EPISODE 97 ROMANS CHAPTER 5 " Let Go In Hope"

Thank you for joining us for this edition of Share the Word. You know, it never ceases to amaze me that when Paul sits behind that microphone, he brings out emotions and thoughts that I, for one, am so grateful for. And in this broadcast, I pray that the Holy Spirit opens your heart to an understanding beyond anything you've ever experienced. Romans chapter 5, Let Go in Hope. I want to talk this lesson about hope. How would you define that word?

It's kind of hard, actually. I think it represents different things to different people. The Apostle Paul used a word translated into our English Bibles as hope several times in today's chapter. I do know what he meant by it, and it's so important. By the end of today's podcast, you'll know exactly what he meant by it too. Hope springs eternal in the breast of every man.

That line was written in 1732 by Alexander Pope in his poem, An Essay on Man. Hope springs eternal. You've probably heard that line. Maybe not in every man, as he wrote, but most of us are warmed by that sentiment. We want to see better things come. We are desirous to be optimistic.

But what hope represents, or what we each hope for, that's very subjective. For example, we're coming into a political season here in America as I write this. It looks like it's going to be a doozy. Every four years, the American society seems to be getting more and more polarized and desperate feeling to me, looking for someone who can solve our problems. I remember a few election cycles back now. The rallying cry for one political candidate for president was, Keep hope alive.

I remember seeing a lot of posters during that campaign season with just the candidate's screen-printed face on them, with the huge word hope beneath it. It was an effective slogan. People identified with that. I think many believed that if only he could be elected president, there'd be fundamental changes coming to our fractured society, especially in race relations and for those who felt marginalized. I don't think much of anything like that actually happened, unfortunately. The problems, I'm afraid, are deeper than politicians and certainly slogans can solve.

And then the pendulum swings back in the other direction. In 2016, many people became hopeful that a different politician from a different party could somehow produce the things they hoped for by, in their view, turning back the clock in our culture to a simpler, more orderly society they nostalgically remember. But that didn't happen either. One group hoping for one kind of change, another group hoping for another. This is most definitely not a program about politics, that's for sure. I'm glad we Americans have some say in our government and believe Christians should not only vote our values, but also speak up about things that we know anger God going on in our society.

But I guess I'm not very optimistic at my age that politics is ever going to achieve the ends I'd like to see. Taking the Bible as literally as I do, I rather expect things are going to get darker if we're in or approaching the last days, and I suspect we are. In fact, as we learned in 2 Thessalonians, the notion that a man is going to save us, a man is going to bring about peace and security and justice and equality on this planet, well, that's exactly what will lead desperate people one day to embrace the Antichrist, a false Messiah. So I'm not really optimistic when it comes to the prospect of any human leader actually solving my country's problems, much less the world's problems. I wish I could be more optimistic about that than I actually am, but my hope is not there.

I am, however, very optimistic about the hope Paul writes about in Romans chapter 5, when he opens with this declaration: 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 the hope of the glory of God. If you listened to our podcast over the previous few episodes of Romans, and I hope you have, because it's valuable to hear these big ideas rolled out in the way the original author intended, you should understand what he means there by therefore at the outset of this chapter. Therefore, that is based on what I have just explained about sin and righteousness and wrath and grace and faith and justification, all these key terms we've been defining through the preceding chapters.

Therefore, understanding the amazing way God has made for us to be saved on the basis of his grace and through our faith in Christ, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Listen carefully to this part. The Greek word Paul used there in verse 2 and later throughout this chapter rendered hope contains no sense of uncertainty. There's nothing of uncertainty in the word he used. Although hope is commonly used in contemporary English for a wish we have about the future, something we cross our fingers and wish will happen. This term the Bible writer used actually means something not yet realized but absolutely certain.

Something not yet realized but absolutely certain. Christian hope, biblical hope, is something not yet realized but absolutely certain. If you're making cards, that's another key term to put down: hope, something not yet realized but absolutely certain. So what is Paul telling believers here they don't have yet but can be absolutely certain about? Glory, of one day sharing in the glory of God. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

He's talking about heaven, the place defined by God's glory. So let me break down just what he's saying in verses 1 and 2. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, he began. Justified, that means declared righteous, declared innocent by God, based on our faith in Jesus. By the way, the Greek construction he used there, since we have been justified, means this is a one-time act with continuing consequences. When I placed my faith in Jesus, the Judge of all the earth issued a verdict in my case.

He transferred, we learned this last lesson, Christ's righteousness into my bankrupt account, and then he rendered the verdict, This one is innocent in my eyes. As Psalm 103 put it, remember, as far as the east is from the west, I'm removing his sins from him. When God looks at me now, he no longer sees my sin; he sees Christ's righteousness. Same for you if you're a believer. That's exactly what we have been justified means. Then it goes on, so we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Meaning, God, the righteous judge who was angry at my sin before, who was at enmity with me and I was estranged from before, now, because I have been justified in His sight, now we are at peace. This context that we're talking about here is not subjective internal peace; it's a judicial context. He's saying, God has nothing against me anymore. We've been reconciled because Jesus took the punishment for my sins. The cause of the enmity that existed before, it's gone. Then Paul clarifies, we also have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

I can stand before God now innocent, accepted, but only through my faith in Christ and because of God's grace. I completely acknowledge that I have no other plea before God's judgment bar. In which we stand, that's another reference to the security of this, the finality of this, the certainty of our salvation transaction. My position vis-à-vis my Creator and Judge has been forever decided because of my relationship with Christ by faith. We have been reconciled. So consequently, he finishes with, and now we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

So how does knowing all this make you feel, Paul? I'm rejoicing in the certainty of God's promise to me. I don't have the fulfillment of it yet, but there's no doubt whatsoever that I will. I am going to see the glory of God. I'm heaven-bound. That's my confident expectation because that's God's promise.

I hope that's your confident expectation too. In verses 3 to 5, Paul says this is all true for believers, notwithstanding tribulations and suffering that we may have to go through first here. Difficult life experiences, they don't diminish our hope. Rather, he says that for people of faith, difficult experiences, tribulations produce endurance and develop godly character and ultimately increase our hope, which will not be disappointed. The more I go on through this life, the more difficulties I experience, the more physical challenges I face, the more I am reminded of my frailty and mortality. The more sharply God's promises come into focus and my hope in them comes into focus.

As this apostle wrote elsewhere on this very point, we don't lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day after day. For these light, momentary afflictions are preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not at the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. That's 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 16 and following. Our difficulties here, Paul wrote there, any suffering we encounter here, these things are like a couple grains of sand compared to all the sand along the Atlantic shore.

There's no comparison between our temporary troubles here and what God has planned for us in glory. In the second half of this chapter, Paul gets into something of a comparison, a contrast between the first man Adam and the God-man Jesus. I don't know if you've ever thought of it this way, but it's significant that these two very real men were directly sons of God. I mean, God was directly the father of them both. He created Adam from the dust of the ground. Adam had no earthly father.

God was his father. And the man Jesus came about by a miracle conception wrought by God in a young virgin. God was his father. Adam and Jesus are the only two men ever on this planet who did not have a human father, that God was actually their father. And these guys had a huge impact on the human race. But boy, has their impact on the human race been different.

Paul draws the contrast in verses 12 and following. This isn't the big idea I'm focused on today, but I don't want you to miss what his point is here. Adam, the first man, through his deliberate choices, brought sin into our world, Paul says. And as God had warned, this is the record from the very first chapters of the Bible, Adam's sin and disobedience then brought death into the world. Sin is why we physically die. Death is the penalty for sin.

And sin will also, he says, bring condemnation. That's judgment at the end of the road, which can lead to spiritual death and eternal separation from God. But before you get too angry at Adam, Paul reminds us in verse 12, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death has spread to all men because all have sinned. In other words, you have the same freedom of choice as Adam did, and you've chosen to sin against God too. Since it's sin that brings forth physical and ultimately spiritual death, and we all sin, and we're all in the same sinking boat, man, that sounds pretty hopeless, doesn't it? But the good news is, what Adam thoroughly screwed up, Jesus came to fix.

What Adam ruined, Jesus restored. Adam's disobedience to God brought death and condemnation to mankind, but Jesus' obedience brought justification, superseding condemnation, and made a way to eternal life overcoming physical and spiritual death. Here's how Paul puts it in verses 18 and 19. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, referring back to Adam's sin, so one act of righteousness leads to justification of life for all men. That's eternal life. The one act of righteousness referred to here is Jesus willingly laying down his life as an atonement for our sin.

He goes on, for as by the one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. He puts this even more concisely in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 22, where he says, All who are in Adam die, but all who are in Christ will be made alive. All who are in Christ, whose faith is in him, will be resurrected to eternal life. And that, friends, is our hope, something not yet realized, but absolutely certain. The Bible elsewhere says that God is the God of all hope, Romans 15:13. Without God, there really is no hope.

In fact, the Bible says just that in Ephesians 2, verse 12: We are, he says there, without God and without hope in the world if we don't have Christ as our Savior. I remember once seeing Mikhail Gorbachev interviewed, who was the absolute leader of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. He was, of course, a Marxist, a communist, and atheist. This interview was after the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and he was asked by the program's host, Mr. Gorbachev, how do you view your life now in the final analysis? What's its meaning?

Meaning? Gorbachev looked at the interviewer kind of amused. Meaning? he said. I see no meaning. You're born, you suffer, you die.

I was struck by that. What a hopeless answer. In contrast, in our moments remaining, I want to explain the Christian view of hope through the experience of a woman I knew named Barbara. I didn't meet her until she was in her fifties, late fifties actually. She had gone to church, she told me, off and on in her life, but she had no real faith, and she knew it. Her daughter, Laura, who's a friend of mine, told me about the time she was at her mom's house and they were talking about spiritual things together.

Laura had been trying to get her mom to understand the importance of receiving Christ as her personal Savior for some time. But that morning, she turned on a Christian television show, and by chance, the speaker started saying some things that sounded like they were aimed right at Barbara. He said, Maybe you've put on 50 pounds, and the dress you're in looks like a muumuu, and you walk around in bedroom slippers every day, and your husband no longer pays any attention to you. And Barbara Felt just described her pretty much to a T. She busted out laughing, and it caused her to tune in to this man's message. She settled down in her housecoat and rollers on the couch, and she listened.

And as she did, eventually, he explained the gospel, how Jesus had come into our world to enable us to be reconnected to our Creator, from whom we are all disconnected because of sin. He explained what we need to do is to confess to God that we are sinners, deserving His judgment, and reach out in faith and personally receive what Jesus did for us when He died for our sins on the cross. That day in her living room, Barbara did exactly that. She repented of her sin. She reached out in faith. She invited Jesus to come into her life as her Savior and leader.

After that, things began to change in her life, at first on the inside, then increasingly in more visible ways. Nowhere was that more evident than in the way she faced cancer when it recurred at about 60 years of age. When it had first struck her years before, earlier in her life, she was very angry and very bitter about it. But since she gave her life to Christ, that anger abated. She faced the recurrence with courage and confidence, and she battled that disease with hope, the kind of hope that only comes from believing the promises of God. Shortly before her death, I was with Laura and others of their family in Barbara's hospital room, and we were singing songs about faith and about hope.

Songs like, My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. On Christ the solid rock I stand. And, My hope is in the Lord who gave Himself for me and paid the price for all my sin at Calvary. When I asked Laura the other day what she remembered about that, she reminded me that I said to her mom that day in the hospital room, It looks like you're going to be with Jesus pretty soon, Barbara. And she replied, I know that, Paul, but I'm ready. I had seen Barbara several times in the few months before that, twice on the weekend that she passed away.

Each time, she communicated to me her confident hope in Jesus in the face of death. Each time, I was struck by her freedom from fear. I don't know who will hear her story on this podcast. I don't know if you'll think her hope was real or if she was just fooling herself, that this stuff about Christ being our Savior, about life beyond this life, if it's all a mind game. But whatever you do, do think about it, because there's nothing in the world more important to think about. Because one day, unless Jesus comes back first, each of us is going to get to the place that Barbara got to, to the end of our life journey.

And the Bible says, without a reconciled relationship with our Creator, at that point, we are without God and without hope. But what those of us who witnessed Barbara in those final weeks and days saw was exactly the opposite. Barbara passed from this life to glory when she was only 61 years old. And I was asked to speak at her funeral. I remember seeing among the montage of pictures Laura and her sister put together to display at the service a snapshot of their mom's baptism. It was a real privilege for me to have baptized her that last summer she was alive here.

Why would someone her age want to be baptized, you might be thinking? Because Barbara wanted everyone to know what had been going on inside of her heart. It was that evening that she came out publicly and said, I've committed my heart and life to Jesus Christ. In fact, when she got so sick that last time, she was right then in the middle of taking a course we did at our church called Becoming a Contagious Christian about sharing our faith with other people without sounding too preachy. Barbara wanted to be able to do that, to be able to share with others the confidence, the peace that she experienced when she put her faith in Christ. So at her funeral, I tried to communicate that message for her.

Here is exactly how I remember doing it, explaining Barbara's faith and hope to her friends and extended family that day. I told them this story. When I was around 12, I went to the Barnum and Bailey Circus at the old Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I still remember things I saw there that amazed me as a kid. It was quite a show they put on. We had great seats right in the center front.

One of the most memorable acts was the trapeze artists. We were so up close, I had to lean back and crane my neck up in the air to watch them. It seemed like they were operating right above our heads. What really impressed me was the incredible relationship of trust between the flyer and the catcher on the trapeze. Do you know what I mean? As they were swinging across the arena over our heads, the flyer was at one point having to let go, and the catcher was the one who had to catch them.

As the flyer swung high above us on the trapeze, the moment came when she let go. She arced out into the air, flying freely. Her body was stretched out in a fixed position, her arms were upraised, and then just as it appeared she was starting to fall and everybody in the audience was gasping, the catcher came swooping in from the other direction with his strong arms, plucking her right out of the air. Their arms interlocked together and they swung to safety. Everybody was so relieved. The flyer let go in hope because she knew the catcher would get her.

That's exactly what Barbara did the morning when her time here was up. She let go in hope. She let go in hope, and Jesus, in whom she fully trusted, Jesus' strong arms were there to catch her, to take her safely home to glory. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Thank you, Paul. This episode had a profound impact on me because at the time of this recording, I was experiencing firsthand the importance of that emotional plea from my heart with somebody who was about to meet our Lord Jesus Christ and was without God and without hope.

It was hope that finally opened their eyes, their hearts. Please, it doesn't matter what we've done. By repenting our sins and accepting Christ, we are made right with God through His sacrifice on the cross. There is nothing we can do apart from our Lord Jesus Christ. Share that with the world.