Friday DIVE – September 5, 2025 – Romans 5:1-11

¹ Therefore, having been justified by faith, we ^{[let us]} have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  

Here is one of Paul’s great lyrical passages in which he almost sings the intimate joy of his confidence in God.  Trusting faith has done what the labour  to produce the works of the law  could never do; it has given a man peace with God.  Before Jesus came, no man could ever be really close to God.

• Some, indeed, have seen him, not as the supreme good, but as the supreme evil.
• Some have seen him as the complete stranger, the utterly untouchable.
• It is only when we realize that God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that there comes into life that intimacy with him, that new relationship, which Paul calls justification.

Through Jesus, says Paul, we have an introduction to this grace in which we stand.  The word he uses for introduction is prosagoge, (G4318).  It is a word with two great pictures in it.

(i) It is the regular word for introducing or ushering someone into the presence of royalty; and it is the regular word for the approach of the worshipper to God.  It is as if Paul was saying, “Jesus ushers us into the very presence of God.  He opens the door for us to the presence of the King of Kings; and when that door is opened what we find is grace; not condemnation, not judgment, not vengeance, but the sheer, undeserved, incredible kindness of God.”

(ii) But prosagoge ( G4318) has another picture in it.  In late Greek, it is the word for the place where ships come in, a harbour or a haven.  If we take it that way, it means that so long as we tried to depend on our own efforts we were tempest-tossed, like mariners striving with a sea which threatened to overwhelm them completely, but now that we have heard the word of Christ, we have reached at last the haven of God’s grace, and we know the calm of depending, not on what we can do for ourselves, but on what God has done for us.

Because of Jesus we have entry to the presence of the King of Kings and entry to the haven of God’s grace.

No sooner has Paul said this than the other side of the matter strikes him.  All this is true, and it is glory; but the fact remains that in this life the Christians are up against it.  It is hard to be a Christian in Rome.  Remembering that, Paul produces a great climax.

Romans 5:3-4

³ And not only  that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance ^[endurance]; ⁴ and perseverance, character; and character, hope. 

“Trouble,” he said, “produces fortitude.”

The word he uses for trouble is thlipis (G2347), which literally means pressure.  All kinds of things may press in upon the Christian — want and straitened circumstances, sorrow, persecution, unpopularity and loneliness.  All that pressure, says Paul, produces fortitude.

The word he uses for fortitude is hupomone ( G5281), which means more than endurance.  It means the spirit which can overcome the world; it means the spirit which does not passively endure but which actively overcomes the trials and tribulations of life.

• When Beethoven was threatened with deafness, that most terrible of troubles for a musician, he said: “I will take life by the throat.” That is hupomone ( G5281) . When Scott was involved in ruin because of the bankruptcy of his publishers, he said: “No man will say ‘Poor fellow!’ to me; my own right hand will pay the debt.” That is hupomone ( G5281) . Someone once said to a gallant soul who was undergoing a great sorrow: “Sorrow fairly colours life, doesn’t it?” Back came the reply: “Yes! And I propose to choose the colour!” That is hupomone ( G5281) . When Henley was lying in Edinburgh Infirmary with one leg amputated, and the prospect that the other must follow, he wrote Invictus.
  • “Out of the night that covers me,  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,  I thank whatever gods may be  For my unconquerable soul.”  
• That is hupomone (G5281).  Hupomone is not the spirit which lies down and lets the floods go over it; it is the spirit which meets things breastforward and overcomes them.

“Fortitude,” Paul goes on, “produces character.”

The word he uses for character is dokime (G1382).  Dokime (G1382) is used of metal which has been passed through the fire so that everything base has been purged out of it.  It is used of coinage as we use the word sterling.  When affliction is met with fortitude, out of the battle a man emerges stronger, and purer, and better, and nearer God.

“Character,” Paul goes on, “produces hope.”  Two men can meet the same situation.  It can drive one of them to despair, and it can spur the other to triumphant action.  To the one it can be the end of hope, to the other it can be a challenge to greatness.  “I do not like crises,” said Lord Reith, “but I do like the opportunities they provide.”  The difference corresponds to the difference between the men.  If a man has let himself become weak and flabby, if he has allowed circumstances to beat him, if he has allowed himself to whine and grovel under affliction, he has made himself such that when the challenge of the crisis comes he cannot do other than despair.  If, on the other hand, a man has insisted on meeting life with head up, if he has always faced and, by facing, conquered things, then when the challenge comes, he meets it with eyes aflame with hope.  The character which has endured the test always emerges in hope.

Romans 5:5

⁵ Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.  

Then Paul makes one last great statement: “The Christian hope never proves an illusion for it is founded on the love of God.”

When a man’s hope is in God,  it cannot be disappointed.  When a man’s hope is in the love of God, it can never be an illusion, for God loves us with an everlasting love  backed by an everlasting power.  

Romans 5:6

⁶ For when we were still without strength, in due ^{[at the right]} time Christ died for the ungodly.   

• Who are the ungodly?  Note Romans 3:23
• What do you understand “without strength” to mean?  Note Romans 8:7

Romans 5:7-8

⁷ For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.  ⁸ But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.   

The fact that Jesus Christ died for us is the final proof of God’s love.  It would be difficult enough to get a man to die for a just man; it might be possible for a man to be persuaded to die for some great and good principle; a man might have the greater love that would make him lay down his life for his friend.  But the wonder of Jesus Christ is that he died for us when we are sinners and in a state of hostility to God.  Love can go no further than that.  

• Rita Snowdon relates an incident from the life of T. E. Lawrence.  In 1915 he was journeying across the desert with some Arabs.  Things were desperate. Food was almost done, and water was at its last drop.  Their hoods were over their heads to shelter them from the wind which was like a flame and full of the stinging sand of the sandstorm.  Suddenly someone said, “Where is Jasmin?”  Another said, “Who is Jasmin?”  A third answered, “That yellow-faced man from Mean.  He killed a Turkish tax-collector and fled to the desert.”  The first said, “Look, Jasmin’s camel has no rider.  His rifle is strapped to the saddle, but Jasmin is not there.”  A second said, “Someone has shot him on the march.”  A third said, “He is not strong in the head, perhaps he is lost in a mirage; he is not strong in the body, perhaps he has fainted and fallen off his camel.”  Then the first said, “What does it matter? Jasmin was not worth ten pence.”  And the Arabs hunched themselves up on their camels and rode on.  But Lawrence turned and rode back the way he had come.  Alone, in the blazing heat, at the risk of his life, he went back.  After an hour and a half’s ride he saw something against the sand.  It was Jasmin, blind and mad with heat and thirst, being murdered by the desert.  Lawrence lifted him up on his camel, gave him some of the last drops of precious water, slowly plodded back to his company.  When he came up to them, the Arabs looked in amazement.  “Here is Jasmin,” they said, “Jasmin, not worth ten pence, saved at his own risk by Lawrence, our lord.” 
• That is a parable.  It was not good men Christ died to save but sinners; not God’s friends but men at enmity with him.

Then Paul goes on a step. 

Romans 5:9

⁹ Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.  

Through Jesus our status with God was changed.  Sinners though we were, we were put into a right relationship with God.  But that is not enough.  Not only our status must be changed but our state.  The saved sinner cannot go on being a sinner; he must become good.  Christ’s death changed our status; his risen life changes our state.  He is not dead but alive; he is with us always to help us and guide us, to fill us with his strength so as to overcome temptation, to clothe our lives with something of his radiance.  Jesus begins by putting sinners into a right relationship with God even when they are still sinners; he goes on, by his grace, to enable them to quit their sin and become good men.  There are technical names for these things.

• The change of our status is justification; that is where the whole saving process  begins. 
• The change of our state is sanctification; that is where the saving process  goes on, and never ends, until we see him face to face and are like him.

Romans 5:10-11

¹⁰ For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved  by His life.  

¹¹ And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.  

There is one thing to note here of quite extraordinary importance.  Paul is quite clear that the whole saving process, the coming of Christ and the death of Christ, is the proof of Gods love.  Sometimes the thing is stated as if on the one side there was a gentle and loving Christ, and on the other an angry and vengeful God; and as if Christ had done something which changed God’s attitude to men.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The whole matter springs from the love of God.  Jesus did not come to change God’s attitude to men; he came to show what it is and always was.  He came to prove unanswerably that God is love.