Tags

, , , , , ,

See the source image

What is it that challenges bring to me? What does all the trouble mean?

  • I get to shout praise.
  • Trouble leads to praise because we know who is in control, and it isn’t us.
  • It is God. God is God and God is Great.
  • God is generous to us.
  • God’s ways are not our ways and God’s timing isn’t our timing.

I get to be passionate about being patient. Not just patient but passionately patient. I go after the patience in new and deep ways. There are not enough containers to hold the patience that is mine through the HOLY Spirit.

  • This patience leads to virtue. Patience is at the core of all character. Perseverance, through patience, will win the day.
  • We are a people of hope. We know God is in a good mood.
  • We know God will not abandon us. We know Jesus defeated death, ransomed us from a life divorced from achieving God’s goal for us and now sits at the right hand of God.
  • We know we have same Holy Spirit in us that raised Jesus from the dead.

We shout with praise!

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Master [Lord] Jesus the Messiah [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. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

English Standard Version. (2016). (Romans 5:1–5). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

WITH THE WORDS “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith,” Paul signals an important transition in his argument. He has established the truth of justification by faith in chapters 1–4. Now he will elaborate the results of the new status God has given us in the Messiah.

One of those results is “peace with God.” “Peace” is a rich biblical word. Our English word “peace,” in keeping with the secular Greek use of eirene, often has a negative sense: the absence of hostility. But the Old Testament and Jewish conception of peace, shalom, was much more positive, connoting a general sense of harmonious well-being.

Another wonderful result of our justification is “access by faith into this grace in which we now stand”. The Greek word behind “access” (prosagoge) suggests the same idea as the English word, as when, for instance, we say a person has “access” to the President.

  • But Paul surprises us by claiming not, as we would expect, that we now have constant access to God, but that we have access “into this grace.”
  • He therefore implies again how fundamental the notion of grace is to him.
  • But grace here does not, as in these earlier verses, refer to the freedom with which God acts toward his creatures.
  • Rather, it is a state in which the believer lives. God’s free giving to us does not stop when we become disciples of Jesus.
  • It continues to be poured out on us so much that we can be said to live in a constant state of grace.

The third result of our new justified state is that “we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” The verb for “rejoice” (kauchaomai) suggests both the idea of taking confidence in and of rejoicing in; some versions translate “boast”. Paul introduces what becomes the theme of this paragraph: the hope we have as disciples to share in God’s glory.