been poured out and executed upon Christ when He died in our place and bore God’s wrath upon Himself that we deserved. And since He made full and final payment for all our sins, then God’s wrath has been satisfied, and we are no longer under that sentence [3.24-25]. Paul will draw this conclusion in these words in v 9: Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. Now, instead of being sentenced to bear God’s holy, just, and righteous wrath, 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… Where are we ‘standing’? Our ‘standing’ refers to a new relationship we now with God. Peace with God is not just a ‘cease-fire.’ It is more than that; our standing is now into this grace of God! We stand in God’s favor, in His Grace, we are accepted by God into His very Presence! And we also have obtained by faith every blessing and benefit in Christ that Christ Himself is and has! When we believe in Christ and are in Him by faith, then we enjoy every benefit that belongs to Christ—including being with Him in Glory!
3 / Which is what the next benefit of having been justified by faith promises us: and we rejoice in hope of the Glory of God! This hope of the Glory of God is the promise that we will share His Glory in His Heaven—in His very Presence! And this hope is not just a wishful, ‘maybe,’ ‘iffy’ kind of hope. Bible hope is a confident expectation and certain assurance that God will do what He has said He will do. And this is what we rejoice in…this is what gives us our joy and happiness, even when the trials, sorrows, griefs, and adversities of life come upon us—as they certainly will…keep on reading…
4 / Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings… Only the hope of the Gospel and the assurance of having been justified by faith in Christ can give this kind of rejoicing that is not contingent upon the circumstances and experiences of this human life we all live. Because the sufferings—of all kinds and degrees—will come. BUT, instead of separating us from the love of God and cancelling our standing in the Grace of God [see ch 8.31-39], our sufferings will even strengthen and enrich our rejoicing—even in the midst of those sufferings [ch 8.18-25]. How does that work?…
[1] …knowing that suffering produces endurance… When we know and rejoice in our justification before God through faith in Christ, our sufferings do not break us down, but rather strengthen us up. Our sufferings are ‘stress tests’ of our faith in Christ. But when our faith is in Christ, not in ourselves, we find out that Christ does not fail us. And as we trust Christ in our sufferings, we discover and experience that His strength becomes ours! He works His strength in our weaknesses. And, like a muscle is strengthened through stressful exercise, so our faith and confidence in Christ grows stronger and more enduring.
[2] …knowing that endurance produces character… This very word character means ‘tested-ness.’ And the test is whether Christ is real or not, strong or not. What is being tested is Christ in you, the hope of Glory [Colossians 1.27]. And since Christ is our Glory, our hope of Glory, and already in Glory—then He will see us through every temptation, trial, and suffering and bring us to His Glory [Hebrews 2.10]!
[3] …knowing that character produces hope… Paul brings us back to we rejoice in hope of the Glory of God. And it is the testing and proving of our hope in Christ that makes us rejoice—even in our sufferings. And Paul assures us that our hope in Christ and in the Glory that is yet to be revealed to us and in us will not fail us—we will not be disappointed in the end…‘does not put us to shame’…and we must not be discouraged or lose hope in the present sufferings. And what gives us this hope in life and in death? It is because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. The gift of the Holy Spirit is an accompanying gift [and guarantee of all future gifts] that God gives us when He justifies us through our faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit witnesses and testifies in our inner spirit that God loves us! This is a subjective assurance that the Holy Spirit gives us—even as we suffer! NOTE: our physical afflictions and sufferings are not testimonies to God’s anger or wrath against us—rather, they testify and witness to God’s love for us. God makes us more like Christ through our sufferings if we suffer in the knowledge and assurance of our justification before God.
III | vv 6-11 | God also gives us an objective witness and testimony to His love and promise of sharing His Glory in Heaven…since we have been justified through faith in Christ
vv 6-8: Paul reminds us that God loved us—and Christ died for us—when we were in our weakest state: For while we were still weak [in our sin and unable to save ourselves], at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. That’s who God saves…that’s who God justifies when they believe in Christ—the ungodly [see also ch 4.5]. And Christ died for the ungodly as a testimony to the love, grace, and justice of God. God’s love in Christ’s death for us is so God-like, so un-man-like, that it defies any comparison or precedent that we can point to in our merely human experience. For one will scarcely die [it will never happen]—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die [OK, there may be a case where someone would volunteer to die to save another extraordinarily ‘good’ fellow human being—but none of us was ‘good’ in any sense of the word in God’s assessment]—but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! So, how can we ever doubt God’s love for us, now that we have been justified by faith in Christ and given us access to Himself and all His Grace in Christ? If He loved us so—and if Christ died for us—when we were ungodly and while we were still sinners, will He not continue to love us until we receive the full measure of the hope of the Glory of God?
vv 9-11 | Paul continues to press home our rejoicing in hope of the Glory of God… Since, therefore, [going back to v 1] we have now been justified by His blood [Christ’s death and the offering of His own righteousness for our unrighteousness], much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. This is another testimony and witness to just how ‘justified’ we are—this is what it means to have also obtained access by faith into this Grace in which we stand. The word that Paul uses here is reconciled. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.” This is a commentary on ch 4.24-25: The Gospel includes both the death of Jesus Christ to pay the righteous penalty and punishment for our sins, and also His life in His resurrection. Not only did He die for us, but He was also raised from death for us. And when He died for our sins, our sins died with Him and in Him. And when He was resurrected from death to life, He demonstrated that our sins have been put away forever—and His perfectly obedient life is now ours! We have been reconciled to God—God is at peace with us, perfectly, and forever!
IV | vv 12-21 | Jesus Christ and Adam stand before God in similar roles in relationship with the people they represent—both were in human history as a “federal head” of those who are ‘in’ them
1 / All throughout this section, Paul is going to use the words “by one man / one man” over and over—referring to either Adam or Jesus Christ. When he does this, he will tell us what each one man did, and what effect it had on those who were ‘in’ that man when he did what he did. Paul will relate Adam and Jesus Christ to one another so closely, he even says: …Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come [v 14]. Adam may be the last person we would expect to be a type of Christ—but read on…
2 / By doing this, Paul is referring to both Adam or Christ as a federal head. He doesn’t use those words, but that’s what he means. So what is a federal head? The word federal refers to ‘one’ person or entity that acts on the behalf of those whom he represents—in other words, whatever the federal head does, those whom he represents do also. [Think of our ‘power of attorney’ acting in another’s person/stead…]
3 / In fact, the word federal comes from the Latin word foedus [pronounced: foy-dus] which means ‘a covenant, pact, or common mutual agreement and union.’ So, if something is federal, it means that the federal head acts ‘in the place of’ all the constituent parties that are in the federation / union. We use this word and concept all the time. For example, the government of our collective states is called the federal government. The states are represented by the federal government. In our federal government, whatever the federal does, all the states who are members of the federation do the same. Take a labor union for another example: the members of the union elect a representative to bargain and speak for them—in their person and place. Whether they like it or not, agree with it or not, when their federal head or union boss speaks or acts, everyone of the members speak or act the same thing. The examples go on and on…
4 / So, with that in mind, let’s read and see what these two federal heads—Adam and Jesus Christ—have done in their respective roles in the history of justification by faith in Jesus Christ…
vv 12-14: Verse 12 tells us in a three-fold progression of thought how we all came to be dead, both physically and spiritually before God—and all through the federal headship of one man, Adam.
[1] …just as sin came into the world through one man This, of course, is Adam’s transgression against the authority and command of God in the Garden of Eden. When Adam ate the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he sinned—and when Adam sinned, since we were all ‘in him’ [though yet to be born], his sin came into the world and upon everyone who would be born from him, after him—which is every one of us in the human race. In other words, Adam’s sin altered both his physical and spiritual ‘DNA’ for us all who would be born after him—in the likeness of his fallen human nature;
[2] …and death [came] through sin… since that was the consequence God had prescribed: in the day you eat of it, you will surely die. And, as Paul will explicitly state in 6.23, For the wages of sin is death.
[3] …and so death spread to all men because all sinned. NOTE: this is not the same as saying because all have sinned [as in 3.23]—referring to the personal acts and experience of each individual human being—but “all sinned.” This is a particular verb case [we call it aorist which means ‘an act that is done in a point in time in the past’]. So, the statement says that when Adam sinned as our federal head, since we were all in him yet to be born, everyone of us sinned in his sin. And lest anyone say, “But, that’s not fair! I was not there. That was Adam, not me. You can’t blame me and make me a sinner just because Adam sinned, and I would be born thousands of years later as a member of his progeny race of mankind. And, if I had been in Adam’s place, I would not have sinned [which everyone of us would have].” But, God says it is fair—and so it is. God created Adam in a state of innocence of sin and righteousness—but Adam had the ‘created-in’ capacity to become unrighteous, which he did. AND ALSO, if you have a problem with Adam being your federal head in his transgression, then you need to read on and remember that the same federal headship will be exercised by Christ in His act of righteousness and obedience for our justification. So the federal headship / representative / substitute role is exercised by both Adam and Christ.
- vv 13-14: the point that Paul is making here is that, even the Law God gave at Sinai would not come until hundreds of years later [when God would explicitly define and codify transgression,] still there was a ‘law’ of disobedience, of right and wrong, that was written ‘by nature’ on our hearts and consciences in the creation [see 2.12-16]. That’s why death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam…and before the giving of the Law. Then, by adding “Adam, who was a type of the One who was to come,” Paul leads us into the next discussions of how Adam’s and Christ’s federal headship are alike…and not alike…
vv 15-17: But the free gift is not like the trespass… The dissimilarities Paul points out are basically these [and they are but generalized here in these expressions]:
[1] Death vs. life—Many died through one man’s trespass—but through the obedience of Christ, many will live [a word that Paul will use repeatedly in the following verses].
[2] Adam’s trespass vs. Christ’s obedience. Adam disobeyed—Christ obeyed [v 19].
[3] One man’s sin=many died vs. free gift by the grace of that one Man Jesus Christ abounded for many=many are made righteous.
[4] Condemnation vs. justification. Adam’s transgression brought condemnation upon the whole human race that was ‘in him’ when he sinned; Christ’s righteousness obedience brought justification to all who believe ‘in Him.’ Condemnation brings death; justification brings life.
[5] Reign of death vs. reigning in life. Notice ‘who’ reigns, and in ‘what’ sphere each reigns: because of Adam’s sin [as our federal head, and we in him], death reigned through that one man—all died. BUT, in Christ, our federal head by faith in Him, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one Man Jesus Christ. He doesn’t just say that life will reign in us as death reigned in us through Adam, but that we will reign in life. What we need to see and understand here is that: in the original creation, Adam was created to reign in life over the creation God had entrusted to him. But, he failed, and forfeited his reigning life, not only for himself, but for all those who were ‘in him’ and would be born after him. But, since Adam was a type of the one who was to come [Christ], then when Christ does come—as the second Adam / last Man [1 Corinthians 15.45-47]—then as the federal head of all those who believe in Him, when He assumes His Kingship over righteousness and life, we assume that same co-reigning kingship in life—since we are ‘in Him’ as our federal head, both in His obedience in His life and in His victory over sin and death in His resurrection! What we must see also is that Jesus Christ is creating a whole new-creation ‘humanity’ [2 Cor. 5.17].
vv 18-21: Here’s another “Therefore…” since Paul is going to re-state, sum up, apply, and give us the conclusions and consequences of all these comparisons he’s been making, beginning in v 12. His summary statement is:
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For 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.
That one summary statement, when read and interpreted through the prism of federal headship makes us understand how Adam represented and acted for us all [since we were ‘in him’] … and Christ represented and acted for us all, His people, as our Substitute and federal head, and we are ‘in Him’ by faith!
- In v 20, Paul returns again to the Law as he did in vv 13-14 … to show that what the Law did when it was given was to specifically codify the righteousness of God that He requires us to live up to [which we can’t, didn’t, and won’t]; and the Law by which we all will be judged; and the Law which indicts us all to be guilty; and the Law which sentences us all to condemnation – BUT this is the Law which Christ fulfilled perfectly, fully, finally, and satisfactorily to God by His ‘one act of righteousness’ [v 18] and ‘the one Man’s obedience’ [v 19]. [see also ch 3.26, 31]. These summary resumes’ include the whole of Christ’s coming into our world, the life He lived, the death He died, and the resurrection life He rose from the dead to live forever!
BUT—“where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
When Christ cried from His Cross: “It is finished!” He was offering to God His Gospel obedience of righteousness! And when we believe in Him by faith, God credits us [who are unrighteous, ungodly, sinners in Adam] with the perfect righteousness of God in Jesus Christ!
