Romans Chapter 5– John Karmelich

1. My title for this chapter is “breathing easy”.

a) There are moments in life that are very stressful. There usually comes a point where that stressful event is over and we can now “breathe easy”. A similar cliché is a “sigh of relief”. It is the idea that whatever was stressing us out, is now all over.

b) Chapter 5 is all about having a peace with God.

i) It is the idea that as long as we believe Jesus died for our sins, we can’t mess up our salvation. We can “breath easy” knowing that we can’t mess it up.

c) “Breathing easy” is my nickname for the Christian cliché of “joy”.

i) Joy is different from happiness.

ii) Happiness is based on the circumstance of the moment.

iii) When a positive event happens in our life, that event makes us happy.

iv) Joy should be present in Christians no matter what the circumstances. We can be sad and still have joy. Joy comes from the inner peace that no matter what happens to us in this “temporary” life, we are saved and we can’t mess it up. In other words, no matter what the situation, we can “breath easy”.

2. There is a subtle distinction between the peace “of” God and the peace “with” God.

a) The peace “of” God is the idea that God has no longer holds us accountable for the payment for our sins as that was taken care of by the “cross”.

b) The peace “with” God is Him saying to us in effect, “Come on over to Me. Now that the price has been paid, I want you to come close to Me and be with Me.”

c) Imagine if Jesus died for your sins and then God the Father said, “OK, the price for your sins has been paid. You get to go to heaven. Now go be on your merry way.” ☺

i) The peace “of” God is about forgiveness. The peace “with” God is about developing a personal relationship with God.

d) Let me put it another way: Too many people view heaven as this wonderfully materialistic place that is beautiful and serene where they can relax by themselves or with friends and not bother about God himself when they get to heaven.

i) I am convinced that some people are going to enjoy heaven much more than others. In heaven, we sing praises to God and spend our time with Him. In other words, if you don’t enjoy that now, you won’t appreciate heaven as much.

e) Our future in heaven is with God: Here is a description of life in heaven: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21:3 NIV).

i) My point is God did not save us so we can now go about our life without Him.

ii) God saved us to be with Him in heaven forever.

f) In some ways, our lives on earth are a “preview” of what is to come. Right now, God desires we spend time with Him, talk to Him regularly, and make God part of our daily lives. The biggest difference is that in this life we still wrestle with our “sin-disease” as well as the same sin disease of others around us. God wants to show how rotten things are here on earth as to appreciate heaven all the more once that is taken away.

g) This leads us back to the peace “with” God. This is about our relationship. This is about God forgiving our sins and then, out of gratitude, we develop a daily relationship with God. We can “breath easy” knowing that whatever we are going through at the moment, it is temporary in comparison to eternity.

h) Let’s go to Verse 1 and I’ll come back to “breathing easy” throughout the lesson.

3. Chapter 5, Verse 1: Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

a) The first word of Chapter 5 is “therefore”. The classic teaching line is, “Whenever you see a “therefore”, you have to ask where is the “wherefore”.

i) In other words, the word “therefore” is a conclusion of an argument.

ii) You need to understand the argument itself before you can accept the “therefore”.

b) The conclusion of the “therefore” is the idea that we have been justified by faith.

i) To review some previous lessons, the word “justified” means “just-as-if-I-have-never-sinned”. It doesn’t mean we are innocent of our sins. It means that Jesus paid the price for them. If all of our sins could be listed on a chalkboard, it would be as if God completely erased all that chalk because the price as been paid. “Justified” can be thought of as that clean chalkboard.

ii) The “wherefore of the therefore” was Chapter 4 of Romans. The main point of Chapter 4 was that God said Abraham was “righteous” long before He actually performed any good deeds. Abraham was saved based on his faith alone.

iii) The word “righteous” has a similar conclusion to “justified”, but there the difference is in the perspective. The idea of “righteous” is that God sees as perfectly forgiven beings in our future state, and therefore God can call us “perfect right here and right now”.

iv) To use another illustration from the last lesson, imagine we are watching a rerun of a sports event on television. The players on the television don’t know who has won or lost the game. Only the people watching the television, who saw the “live” game and know who won and lost. Therefore, the “all-knowing TV-viewer” can call the winning team “the winner” before the game is over.

a) God called Abraham “righteous” as if God was watching a “rerun” of Abraham’s life. God knows all things and knows what will happen in the future. God calls us “righteous” because from His perspective, He already knows who has accepted Jesus for the payment of sins and chooses to follow Him no matter what the circumstances.

b) The point of Chapter 4 is that God calls Abraham righteous “before the game started”. Abraham was called righteous long before he was asked to perform the first Jewish ritual of circumcision. He is saved by faith.

c) The second word of Chapter 5 is “since”. (Don’t worry, the pace will pick up later. ☺)

i) What Paul is saying is that this “righteous” standing is a done deal.

ii) We no longer have to worry about it.

iii) It is not “if” we have peace with God. It is “since” we have peace. We don’t have to work for it. We don’t have to worry about it. It is a done deal.

iv) But what about our moments of doubt? It doesn’t matter. We all go through moments like that, especially when things get rough. Remember we’re not talking about life from our perspective, but from God’s perspective. He knows all things and He knows our future.

v) All Christians should have some moment in their lives where they remember making a commitment to serve God and realize that Jesus’ paid the penalty for their sins. I have found there is an initial period of peace and joy that comes with that commitment. There are usually some miracles that God puts in our life at that time as God responds to “our response” to His love.

a) Then comes the rough times. That is when the doubts kick in. During such times, it often helps to remember those past “joy” moments, just to remember that if God was “faithful once”, He is still there in a sense, asking us to “trust Him”.

vi) Which leads us back to the word “since”: If you have turned your life over to Jesus for payment of the sins, that peace of God is there. He is no longer wants you to pay your price for your sins. He has provided the payment for our sins and we have accepted that payment. The purpose of God providing that payment is so we can have peace “with” God. The point of “since” is that it’s a done deal. Again, it’s breath-easy time! ☺

d) Another phrase to talk about is “gained access by faith”.

i) If you read the early chapters of the bible, especially Leviticus, you get the impression that approaching God is like trying to walk through a deadly mine field. You have to step in just the right spots, or you get killed. For example, take the first high priest was Aaron. His direct descendants were to be high priest just like the oldest son of a king is to be the next king.

a) God killed two of Aarons’ on the spot because somehow, they did not perform the high priest ritual like God designed them to do so. (Reference Leviticus 10:2).

b) Now, if I was one of the remaining, living brothers of the two brothers who just got killed on the spot, I would be a nervous wreck about performing the rituals of the high priest. ☺ If I was that living next-high priest, I would be performing my duty like walking through a mine field.

ii) My whole point here is that God takes sin seriously and we don’t just casually approach the throne of God. It would be deadly.

iii) God wants us to understand how “deadly” sin is. He wants us to appreciate all-the-more how important the cross is.

iv) At the same time, we can approach the throne of God. Remember the “since” word. It’s a done deal. The path to God’s throne is no longer a mine field. God still wants us to come to Him humbly.

e) An aspect of worshiping God is to balance “respect” with “boldness” in approaching the throne of God. When we pray, it helps to have a healthy balance of realizing we are approaching the most holy throne of God with the fact we can approach it “boldly”.

i) For example, when you enter most Roman Catholic churches, you see a statue of Jesus dying on the cross. Protestant churches usually have an empty cross. A statue of Jesus dying on the cross represents how “seriously” is the cost of our sins and the necessity of God Himself paying the price. The idea is you don’t approach the throne of God casually. One needs to have a deep sense of understanding and awe of how “expensive” sin is that has to be dealt with.

ii) The typical Protestant church “empty” cross is the emphasis that sin is now a “done deal”. We can approach God because the price for sins has been paid.

a) My point is that both sides are capable of over-emphasis. One can have such a sense of awe of who God is, that we are afraid to approach God as “our friend”. The other possible over-emphasis to have such a casual relationship with God that we forgot how seriously God cares about sin.

b) I will occasionally ask a devout Catholic, “Why do you pray to Mary or someone else when you can pray to God the Father directly? It often never occurs to that person that one can pray directly to God for intercession.

c) I also have seen devout Evangelical Christians be guilty of being “overly-casual” with God. There has to be a respect for God in our relationship.

f) Let’s look at the last sentence of Verse 2: “And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God”.

i) Let’s get back to “breath easy”. If we now know that we have the peace of God (forgiveness of sins) and peace with God (we can be with God), we should have joy over that fact. Getting to live “happily ever after” for eternity is something to be happy about. ☺

ii) One has to see “rejoice” as both a command and a request by Paul. He is saying in effect, “Look folks, I know this life here on earth has its rough times. What is that in comparison to eternity? Look, God has forgiven us of whatever wrong we have done and God wants to be with us forever. The realization of that fact should make us want to be appreciative to God. It should make you want to have joy. It is a done deal. We can breath easy now. Learn to appreciate it”.

4. Verse 3: Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope.

a) Verse 3 is a “flow chart”. A “flow-chart” is where “A leads to B” and “B leads to C”, etc. In other words, you can’t get to “B” unless you’ve accomplished “A” first.

i) This “flow chart” says that 1) suffering produces 2) perseverance.

ii) This “flow chart” says 2) perseverance produces 3) character.

iii) This “flow chart” says 3) character produces 4) hope.

b) It might help to look at the final word of “hope” and talk about that characteristic.

i) As I explained in the last lesson, biblical “hope” is about trusting in a fact.

ii) We think of “hope” as having doubts. For example, we might say, “I hope it doesn’t’ rain today.” We have doubts about the weather.

iii) Paul uses the word “hope” like it is a done deal. We have hope (i.e., trust) in the fact we are going to heaven and we can spend eternity with God.

iv) The problem is we do have those doubts. Those doubts make us turn from God. We have difficult times in our life and those times naturally make us pessimistic because we don’t know the future. We lose “hope”.

v) So, how do we develop better “hope”? We follow the “flow chart”.

c) Let’s talk about perseverance. What Paul is saying is that God puts suffering in our life so we can learn to persevere by trusting Him.

i) A “veteran” Christian should say, “Well, God got me through that one situation. Hey look, God got me through another one. Hey, how about that, God got me through that one as well!” As we learn to trust God, we learn to persevere.

ii) It’s like the classic cliché, “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger”.

iii) Suffering leads to perseverance. A classic joke here is “Don’t pray for better perseverance because God will send us “suffering” to help us.” ☺

d) The next step on this flow chart is “character”.

i) Character is like being in “good shape” spiritually. It would be like realizing “Yes, things look bad. However, things have looked bad in the past and God got me through it. He will get me through this one as well”. That is growing in character.

e) Finally, being in “good spiritual shape”, i.e., character, leads to “hope”.

i) If we have had enough life-experience of difficulties, at the same time, knowing that God is watching us and guiding us through such times, it does lead us to have the type of “hope” (i.e., trust without doubts) that God desires for us.

ii) Remember that God the Father wants us to trust Him more every day. With that, God is working through this “flow-chart” to get us to trust Him.

f) Let me sum up this section with a prayer. When we go through rough times, we can say to God, “Lord, I don’t know why I am going through this right now. The only thing I know for sure is that You love me and want to spend eternity with me. Somehow, someway, this rotten situation is helping me prepare for that eternity with You. Help me to have joy through this situation and help me to learn what You want me to learn from it. Give me the strength to get through the next thirty seconds (or thirty years). Help me to realize that You are my strength during this time and my dependency is completely upon You. I don’t know the future, but you do. Let not this lesson be wasted.” Amen.

i) Remember Verse 3 opens with the word of “rejoicing in our sufferings”. That prayer is an example of how to rejoice during such times.

5. Verse 5: And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

a) Remember I said we think of “hope” as “I hope it doesn’t rain”? Well, if it does rain, we get disappointed because we “hoped” it didn’t rain.

i) In God’s idea of “hope”, the bad weather never comes. ☺

ii) Go read the end of the bible. We win. ☺ We need to trust in that fact.

iii) We are not guaranteed prosperity and happiness in this lifetime. If that were the case, people would seek God for the “fringe benefits” and not to spend time with Him. What we are guaranteed is “internal and eternal joy” despite whatever is the situation of the moment, be it good or bad.

b) How do you know this is true? After all, you don’t know what I’m dealing with right now and I don’t “feel” so joyful. How do I know this “hope” is true? Great question! ☺

i) Verse 5 says, “His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us”.

ii) Jesus said, “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” (John 14: 26-27a, NIV).

iii) What both Paul and Jesus said is the Holy Spirit is living inside all believers. Part of His job is to give us that peace no matter what the circumstance.

iv) What does that “peace” mean? It ties back to my opening theme of “breathing easy”. It is the idea that we understand that whatever we are going through, it is temporary. God put that peace inside of us so we can have the proper perspective about whatever we go through.

v) We grow through sufferings and perseverance with the goal of “doubting less”. We can have “better peace” after we have been through a bunch of trials knowing that God does get us through it.

vi) We don’t have to depend upon ourselves for this peace. It is God himself, through the Holy Spirit providing it for us. It is “there” for the believer.

c) Let’s look at the phrase, “God has poured out his love into our hearts.”

i) There is a great visual illustration one can use as a bible teacher. Take an empty glass and start filling it with water. Keep pouring slowly until the water starts spilling over the rim onto the ground. That is an illustration of how God wants to work in our life. He wants us to be “filled” with the Holy Spirit to a point where God’s love has to spill unto others around us because “there is no more room inside of us to hold it in”.

ii) For those who like to get emotional, this is the verse to get emotional over. God wants us so filled with joy, so that everyone around us notices how joyful we are.

iii) Again, it is not about being blind to suffering: “Whoopee, I stubbed my toe”, Praise the Lord, I will persevere from this!” ☺ Pain is real and God designed our bodies with ”pain sensors” so we know we have to deal with injuries and other physical issues. God also gives us real emotional pain since we have the capacity to love other people and we truly suffer when others are hurting.

a) The point is that it is ok to grieve. At the same time, there can be an internal sense of “joy” through it all knowing we have this hope and knowing we can “breathe easy”.

iv) I should also add the dangerous times are usually the “good times”. It is when things are going well we start giving ourselves the credit and not God. We start spending less time with God as we get busy with other things. That is usually when God sends us some sort of “reminder” that He is still there!

6. Verse 6: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

a) Let’s start with the phrase, “right time”. This is the moment in history, roughly 2,000 years ago, when God the Father choose to send His son. Why that time? Why not right after the Garden of Eden, or right before Noah? Why not today, when the world could watch the resurrection via satellite?

i) First of all, God choose the right time, not us. We have to respect His decision.

b) Here are some good reasons why God choose “that time”:

i) Rome was at its peak of power. It was the largest single empire (by territory) in human history up to that date. It made spreading the Gospel message much easier because communication and travel was allowed.

ii) There were no prophets in Israel for nearly 400 hundred years. That made Israel spiritually “empty”. Also remember Israel was in bondage for roughly 400 years before a redeemer (Moses) came along. I will argue that “pattern” was designed to keep the Nation of Israel on the lookout.

iii) Jesus needed to go to the Promised Land while the Jewish people were still a nation and collectively in one place. From 67AD to 1947, there was no such nation.

c) With all of that said, there is a more important idea being communicated in this verse. It is the question: When Jesus died on the cross, how many of your sins were yet future? The answer is all of them.

i) There is a false-concept that Jesus died for all the sins we committed up to the point where we first accepted Jesus as our payment. The rest is our problem. That is nonsense and non-biblical. Jesus paid the price for all the sins we commit in our lives, past, present and future.

a) Does that mean our behavior doesn’t matter? No, it does matter a lot! That issue is for another lesson. The focus of this lesson is on peace with God. The fact we can “breath easy” knowing we can’t mess it up our salvation if we’re trusting in Jesus’ payment for our sins.

ii) The verse says, “When we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly”.

a) We didn’t have a whole lot of power before we were born. ☺

b) Further, our sins kept us from having good-standing with God.

c) The point is the price for sins was paid before we even asked for it.

d) It was a “done deal” even before we could realize it was a done deal.

e) What does that mean? We can’t get any credit. We didn’t do anything special to draw God to us. He did it all beforehand.

iii) This should help with the “breath-easy” part. If God took care of all it before I was born, then I should not have to worry about it.

7. Verse 7: Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

a) I remember getting into a discussion one time about the idea of who was to blame for killing Jesus. I responded with the classic Chuck Smith quote of “If you want to blame someone for Jesus’ death, blame me. He died for my sins.”

i) That person then asked me, “Are you telling me Jesus committed suicide? Suicide is a sin. It is a sin because “do not murder” includes suicide.”

ii) I responded with, “Yes, he committed suicide like a solider jumping on top of a grenade so as to save the lives of the soldiers around him. It may be suicide from our perspective, but it was done out of love. Jesus in a sense, committed “God-the-Father-ordained suicide so that we never have to do the same!

b) This leads back to Verses 7 and 8. On rare occasions, you will hear about someone giving their lives so others can live. Usually it is a solider dying for their fellow soldiers or someone giving their lives so their children can live on. In those cases, it is someone dying for someone else they are affection about.

i) Imagine giving up your life in order to save someone you can’t stand. Think of the most repulsive, disgusting, low-life person you can imagine and then dying so that person can live another day. Personally, no thank you. Couldn’t do it.

ii) But God did. That’s the point. We are those disgusting people. We are the sinners. We are the ones Jesus died for.

iii) Suppose God spoke in a big booming voice the whole world could hear and say the words “I love all of you.” Let’s say the world was convinced it was the voice of God and not some sort of trick. The problem with that message is the world could then respond, “How do we know You really love us?”

a) I can’t think of a better way of saying “I love you” by God saying in effect, “I want to resurrect you and spend eternity with you and I myself am willing to die to prove it. I myself am willing to give up “part of me” in order that you may live.

b) I remember speaking to a widow after a 40-year plus marriage. She said that when her husband died, part of her died as well. I am convinced that is true that after a long marriage, two become “one”. When one dies, part of the other “one” also dies. In that sense, God agreed to be a “widow”. He gave up part of Himself, for our sins. That is why Christianity teaches the trinity concept of “separate but equal”.

8. Verse 9: Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!

a) Let’s get back to “justified”, or “just-as-if-I-never-sinned”. The text says we are justified by his blood. This is a reference to the cross itself and Jesus’ blood was spilled during the crucifixion process. We are justified by his blood.

i) In the Jewish sacrificial system as outlined in Leviticus, the blood of an animal must be shed for forgiveness. You can’t find an exact Old Testament quote on this, but if you study all the sacrifices for sins required the killing of innocent animals. In some cases the blood itself must be put on the altar. (e.g., Leviticus 4:30).

b) Some bible scholars call Romans Chapter 5 the “much more than” chapter. That is because in the King James Version, the phrase, “much more than” is repeated 5 times.

i) The NIV translation used here, uses “much more” 4 times, but whatever. ☺

ii) The point is Paul liked this phrase and used it over and over again in Chapter 5.

iii) The phrase, “much more than” means “Point #2” is greater than “Point #1”.

iv) In this verse the two points is that we are saved for eternity (Point #1) and we don’t have to receive God’s wrath (Point #2). I’ll explain how Point #2 is greater.

c) Let’s move to the question of what does God’s wrath mean?

i) It means we are saved from going to hell. Reading it in context of Verse 10 (“saved through life”) that is the more likely choice.

ii) I’m also speculating that Paul was a “pre-tribulation” kind of guy. ☺ That means Christians will be taken into heaven before all of the horrible stuff happens as described in the book of Revelation. Revelation 15:1, which is near the end of all of that destruction, has the phrase “God’s wrath is completed” (NIV). Tying that to Romans 5:9 (“saved from God’s wrath”), one can argue that Paul is also speaking of being saved from the tribulation period.

a) Again, I am speculating here. In context, Paul is talking about eternal salvation. My point is Revelation is pretty “wrathy” to me. ☺ I believe there is a double-meaning to the point of “saved from God’s wrath”.

9. Verse 10: For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

a) In this verse, we have the second “how much more” phrase. Again, that means Paul’s “Point #2” is a more significant statement than his “Point #1”.

i) “Point #1” is that we were “reconciled” to God the Father through Jesus’ death.

ii) “Point #2” is that we shall be “save(d) through his (Jesus’) life.”

b) OK, what’s the difference between these two points? Reconciliation means “a change from enemy to friendship” (Easton’s Bible Dictionary).

i) My point is just because we are God’s friends, doesn’t guarantee, on that point alone we get to spend eternity with Him. God could just say, “OK, you don’t get to go hell, I’ll just make you stop existing when you die.”

ii) The “how much more” point here is that we get to spend eternity with Him.

iii) The “how much more” point is the fact we get resurrected. Paul says we are “saved through his (Jesus) life. That refers to the resurrected life. Paul is hinting at the fact that we get the same privilege that Jesus got of being resurrected.

10. Verse 11: Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

a) The key word of Verse 11 is the word “rejoice”. If we are “reconciled” to God (i.e., we are no longer God’s “enemies” due to our sins) and we get to spend eternity in heaven.

i) I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s something to rejoice about. ☺

b) This gets back to my “breath easy” theme. No matter what happens to us Christians, we are saved. No matter how bad the situation, we are saved. No matter how much pain we are in, we are saved. Having the eternal perspective should help us “breath easy”.