Romans 5:1-11

Justification-Individual

13 As further developed in Galatians, the law was not given till hundreds of years after Abraham was counted righteous. The promises he received in connection with it were unconditional, dependent only on God's faithfulness. They were given without any reference to the law and do not depend on any legal observance for fulfillment. When the law did come it did not confirm these promises. It was brought in to show how impotent their own efforts were when they sought to attain to Abraham's divinely given righteousness by the keeping of the law. The law hindered rather than helped. Instead of making them just, it drew down God's indignation for their failure to live up to it.

16 Faith has not the least merit. We do not deem it meritorious to believe an honest man. It is no effort. It is not work. It is the simplest, easiest, freest channel God could choose to convey His righteousness to us. Let us exult in His explanation that it is of faith that it may accord with grace. In Ephesians we have the further truth that such a salvation-through faith-calls for further favor in the future (Eph_2:8).

17 Abraham believed God when all the evidence was against Him. He was, for all practical purposes, as good as dead himself, and Sarah, his wife, was worse, if that could be. He faced the facts. He considered his own condition as well as that of his wife, yet never doubted that God could and would do as He had said. He believed in a God Who was superior to death, and thus made it possible for God to vindicate him. Apart from death we can see how God could pardon his sins, or cover them by means of atonement, but it is only as having died to sin, and being alive in resurrection, that we can realize that Abraham is justified.

23 Thus, we, too, are justified, by the simple process of believing God. We do not believe concerning our seed, as Abraham did, but concerning his Seed, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who actually died for our sins and was roused because the sin He bore was all gone, and we were vindicated.

CONCILIATION

INDIVIDUAL

1 Justification is the ground of peace. Sin no longer bars us from the presence of God. Yet peace is a favor infinitely beyond justification. God's affections are not satisfied with clearing us from all guilt. He craves our love and our adoration. Righteousness alone does not give us a passport into His presence, but this further grace of reconciliation urges us into full and affectionate fellowship with Him. And we are aware that He will not rest in having us clothed in forensic righteousness only, but will make us all that He desires, to satisfy His own love.

5 His way of winning our response is to pour His own love into us first, as exemplified in the death of Christ for us while we were most undeserving of His favor. The grace of it lies in the entire lack of anything in us to draw out His affections toward us.

9 The blood of Christ is a memorial of the abiding efficacy of His death. It fends us from all future indignation. If Christ died for us as sinners, surely we have no need to fear aught now that we are justified!

10 We now take up the new subject of conciliation. We leave the atmosphere of the court for the closer ties of the family circle. Now it is not Christ dying for sinners, but God's Son dying for His enemies. The effect is not justification, but conciliation, peace. Furthermore, we are not only unafraid of future wrath, because of the abiding value of His death, as figured by the blood, but we have the living Son of God Himself as the surety of our salvation. We shall be saved by His life.

11 Christ did not obtain "atonement". That was a mere temporary covering for sin made by the blood of bulls and goats, and utterly failed to take away sin. Let us not degrade Christ's work by calling it an "atonement". But let us glory in conciliation, the ripened fruit of God's great effort to win the fealty and affection of His creatures. Few things indicate more clearly the necessity for using sound words than the constant reference to the work of Christ as "the atonement."