Last week we talked about John 3:16 and the passage surrounding it.  Probably the best known passage from the bible.  This week we change gears a little.  We move from the most popular verse of the bible to arguably the most important book of the bible at least for Christian history.  That book is Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  Romans is Paul’s seminal work.  As N. T. Wright calls it, an “Alpine peak towering over hills and villages.”[1]  This “Alpine peak” has towered over nearly two thousand years of Christian history.  Its influence cannot be underestimated.  At St. Augustine’s conversion to Christianity, when he heard a child’s voice say “pick it up and read it”[2], what he picked up and read was Romans. In 1515 and 1516, it was Romans that Martin Luther lectured over and there rediscovered salvation by faith thus paving the way for the start of the Reformation.  (On what date comfirmands?) It was in 1918 when a young Karl Barth wrote Paul’s Epistle to the Romans which as Karl Adams wrote dropped like “a bomb on the playground of theologians.”  No book of the bible has been as influential on history as this book.  And yet with all of that influence, the message of Romans is quite simple: we are saved by grace through faith.  That’s it.  We are saved by grace through faith. 

          By the time Paul gets to chapter five, the passage Mary just read, he has already made this point.  He has already gone through and explained how humanity is sinful.  He has shown how no action that we can do, no work, will save us and make us right with God.  Only God’s action through the cross, through Jesus Christ, and through grace towards us makes us right with God.  We go from sinners and enemies of God to justified and saved.  He has already explained that, but what does that mean?  That is what chapter five is.  If you were to go ask the average person on the street or even many of us here in this church, what “being saved” or “being justified” means, I am not sure you would get much of a response.  Oh sure, somebody might say that it means we would not go to hell.  For as important as that is, it is just the tip of the iceberg.  The benefits of that salvation are all around us.  We enjoy them today.  We just don’t know it.  Paul gives three benefits that we enjoy: 1) we have peace with God, 2) we have obtained access by faith into his grace, and 3) we can boast in hope.  Peace, grace, hope.

          Peace with God is a very foreign concept to us.  Rarely do we think about being at war with God, so peace after war seems even stranger.  It is especially strange because who in their right mind would go to war against God? (Raise hand.) As sinners we all do.  We fight against God. It is not a fight we can win, but we still fight it. We fight for our own causes instead of His.  In John Elderidge’s book Epic, which was one of the books I was giving away a few weeks ago, this war between humanity and God is a primary concern.  The story of creation and humanity and everything is seen in the context of war between good and evil, God and his angels versus the fallen angel Lucifer and his minions.  As Elderidge writes this story, the battleground for part of this war is right here on earth as those who do God’s will fight for his side and those who don’t don’t.  It is a great story.  And whether or not you believe in Lucifer or Satan as a physical entity, when we fight for our will against God’s will, we are fighting on the wrong side.  Luckily, a decisive battle in this war was fought a long time ago.  Jesus Christ died on cross for us and was resurrected, so we could join the good guys. And fight for the cause good.  Instead of fighting against God and receiving all negative repercussions that that separation entails, we get the benefit of being apart of the life of that loving, grace-filled God. 

          Grace was the second benefit.  “We have obtained access by faith into his grace.”  Because that great canyon between God and all of us has been bridged by Jesus Christ we can have grace.  Grace is love.  Grace is Christ dying for the ungodly, for the sinner.  Grace is mercy when we deserve wrath.  And that is what we have been given by faith.  Grace after grace after grace.  Grace is one of things that cannot be described, it can only be pointed to.  On Thursday, I was reading the sermon from the memorial service of my former professor and friend Stan Hall.  There were many great stories that were shared during that service, but one in particular illustrated grace in an extraordinary, if peculiar way.  During his first pastorate in Indiana, Stan encountered a man who was enduring an Indiana winter in a drafty, uninsulated house with only a fireplace for heat and no wood.  So Stan did the only logical thing, he removed a couple of pews from the sanctuary (probably from upfront) and put them to better use.[3]  That is grace.  Grace is God intervening to change our lives.  Grace is the world changing around us in powerful ways.  Grace is God growing our faith day in and day out. Grace is God’s love being poured into hearts through the Holy Spirit like it says in verse 5.  And it is because of that grace that Paul can write what he does next.

          “We boast in the hope of sharing the glory of God.”  Hope is something we know about around here.  The one theme I have preached the most over in the six months or so I have been here has been hope.  It is fitting that on this day of our annual congregational meeting, when we look back and look forward, that we revisit hope once again.  Paul writes, “we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.  And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”  You all know about suffering, endurance and character.  The history of this church is suffering, endurance and character.  You know the history here: sixty-five years of challenges faced and a new day dawning.  Through troubles and triumph, this church persevered to bring us to this day.  And it is because of that character that we hope today.  If by God’s grace we have been brought through so much, how could we not hope about tomorrow?  And not even that, how could we not boast?  Boasting is one of those things that Paul speaks out against earlier in Romans, but here he lifts it up.  The reason?  Bad boasting is boasting in your accomplishments.  Good boasting is boasting in what God is doing.  Good boasting builds up the church.  Good boasting builds up the faith.  The same way this church was worn down by negativity and saying “we can’t”, it can be built up by hope and boasting in what God is doing among us. The culture is changing around here.  We are believing what Paul is saying here more everyday, but we have to continue.  We have to preserve and in that perseverance be built up.  We have to enjoy the fruits of our faith.  To live in the grace of God.