Outline Transcript:
Hi everyone,
I just wanted to give you a quick video for Good Friday and Easter.
A little more than six years ago, before COVID was breaking out, I was in another country where our seminary, ABTS, has a site, and I was teaching a class. My students raised their hands and said, “Could you explain to us the love of God?” I had just been talking about the grace of God and the love of God.
They said, “In our language, in our Bible translation, when you say, ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,’ we know it must mean something more than what our version translates. The closest thing to love that we have is something like indulging or spoiling. We know that’s probably not what it means, but we don’t have a really good word to use for love. Could you explain the love of God for us?”
So I had to slow down my lectures, and I basically scrapped most of the rest of that day and part of the next day. I turned their attention to Romans 5.
That’s actually where I was teaching my students again a few weeks ago, this time in Thailand. In that class, I had students from Korea, China, Thailand, the Philippines, America, Bangladesh, India, and maybe another country or two. Again, we were in Romans 5, talking through the grace and the love of God.
I want to share a little bit from Romans 5 with you and show you how I taught the passage. This was a two-hour lecture, and I’m going to try to do it in about ten minutes, so I’m just going to give you a few highlights.
One of the things I wanted to communicate was that, of course, I was doing this in simple English. I can’t do it in Chinese or Thai, and I don’t know the languages of some of the other students, like Korean or Indonesian. So you have to do it in very simple terms and easy sentence structures.
But the fact is, a lot of these students are better grammar students in English than many of us who are native English speakers, because they’ve had to study grammar in order to become proficient enough to be seminary students. So I know they understand grammar to some extent.
Romans 5 and the Grammar of the Gospel
I’ve got my ESV here, and I’m just going to read through a portion of the first eight verses of Romans 5 and make a few simple comments and observations.
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I wanted to communicate to them that the intricacies, the texture, of gospel news and gospel proclamation are often found in the verbs and even in the prepositions. A lot of times, if you’ve ever studied Greek or really done anything with grammar in general, the base meaning is in the verbs, and then the sentence builds out around them. That’s true in Greek here.
“Have been justified” is a truth statement. It’s not a command. It’s not a question. It is something that has been done. It refers to something that happened in the past, a decisive event with ongoing consequences.
And it’s in the passive voice. It doesn’t say we have justified ourselves. No, it says we have been justified. So it is something done to us, outside of us, external to us, independent of us. God Himself did this to us.
Then you have the next phrase: “we have peace with God.” That is present tense. It is ongoing. It is not just a comment of potentiality. It is a comment of surety, of assurance. We have peace with God.
In the class, the question came up: “What if we don’t have peace with God? How do we know what kind of decisions to make? What do we need to do to get peace with God again?”
The point I was making was this: even when we do sin and step out of fellowship with the Lord, which we are going to do every day, since we have been justified by faith in the past, something done to us with ongoing and unbreakable consequences, we have peace with God. It cannot be broken.
And we have it through faith in Christ, in union with Christ, through the instrument of faith.
A lot of people work toward assurance by trying to do better or be good enough to impress God, please God, or make God happy with them so that they can enjoy some inner sense of peace. But this text blows that out of the water, because it points to a decisive event that has been enacted upon us in the past, and that event produces, ensures, and secures peace with God.
God Shows His Love for Us
Let me skip down to verse 8. Maybe in another setting I’ll go through this passage more slowly, but for this video, and just to encourage you, listen to verse 8:
“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
The NASB says:
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Truly, the question of assurance is at the heart of the Reformation. The Reformation wasn’t just recovering the centrality of Scripture, though it was that. It wasn’t just recovering the centrality of the doctrine of faith alone, sola fide, though it was that too. At the heart of the Reformation was the question: How do I know I’m right with God?
That is a question of assurance.
And when you ask that question, you have to ask questions of source and authority. How do you know that? What is your source? Where did you get it from?
The Reformation went back to the Scriptures, back to the sources, and found there that our assurance is in the objective love of God for us.
So if you are struggling, trying to do enough for God so that you can experience God’s love for you, that is a fool’s errand. You can never do enough for God in order to receive the love of God, because God has done it for you.
We were condemned and corrupt in Adam. We were both unable and unwilling to come to God. But God demonstrates, God shows, His love.
So if you want to know today how God loves you, look to the cross. Look to the historical record of what Christ has done for us, and what was verified three days later in the resurrection. God’s love is demonstrated today by remembering the historical event of the gospel with all its theological truths and implications.
That is God’s love for us today. That is what He shows us today.
His Own Love Toward Us
Notice that Paul says, in the NASB, “His own love.” That’s significant. It’s not abstract. It’s not just some abstract virtue that God happens to be good at. It is His own love. It comes from who He is.
And then notice the prepositions.
The ESV says “for us.” The NASB says “toward us.” It is a preposition of relation. It can also be translated “in regard to” or “on behalf of.” It is particular.
Think of it this way: an athlete might show his greatness by scoring touchdowns or making baskets in a championship game. He is displaying greatness for people to see. But that is not what this text means. It is not saying that God is merely putting love on display so that we can observe it from a distance.
There is a purpose to His love, a goal to His love, and it is directed toward people.
God is glorified, and God loves to save bad people.
There is an intentionality to the love of God. You can see it in the words “for” and “toward.” So God demonstrates His love for you in that while you were still sinning, Christ died for you.
That is the demonstration not only of God’s love, but of His particular redemption, His specific love for you. Christ died for bad people.
It was not just to create a potential that sinners might come to Him someday. There was an intentionality, not merely a potentiality, in the love of God for each of you who have received the grace of God through faith in Christ by His blood.
Encouragement for Easter Week
So this Easter week, be encouraged.
Today, not just on Good Friday, but even today, and next week, and the week after, and in the years to come, God shows His love for you in that while you were dead in sins and trespasses, while you were condemned in Adam, corrupt by Adam’s nature, unable and unwilling to come to God as one of His enemies, God reconciled you to Himself.
God stepped down. He condescended and reached for you out of the grave. He made one of His rebellious enemies an adopted son who now has the privilege of sitting at the table with the King and enjoying His presence forever.
And God did this for you.
That is why Paul can say in Romans 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
It is not only that God is with us, though that is true. He is Emmanuel. But there is a particularity, an intentionality, to God’s love for us in the cross and in the resurrection.
And He loves you.
He loves you so much, and He shows you that love every day by reminding you of the cross, of what Christ did on that cross, and of what Christ did in the resurrection. He pours His love out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
God bless you, and have a great, worshipful Resurrection Sunday.