No images? Click here THAT YOUR JOY MAY BE FULL PT. IIIRomans 5:12-21 October 23rd, 2022 Even though this chapter in Romans is deep in doctrine and theology, there are many nuggets of practical truth for the Christian. Paul has thoroughly hammered home the point that we are by nature enemies of God and hostile to truth. But then in verse one of Romans 5, Paul tells us that we have peace with God since we have been justified by faith. Peace with God is the reason that our joy can be full. When Jesus was explaining to His disciples their need to abide in Him, He said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11) In the Upper Room Discourse, Jesus began to prepare the disciples for His departure. He understood that they would be sorrowful and afraid, so He exhorted them to hold fast to the truth, to not lose heart, to not let their hearts be troubled, for He would send the Holy Spirit to be in them.
Holding fast to joy is one of the most challenging aspects of a Christian’s life. Because Jesus had full joy, He was able to obey His Father and fulfill the purpose for which He came to earth. In the same manner, because of joy, we are able to live an obedient Christian life, to love God, to be a witness to others and to serve in the church. However, circumstances may overwhelm us, or sin may creep into our life, and we are robbed of joy. We begin to focus on our protection and to trust in ourselves; this is turning from the worship of God to worship of self.
I. Know the Truth (vv. 12-14) When we begin to lose our joy in The Lord, these are times when we must anchor ourselves to a strong mooring. The first mooring is to know the truth regarding our sinful nature. If we are to understand the good news (gospel) we must first understand the bad news. The bad news is that Adam’s sins nature was imputed to us. Both spiritual death and physical death spread to all men because all sinned. God created man perfectly but, when Adam sinned, the nature of all mankind was forever changed. We are by nature sinners. We lose joy because our intimate relationship with God has been severed. We try to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps, believing we can regain the relationship that Adam lost. This, too, is self-worship. We must not attempt to deny our sin; rather we must acknowledge it, confess it, and turn from it. This is the first key to having our joy restored.
II. Faith in the Truth (vv. 15-19) The second mooring is faith in the truth. We need to understand just how much God hates sin. We need to think about sin in the way that God does. God hates that Adam’s sin changed the whole relationship between mankind and Himself. God hates sin so much that He sacrificed Himself to heal us from this mortal fate. This is God’s free gift to us.
- The free gift is not like the trespass (v. 15) In verse 15 Paul makes a comparison between the trespass and the free gift. The trespass of one man brought death to all but the free gift by the grace of God through Jesus Christ brings life to many. We see the effects of spiritual death all around us every day – in our life, in our nation – but God didn’t leave us without hope. The free gift brought us forgiveness and life, abundant life.
- The free gift is not like the result of sin (v. 16) The judgment through one man’s sin brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. Before becoming a new creation we were under the wrath of God but now, as new creations, we not only escape the wrath of God, we have security in the hope of salvation – our joy is made full. We have forgiveness of sins and the righteousness of Christ credited to us. No temptation, no sin, nor anyone can snatch us out of the hand of Jesus or of the Father. We are eternally secure. We have endurance in the face of tribulation because Jesus has overcome the world (John 16:33). As we grow in sanctification, we overcome the sin in our life. For those who are in Christ, all sin has been overcome judicially now and fully in the life to come.
When Adam sinned, he didn’t understand the consequences that would ultimately result. Surely, he would not have wanted to pass his legacy of sin to all men. Sin is a liar. Adam thought that he would be more like God when, in actuality, his sin made him more unlike God. While sin promises pleasure or happiness, we find it only delivers emptiness. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 2:9, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him". Paul could authoritatively state this because he had been caught up to the third heaven thirteen years prior to writing this letter. (See 2 Corinthians 12:1-7. Also note that 1 Corinthians was written in 56 AD and 2 Corinthians in 57 AD) The point is that Satan’s promises are worthless while God’s promises are pure gold! In Christ we have full access to God, a full inheritance; we have Christ’s righteousness. Salvation and sanctification make us more like God, whereas death makes us more unlike God.
- Adam’s trespass (v. 18a) was disobedience (v. 19a) - Christ’s righteousness (v. 18b) was obedience (v. 19b)
In verses 12-17 Paul contrasted the differences between trespass and righteousness and between disobedience and obedience. Now in verses 18 & 19, he discusses the ramifications of these differences with a view toward imputation. Verse 19 points out that by Adam’s disobedience, many were made sinners and by Christ’s obedience many will be made righteous. Before coming to saving faith, we were dominated by sin because Adam’s sin nature was imputed to us. After coming to saving faith, we can live without domination by sin because Christ’s perfect righteousness has been imputed to us. Philippians 2:8 tells us that Christ humbled Himself and was completely obedient to the Father’s plan. Since Christ was not conceived by a human man, He could obey perfectly in all things; he did not inherit Adam’s nature. Christ was fully obedient to His Heavenly Father as well as to his parents (Luke 2:42-51).
There are two types of obedience attributed to Christ: active obedience and passive obedience. His passive obedience was His submission to death on a cross. His active obedience consisted of every other thing He did on earth. No ordinary man could provide atonement for our sin; a perfectly righteous, fully human sacrifice was required. Rather than being born a helpless baby, Jesus could have come to the earth as a fully grown God-man and been a sufficient sacrifice for our sin, but this was not God’s plan. By coming as He did, Jesus experienced all the temptations, the joys, the sorrows, the hunger and thirst, the rejection by even those close to Him, and ultimately the most horrible death possible. He experienced the fulness of human life from birth to death.
Hebrews 5:7-9 tells us that, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him…” Thus, while in the garden prior to His arrest, Jesus offered up loud cries and tears, not for Himself, but for us. He was heard because of His reverence; He feared His Father in the sense of having great awe. The writer tells us that Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered. As fully God, Jesus completely understood obedience. But as fully man, He willingly subjected Himself to learn obedience because He knew that we could not obey perfectly. As a child He was required to learn obedience to His parents. As a man He obeyed the law perfectly, and He also understands the temptation to not obey. Yet, His desire was to obey, and He wanted to experience all that it meant to obey. The Father essentially said that in order to be the perfect sacrifice, He needed Jesus to experience all aspects of obedience. We praise God that we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses and One who has been tempted in every way as we, yet without sin! (Hebrews 4:15)
Paul tells us in Galatians 3:24 that the law was our guardian until Christ came into our life. (Other versions translate guardian as schoolmaster or tutor.) Christ’s tutor for suffering was to experience obedience and, so, He learned how hard temptation was. He experienced for himself how weak and frail the flesh is. He learned how to battle the flesh; He learned how tempting sin is. In His suffering He learned perfect obedience. His suffering had to reach its fullest extent, then He could be our perfect high priest. He had a full understanding of the frailty of humanity and the difficulty in saying no to sin.
The ultimate goal for His suffering was to impute His obedience in the areas where we are disobedient. We are prone to give into temptations to not tell the truth, temptations to lose our temper, temptations to lust, temptations to greed, temptations to gluttony, etc. Christ, by His own will and desire, subjected Himself to every experience of humanity. In moments of temptation, we find ourselves wanting to give into temptation but, knowing what Scripture teaches, we struggle. (See Galatians 5:17). However, Christ was resolute; He understood the temptations we face but refused to yield to the flesh. Christ learned obedience so that He could give us His obedience. That is true love!
Hebrews 5:9 says that Jesus “became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him…” If our joy is contingent on truth and the truth is that we must obey, then how do we obey? Romans 1:5 explains that we receive grace through the obedience of faith. We must understand that we are sinners by nature, that we have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and we must have faith in the fact that Christ’s perfect obedient is imputed to us, that His death was a substitute penalty for the sin debt we owe and that His resurrection was proof that a necessary and sufficient atonement had been made for us. This is the saving faith that we receive by grace through being born again (John 3:3; 2 Corinthians 5:16; Ephesians 4:24). Christ’s perfect obedience secured for us all the blessings of being a child of God, including being with God forever.
Our first act of the obedience of faith is believing that all this is true. However, James 2:19 warns us that the demons believe and shudder; they know Christ but are not known by Christ (See Matthew 7:21-23) Jesus said in John 14:23, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” Keeping Jesus’ word is tantamount to being obedient to God. Our obedience ensures that our joy remain full.
Our second act of the obedience of faith is seeking to obey God in all things, then confessing and repenting when we fail to do so. The God who said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5) does not cease making His home with us when we sin; however, it may seem that way as our sin grieves the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). Paul then goes on to list a number of sins that grieve the Holy Spirit. (See Ephesians 4:31-5:6) Since we understand the gospel and what God has done for us in Christ, the suffering He endured, grieving the Holy Spirit should be repugnant to us as it is to God. Thus, we desire to obey. To struggle with sin is a form of worshipping Christ. We worship as we acknowledge and thank Him for the struggles He endured for us. Christ is honored when we obey, and obedience gives us great joy. We know how difficult sometimes it is to obey, yet Christ knows it better. The great free gift of God is that we are credited with Christ’s perfect life. When God looks at us, He doesn’t see our sin, He sees Christ’s perfect righteousness!
III. Rest in Grace (vv. 20-21)
Our response to all that God has done for us in Christ is to rest in grace. Laws and regulations are all around us. Congress has passed more than 30,000 statutes since 1789, the Constitution has been amended 27 times, God initially gave Moses 10 Commandments then others to interpret the ten, Jews have identified 613 commandments in the Old Testament. However, obedience to any law does not produce righteousness, and disobedience to any law does not make us sinners; we were sinners before we understood any law or any rule of our parents. The imputation of Adam’s sin is that which made us sinners.
The grace that we rest in is clearly stated in Romans 8:1-4, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
The law doesn’t condemn us; the law doesn’t save us; it helps an already condemned person begin to place a framework around their disobedience. This verse tells us that the law “came in to increase the trespass.” We might think to ourselves that knowing the law doesn’t cause me sin more; however, Paul said in Romans 7:7-8 when he learned that the law said, “You shall not covet” sin produced all kinds of covetousness within him.
Romans 7:20 tells us that the law awakens us to the sin already within. The law condemns the sinner while guiding the righteousness in righteous living. The sinner sees the law as restricting his ability to please himself; the righteous see the law as a goal to be achieved, as we seek to please God. However, we must understand that we can do nothing to increase God’s grace; we can only rest in His grace. The danger in believing that our obedience produces righteousness is that we judge others according to our standard of obedience. Jesus commanded us, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.” (John 7:24) The right judgment, of course, is clear Scriptural mandate. David Powlison wrote in his book on sanctification, “Christian obedience is so much better understood as a response (and not a precondition) to God’s wonderful love and grace.” Nothing will kill joy in individuals or in a fellowship faster than getting this backward, thinking that obedience is a precondition for God’s grace.
Also, we must not misinterpret what Paul is saying by thinking that we should never confront disobedience in others. In Galatians 6:1 Paul tells us to restore those caught in a transgression, first examining ourselves; however, we are to confront them in a spirit of gentleness. A tension exists between grace and obedience and if we lose sight of the free gift of Christ’s perfect obedience imputed to us and begin to focus on obedience, especially in other, Christian joy will be drained out of us and out of our Fellowship.
The three moorings that lead to lasting joy are:
Paul closes this section of Scripture by reminding us “that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Selah:
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