We live with uncertainties. None of us know how long we will enjoy good health or how long we will live or how long the members of our family will live. We do not know if the next meal or the next trip will be our last. Uncertainties accompany us.
We do not know what tomorrow holds, whether the stock market will rise or fall; whether our livelihood will sustain us through the next decade. We do not know how the upcoming presidential election and the new Congress of 2009 will affect our lives. Uncertainties dog us.
My concern this morning is not to see how morbid I can be! Yet I do want to consider some present uncertainties so that we might understand how important it is to lay hold of the one great certainty that belongs to all that trust in Christ. Namely, we can live with confident assurance of eternal salvation.
I have had many discussions about this subject over the years. I can recall a number of them where people objected to this idea of certainty regarding salvation. They thought it brash or even unbiblical. Others have claimed an unfounded assurance, declaring their eternal salvation even though nothing seemed to indicate evidence of regenerate life. It was assurance based on a profession of faith or walking a church aisle or baptism or church membership but not an assurance anchored in the finality of Christ's work.
So where does that bring us this morning in light of the biblical text we are considering? Let me pose a few questions to aid our thought. Do you have the assurance that you will stand forever in Christ's presence? Do you have the assurance that you will not face God's wrath even though you know that you deserve it? You may have a beginning in Christ but will you be saved finally when your life ends? These are not peripheral questions for us as we gather to worship the living God. They carry enormous weight in our minds and souls this day. The Word of God is not silent on these things!
Paul has been explaining the benefits of justification: peace with God, ongoing standing in grace, radiant hope, purpose in tribulations, the abundant diffusion of God's love by the indwelling Spirit. But Paul lingers at just this point of God's love. He is staggered by it! Especially vital is the ultimate demonstration of God's love: "Christ died for us." Now, the question is what does that have to do with assurance? We considered in our previous study that Paul's concern in dealing with this demonstration of God's love is for the believer's assurance. But he is not finished. In verses 9-11, he gives an exposition of how we have assurance in our salvation due to the effectiveness of God's love to us in Christ's death. God's love for us in Christ secures our salvation forever. Yet some wonder if the sin and failures of their lives after justification might tip things the wrong way so that they end up facing God's wrath. Others, well-meaning I imagine, think that their beginning is in Christ but it is up to them to make a good finish in order to eventually avoid God's wrath. Quite naturally, they let self-dependence supplant reliance upon the grace of God alone. So how do we uproot this kind of anxiety-producing, sleep-robbing, guilt-inflaming way of thinking? How do we lay hold of the assurance found in God's love for us in Christ? That's what I want us to consider in our text.
Something can be absolutely true and yet we struggle to believe it. I remember that my grandfather would not believe that American astronauts had landed on the moon. In spite of the pictures from the lunar landing, he just could not believe it. It stretched far beyond his frame of mental reference. He had never driven a car and certainly had never flown, so the idea of a couple of men flying to the moon was just too much for him.
Assurance of salvation may stretch beyond your mental frame of reference too. You may be one who is wired emotionally and mentally in such a way that it is very difficult for you to be assured of anything, especially something so eternally vital as assurance of salvation. You want to get there but you struggle constantly with nagging doubts. Or you may be one that has a faulty assurance because you are wired to just naturally assume that everything will turn out roses for you. It's not that you have solid reasons for assurance, you just don't think seriously about it; you just assume it to be true even though it may not be.
So to address both of these views, as well as all in between, Paul utilizes an argument that basically states: if something bigger and greater is true then something easier and lesser is certainly true; if God has gone to the greatest levels of love to do one thing for you He will certainly do that which costs much less. Now, what does this mean in terms of assurance? Let me illustrate it and then explain it.
Suppose that you had just recently moved next door to a nice gentleman that had served in the Viet Nam War. Often he would have trouble sleeping because of thinking about the war. On just such a night he smelled smoke and saw that your house was on fire. He reacted quickly, knocking down the door to get to you and bring you to safety. In the process, he experienced 2nd and 3rd degree burns but at the risk of his life, he brought you to safety. You felt a debt of gratitude toward him so you visited him regularly in the hospital and then often visited with him once he returned home. You became very close friends. Sometime later, you asked him to come to your home to show you his new dog.
Would you wonder if he would come to your home to show you his new dog when he had done something far more important for you by risking his life to get you out of a burning house? If he would do something much riskier and harder—rushing into a burning house—then would he not do something for you that was much easier and pleasant—showing you his new dog? You would have the certainty that he would do the latter because he had already done the greater.
That's the kind of argument that Paul is giving. Notice how he does it.
The concern is avoiding the wrath of God at the Day of Judgment. We will all stand before the judgment seat of God (Rom. 14:11; 2 Cor. 5:10). But the power and effect of the gospel is that as Christians we no longer fear that Day as a day of wrath but look forward to it as a day of welcome in God's presence, as well as a time of accounting and of reward (1 Cor. 3:10-15; Rom. 14:12). So what is the struggle?
Knowing our hearts and the sin that we indulge in, the neglect of obedience, and the failure to live out the Christian life at every point, we may struggle with fear of God's wrath. We readily confess that we deserve wrath. There is nothing in us that deserves God's favor and kindness and reward. Assurance that we will make it through Judgment without being cast into outer darkness fizzles with every failure on our part.
How do you find assurance that you will not eventually end up facing God's wrath because of your sin? Paul begins with something greater and more difficult: justification. "Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him." What was involved in justification? It was the point in which divine justice and divine mercy met. From the standpoint of God's just governance of the universe, every violation of His holy law must be punished with appropriate severity. Breaking the law of the Infinite holds infinite consequences: "for the wages of sin is death." The sentence of death is against "all [that] have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 6:23; 3:23). God's wrath is "revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness" (1:18). No one has an excuse before God—all are under sin (2:1). The Law of God holds everyone accountable before God (3:19).
For God to forgive and accept as righteous those that have broken His law required that eternal justice be satisfied. He could not ignore our sin or let it slide or even accept partial satisfaction of justice. The full measure of eternal satisfaction must be met or none could ever be accepted by God. The righteousness of God stood in the balance. So God took the most severe measure possible. His sinless Son accepted our sins as though they were His own; and with that acceptance He bore God's wrath in full measure against us at the cross. No greater display of love could ever be shown! No greater price could ever be paid! Here was the greatest act of the omnipotent God: "having now been justified by His blood."
Now, what is the lesser act? It is that "we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him." Here's the way that he argues it. If God has gone to such great measure to deliver you from the guilt and penalty of sin through the bloody death of Christ, if He put His Son in your place so that Christ might bear eternal judgment against you, and if Christ has fulfilled the Law on your behalf so that you "might become the righteousness of God in Him," much more then you will be saved from God's wrath through Christ. The greatest act was declaring you, as a sinner, to be righteous—and the costliness of that legal declaration. The lesser act (though to us a great thing!) is delivering us, consequently, from God's wrath. If God did the greater then you can be assured that He will do the lesser in the future.
He adds yet another layer to this in verse 10. Both of these verses have similarities; they are parallels in that they both deal with the greatest works of God through Christ as the point of assurance of the lesser work of God through Christ. Please understand, by using "lesser," I am not trying to minimize or shortchange any of this; but it is the style of argument that Paul uses.
This time he brings up reconciliation as the greater work and future glorification as the lesser. "For if while 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." What does He mean by reconciliation? He virtually explains it by first identifying us as "enemies." The plural noun is actually joined by a present participle of "to be" in order to give us a clearer idea of what it means to be an enemy of God. It is more literally, "For if while being enemies we were reconciled to God," in order to show that we did not change our status so that God might reconcile us. We were enemies when He reconciled us.
Reconciliation implies that two parties are estranged, and in this case, at enmity with each other. It is an adversarial condition. We were God's adversaries; God was our adversary. Even if we did not outwardly display this enmity, it still reigned in our hearts.
We use the terminology of enemy and adversary rather loosely. During this political season, we sometime hear one candidate refer to another as his "adversary" and at the very least, his "opponent." While battling it out on the political front these candidates would take that adversarial relationship only so far. They would unite against a common foe. But the relationship between God and unregenerate man is not friendly opposition but that of mortal enemies. Man battles against God and against the knowledge of God. He does everything he can to keep God from ruling over him. God, on His part, places His enemy under condemnation. He opposes him at every turn and will one day demonstrate His wrath against him.
But in the kindness and mercy of God, even "while we were enemies," God initiated and carried through the work necessary to reconcile us to Himself. We did not decide to reconcile ourselves to God. Instead, reconciliation is something accomplished by Christ "through whom we have received the reconciliation." You only receive what has already been provided by Another.
What does it mean, then, to be reconciled? It implies that every barrier to the relationship, everything that hinders it has been removed. And even more, it is not mutual tolerance, sort of like what we have with some of our so-called allies; it is a joining together in a family relationship. The word means "to exchange enmity for friendship" [ELKGNT, 323]. Even though we were under the curse of the Law, Christ redeemed us so "that we might receive the adoption as sons" (Gal. 4:5).
So here is the point that Paul makes. If God has moved you from enemy status to sonship through the death of His Son, if He has gone to that length to reconcile you to Himself, then you can be assured that you will be saved in the future by the life of Christ. In other words, He has already reconciled you and made you part of His family (cf. 8:15-17) so why would you dare think that He would drop you at the end? If God has done that kind of work to reconcile you, giving His Son over to death on your behalf, then be assured that such love will not let you go!
'Okay, fine. I see the argument of moving from the greater to the lesser but what are the means that I can cling to for assurance that this is true? I must have something to look to and hang on to if I am to be assured.'
That's precisely what Paul explains for us. You see, we do not find assurance of our eternal salvation by morbid introspection in which we constantly search out the darkest crevices of our lives or by constant navel gazing in which we continually try to find assurance by looking to our level of performance. Assurance focuses on the display of God's love in Christ. Yes, we do have the internal witness of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:16), yet that is not self-produced or self-manipulated. The Spirit's internal witness is a divine gift appropriately measured to us at just the right times to encourage us in the faith. Externally, we are to continue to see Jesus Christ in His justifying, sanctifying, and glorifying power toward us as the ongoing certainty of our eternity with Him. How does that show up in our text and work out in daily life?
Do you see the emphasis in these verses on the death of Christ? First, we have "been justified by His blood," which indicates His bloody death at the cross. It is not a justification by Christ's blood apart from His death. Otherwise, Jesus could have donated an appropriate amount of blood and skipped the cross. Some have delved into mystical arenas as though Christ's blood apart from His death satisfied the divine requirement for justification. The writer of Hebrews scuttles such folly by showing that the language of "blood" is in reference to the bloody, sacrificial death of Christ that was foreshadowed by animal sacrifices. "By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all…He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God…For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified" (Heb. 10:10, 12, 14). Jesus partook of flesh and blood "that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives" (2:14-15). It was through that death that Jesus as "a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God"…made "propitiation for the sins of the people" (2:17).
Second, even though enemies of God we have been "reconciled to God through the death of His Son." Does Paul mean that the blood had no part in this? Of course not, but rather he parallels "His blood" in verse 9 with "through the death of His Son" in verse 10 to point to the same sacrifice of Christ at God's bidding. It took the bloody death of Christ to break the enmity between us and God, to deliver us from the devil's snare and sin's penalty, so that we might be reconciled to God.
'But I know all of that,' someone might say. 'I know that Christ died for me to justify me and reconcile me to God.'
Good—then focus on that work of Christ at the cross! Live in it. Ponder it. Meditate on it. See it as His death for you and not just a death for man in general. See your sins on Him as He absorbed the full measure of God's wrath against you. See that He paid it all—without exception. No sin remains to curse you and haunt you until the judgment. Christ bore the massive weight of judgment against you so that God has declared you righteous before Him and so that He now calls you His own child.
But what does that have to do with assurance? Everything! Why do you doubt that God will accept you at the judgment? Why do you question whether or not you will be glorified in God's presence? How can you doubt this when, "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us"? If God went to such depths and heights, breadth and length to justify you and reconcile you, if He did that which cost Him so greatly, can you not rely on His love and faithfulness to do what is much less difficult to Him in saving you from wrath and glorifying you in His presence?
But Jesus did not stay on the cross. He rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, was exalted to the right hand of the Father, and continues His reign as our great high priest. He has invested His righteousness and death in you. Will He not also invest His life in you? "Much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life."
Here Paul calls for us to think about the risen, exalted, and reigning Christ. Since He reconciled us to God through His death, then we can count on Him saving us by His life. "Saved" has past, present, and future dimensions: we have been justified or declared righteous; we are being sanctified or made righteous in our practice; and we shall be glorified or delivered from every trace of sin and caught up in the resplendent glory of the exalted Christ. If the hard work of reconciliation has been done then the lesser work (though again, a great work indeed) of our glorification will take place. How can we be sure? Because the grave could not hold Jesus Christ; where He is there we will also eventually be (John 14:1-4; Col. 3:1-4). It would be appropriate, and maybe even better, to translate that last phrase, "we shall be saved in His life," pointing to the believer's union with Jesus Christ. This union is so certain that Paul often spoke as though the believer is already in heaven, and indeed he is since he is in Christ (Col. 3:1-4; Phil. 3:20-21; Eph. 1:3; 2:5-6).
There's a wonderful ring of certainty in these verses that is grounded in the love and faithfulness of God through the death and resurrection of Christ. "We shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him…we shall be saved by His life." There's no question mark—no "might be saved" indicated. Here is the certainty that is ours and in which we are to live. And how can we? If the God that demonstrated His great love to you by giving His Son to die for you, and if that love that sent Jesus to the cross has justified you and reconciled you to God, then you can be sure that His love will not let you go. 'But what if I let Him go?' Did you initiate your salvation? Did you do anything to accomplish it? Did God look to your power or strength to add anything to the work of His Son to justify and reconcile? Then be assured that His love will not let you go! Find your assurance by studying, pondering, and glorying in Christ crucified, resurrected, and reigning.
So what happens when a Christian walks in assurance of God's love and the certainty of his salvation complete in Christ? He certainly will not go around with a scowl on his face or a sour disposition or a complaining spirit. He knows what it is to exult in God. What does that mean? "And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Here is the same word used in verses 2-3. In the first, "we exult in hope of the glory of God." Our boasting is in future glory, anticipation of experiencing all that Christ has secured for us for eternity. Second, "we also exult in our tribulations." Our boast continues because we know that the God who has justified us uses every detail of life to shape us in the image of Christ and to abundantly diffuse His love in us by the Holy Spirit. The first looks ahead, the second looks within to see evidence of grace at work. But now he adds a greater dimension: "we exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ." It is personal and relational—"in God." It is grounded and secured in the work of Christ—"through our Lord Jesus Christ." It is exhilarating, enjoyable, and exciting—"we exult in God." The word conveys intense joy and enjoyment. When we live in assurance it affects the way we enjoy God in the present.
But you cannot enjoy Him if you do not know Him. You cannot know Him except through "our Lord Jesus Christ." And if you know Him, spend time with Him. There is the process of enjoying God: through the means of grace given to the body of Christ. Enjoy Him by reading and studying the Word. Enjoy Him by listening to the Word preached and taught. Enjoy Him by singing and worshiping. Enjoy Him by praying to Him. Enjoy Him by meditating on Him. Enjoy Him by giving thanks to Him. Enjoy Him by casting your burdens on Him and trusting Him. Enjoy Him by talking about Him to others. Enjoy Him by glorying in His gospel of grace. Enjoy Him by serving with and fellowshipping with the body of Christ.
Assurance is not simply to give us peace so that we can feel good about our spiritual lives. It is given so that we might enjoy God! Any who think the Christian life is dull or unenjoyable can only think such a thing if they do not know the assurance of sins forgiven and future glory. Enjoy God through our Lord Jesus Christ!
That last phrase gives another aspect of our exulting in God: "through whom we have now received the reconciliation." The emphasis is on "now." Reconciliation is not future tense but present reality. Why does he seem to tag that onto the last sentence in this paragraph? Because it is the culmination of assurance: the believer lives in the present reality that he belongs to God through Christ! Right now, he is reconciled to God; he is no longer an enemy but a son. He has nothing to fear even when death comes. God is for him (8:31). Enjoy the relationship made possible through the bloody death of Christ. Glory in this relationship. When you do you think about it, talk about it, study it, pray over it, and find satisfaction in it.
The Christian lives in two worlds: the now and the not yet. Assurance straddles these two worlds; it bridges them with the intense joy of knowing that though once an enemy, now reconciled to God; that once condemned, now counted righteous in Christ. The God who has done this will never let you go. He has invested the blood of His Son in you so that you might forever enjoy Him.
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