I really lucked out, because I get the opportunity here to speak on my favorite Scripture text! Now, I do have to admit, as I’m sure the youth are telling their parents and everyone around them right now, that pretty much every time that I preach I say that something or other is my favorite thing… be it Scripture, story, song, whatever… But this truly is my favorite Scripture passage, and later you’ll find out why.
Enough senseless talking, though. Let’s jump into the text.
I’m going to focus on Romans 5:1-8 today. We’ll start by breaking up the text into two different parts. The first section is Romans 5:1-5. Let’s re-read it.
Therefore, 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 in into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering leads to perseverance, perseverance leads to character, and character leads to hope. 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.
I heard a story on KLOVE the other day that I want to share with ya’ll. The story is about a young Muslim man named Hajib who, after speaking with a Christian missionary, converted to Christianity and gave his life to Christ. Excited about his new-found faith, Hajib ran from the clandestine home of the missionary to his town about 5 miles away. Upon arriving at the town square, he began to tell any and everyone he could about Jesus and about how his life was changed because of this talk with the missionary. The people were enraged at his audacity in speaking out against Mohammed and their religion. They were so upset that a group of women attacked him and beat him within an inch of his life, leaving him for dead. His family came to him, picked him up, and took him home to heal. When he was able to get up and move around again, he left his house and went back to the center of his town and began again to share the Gospel to any and everyone who passed by him. Again, a group of angry women attacked him and again left him for dead. And again, his family came to pick him up and take him home to recover. When he was well enough, he went out for a third time to proclaim the name of Jesus. This time, the group of women came to him weeping and asked him why he kept coming back to them over and over, knowing that they were just going to attack him. His answer was simple. He said, “I have learned an amazing truth about Jesus the Christ, and I know that everyone will want to hear about it. I obviously wasn’t sharing him the right way, so I decided to try again and again until you came to know and love Him like I do.”
Even through suffering, Hajib persevered, and because of that, his village came to know Christ. This is the story I think of when I read the first few verse of Romans 5. Because of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we are able to persevere through many different hardships and are better off because of it!
I just got through doing a translation and in-depth exegetical analysis of the book of Romans, and upon compiling my first draft, I sent it to my mom to proof read for me. She’s a high school English teacher and she has edited my papers for grammar and spelling mistakes since I started writing, so I didn’t hesitate in sending this 150+ page translation and exegesis to her to read through and proof read. She started by reading my translation of the Epistle to get in the right mindset for what she was doing. When she reached this section of Romans 5, she called me crying, saying that everything it says is true, and that she was so greatly encouraged by it that she finally felt hopeful about things.
You see, my mom has been in and out of the hospital multiple times this past year and a half. She has been battling some health problems that don’t seem to want to leave her alone. So far, she has had three different surgical procedures, had her appendix and left ovary removed, and is about to undergo a hysterectomy. This in and of itself would probably still be bearable for my mom. She’s a pretty strong person. But at the same time that all of this has happened, my dad, who is a tech-sergeant in the Air Force, has been away more than he’s been home. Most of his assignments are to places like South Carolina and Florida where he took part in a couple training exercises, but he has also served a 6 month tour in Iraq and is heading overseas to Afghanistan in the fall. The stress level at home has been through the roof.
When my mom read the first 5 verses of Romans 5, though, she saw exactly what it was that Paul was talking about and was able to look back and see Christ’s work and presence in her life even in the midst of sorrow and pain. She now has these five verses written all over her house and classroom so that she can always be reminded of how God is still present in a very real and very loving way.
I think this message is one that is very much so applicable in all of our lives. We’ve all gone through hard times. We have all dealt with suffering, and we’ve all seen difficult situations that we’ve had to pull through. And just as the saying goes, “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” That might be a harsh truth, but it is a strong truth. If life were a walk in the park, we wouldn’t be the people that we are today. I wish that for all of us life could be one fun party after another, and I know that there are many people in the world who spend their entire lives and everything that they have on reaching that next high in life. The truth of it is, though, that no matter how much we love those mountain-top experiences, it is in the valleys of life, in the dirt of suffering, that we grow the most.
Now let’s jump into the second half of the Scripture:
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrated and demonstrates still His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
This is the part of the Scripture that is my favorite. In fact, this Scripture is so important to me that I had it tattooed onto my arm. How amazing is this? While we were still sinners, Christ died for us!
I must admit, though, that as much as I love these three verses and as often as I have read them, it was not until this past semester that I began to truly understand what it was saying, especially the seventh verse. When I began working on my studies in Romans in January, I knew that this was going to be one of those verses that I would struggle with a little more than others. You see, I did not know what it was saying! Verse seven says, Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. Why would someone dare to die for a good man, yet only rarely die for a righteous man? What is the difference? Knowing my problem with this verse, I looked forward to see what I would find when I translated it from the original Greek. What I found confused me even more, partly because I was looking at Greek words. I found that because of the way that the Greek sentence was worded, the verse could also be translated as, Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for the sake of good someone might dare to die. Now, this I understood. For one man, even a good man, it was not a common thing for people to lay down their lives. But for the good of everyone, some might just give up their life. This makes the next verse make sense too! God showed His love by doing just this! Jesus died for the sake of the good of the people.
I felt a little bit better about things then. I understood what it was saying now. The story doesn’t end there, though. You see, as part of the work that I did in Romans, I had the opportunity to interview some amazing and Godly people who knew their Bible better than I ever will. One of these interviews was with one of my professors Texas Lutheran. He is a Romans scholar, and I was greatly looking forward to some clarification on a few things, including this verse to which I had unearthed a new way of translating. When I presented my version to Dr. Russell for his thoughts, he urged me to re-think it and look at it again in the original context. So together we poured over this verse and the following verse, trying to make sense of it. Through this study, I realized that I was wrong in changing the translation. What Paul is saying in this section is not that for the good of humanity someone might give his/her life. What he is saying that it is a very rare occasion for someone to lay down their life for a righteous person. People value their lives to the point that even for a deserving person, it is a rare occurrence that someone would sacrifice their life for another. That being said, it does happen. For a good person, someone might just dare to die. Maybe. But God showed His love by sending Jesus to die for us when we were completely undeserving, something that no human would do for another who didn’t deserve it.
I have a wonderful friend named Bethany. Bethany is a wonderful girl who loves God more than anything or anyone else and is following His call that He placed on her heart to do missions ministry. Bethany has a legacy of mission work in her past. Her parents were missionaries in China. They worked there for almost ten years undercover, knowing that if the wrong people found out where they were, they would be dead. When Bethany was a few months old, a good friend of her parents who was there in China with them was found and arrested, his execution harsh and public. When this happened, Bethany’s parents fled China and came back to Texas, settling down and finding work in my hometown, Burnet. Bethany grew up in Burnet because her parents did not want her to grow up around the terrors that they faced in China. As she was growing up, though, Bethany felt a strong call to ministry, specifically missions work. Her parents greatly discouraged this, though, because they were terrified at what would happen if something were to go wrong over there. They knew that life, had lived that life, and didn’t want her to live that life.
Bethany stuck with it, though and is now overseas at a place that cannot be named doing work that she could literally be arrested and killed for doing. When her parents saw her determination, they- albeit grudgingly –began to support her whole-heartedly.
She’s doing God’s work. So why is it that her parents were so upset? The answer is simple. They felt that they were losing their daughter to undeserving people who would most likely kill her.
I tell this story to you because I think that it, in a microcosm of a way, parallels what Paul is talking about in these three verses. You see, just as in this story, there are two sacrifices that are evident in this Romans text. The first is the amazing sacrifice made by Bethany. The second is the even more amazing sacrifice made by Bethany’s parents. In the same way, Paul speaks here of two sacrifices that were made: The amazing sacrifice of Christ, God the Son, and the even more amazing sacrifice of God the Father.
How many of you here are parents?
Ok. How many of you parents would have no problem sacrificing everything you have, even your own life, for your children?
I know that my parents would, without thinking twice, give their lives for my siblings or me. I’m sure that there isn’t a soul in this congregation that would have any hesitations about giving his/her life for another.
Now I’m going to ask a question much harder to answer. I don’t want to you answer this out loud or anything. Just think about it and answer it for yourself. Would you be able to offer your child’s life for another’s? You know what, let’s make it a little bit harder. Would you be able to sacrifice your child for someone whom you love but who had rejected and turned away from your love?
Now, I don’t have a child and don’t really want one anytime soon, but if I was asked to give the life of a loved one as ransom for someone else, I wouldn’t do it. I don’t care if this person was the next president or whether they were just some bum on the street. I would not do it. My own life, maybe, but not a loved one’s.
This is exactly what God did for us, though! He gave all that He had, His most prized possession, His very own Son for us!
Very rarely will someone die for a righteous person, but for a good person, someone might jut dare to die. But God demonstrated and demonstrates still His love to us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
We weren’t worth it. We were completely undeserving. Christ still died for us because He loved us that much! Even more so, though, God sacrificed His one and only Son because He loved us that much! There’s a reason that John 3:16 is so popular. It, like this section of Romans, is a banner that we as broken and sinful sinners can rally behind.
So what do we do with this love? We can’t simply hold it to ourselves. Christ died for us all, and we have to let everyone know it! Paul speaks of this very thing in Romans 10:14-15: How, then, can they call on the One they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the One of Whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the Good News!”
Christ is calling us to share the knowledge of God’s undeserving and unfathomable love with all. How else will they come to truly know Christ? So go and share God’s love, a love that didn’t come when it was convenient, but came when it was needed the most.
Let us pray!
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