Guilty!? The Awesomeness of God’s Grace in the Letter to the RomansSample

God’s love and our deliverance

“For while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.” Romans 5:10 (ESV)

Paul symbolically describes God’s love as a sunrise on a clear summer morning as the sun’s rays stream over what he has written. He offers a beautiful perspective. God’s love has accomplished what we could never do. Paul examines the substance of the reconciliation between God and man. He digs deeper to discover what God had to do to achieve peace.

How remarkable! Christ is the embodiment of God’s love—He is God’s love in action. He is the living, loving God who became man. His death reveals how much God loves us. On the cross, a man died because a man sinned. On the cross, God, in the person of Jesus, died. This is the incomprehensible wonder of God’s love.

Our hope is based on this amazing love. We can be certain that through our faith in Jesus, we belong to God, and we will be saved when the final judgement comes. If we believe the gospel that Jesus is our deliverer we are members of God’s family, the people whose sins are forgiven and who are free of guilt.

Our hope as Christians is that in the future, the verdict of innocence will be confirmed because it is based on what God has accomplished through the death of Jesus. His death for us, weak, helpless sinners, demonstrates how much God loves us. We can count on His rescue at the coming judgment. God did the unthinkable in sending His son to die for us when we were still enemies. Now reconciled to Him, we are His friends and He will never let us go. If God has done this great thing for us, we can be assured that He will bring us to glory.

Paul closes by saying that we have every reason to praise God. He refers to what he said earlier about the Jews who assert that the Creator is exclusively their God. They rejoice in the fact that their possession of the Law gives them special status. Paul ascribes this to arrogance. We may joyfully praise God and raise His name on high for His grace to sinners.