Romans 5
5
1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, let us be at peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
2 For through him we also have access by faith to this grace, in which we stand firm, and to glory, in the hope of the glory of the sons of God.
3 And not only that, but we also find glory in tribulation, knowing that tribulation exercises patience,
4 and patience leads to proving, yet truly proving leads to hope,
5 but hope is not unfounded, because the love of God is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
6 Yet why did Christ, while we were still infirm, at the proper time, suffer death for the impious?
7 Now someone might barely be willing to die for the sake of justice, for example, perhaps someone might dare to die for the sake of a good man.
8 But God demonstrates his love for us in that, while we were yet sinners, at the proper time,
9 Christ died for us. Therefore, having been justified now by his blood, all the more so shall we be saved from wrath through him.
10 For if we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, while we were still enemies, all the more so, having been reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.
11 And not only that, but we also glory in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin, death; so also death was transferred to all men, to all who have sinned.
13 For even before the law, sin was in the world, but sin was not imputed while the law did not exist.
14 Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses, even in those who have not sinned, in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a figure of him who was to come.
15 But the gift is not entirely like the offense. For though by the offense of one, many died, yet much more so, by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, has the grace and gift of God abounded to many.
16 And the sin through one is not entirely like the gift. For certainly, the judgment of one was unto condemnation, but the grace toward many offenses is unto justification.
17 For though, by the one offense, death reigned through one, yet so much more so shall those who receive an abundance of grace, both of the gift and of justice, reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.
18 Therefore, just as through the offense of one, all men fell under condemnation, so also through the justice of one, all men fall under justification unto life.
19 For, just as through the disobedience of one man, many were established as sinners, so also through the obedience of one man, many shall be established as just.
20 Now the law entered in such a way that offenses would abound. But where offenses were abundant, grace was superabundant.
21 So then, just as sin has reigned unto death, so also may grace reign through justice unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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Romans 5
5
Developing Patience
1-2By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.
3-5There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!
6-8Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
9-11Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!
The Death-Dealing Sin, the Life-Giving Gift
12-14You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
15-17Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?
18-19Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
20-21All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.