Romans 5:1-5: Joy That Can't Be Taken Away

Romans 5:1-5: Joy That Can’t Be Taken Away

Please turn with me in your Bible to Romans 5. If you’re using one of the Story Bibles we provide, that’s on page 780. We’ve book working our way passage by passage through the book of Romans, and this morning the next passage we come to is Romans 5:1-5. Romans 5:1-5:

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 

One of the most cherished themes of the Christmas season is joy. Even many people who aren’t devoted Christians still view the Christmas season as a season of joy—joy in being together with family and friends, joy in celebrating treasured traditions, and joy in all of the good things that we hold dear in life. Just last week, Becky and I went to see the new Grinch movie they have out, and you can see the theme of joy quite clearly in that movie. The Grinch is a grumpy old creature who lives in seclusion high up on a mountain and absolutely can’t stand the joy that the Whos of Whoville have during the Christmas season. So he tries to steal their joy by stealing all of the Christmas presents and decorations in the whole town. But in the end, the Grinch sees the sincerity of their joy since they still have it even after he steals all their stuff, and because of that, the Grinch himself ends up sharing their joy with them. It’s a heartwarming story. 

Now, of course, we as Christians believe that the truest and deepest joy is found only in Jesus. He brings us a joy that’s richer and greater than anything else in this world. Yet so often, if we were honest, we find that joy in relatively short supply in our lives. So often, we encounter various circumstances that rob us of that joy. Maybe it’s an issue with someone in our family who isn’t acting the way we want them to act. Or maybe it’s something at work that’s not going the way we want it to go. Or maybe we have concerns about our health or our finances or our future that are weighing heavily on us. There are so many things that come into our lives and threaten to rob us of joy. Even the everyday grind of life often threatens to steal our joy. 

That’s why I’m so grateful for this passage here in Romans 5. This passage reminds us that our joy doesn’t have to be just an occasional or periodic experience in our lives. It can be a perpetual one. God wants us to have a joy in Jesus that’s full and vibrant regardless of what circumstances we encounter. And that’s what this passage speaks to us about. It shows us that Jesus offers us joy so great that nothing can take it away. That’s the main idea I’d like us to see. Jesus offers us joy so great that nothing can take it away. And as we look closer at this passage, we see two characteristics of the joy Jesus offers us. Number one, the source of our joy. And number two, the strength of our joy. 

The Source of Our Joy

So first, the source of our joy. Look again at verses 1-2: 1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. So according to this passage, our joy as Christians is properly rooted not in the ever-changing circumstances of this life but rather in the unchanging realities of the gospel. And that right there is enough to show us why we so often struggle to have joy. Many times, our joy is way too tied up in earthly circumstances. When things in our lives are going the way we want them to go, we’re up here. And when they’re not going so well, we’re down here. Our joy rises and falls according to our circumstances. It’s dependent on the success of a project at work, the results of an election, how popular we think we are, or the way our children are turning out. Yet this passage reminds us that God offers us a joy that’s rooted not in those ever changing circumstances but in the eternal realities of the gospel. 

Paul teaches that, for those of us who are Christians, our joy properly rests first in having been justified by faith. That means God views us as righteous because of the faith we’ve exercised toward Jesus. And because of that, Paul continues, we have “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” There was a time when that peace didn’t exist. Later on in Romans 5, Paul states that all of us were “enemies of God” prior to our conversion. Through our sin, we had declared God our enemy, and in his justice, God had declared us his enemy. So there was enmity on both sides. But that’s where Jesus comes in. Jesus became a human being and voluntarily died on the cross in order to suffer the judgment we deserve for our rebellion. He endured God’s wrath so we wouldn’t have to. Then he triumphantly resurrected from dead in order to demonstrate that the Father had indeed accepted his sacrifice. And now that we’ve exercised faith in Jesus and are therefore righteous in God’s eyes, we have “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Paul then goes on to say in verse 2 that we’ve “obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.” And that grace is related not only to the present but also to the future. As Paul declares in what I believe is the climax of this passage, “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

So what’s the Christian’s joy properly tied to? Is it tied to whatever circumstances we happen to be facing at a particular moment? Not at all. We rejoice “in hope of the glory of God”—that is, the hope both of seeing and sharing the glory of God in heaven. Both of those ideas are contained in the phrase “hope of the glory of God.” First, seeing the glory of God. When we get to heaven, we’ll get to actually see God in all of his radiant glory. 1 John 3:2 states, 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. Just imagine that: seeing God “as he is.” That’s hard for us to imagine, isn’t it? In fact, it’s impossible. You and I can’t even come close to comprehending what glory of God is like. If the distance between our current level of comprehension and comprehending the glory of God were the same as the distance between here and the moon, I’m fairly confident that even greatest theologian who’s ever lived has only traveled one inch of that distance. We’re so far from being able to comprehend the glory of God. And yet, one day, we’ll actually see it. We’ll see God’s glory firsthand. How amazing is that? Is there any greater state of blessedness than that? So when Paul says back in Romans 5 that we rejoice “in hope of the glory of God,” that’s part of what he means. We’ll get to see the glory of God. 

But not only does that refer to seeing the glory of God, it also refers to sharing the glory of God. In other words, when we get to heaven, we’ll actually be able to participate in God’s glory and have his glory imparted to us in some way. You may remember that back in Romans 3:23, Paul stated that that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That was our condition before embracing Jesus. And now that we’ve embraced Jesus, we do share God’s glory in part. But when we get to heaven, we’ll share God’s glory in an even fuller way. Listen to what Paul writes in Romans 8:16-17: 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. So that’s what’ll happen in heaven. We’ll be “glorified with him.” We’ll share his glory. Of course that doesn’t mean that we’ll share his deity and become little gods. There will always be a clear distinction between Creator and creation—between God as the King and us as his servants. But we will share God’s glory in many other ways. We’ll share his glory morally, living lives of righteousness and holiness just as God is righteous and holy. We’ll also share God’s glory physically, to a degree. 1 Corinthians 15 teaches that our physical bodies will be transformed to resemble God and share his glory.  And I’m sure that we’ll share God’s glory in other ways as well—ways that are beyond our present ability to comprehend. 

So all of that is contained in Paul’s statement back in our main passage that “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” We rejoice in the fact that we’ll get to both see and share God’s glory in heaven. And by the way, that word “rejoice” is actually more literally translated “boast.” If you’re using a different translation of the Bible, your translation may render that word as “boast” rather than “rejoice.” That would be a more literal translation. And of course, Paul’s not implying that we should be prideful in any way. Our boasting here isn’t a boasting in ourselves but a boasting in God. We’re so joyful and excited about what God’s promised us that it’s like we have to tell someone about it. We have to boast about it. So this isn’t a quiet joy. It’s a joy so great it can’t be kept inside. That’s the sense in which “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

So is that the kind of joy you have? Is your joy rooted in the “hope of the glory of God,” or is it more rooted in the shifting circumstances of your life? If it’s more rooted more in your circumstances, you probably don’t have it a lot of times. And even when you do have joy, it’s a very fragile and dim joy compared to the joy that’s available in Jesus. Jesus offers you a joy that you can have anytime, anywhere, and through any circumstance. You know, if someone were to steal my wallet, they really wouldn’t be taking very much from me. The amount of money I keep in my wallet is very small compared to the amount of money I have in the bank—of course, not that I have all that much anyway, but I think you understand what I’m saying. So as long as I called to cancel my credit and debit cards after my wallet was stolen, I really wouldn’t be out very much money. And just like having my wallet stolen wouldn’t result in the loss of any large amount of wealth if my wealth is in the bank, enduring various kinds of trials in this life won’t result in the loss of our joy if our joy is in heaven. If everything truly precious to us is in heaven, then nothing that happens here on earth will be able to take our joy away from us. It’s eternally secure. 

The Strength of Our Joy

And Paul makes that clear as we move along in our text of Romans 5. The source of our joy, point one, leads to the strength of our joy. That’s point two: the strength of our joy. Look at verses 3-5: 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. So we’ve said that the joy we have in Jesus remains intact even through sufferings. But these verses make an even greater claim than that. Not only does this joy remain intact in the midst of suffering, there’s even a sense in which it’s amplified through suffering. 

Now when Paul talks about suffering in verse 3, I believe he’s referring to the sufferings he experienced in the course of his Christian ministry. But I don’t think it’s too big of a jump to extend what he’s saying to more general kinds of suffering as well. And in step-by-step fashion, he explains the way in which suffering contributes to our joy. He says first, at the end of verse 3, that “suffering produces endurance.” That’s the first link in the chain. Suffering produces endurance in the sense that it rouses us from our spiritual complacency and compels us to rise to the challenge of enduring. Suffering exercises and develops those muscles of endurance which would otherwise be undeveloped.  Then Paul states in verse 4 that “endurance produces character.” That word “character” literally refers to a testing process—kind of like gold or silver might be tested to verify their purity. And similarly, when we exhibit endurance for an extended period of time, that endurance proves our character. So “endurance produces character.” Then finally, we read in verse 5 that “character produces hope.” In other words, character demonstrates that we’ve truly been converted and can therefore confidently look forward to the eternal glories of heaven. “Character produces hope.” And Paul then adds that “hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” So in case we needed any assurance that our hope isn’t misplaced, Paul reminds us that God’s proven his intent of giving us heaven in the future by giving us the Holy Spirit now. Elsewhere, in Ephesians 1, he refers to the Spirit as a “down payment of our inheritance.”

So to sum up the process, suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope, and hope will not disappoint us. That’s the way in which suffering can actually contribute to our joy rather than diminishing it. It makes our joy shine all the brighter by reminding us of what we have waiting for us in heaven. Suffering directs our gaze toward the hope we have of heavenly glory. 

Conclusion

A few weeks ago, I was jogging around my neighborhood in the morning as I usually do and saw one of my neighbors a few streets up standing in her front yard. And I happened to know this lady. Her name is Heidi, and a few years ago Becky and I somehow encountered her as we were taking a walk and talked to her and found out she was a Christian. So we invited Heidi and her husband Lynn and their six children over to our house for dinner. And yes, that was a lot of people to have over for dinner. I think we ended up making spaghetti or something simple like that. But it was a great time. It was obvious that Lynn and Heidi were a very happy family and that Jesus was the center of their home. They were actually in the process of writing and illustrating a children’s book on the fruit of the Spirit. That was a family project of theirs. So we had a great time with them that evening but then didn’t really stay in contact all that much. We’d say hi to them from time to time when we saw them at the library and other public places around town but didn’t really maintain an especially close relationship. But a few weeks ago, while I was running, I saw Heidi standing out in her yard. And it was a bit unusual because it was fairly early in the morning, about 6:00, and she was just standing out there in her bathrobe. So at first, I wasn’t really going to stop running to talk to her, but then she called out and asked who I was. One thing I forgot to mention is that Heidi is actually legally blind. So she can see well enough to walk around and things like that but not well enough to drive. Plus there wasn’t yet very much sunlight at this point in the morning. So I think she sort of recognized me but wasn’t sure and called out to see who I was. And I told that I was her neighbor Josh. Then she said, “Did you know my husband died?” And as soon as she said that, my heart dropped, and I stopped running and went over to learn more about what had happened. Apparently, her husband Lynn had gone in for heart surgery two weeks prior to that and ended up bleeding out on the operating table. So there Heidi was: her husband had just died, she had six kids to take care of all under the age of 10, she had no job since she was a stay-at-home mom, and on top of that she was legally blind and couldn’t even drive a car. So obviously she had no clue what she was going to do. She was just trying to help her kids process their father’s death and keep them from being angry at God and somehow also try to work through her own feelings of grief and provide for the family. But she told me that the reason she was standing there in her yard was so that she could praise Jesus as the sun began to rise and ask for strength to make it through another day. She wasn’t angry at God. She wasn’t questioning God’s plan. She was actually praising God. 

Needless to say, that’s not at all the way most people would respond. But as Christians, we have something unique. Going back to Paul’s words, we have the ability to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” We have access to a joy that no amount of suffering, no matter how great, can ever take away from us. And Heidi is living proof of that.  Let me ask you something: have you learned to suffer well? Have you learned, like Heidi, to rejoice even in the midst of trials in your life? I believe one of the reasons God allows us as Christians to suffer in various ways is so we can engage in the peculiar ministry of suffering well. Because few things will impact the people around us as much as seeing us trust God and even rejoice in God in the midst of our sufferings. If you want to show someone who’s not yet a Christian that the gospel has real power to change people’s lives, let them see you rejoice in your sufferings. That’ll probably speak more powerfully to them than a hundred other conversations ever could. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a dozen people became Christians as a result of Heidi’s testimony. And likewise, when you suffer well, it also serves as an immeasurable encouragement for other Christians and a means of strengthening them in the faith. So perhaps God has given or will give you the ministry of suffering well. Will you rise to the occasion? Will you choose to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God” even in the midst of your sufferings?   

You know, Heidi’s story reminds me of another story from 150 years ago. A Christian man in Chicago named Horatio Spafford lost his 2-year-old son in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The fire also left him ruined financially. Horatio was a successful lawyer and had invested significantly in property that was consumed by the fire. His business interests then took another hit with economic downturn of 1873. So Horatio made plans to move with his family over to Europe. And he ended up sending his wife and children over to Europe ahead of him while he tied up some loose ends with his businesses here in America. But while his wife and children were on the ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, their ship collided with another vessel, and all four of Horatio’s daughters died. His wife Anna managed to survive and sent him a telegram from Europe with the tragic news. So as Horatio travelled to meet his grieving wife, he was inspired to write these words as his ship passed by the place where his daughters had died. These words make up the hymn that was eventually titled “It Is Well with My Soul.”

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

But Lord, 'tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!
Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul.

And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

So is it well with your soul this morning?