Romans 6

Chapter 6. The Blessings That Flow From JustificationTherefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 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. (Romans 5:1-2)This chapter is an inventory of the treasures in the house of faith and the blessings that flow from justification by faith. In the preceding chapters the apostle had unfolded the principles of God’s righteousness and the conditions through which it is received; and now, before he closes this second chapter on the divine salvation, he proceeds to enumerate and sum up the special blessings of this great salvation. In so doing he anticipates a little the subject of sanctification, which is to come in the next chapter; and so we find some things in this enumeration which properly belong to the sanctified life. We must not think this strange or illogical, because while in the nature of things justification and sanctification are distinct and are very distinctly treated in this epistle, yet in the mind of God they are associated very closely, and in the experiences of the believer they ought not to be as widely separated as they usually are. Indeed, it seems to be the thought of God that they should immediately succeed each other. When God’s people left Egypt, He meant them to go immediately into the land of Canaan, and if they allowed an interval of 40 years to intervene, it was not because God wanted it. And so, in the Pentecostal experience of the Apostolic Church, it would seem as if all who accepted Jesus were at once taken into His fullness and received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the same as the apostles—passing at once into the sanctified life, living in entire consecration—so that it could be said, “No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own… and much grace was upon them all” (Acts 4:32, Acts 4:33). Through the lowering of the Christian standard, there has come about a kind of Christianity which has no spiritual warrant; a condition in which people are justified and yet do not expect to live a holy life—and do not live it, until through truer teaching and the preparation of God’s Spirit they are awakened to realize the true life of holiness to which God has called them, and after years of wandering they at length come into the experience of sanctification which they should have known from the first. While the summary of blessings which the apostle unfolds in this chapter has reference chiefly to the fruits of justification, yet it reaches out into all the fullness of the believer’s sanctified life and takes in, by anticipation, some of the things which are to be more explicitly unfolded in the chapters that follow. “Peace with God” “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God” (Acts 5:1). The revised and correct reading is, “Let us have peace with God.” Dr. Marvin R. Vincent, in his critical notes on this verse, says: “This is undoubtedly the true reading, but the commentators have been perplexed to understand why it should be put in this way rather than in the simple indicative mood—we have peace. Why should he say, ’let us have peace,’ when we have it already? For the peace spoken of here is not a feeling of peace, but it is the condition of heaven, a reconciliation with God through the redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ.” We are brought out of a condition of alienation and separation into one of acceptance and peace. The controversy is ended. There is no condemnation. We are regarded and treated as friends and received into His family as children and joint heirs with Christ. Now why should it be said, “let us have peace,” when we have it already? Well, there is doubtless a very profound reason for it, and perhaps it will appear if we were to put the emphasis on the word have. Let us have peace. God has made it, now let us take it. Many persons are trying to make peace, but peace is already made through Jesus Christ, and all that God asks of us is to take the reconciliation that He offers and have the peace that He has arranged. Many persons are acting toward God as if He were at war with them, as if everything were against them and God was their worst enemy. The truth is, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:19), and the death of Jesus was the outflow of His own personal and sovereign love; and when we see this and know it, we are ready to lay down our arms and become His friends. After the Old French War, it is said that a French frigate was seen fleeing from an English warship in the Southern Seas. The British cruiser pursued the fugitive and, after a hard chase, overtook her. The Frenchman hauled up the white flag and surrendered, and as he presented his sword to his conqueror, the Englishman laughed at him and asked him what he meant by surrendering. “Why,” he said, “didn’t you know the war was over, and peace has been made for months?” “Why, no,” said the Frenchman. “I thought we were still at war and I tried to escape. When I could not, the only thing left for me was to surrender. But I have been so long away from civilized ports and the news of the world that I did not even hear that peace was made.” The men cordially shook hands, the sword was given back to the Frenchman and they sat down together as comrades. The war was over and they said, “Let us have peace,” because peace was at headquarters. This is what God means. Peace is made for every man who will take it through Jesus Christ, turn from his sins and accept the Savior as his Redeemer and Lord. Don’t try to please God by your own works, and earn His favor, but frankly accept His forgiveness, turn from your rebellion and disobedience and accept the peace which has been sealed through the precious blood of Christ. Perhaps the verse might be explained in another connection. Let us hold fast to the peace which we have with God. Let us live in it, recognize it and never doubt it. It is not a truce but a permanent peace. It is not an armistice but an absolute amnesty, a great treaty of peace, signed and ratified forevermore. A poor woman in one of Mr. Whittle’s meetings in Glasgow was brought into light by a little verse in the fifth chapter of John: “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). The evangelist gave her the verse, written on a little card, and sent her home rejoicing with her little son. They both went to bed that night, happy as angels. But in the morning she came down to breakfast as gloomy as ever, her face all clouded and her heart utterly discouraged. She had had a night of conflicts, doubts and fears, and when her little boy asked her what was the matter, she could only burst into tears and say, “Oh, it is all gone. I thought I was saved, but I feel just as bad as ever.” The little fellow looked bewildered and said, “Why, mother, has your verse changed? I will go and see.” He ran to the table and got her Bible with the little card in it, and turned it up and read, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” “Why, mother,” he said, “it is not changed a bit. It is just the same as it was last night; it is all right.” And the mother looked with a smile at the little preacher, whose simple trust was used of God to save her; and taking him in her arms, she thanked God that her precious verse was still the same and her peace as unchanged as the everlasting Word of God. Is that what the apostle means? We are justified, now let us have and hold fast to the peace. It is not merely forgiveness, but it is an everlasting decree. Let us walk in the strength of it and never allow the shadow of a doubt or fear to cross the sunlit sky of our heaven. “Access by Faith Into This Grace in Which We Now Stand” There is also grace to keep us as well as to save us, and to keep us not falling but standing, and standing fast in holy obedience and steadfast victory. The word “access” means right, liberty, unbounded freedom and power, a throne of grace to which we can always come and obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. A kind lady once sent to Rowland Hill a sum of money to give to some poor curate. Rowland Hill, with his shrewd English sense, did not give it all at once, but sent enough to pay the man’s debts and give him a start, and then added at the bottom of the letter, “More to follow.” Every week or two there came another letter with the same mysterious words—“More to follow”—until the poor curate got used to it, and the little message grew into one of our sweetest hymns. When Jesus Christ forgives a man’s sins and accepts him as a child, He undertakes a good deal more than human love would be equal to. Nothing but infinite grace bought on Calvary would induce Him to take all the follies, provocation, disobedience and failures which all of us have laid upon our blessed Lord, and for which He has so graciously provided until the very word makes us ashamed, while at the same time it makes us trust Him more. The Apostle Paul, speaking of his salvation, said that he obtained mercy; and then he adds of his later experience, “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 1:14). The very faith and love were but gifts of divine grace. Every step of the way is dependent upon Him. Apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:5). “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another” (John 1:16). Now, all this grace and all this fullness come to us by Him. The person of Jesus Christ is the channel through whom our life is maintained as well as created. Every moment we are held to Him personally by utter dependence, as a baby to its mother, as a tree to its root. Joy in the Prospect and Hope of the Glory of God This means the joy of salvation, the joy that springs from knowing that we are accepted and looking forward to our final and full salvation in the glory of the Lord. This is a different joy from that meant in the 11th verse. This is the first “joy of the soul in its earliest love.” It is founded upon the fact of its salvation and the hope of heaven. It is a wonderful thing to find that we have escaped the wrath of God, the judgment due to our sins and the dreadful prospects of a lost soul, and been translated at once into all the privileges and hopes of the kingdom of God. No wonder that the newborn soul springs at once into an ecstasy and gladness which often becomes—alas!—but a memory of “the blessedness we knew when first we saw the Lord.” This is all right. It is a wonderful and glorious thing to be saved and to have the hope of the glory of God. Don’t clip the wings of the little bird, don’t cut back the free growth of the springing vine, don’t sober down that happy child—the devil will do that soon enough. They need all the spring and the sweetness, all the triumphant gladness of this hour. The settling will come in God’s time and way, and all the better if there is a good deal to settle. The Discipline of Trial “We glory in tribulations, also” (Romans 5:3). It is rather remarkable that the two words employed in this expression are both extreme words, one denoting the highest triumph, and the other the profoundest suffering. Sorrow is spoken of not by an ordinary term, but by a word denoting the hardest kind of sorrow. Tribulation is literally derived from a root signifying a flail, and it means a kind of suffering that leaves us bruised and beaten, as the wheat that has been threshed on the summer floor. On the other hand, the word glory expresses the very highest kind of joy and triumph. It is not mere enduring, patience or even long-suffering, but it is triumphant, and even ecstatic, joy. It suggests the idea that while ordinary joy may carry us through ordinary trials, when we come to the deepest afflictions and the hardest places we must have the very highest experiences of divine joy and rise even to the spirit of glorying in the Lord. But there is also a sober side to trial: the quiet, steady schoolroom of patience and proving which must follow the long strain that so often comes after the first victorious conflict. “Tribulation worketh patience; patience (not experience, but), proving; and proving, hope, a hope that maketh not ashamed” (Romans 5:3-5, author’s translation). This is the deep, settled establishing that comes through patient suffering and the joy of the Lord. We want the joy to inspire us for the long-continued test, and then, when faith is proved, and patience has its perfect work (James 1:4), there comes a holy confidence which “maketh not ashamed,” and a sense of the divine love which has been proved in the severest ordeal which can come to human hearts and lives. This is the glory of our great salvation, that it sustains the human heart in the trying hour. Other things will do with prosperity, health and highest happiness, but Christ has this supreme glory, that His grace shines most conspicuously when everything else fails, and that the Christian’s brightest hours are often those that are overshadowed by earth’s heaviest trials. The Assurance of God’s Love God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us__ Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 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! (Romans 5:5, Romans 5:9-10) There is a revelation of the love of God in the moment of conversion through the grace of Jesus Christ and the promise of salvation. But there is a deeper experience of the divine love which comes to the soul after it has been proved and tried and brought into the intimacy of His fellowship. This comes from the Holy Spirit pouring out the love of God into the heart. There are atmospheres in Christian life that greatly differ. Some of God’s children live in a cellar all their days, where the light is dim and the air damp; others live in shaded rooms and dim light, where the sun seldom shines; but others dwell in the very sunlight of God’s perfect love. The element of their being is not duty, conscience, doctrine, intellectual conviction or even Christian work, but divine love—the sweet, mellow, warm air of the Father’s house and the Father’s heart, the love of God poured out into the heart like the warm sunshine by the Holy Spirit abiding in the heart, and dwelling ever on God’s glorious gift and everlasting pledge of His perfect love, His own beloved Son. Others talk about their love, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The Life of Christ in Us “How much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” (Romans 5:9). The grace of Christ is the starting point of Christian life and the ground of our justification, but the life of Christ, our risen Lord, is the source of our spiritual life. His intercession for us at God’s right hand and His indwelling life in our hearts bring to us the strength and grace that keep us day by day and carry us victoriously through all our pressures and trials. Faith in a crucified Savior alone may give earnestness and depth to our Christian life, but it is only the revelation of a living Christ that can elevate us to the heights of grace and inspire us with the strength we need for victorious living. We are saved by His faith in a very real and precious sense, but in a yet more glorious manner we are saved by His life. Joy in God Then the climax of all these blessings is reached in the 11th verse when he says, “But we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation [atonement].” This is a different joy from that meant in the third verse. There the joy is based upon a thing, here it is drawn from a person. There it is the joy that springs from the hope of our coming glory, here it is joy in God Himself, through our reconciliation to Him and our fellowship with Him. This word atonement means literally “at-one-ment.” It denotes not only our reconciliation to God but, we believe, denotes also our being brought into perfect harmony with God in all His will and introduced to such perfect fellowship that we have His very own joy in our heart and life. This is the joy that is not subject to vicissitudes, nor influenced by circumstances. It springs from the very heart of God Himself, and is as eternal as His own blessedness. Now these are the blessings of the justified, and with such a catalog of glorious things the apostle finally sums up the chapter by a magnificent contrast between Adam and Christ, and the fall of man through the former, and his redemption through the second Adam, the Lord Jesus. He gives us the points in which they agree. In both cases the consequences came through a single individual. Our ruin comes from Adam, our redemption comes through Christ. Again, in both cases, the consequences spring from a single act. By one act of disobedience Adam ruined his posterity, by one act of atonement Christ redeemed His. Again, in both cases, the acts of the individual descend to his posterity. Adam wrecked his whole race by disobedience, Christ saved His spiritual seed by His atonement, and so the verse is true, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). There are two generations in the world, the Adam race and the Christ race, and we all belong either to one or the other. We have received our natural life from Adam; but if we are born from above, we are the seed of Christ, and are partakers of His obedience and His life. Then he contrasts these two heads of humanity: a. One has brought a heritage of sin, the other has brought a divine righteousness. “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). b. One has brought us condemnation, the other has brought us justification. “Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men” (Romans 5:18). c. One has brought us death, the other, life. So we read that, “For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17). d. The consequences of Christ’s redemption are greater than the consequences of Adam’s sin and fall, for “where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:20-21). This is true in the fact that the redemption of Christ elevated humanity to a much higher place than Adam could ever have inherited for most of his posterity. Christ has not come to restore the saved to Adamic purity or an Eden paradise. The holiness that Jesus gives is far higher than the holiness that Adam knew. It is that we should be partakers of the divine nature, and the glory to which He raises us is transcendently greater than paradise restored. A single redeemed man in the glory of the ages to come will be higher than the whole human race could have been in the Adamic life, and the number of the redeemed will be vaster, no doubt, than all that ever have been or ever shall be lost. The day is doubtless coming when the myriads of planets that sweep across the immensities of space shall be colonized—yes, ruled by ransomed man—and all the universe shall be a monument to the grandeur of Christ’s redemption. In a more individual sense it is also true that grace superabounds over sin in every life that fully yields itself to Christ. God loves to take the most lost of men and make them the most magnificent memorials of His redeeming love and power. He loves to take the victims of Satan’s hate, and the lives that have been the most fearful examples of his power to destroy, and use them to illustrate and illuminate the possibilities of divine mercy and the new creations of the Holy Spirit. He loves to take the things in our own lives that have been the worst, the hardest and the most hostile to God, and transform them so that we shall be the opposites of our former selves. The sweetest spirits are made out of the most stormy and self-willed; the mightiest faith is created out of a wilderness of doubts and fears; and the most divine love is transformed out of some heart of hate and selfishness. Boanerges becomes John, Jacob becomes Israel, Simon the son of Jonas becomes the lowly and glorious apostle, crucified with downward head. The grace of God is equal to the most uncongenial temperaments, to the most unfavorable circumstances; and its glory is to transform a curse into a blessing and show to men and angels of ages yet to come that “where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20).