Romans 5:1-5 ‘Faith Triumphs in Trouble’

NOTES
Paul seems here to move from the objective facts of justification and faith to the more subjective workings of those in our lives. He focuses more on the individual, and his relationship with God.

TEXT
Rom 5:1
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

• Note that peace with God here is not conditional on anything except having been justified by faith. This peace he speaks of then is not inner subjective peace – calmness and serenity etc, but an objective peace. We are literally reconciled to God because of our justification through faith, and so He has no war with us anymore.
• Notably, this peace is offered to us through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Rom 5:2
through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

• Grace is God’s undeserved favour. Now, to a certain extent, everyone receives some of God’s grace, or all of us would be dead already. However, it is not this grace that this verse speaks of. It speaks of grace in which we stand. When we stand we aren’t moving. We’re going nowhere. So unless the grace moves, we’re going to be in it forever. So in effect this verse says that through Jesus we have access into God’s grace in which we can stand and never have it taken away from us! This also then is a ‘positional’ statement – it’s not necessarily that we always feel this grace or live accordingly, but rather that we are objectively standing in it.
• ‘Rejoice in hope of the glory of God’ is one of those statements that sounds really nice and which we pass over pretty quickly without grasping the true significance of it. First note the use of the word ‘hope’, which we will come back to. We rejoice through Jesus Christ in hope of the glory of God. Hope here doesn’t mean ‘hope’ as we use it today. It is not uncertain. Hope is looking forward to something yet to be unveiled, but something we know will be unveiled. And what do we hope in? Our future in heaven? All the nice things God will do for us? The salvation of the world? The reformation of our culture? Yes, all of these things, but none of them. It is the glory of God that we hope for. It is His glory that we must seek at all times, and His glory that we want to know. But we can’t know His glory, or hope for it, without Jesus Christ, and reconciliation to God.

Rom 5:3
And not only that,
but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance;

• And that’s not all! All of these great things, and that’s hardly the beginning!
• We glory in tribulations – glory has something to do with truth. Glory is seeing something great for what it really is. Thus, the glory of God can be seen in the cross. The cross isn’t ‘shiny’, but it is glorious because it is the truth of who God is, and that is Great. Paul is saying that we can glory in tribulations, that is, we can reveal the truth about us, and we can see how great God has made us.
• John Macarthur has some good things to say about the words used in this and the next verse. Tribulations, according to Macarthur, is a word used for pressure, like pressing olives or grapes. They push us. Note that these are not the normal tribulations of every day life, these are special tribulations that God brings about for our development – we can see that in the context because Paul is talking about things we have through Christ Jesus.

Rom 5:4
and perseverance, character; and character, hope.

• Perseverance is like endurance. Without this ‘pressure’ we can’t know how long we will last under pressure! The more perseverance we have, the more we can hold. This is beneficial for a life doing God’s work!
• Character is apparently more literally translated ‘proven character’, since the word used is often translated ‘proof’. The word was used of testing metals to determine their purity. This is what God does to us – burns away the impure and leaves the pure. We all want that!
• The end result is hope. Now, I find this quite interesting, given that Paul says two verses previous that we already hope in the glory of God. That is, after being justified we immediately have hope in the glory of God…and yet the result of years of hard trials and perseverance is that hope! Maybe someone will be able to tell me why this is like it is. My idea at the moment is that the hope in verse 2 is a hope that we have of our future, and in verse 4 the hope is a hope that is fully realised in our hearts. This is a personal hope, a subjective hope. But in the end it is the same hope. We see this more in verse 5….

Rom 5:5
Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

• Hope does not disappoint. Well, in our experience, hope is one thing that is likely to disappoint. Having hope in anything is a quick way to be disappointed, and disappointment is one of the worst things to go through (for me anyway). However, Paul says here that hope does not disappoint. Remember what hope he is talking about – Hope in the glory of God.
• Why does this hope not disappoint? Because it turns out He has already given us a foretaste of the fulfilment of that hope. He has poured out His love in our hearts to the point of overflowing. This is why the trademark of a Christian is love. If we don’t have love, there is no evidence that His love has been poured out in our heart – which it has!
• This love is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, one of His many many functions. If we deny that love and let it grow cold then really we are grieving the Holy Spirit!
• Pauls point is that we can hope and not be disappointed in the glory of God, because a part of it is already made manifest in our hearts – that is, the love of God. By knowing the Holy Spirit better and better, and walking in the Spirit, then the glory of God becomes more and more real to us. And all this because of God justifying us by faith through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ!

 

SUMMARY
Paul focuses in on some of the personal benefits of faith – hope and love! He shows that we can glory in tribulations because they effect hope in us, which doesn’t disappoint because we already have the deposit, which is love in our hearts.

WHAT DO I LEARN?
Love is very important. Tribulations are necessary and beneficial, and I should glory in them! More and more I want to reveal my true character by letting God strip away all that is impure and sinful.