Positive Power of God’s Promises!

 

READ Romans 5–8

How can I put these two thousand plus words into a coherent expression of the deep joy they produce in my heart? Every time I read them, I’m filled with gratitude at the wonder of God’s gracious gift of Jesus and what He has done. This passage begins:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:1–2)

If that were not enough, it tells how Jesus gives hope because He reveals how suffering produces endurance, character, and hope — because His love is poured into that mix. He died for me before I was born, before I sinned, justified me, saved me from God’s wrath. I “rejoice in God through my Lord Jesus Christ, through whom I have now received reconciliation.”

The passage reminds me how one act of disobedience in Eden led to condemnation for all, but one act of righteousness by Jesus Christ leads to justification and life for all. “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.” (Romans 5:18–19) Such a great wonder that God did this for sinners!

But there is more. I died with Jesus. This means that because I have “been united with him in a death like his, I shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” This is not a someday promise that death will have no dominion over me, but that sin no longer has dominion over me, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

Chapter 7 describes the battle with sin that can be won because of Jesus. I struggle against sin that tries to hang on to me like a leech or is a taskmaster. Before salvation, I could not resist and often could not recognize it. But now my loving Savior has opened my eyes to the spiritual realities of sin’s danger and sin’s defeat — and He gives me victory as well as forgiveness!

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. (Romans 8:1–4)

This is a great wonder of the Gospel. It is not merely a religion of belief in the event of Jesus, but power over sin because Jesus changes lives. It is a black or white reality depending on a relationship not on rules . . .

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:9–11)

The change is in: my assurance — the Spirit bears witness that I belong to Him; and in any suffering I might experience — the Spirit reveals God’s good purpose for it; and in my praying — I don’t know how to pray but He intercedes for me.

What then shall I say to these things? If God is for me, who can be against me? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for me, how will he not also with him graciously give me all things? Who shall bring any charge against me? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for me. Who shall separate me from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? The Bible says, “For His sake I may be killed; regarded as a sheep to be slaughtered” but in all these things I am more than a conqueror through him who loved me. I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, (even my foolish self) will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31–39, personalized)

I live in the certainty of the promises of God, a certainty that persists and puts peace in my heart. Hallelujah, what a Savior!

 

Relationship Restored!

 

Last night’s television show featured two sisters who had not talked for forty years. Fiction yes, but true stories are not any different. I cannot imagine it, at least the forty years part, but do know of rifts in relationships. Life seems too short for such estrangements yet both sides must be willing before any rift can be resolved.

RECONCILE is a NT word. It means “to be or become restored to favorable or friendly relations with another after a presumed wrong.” In the Bible, the wrong is sin and the rift is between all of humanity and God because, “All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.”

Reconciliation was promised in the OT and believers looked forward to it in prophecies about Jesus.

Isaiah 53:6. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Reconciliation happened when the Messiah came, died and rose again. It is fulfilled as individuals believe in Him and experience the wonder of being restored to a personal relationship with God.

Romans 5:10–11. “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. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

Reconciliation is the work of God. He removes the enmity between himself and humanity, yet this divine act requires a response of faith from us. The NT admonishes readers to “be reconciled to God.” When that happens, other wonders are included. We become part of Christ’s Body, the church. We are at peace ‘with’ God and enjoy the peace ‘of’ God even in life’s trials. He sees us in Christ, holy and blameless, a salvation freely given yet proven to be true by a changed life of faith and obedience.

Colossians 1:18–23. “And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.”

This restoration was promised to the Jews yet made available to all people after most of them rejected Christ. Romans 11:15 says, “For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?” That is, when they said NO to Jesus and crucified Him, then the whole world could respond to God’s offer of salvation and reconciliation, an offer that changed the deadness of being separated from Him to the life of being united to Him!

Such removal of enmity between God and those who believe leads to missionary zeal because He makes us His ambassadors. We live here but represent our heavenly home:

2 Corinthians 5:18–21. “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

The outcome of this amazing grace is that we are also reconciled to one another. The Bible is clear that because of Christ, we are united in Him and in agreement on the very basics of life in Him. There ought to be no animosity between Christians. Only it happens. Our sinful selves, which the Bible calls our fleshy nature, can usurp the Holy Spirit. If this ‘tipping over’ as I call it is not recognized and confessed for what it is, the wonderful results of being reconciled to God and to others is blocked until I give up my selfish I-wants and yield again to the Holy Spirit. Only the Lord can restore right relationships.

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY is made possible by being reconciled to Him. Before that happened, I knew nothing of God and could not see His glory or communicate with Him. The enmity, caused by sin, needed to be removed. He put my sin on Jesus, indeed all the sin of all the world for all time, and put Jesus’ righteousness on me. Jesus was not a sinner but treated as if He was. I am not righteous but because of Jesus I am now treated as if I am. This is the absolute wonder of being reconciled to God!