20  The Security of Salvation (5:1-11)

Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 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. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. (Rom. 5:1–11)

One of Satan’s primary tactics against believers is that of making them doubt that salvation is secure forever or that it is real in their personal case. Perhaps for that reason, Paul describes one of the key parts of a Christian’s armor as “the helmet of salvation” (Eph. 6:17; cf. 1 Thess. 5:8), provided to surround and protect his mind against doubt and insecurity concerning his redemption. This is both objective and subjective. First, salvation can be shown by the objective testimony of Scripture to be eternally secure for all the saved.

The issue of eternal security, or “once saved, always saved,” has been hotly debated throughout much of church history. Everyone agrees that the truth or falsehood of that doctrine is of immense importance. But it is also crucial to the believer to recognize the evidence that he actually has that real salvation. Once security is established as a fact of salvation, then assurance must be maintained in the heart of the Christian subjectively.

If, as some maintain, a person is saved by faith in Jesus Christ but can sin his way out of God’s grace, Christians must live in continual uncertainty about their spiritual destiny on both counts. That which they received on the basis of God’s work must be maintained on the basis of their own work; the divine righteousness they received from God as a gift must be maintained by the righteousness they themselves achieve. According to that doctrine, salvation is received by faith but maintained by works, given by God’s power but maintained by man’s power. It is therefore a form of works righteousness. It teaches that if a believer’s life does not measure up to God’s standards, his salvation is forfeited and he is again lost in his sin. One day he can be spiritually alive and the next be spiritually dead again. One day he can be a child of God and the next be back in Satan’s family. Obviously, if there is no eternal security (objective), then there can be reason for fear from lacking assurance in the heart that one is saved (subjective).

In chapters 3 and 4 of Romans, Paul establishes unequivocally that salvation comes only on the basis of God’s grace working through man’s faith. Man’s only part in becoming saved is to receive forgiveness and reconciliation freely in faith from God’s gracious hand. The person who trusts in anything else, including obedience to God’s own law, cannot be saved. In regard to that aspect of salvation, it should be noted, even most of those who deny security fully concur.

The apostle has established the fact that faith has always been the only way to salvation. Abraham, the physical progenitor of all Jews and their supreme example of a man right with God, did not accomplish that relationship through his good works but only through his faith. Quoting Genesis 15:6, Paul declares that “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3).

But that truth had long been lost by most Jews of Paul’s day. It had been replaced by a system of works-righteousness based on partial conformity to the Old Testament law as well as on a multitude of traditions developed by the rabbis. In that respect, popular Judaism was no different from other man-made religions, all of which are built on the principle of man’s pleasing and appeasing deity on the basis of human goodness and accomplishment. Because of the spiritual blindness and pride caused by sin, fallen man has always been convinced he is able to lift himself up by his own spiritual bootstraps. If he believes in God at all, he believes either that he is inherently good enough to please God or that he can make himself acceptable to God through his own efforts. (Paul comments on this further in 10:1–4.)

In Romans 3–4, Paul’s arguments are specifically directed to Jews (see, e.g., 3:1, 9, 29; 4:1, 13), and it seems likely they continue to be his primary audience in chapter 5. As he often does in this epistle, the great apostle anticipates the typical arguments that would be raised against his inspired teaching, many of which arguments he doubtless had already encountered during his ministry.

The questions and objections Paul now addresses pertain to how salvation is maintained. “Granted that a person is made right with God only by ‘being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus’” (3:24; cf. 4:24), some of Paul’s readers would say. “Under what conditions then is redemption preserved? If a person is saved only through his faith, apart from any good works he may achieve, does that mean he can henceforth live just as he pleases because his right relationship with God is eternally secure? Or is salvation preserved by one’s good works?”

Paul answered the second question when he countered the spurious charge that the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith encourages a believer to sin. In response to the apostle’s teaching that “our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God” (3:5), some of his opponents accused him of promoting sin, of teaching that Christians should do “evil that good may come” (3:8). Now he counters the somewhat opposite idea that, although salvation is received by faith, it must be preserved by good works.

If the preservation of salvation depends on what believers themselves do or do not do, their salvation is only as secure as their faithfulness, which provides no security at all. According to that view, believers must protect by their own human power what Christ began by His divine power.

To counteract such presumption and its consequent hopelessness, Paul assured the Ephesian church with these comforting words: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:18–20). As the apostle points out in that passage, it is of great importance for Christians to be aware of the security they now have and forever will have in Christ, a security that does not depend on their own sinful and futile efforts but on the “surpassing greatness of His power toward us” and on “the strength of His might.” That truth is the cornerstone of the feeling of assurance.

Our hope is not in ourselves but in our great God, who, even “if we are faithless, He remains faithful; for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Tim. 2:13). Isaiah described God’s faithfulness as “the belt about His waist” (Isa. 11:5). David declared that the Lord’s “faithfulness reaches to the skies” (Ps. 36:5), and Jeremiah praised Him with the exclamation, “Great is Thy faithfulness” (Lam. 3:23). The writer of Hebrews admonishes Christians with the words: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful” (Heb. 10:23). While continued faith is necessary, our being able to hold fast is founded upon the Lord’s faithfulness, not our own.

In developing his argument in the book of Romans against the destructive notion that believers must live in uncertainty about the completion of their salvation, Paul presents six “links” in the chain of truth that binds a true believer eternally to his Savior and Lord, completely apart from any effort or merit on the believer’s part. Those links are: the believer’s peace with God (5:1), his standing in grace (v. 2a), his hope of glory (vv. 2b-5a), his possession of divine love (vv. 5b-8), his certainty of deliverance (vv. 9–10), and his joy in the Lord (v. 11).

THE BELIEVER’S PEACE WITH GOD

Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, (5:1)

The first link in the unbreakable chain that eternally binds believers to Christ is their peace with God.

The term therefore connects Paul’s present argument with what he has already said, especially in chapters 3 and 4. In those chapters the apostle established that, as believers, we have been justified by faith. Because of our justification by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The verb translated we have is in the present tense, indicating something that is already possessed. Many of a believer’s blessings must await his resurrection and glorification, but peace with God is established the moment he places his trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The peace that Paul is speaking about here is not subjective but objective. It is not a feeling but a fact. Apart from salvation through Jesus Christ, every human being is at enmity with God, spiritually at war with Him (see v. 10; cf. 8:7), regardless of what his feelings about God may be. In the same way, the person who is justified by faith in Christ is at peace with God, regardless of how he may feel about it at any given moment. Through his trust in Jesus Christ, a sinner’s war with God is ended for all eternity.

Most unsaved people do not think of themselves as enemies of God. Because they have no conscious feelings of hatred for Him and do not actively oppose His work or contradict His Word, they consider themselves, at worst, to be “neutral” about God. But no such neutrality is possible. The mind of every unsaved person is at peace only with the things of the flesh, and therefore by definition is “hostile toward God” and cannot be otherwise (Rom. 8:7).

After the famous missionary David Livingstone had spent several years among the Zulus of South Africa, he went with his wife and young child into the interior to minister. When he returned, he discovered that an enemy tribe had attacked the Zulus, killed many of the people, and taken the chief’s son captive. The Zulu chief did not want to make war with the other tribe, but he poignantly asked Dr. Livingstone, “How can I be at peace with them while they hold my son prisoner?”

Commenting on that story, Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote, “If this attitude is true in the heart of a savage chief, how much more is it true of God the Father toward those who trample under foot His Son, who count the blood of the covenant wherewith they were set apart as an unholy thing, and who continue to despise the Spirit of grace (Heb. 10:29)?” (God’s River: Romans 5:1–11 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959], p. 26).

Not only are all unbelievers enemies of God but God is also the enemy of all unbelievers, to the degree that He is angry with them every day (cf. Ps. 7:11) and condemns them to eternal hell. God is the enemy of the sinner, and that enmity cannot end unless and until the sinner places his trust in Jesus Christ. Every person who is not a child of God is a child of Satan (see John 8:44), and every person who is not a citizen of God’s kingdom is a citizen of Satan’s. As Paul declared near the opening of this letter, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18).

Apart from personal trust in God, even members of His chosen race Israel were not exempt from divine enmity and wrath. “My anger will be kindled, and I will kill you with the sword,” God warned ancient Israel soon after He delivered her from Egypt (Ex. 22:24). During the subsequent wilderness wanderings, the Lord declared of unbelieving, unfaithful Israelites: “They have made Me jealous with what is not God; they have provoked Me to anger with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation, for a fire is kindled in My anger, and burns to the lowest part of Sheol, and consumes the earth with its yield, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains” (Deut. 32:21–22). Shortly after Israel entered the Promised Land, God warned: “When you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, and go and serve other gods, and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you shall perish quickly from off the good land which He has given you” (Josh. 23:16; cf. 2 Kings 22:13; Isa. 5:25; 13:9; Nah. 1:2).

To those who foolishly think God is too loving to send anyone to hell, Paul declared, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things [the sins listed in v. 5] the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 5:6).

I once heard a professional football coach say during a pre-game devotional service I held for his team: “I don’t know if there is a God, but I like having these chapels, because if there is one I want to be sure He’s on my side.” Sentiments such as that are frequently expressed by unbelievers who think that the Creator and Sustainer of the universe can be cajoled into doing one’s bidding by giving Him superficial lip service. God is never on the side of unbelievers. He is their enemy, and His wrath against them can only be placated by their trust in the atoning work of His Son, Jesus Christ.

But on the cross, Christ took upon Himself all the fury of God’s wrath that sinful mankind deserves. And those who trust in Christ are no longer God’s enemies and no longer under His wrath, but are at peace with Him.

Paul assured the Colossian believers: “For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fulness to dwell in Him [Christ], and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach” (Col. 1:19–22).

The most immediate consequence of justification is reconciliation, which is the theme of Romans 5. Reconciliation with God brings peace with God. That peace is permanent and irrevocable, because Jesus Christ, through whom believers receive their reconciliation, “always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25). “For I will be merciful to their iniquities,” the Lord says of those who belong to Him, “and I will remember their sins no more” (Heb. 8:12; cf. 10:17). If anyone is ever to be punished in the future for the sins of believers, it would have to be the One who took them on Himself—Jesus Christ. And that is impossible, because He has already paid the penalty in full.

When a person embraces Jesus Christ in repentant faith, the sinless Son of God who made perfect satisfaction for all our sins makes that person eternally at peace with God the Father. In fact, Christ not only brings peace to the believer but “He Himself is our peace” (Eph. 2:14). This all points out how crucial it is to understand the nature and extent of the atoning work of Jesus the Lord as the basis for assurance.

Although the peace of which Paul is speaking in this passage is the objective peace of being reconciled to God, awareness of that objective truth gives the believer a deep and wonderful subjective peace as well. To know that one is a child of God, a brother of Jesus Christ, cannot but give Christians what Charles Hodge called the “sweet quiet of the soul” (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974 reprint], p. 132).

But awareness of our peace with God through Jesus Christ is meant to give us far more than feelings of gratitude and warmth, wonderful as those are. When a Christian is convinced he is eternally secure in Christ, he is freed from focusing on his own goodness and merit and is able to serve the Lord with the unqualified confidence that nothing can separate him from his heavenly Father. He can say with Paul, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39).

The peace that a believer has in the knowledge that he is secure forever in Christ not only strengthens his faith but strengthens his service. The knowledge that we are eternally at peace with God prepares us to wage effective spiritual warfare in Christ’s behalf and in His power. When engaged in battle, a Roman soldier wore boots with spikes in the bottom to give him a firm footing while fighting. Because Christians have their feet shod with “the gospel of peace” (Eph. 6:15), they have the confidence to stand firmly for Christ without the spiritual slipping and emotional sliding that uncertainty about salvation inevitably brings, knowing God is on their side!

THE BELIEVER’S STANDING IN GRACE

through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; (5:2a)

A second link in the unbreakable chain that eternally binds believers to Christ is their standing in God’s grace.

Through whom refers, of course, to the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 1). Because of our reconciliation to God the Father through our trust in His Son, we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace. Prosagōgē (introduction) is used only three times in the New Testament, and in each instance it is used of the believer’s access to God through Jesus Christ (see also Eph. 2:18; 3:12).

For Jews, the idea of having direct access, or introduction, to God was unthinkable, because to see God face to face was to die. When God gave His law to Israel at Sinai, He “said to Moses, ‘Behold, I shall come to you in a thick cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe in you forever’” (Ex. 19:9). But after the people had cleansed themselves according to His instruction, “the Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain; and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, ‘Go down, warn the people, lest they break through to the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish’” (vv. 20–21).

After the Tabernacle was built, and later the Temple, strict boundaries were set. A Gentile could only go into the outer confines and no farther. Jewish women could go beyond the Gentile limit but not much farther. And so it was with the men and the regular priests. Each group could go nearer the Holy of Holies, where God’s divine presence was manifested, but none could actually enter there. Only the high priest could enter, and that only once a year and very briefly. And even he could lose his life if he entered unworthily. Bells were sewn on the special garments he wore on the Day of Atonement, and if the sound of the bells stopped while he was ministering in the Holy of Holies, they knew he had been struck dead by God (Ex. 28:35).

But Christ’s death ended that. Through His atoning sacrifice, He made God the Father accessible to any person, Jew or Gentile, who trusts in that sacrifice. The writer of Hebrews encourages believers to “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

To make this truth graphic, when Jesus was crucified, “the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” by God’s power (Matt. 27:51). His death forever removed the barrier to God’s holy presence that the Temple veil represented. Commenting on that amazing truth, the writer of Hebrews says, “Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:19–22).

Predicting the new relationship that believers would have with God under the New Covenant, the prophet Jeremiah wrote, “And they shall be My people, and I will be their God; … And I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; and I will put the fear of Me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from Me” (Jer. 32:38, 40).

On the basis of our faith in Him, Jesus Christ brings believers into this grace in which we stand. Histēmi (stand) here carries the idea of permanence, of standing firm and immovable. Although faith is necessary for salvation, it is God’s grace, not the believer’s faith, that has the power to save and to keep saved. We are not saved by divine grace and then preserved by human effort. That would be a mockery of God’s grace, meaning that what God begins in us He is either unwilling or unable to preserve and complete. Paul unequivocally declared to the Philippian believers: “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6). Emphasizing that same sublime truth, Jude speaks of Christ as “Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy” (Jude 24). We do not begin in the Spirit to be perfected by the flesh (Gal. 3:3).

Believers will often fall into sin, but their sin is not more powerful than God’s grace. They are the very sins for which Jesus paid the penalty. If no sin a person commits before salvation is too great for Christ’s atoning death to cover, surely no sin he commits after salvation is too great to be covered. Later in this same chapter the apostle declares, “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” (Rom. 5:10). If a dying Savior could bring us to God’s grace, surely a living Savior can keep us in His grace. Still later in the chapter Paul affirms the truth again: “The Law came in that the transgression might increase,” he writes; “but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom. 5:20). Standing in grace, we are in the sphere of constant forgiveness.

Bible expositor Arthur Pink wrote graphically, “It is utterly and absolutely impossible that the sentence of the divine Judge should ever be revoked or reversed. Sooner shall the lightnings of omnipotence shiver the Rock of Ages than those sheltering in Him again be brought under condemnation” (The Doctrines of Election and Justification [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1974], pp. 247–48).

To Timothy, his beloved son in the faith, Paul asserted with the utmost confidence: “I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day” (2 Tim. 1:12). With equal certainty he wrote: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us” (Rom. 8:31–34).

If God sovereignly declares those who believe in His Son to be forever just, who can overturn that verdict? What higher court can overrule that divine acquittal? There is, of course, no higher court and no greater judge. Jesus Christ is the divine judge of all mankind, and He gives His true disciples the unspeakably comforting promise that “all that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).

It is not so that believers may be free to sin that their salvation is secured. The very purpose and effect of salvation is to free men from sin, not to free them to do it. “Having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness,” Paul reminds the Roman believers later in this letter (Rom. 6:18). A professing Christian who persistently and consistently sins proves that he does not belong to the Lord. As the apostle John said of certain apostates in the early church, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). Later in that epistle John wrote: “No one who is born of God practices sin …. Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God” (3:9–10). The true believer will begin, from salvation on, a new pattern of righteousness springing from his new nature which hates sin and loves God. He will not be perfect, but his desires will be different and so will his patterns of behavior. That new development toward holiness is God’s work as we shall see in coming chapters.

Scripture repeatedly details the sinfulness, frailty, and weakness of men, including believers, and a sensible and honest person can see those self-evident truths for himself. Therefore, only self-delusion can lead a Christian to believe that, in his own weakness and imperfection, he can preserve the great gift of spiritual life that could only be bought by the precious, sinless blood of God’s own Son.

For a believer to doubt his security is to bring into question both God’s integrity and His power. It is also to add the merit of men’s work to the gracious, unmerited work of God. It is to add self-trust to trust in our Lord, because if salvation can be lost by anything that we can or cannot do, our ultimate trust obviously must be in ourselves rather than in God.

The saintly Scottish poet and preacher Horatius Bonar penned these beautiful lines in a hymn entitled “The Sin-Bearer” (Hymns of Faith and Hope [London: James Nisbett, 1872], pp. 100–102):

THE BELIEVER’S HOPE OF GLORY

and we exult in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, (5:2b-5a)

A third link in the unbreakable chain that eternally binds believers to Christ and gives them reason to exult is their hope of the glory of God. Since every aspect of it is solely the work of God, salvation cannot possibly be lost. And the end of that marvelous divine work is the ultimate glorification of every believer in Jesus Christ. Those “whom [God] foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:29–30).

As the apostle has already established, salvation is anchored in the past because Christ has made peace with God for all those who trust in Him (5:1). It is anchored in the present because, by Christ’s continual intercession (Heb. 7:25), every believer now stands securely in God’s grace (v. 2a). Next he proclaims that salvation is also anchored in the future, because God gives every one of His children the unchangeable promise that one day they will be clothed with the glory of His own Son.

Kauchaomai (exult) denotes jubilation and rejoicing. The Christian has no reason to fear the future and every reason to rejoice in it, because he has the divinely-secured hope that his ultimate destiny is to share in the very glory of God. Jesus Christ guarantees the believer’s hope because He Himself is our hope (1 Tim. 1:1). In His beautiful high priestly prayer, Jesus said to His heavenly Father, “And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one” (John 17:22). A believer does not earn his future glory in heaven but will receive it from God’s gracious hand, just as he received redemption when he first trusted in Christ and sanctification since.

You know “that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers,” Peter reminds us, “but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Pet. 1:18–21; cf. Col. 3:4; Heb. 2:10). And when our own perishable and mortal bodies one day are raised imperishable and immortal (1 Cor. 15:53–54), they will be fit to receive and to display God’s divine glory. “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:20–21).

The Holy Spirit is also Himself a guarantee of the believer’s security. “In Him [Christ], you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory” (Eph. 1:13–14).

As Paul explains to the Corinthian believers, our glorification begins, in part, even in our present earthly life: “But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).

Because our human understanding is so imperfect, it is impossible for us to comprehend the wonder and magnitude of the glory of God. Nevertheless, we have the Lord’s own assurance that one day we not only will behold His divine glory but will partake of it. The glory of His own divine holiness and majestic perfection will radiate in us and through us for all eternity. We will share God’s own glory because we are “predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29; cf. 1 Cor. 2:7). God has so predestined us, Paul explains later in the epistle, “in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory” (Rom. 9:23). In other words, God’s own glory is manifested through His grace, through His sharing His divine glory with those who deserve only destruction (v. 22).

Although their security rests entirely in the finished work of Christ and the sustaining power of Christ’s Spirit, a Christian’s outward living will testify to his inward spiritual life. Obedience to the Lord does not preserve salvation, but it is an evidence of it. Our perseverance in the faith does not maintain our salvation, but it is an outward proof of it. Those who renounce Christ—whether by heretical words or by persistent ungodly living—prove they never belonged to Him in the first place (see 1 John 2:19).

The writer of Hebrews declares that “Christ was faithful as a Son over His house whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end.” A few verses later he adds, “For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end” (Heb. 3:6, 14). He is not saying that our spiritual security rests in our own ability to hold fast to Christ but that our God-given ability to hold fast is evidence that we belong to Christ. It is only His holding us fast that enables us to hold Him fast. The two sides of Christian perseverance are this: from the divine perspective, God holds believers; from the human perspective, they hold on to Him, because of the strength His Holy Spirit provides.

In addition to exulting in our certain hope of the glory of God, we also exult in our tribulations. This is because they contribute to a present blessing and ultimate glory. Thlipsis (tribulations) has the underlying meaning of being under pressure and was used of squeezing olives in a press in order to extract the oil and of squeezing grapes to extract the juice.

The tribulations of which Paul is speaking are not the troubles that are common to all mankind but the troubles that Christians suffer for the sake of their Lord. One of the less attractive promises that Scripture gives believers is that those who are faithful can be certain of being under pressure from Satan and from the present world system that is under his control. “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,” Paul assured Timothy (2 Tim. 3:12). The last beatitude, which is as long as all the others together, contains the promise that persecution brings God’s blessing (see Matt. 5:10–12). Perhaps because that beatitude is humanly so unappealing, it is given twice (vv. 10, 11) and is accompanied by the admonition to “rejoice, and be glad” when persecution comes (v. 12).

Persecution for Christ’s sake in this life is itself an earnest or guarantee of our future glory. “For momentary, light affliction,” Paul assures us, “is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17). Persecution for Christ’s sake is evidence that we are living Christlike lives. “Remember the word that I said to you,” Jesus reminded His disciples, “‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20; cf. Matt. 10:24–25).

“Let those also who suffer according to the will of God,” says Peter, “entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right” (1 Pet. 4:19). Christians have no reason to despair in this present life, no matter how great their suffering may be or how hopeless their plight may appear from the human perspective. We should always be able to say with Paul’s unreserved confidence: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). As the apostle continues to reveal, even “the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God…. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body” (vv. 21, 23).

Christians not only should rejoice in tribulations because those hardships are evidence of faithful living which is blessed and rewarded, but also because of the spiritual benefits they produce. Tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint. Our afflictions for Christ’s sake produce ever-increasing blessings. It should not seem strange, then, that God’s children are destined for affliction in this life (1 Thess. 3:3).

Verses 3–5a of Romans 5 are a synopsis of Christian maturity and sanctification, which, as every other aspect of salvation, is accomplished by God’s gracious power. In his beautiful benediction at the end of his first letter to Thessalonica, Paul prays, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass” (1 Thess. 5:23–24).

Hupomonē (perseverance) is often translated “patience,” as it is in the King James Version. It also carries the idea of endurance, the ability to continue working in the face of strong opposition and great obstacles.

Perseverance, in turn, produces proven character. The Greek term (dokime) translated proven character simply means “proof,” which in the present context obviously refers to Christian character. The term was used of testing precious metals such as silver and gold to demonstrate their purity. When Christians experience tribulations that demand perseverance, that perseverance, in turn, produces in them proven spiritual character. Just as a metalsmith uses intense heat to melt silver and gold in order to cleanse them of physical impurities, so does God use tribulations to cleanse His children of spiritual impurities. “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial,” James assures believers; “for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him” (James 1:12).

Coming full circle, as it were, Paul says that godly hope produces godly hope. Our “hope of the glory of God” (v. 2) is increased and strengthened by our heavenly Father through the process of tribulation, perseverance, and proven character, the end product of which is hope that does not disappoint. The more a believer pursues holiness, the more he is persecuted and troubled and the greater will be his hope as he is sustained through it all by God’s powerful grace.

THE BELIEVER’S POSSESSION OF DIVINE LOVE

because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (5:5b-8)

A fourth marvelous link in the unbreakable chain that eternally binds believers to Christ is their possession of the divine love of God, which has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. When a person receives salvation through Jesus Christ, he enters a spiritual love relationship with God that lasts throughout all eternity.

As the apostle makes unambiguous in verse 8, love of God does not here refer to our love for God but to His love for us. The most overwhelming truth of the gospel is that God loved sinful, fallen, rebellious mankind, so much “that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). And as the apostle proclaims in verse 9 of this present chapter, if God loved us with so great a love before we were saved, when we were still His enemies, how much more does He love us now.

As if that were not enough, God even graciously imparts His love to us. For those who accept His offer of salvation, God takes His indescribable and undeserved love and pours it out within the hearts of those who believe, through His own Holy Spirit who he gives to them. Taking the truth of eternal security out of the objective area of the mind, Paul now reveals that, in Christ, we are also given subjective evidence of permanent salvation, evidence that God Himself implants within our deepest being, in that we love the One who first loved us (1 John 4:7–10; cf. 1 Cor. 16:22).

Poured out refers to lavish outpouring to the point of overflowing. Our heavenly Father does not proffer His love in measured drops but in immeasurable torrents. The very fact that God gives His Holy Spirit to indwell believers is itself a marvelous testimony to His love for us, because He would hardly indwell those whom He did not love. And it is only because of the indwelling Spirit that His children are able to truly love Him. Speaking to His disciples about the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:38; cf. v. 39). Those rivers of blessing can flow out of believers only because of the divine rivers of blessing, including the blessing of divine love, that God has poured into them.

In the same way, our spiritual security is not in our ability to live godly but in the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit to make us godly. Only God can make men godly, and the Spirit’s leading us into godliness is one of the great evidences of salvation. “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God,” Paul declares, “these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:14).

With the longing to love, even the genuine desire to be godly is produced by the Holy Spirit. Whenever we sincerely aspire to righteous living, whenever we have an earnest desire to pray, whenever we yearn to study God’s Word, whenever we long to worship the Lord Jesus Christ with all our hearts, we know we are being led by the Holy Spirit. Whenever we experience the awesome awareness that God is indeed our heavenly Father, it is “the Spirit Himself [who] bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:16–17). The natural man has no such desires or experiences, and even Christians would not have them apart from being indwelt and led by the Holy Spirit.

Because acknowledging His promises with the mind does not necessarily bring personal confidence to the heart, God makes provision for the emotional encouragement as well as the mental enlightenment of His children. When the Lord is given free reign in our lives, the Holy Spirit will bear fruit in and through us, the first fruit of which is love (Gal. 5:22). But when we grieve Him through our disobedience (Eph. 4:30), He cannot produce what He intends. Therefore, when we live in disobedience, we not only will not feel loving toward God but will not feel His love for us.

With perhaps that truth in mind, Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers: “For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God” (Eph. 3:14–19). The Holy Spirit strengthens the inner man and enables him “to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.” By the gracious work of the Spirit within us, our hearts are able to experience a depth of love that our minds are unable to grasp, “the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.”

Knowing that his readers would want to know more about the quality and character of the divine love that filled them, Paul reminds them of the greatest manifestation of God’s love in all history, perhaps in all eternity: For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. While men were utterly helpless to bring themselves to God, He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us, notwithstanding the fact that we were ungodly and completely unworthy of His love. When we were powerless to escape from our sin, powerless to escape death, powerless to resist Satan, and powerless to please Him in any way, God amazingly sent His Son to die on our behalf.

Natural human love is almost invariably based on the attractiveness of the object of love, and we are inclined to love people who love us. Consequently, we tend to attribute that same kind of love to God. We think that His love for us is dependent on how good we are or on how much we love Him. But as Jesus pointed out, even traitorous tax collectors were inclined to love those who loved them (Matt. 5:46). And as theologian Charles Hodge observed, “If [God] loved us because we loved him, he would love us only so long as we love him, and on that condition; and then our salvation would depend on the constancy of our treacherous hearts. But as God loved us as sinners, as Christ died for us as ungodly, our salvation depends, as the apostle argues, not on our loveliness, but on the constancy of the love of God” (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974 reprint], pp. 136–37).

God’s immense love is supremely demonstrated by Christ’s dying for the ungodly, for totally unrighteous, undeserving, and unlovable mankind. In the human realm, by contrast, Paul observes that one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. Paul is not contrasting a righteous man with a good man, but is simply using those terms synonymously. His point is that it is uncommon for a person to sacrifice his own life in order to save the life even of someone of high character. Still fewer people are inclined to give their lives to save a person they know to be a wicked scoundrel. But God was so inclined, and in that is our security and assurance. Saved, we can never be as wretched as we were before salvation—and He loved us totally then.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That sort of selfless, undeserved love is completely beyond human comprehension. Yet that is the love that the just and infinitely holy God had toward us even while we were yet sinners. The God who hates every sinful thought and every sinful deed nevertheless loves the sinners who think and do those things, even while they are still hopelessly enmeshed in their sin. Even when men openly hate God and do not have the least desire to give up their sin, they are still the objects of God’s redeeming love as long as they live. Only at death does an unbeliever cease to be loved by God. After that, he is eternally beyond the pale of God’s love and is destined irrevocably for His wrath. In Christ, we are forever linked to God by His love, demonstrated in (positive) blessings and (negative) mercy.

THE BELIEVER’S CERTAINTY OF DELIVERANCE

Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 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.

(5:9–10)

As if the first four were not enough to completely overwhelm us with assurance, there is a fifth link in the unbreakable chain that eternally binds believers to Christ, which is their certainty of deliverance from God’s judgment.

The phrase much more then indicates that what follows is even more overwhelming and significant than what has preceded, astounding and wonderful as that is. Having been justified by His blood refers to the initial aspect of salvation, which for believers is past. In light of the fact that we already have been justified, Paul is saying, we are assured of being saved from the wrath of God through Him, that is, through Christ. Because we are now identified with Christ and are adopted as God’s children through Him, we are no longer “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). As part of His atoning work, Jesus delivered us “from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10; cf. 5:9), because on the cross He took upon Himself the penalty and suffered the wrath that we deserve.

Paul’s next thought is closely related to the previous one (v. 9) and is the central message of this passage: 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. If God had the power and the will to redeem us in the first place, how much more, does He have the power and the will to keep us redeemed? In other words, if God brought us to Himself through the death of His Son when we were His enemies, how much more, now that we are His reconciled children, will He keep us saved by the life of His Son? If the dying Savior reconciled us to God, surely the living Savior can and will keep us reconciled.

The thrust of this truth for believers is that our Savior not only delivered us from sin and its judgment, but also delivers us from uncertainty and doubt about that deliverance. If God has already made sure our rescue from sin, death, and future judgment, how could our present spiritual life possibly be in jeopardy? How can a Christian, whose past and future salvation are secured by God, be insecure during the time between? If sin was no barrier to the beginning of our redemption, how can it become a barrier to its completion? If sin in the greatest degree could not prevent our becoming reconciled, how can sin in lesser degree prevent our staying reconciled? If God’s grace covers the sins even of His enemies, how much more does it cover the sins of His children?

Paul here reasons from the greater to the lesser. It is a greater work of God to bring sinners to grace than to bring saints to glory, because sin is further from grace than grace is from glory.

Every blessing a Christian has comes from Christ. Through Him we have peace with God (Rom. 5:1), grace and the hope of glory (v. 2), perseverance, proven character, and hope (vv. 3–4), God’s love poured into our hearts by His Spirit, who is Himself the Savior’s gift to us (v. 5), deliverance from sin by His atoning death (vv. 6–8), deliverance from God’s wrath (v. 9), reconciliation with God the Father (v. 10a), and preservation during this present life (v. 10b).

THE BELIEVER’S JOY IN GOD

And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. (5:11)

A sixth and final link in the unbreakable chain that eternally binds believers to Christ is their joy, their great exultation, in God. This may not be the most important or the most profound evidence of our security in Christ, but it is perhaps the most beautiful. And although this divine evidence is subjective, it is none the less real. Why do we exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ who gave us access to Him? Because from Him we received the reconciliation. He gave it as a gift to us.

The abundant joy that God gives His children through the Lord Jesus Christ includes grateful joy in their salvation and simply in who God is.

Surely one of the reasons David was a man after God’s own heart was his rejoicing in the Lord for the Lord’s own sake. “O magnify the Lord with me,” he declared, “and let us exalt His name together” (Ps. 34:3). Other psalmists echoed that same joy. One wrote, “For our heart rejoices in Him, because we trust in His holy name” (Ps. 33:21), and another, “Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and upon the lyre I shall praise Thee, O God, my God” (Ps. 43:4).

Perhaps nowhere outside of Scripture has this deepest level of Christian joy been expressed more beautifully than in the following stanzas from Charles Wesley’s magnificent hymn “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing.”

Where these six links bind the believer to the Lord, there is true eternal salvation and every reason for full assurance of it.