The Power of Love

Text: Romans 5:1-11

Focus: Redemption

Function: to help us see how God loves us and we should love others

5:¹Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

⁶For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. ⁹Much more surely, therefore, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. ¹⁰For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. ¹¹But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation

Good morning and welcome to the third Sunday of Lent. Today we are going to focus a little bit on theology. I get a little bit distracted preaching sermons on “what we should believe” instead of sermons on what we should do.

I confess for many years I confused Jesus, the Word of God with the bible, the Holy Scriptures. And in one way, I was taught that since the Bible was the revelation of God, it had to be perfect, since God is perfect.

And the problem with that is that the Bible itself does not claim to be perfect. And understanding it that way makes it a lot easier to reconcile the competing understandings about God that we see given to us in the Holy Scriptures.

The New Testament does tell us that God inspired the writers of the Old Testament, but it doesn’t make that claim about itself.

I bring all that up because today we are going to be looking at one of the unique doctrines that the Apostle Paul teaches. And that is the atonement theology.

Verse 8 from today’s text brings it out: “At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly…”

He goes on to point out the significance of that event. And he helps us to see it from an human perspective. He says it this way, you would hesitate to give your lives to redeem, for example, a terrorist, or a rapist, or some other kind of wicked person whom you cannot abide.

People don’t do that. They may give their lives, he says, for a good person, or a leader, you know, like the Secret Service protecting the President, or something like that. I can imagine that ll of us would give our lives for our loved ones, or for a child if it came down to that.

And from that human perspective, he tells us that Jesus Christ gave His live in exchange for the punishment of the wicked people that we don’t believe deserve mercy because they have not shown mercy toward others.

It is the story of redemption and how the Holy Spirit works in the lives of people to restore them into a right relationship with God and others.

God works through mercy. God’s redemptive power comes out when mercy is given to someone who either doesn’t believe they are worthy, or is given to someone that we don’t believe is worthy.

The specific phrase about whom receives the mercy is” “His enemies.”

Remember, there are three things required of us. Doing Justice, walking humbly with God and Loving Mercy.

We love Jesus because of His mercy. We love Jesus because of His mercy shown toward us.

The doctrine of substitutionary atonement teaches that God cannot abide the presence of evil since God is Holy. And the only way that people could be reconciled to God after the sin of Adam was through God’s own sacrificial death which Jesus accomplished on our behalf at Calvary.

Let me emphasize one part of the doctrine. Because of our sin, the ones we commit and the one inherited from Adam our ancestor, God’s awesome holiness would destroy us if we were in God’s presence. And through the sacrifice of Jesus, God forgives our sins, we can’t do it ourselves, and we are now safe in the presence of God.

I think that I have experienced the presence of God before in my worship and prayer and I do believe that it is an awesome power. Scriptures record people falling over as if dead, and others as being full of fear and trembling.

But as I mentioned at the beginning, there are competing doctrines about this stuff, some might even call them inconsistencies. And part of the problem with the doctrine is that we see Satan himself in the presence of God in the book of Job. We have a demon in God’s presence in the book of 1 Kings and both of then are not killed by the awesome power of God’s holiness. Not that there are cracks on the doctrine, but throughout the scriptures we see God speaking to and inspiring people to follow God long before the sacrifice of Christ paved the way for them to be in the presence of God.

I don’t say that to upset your faith in some of the foundational principles but only to serve to remind you Jesus is the Word of God, not the Scriptures.

And the neat thing about all that is the way it leads us to the story of redemption.

It was and still is the mercy of God that draws people back to right relationship with God and with others.

In the passage, Paul is speaking of how the ungodly are brought back into the kindness and love of God.

Romans 2 tells us that it is the kindness of God that leads people toward repentance.

He is speaking about people repenting from unjust actions and unloving attitudes.

And God gives us an example of just how far we can go in our process of love and forgiveness.

In the passage we are reminded that Jesus forgave people even when they were actively murdering Him. That is a powerful statement of faith in God and the power of God for resurrection and redemption.

So we learn to forgive regardless.

Let me give you a secret. Do you want answers to prayers? I would never promise you a magic king of Genie in a bottle kind of god to worship and serve. But Jesus did give us a condition on prayer in Mark 11:25 where He tells us to forgive everyone before we pray.

Jesus forgave us when we were not thinking of Him. He forgave us even if we were alienated from God. His love, the power of His love, brings us back to God and keeps us there.

And that sort of leads us to the beginning of the passage when he is talking about suffering and how it brings hope. It is a spiritual experience if we are open to it. And it has to do with the associated pain and then the forbearance required to forgive our enemies.

But in the end, it is the love of God that wins out over God’s judgment. And by the example of Christ, knowing the power of the resurrection, we can do the same.

That is the power of love given to us by God to redeem us.