As we sit in our pews this morning, there are approximately 144,000 full-time Protestant missionaries around the world. One hundred and forty-four thousand individuals who have dedicated their lives to going across this globe and sharing the message of Christianity. They go into different villages, different continents, different countries. Sometimes they stay right here in the United States, because, folks, we have a mission field right around us. These missionaries do different work. Some are involved in Bible translation into the languages of the world. Some are involved in evangelism and preaching. Some are involved in teaching. Some just go and build houses for people who do not have shelter. But no matter what kind of work they engage in, their mission is largely the same: to go to a people who need the answer to one question, and to provide that answer. That question is: What is Christianity actually about?
It has often been said that America is a Christian nation, or that it was founded upon Christian values. I don’t know that I would necessarily call it a Christian nation anymore. In fact, many people are adopting the term “post-Christian nation.” But if you go almost anywhere in the United States and ask somebody, “Have you heard of Christianity?” they will probably tell you yes. Ask them what Christianity is about, and you are going to get a lot of different answers.
I have asked this question of people personally, and I love asking it because I like to hear the different responses. One person told me, “Well, it’s about love. It’s about loving people and being kind to people, taking care of others and showing them love.” Another said, “I assume it’s about being a good person, doing good deeds, and caring for the world and the people around you.” Some people believe Christianity is like most religions: a set of rituals, routines, and structured habits we involve ourselves in to know a deity. But none of these really answers the question.
Making the Main Thing the Main Thing
For those of us who have spent our lives around church, our first thought when we hear that question is probably, Yeah, I’ve got that one down. We can move on now. But to be honest with you, I don’t know that Christians across this nation and across the globe would all give the same answer. Because we are human, we have a tendency to focus on and prioritize the things that matter to us, and different groups across the Christian world get fixated on different aspects of the faith. If we are not careful, we stop making the main thing the main thing. We get caught up in fussing and fighting and drawing battle lines over secondary issues, when the main thing has never stopped being the main thing.
I truly believe this is a question all of us need to revisit regularly. If you are a believer, do not assume your answer would align with everybody’s. And if you are not a Christian, maybe you have wondered what the answer is. Maybe you have been around Christians, maybe you have some ideas of what Christianity is, but you are looking for the full answer. Wherever you are this morning, I want to give you a biblical answer.
I am not going to pretend I have the only perfect answer. There are many Scriptures I could have gone to that would have brought us to a good one. But I believe a proper answer can be found in our text in Romans 5, and that it is summed up in one word in verse one.
Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
What Does It Mean to Be Justified?
“Justified” is not an English word we use frequently in modern life. It means to be declared righteous, to be declared right. Someone else looks at you and makes the judgment that you are in good standing with the powers that be. More importantly for our purposes, to be justified means you are in good standing with God.
But to be declared righteous requires that at one time we were unrighteous. If I am already righteous, nobody has to declare me righteous. If I am just, I do not have to be justified. So for me to be justified, there had to be a point in my life where, if I had stood before God and given an answer for the life I lived, His response would have been: guilty.
You may say, “Justin, that’s a bold claim. You don’t even know me.” I can make it because of Romans 3:23:
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.
Every single one of us, in our own way, has made ourselves guilty before God. We all have pet sins. We all have things we don’t struggle with and things we struggle with significantly. I have never wrestled with the temptation to murder someone. But there are sins I have wrestled with, and there are sins I have willingly and actively engaged in, thereby making myself guilty before God.
The Judge, and the Problem We Share With Adam
We need to understand who is doing the judging. The one declaring people righteous or unrighteous is a perfect, holy, and righteous Being. He is the only one actually worthy to make that judgment, because He Himself is perfect, and He Himself brought everything we see into being. Genesis 1:1 takes us all the way back to the beginning:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
That is a summary statement. Everything you see was created by Him. If He made it, He owns it, and if He owns it, He gets to set the rules for how it works. In the garden He created one man and one woman and put them in this world to be His representatives. They were to fill the world with the image of God, take care of His creation, serve His creation, and glorify God with their lives.
But in Genesis 3 we are told that, rather than obeying the rules of the One who made this world, they chose to set their own rules, because they felt they knew better than the God who created them. Once they did, they started a spiral that the rest of humanity has been falling down ever since. And your problem today is the exact same problem Adam and Eve had back in the garden. You want to do things your way and still get God’s blessing. That’s my problem too. I wouldn’t say I think I have a better mind than God. I don’t think any of us would make that claim. But that is how we live when we say, “God, I don’t like your rules. I’m going to create my rules and do things my way.” We are saying, I know better than You, God.
Because God is righteous, when He looks at our disobedience and our rebellion, He has no choice but to say guilty. That is the verdict that falls on our lives if we do not find a solution. And every single one of us, myself included, if we were to end our lives right now and enter the presence of the Creator, and He were to ask, “Why should I let you into eternity?” could not find an answer good enough in ourselves. We are unjust. We are unrighteous. We are guilty before a perfect God.
Hang with me. I’m going somewhere. There is an answer to the problem.
Every Religion Is Trying to Fix the Broken
This is the predicament the world finds itself in. We look around and see so many different religions and ways of belief, and they are all trying to solve the same problem. At the end of the day, we all know something is not right. Nobody has to tell us something is broken and needs to be fixed. That is where all these religions developed from. They are trying to answer the same question: How do I fix the broken? How do I relieve my guilt, my conscience that keeps me up at night, the mistakes I keep making even though I do not want to make them? People turn to so many different paths to answer that question.
Here is what makes Christianity unique, and here is what Christianity is all about. Look back at your text; these are God’s words, not mine: “Therefore, being justified by faith.” In the first four chapters of Romans, Paul works to convince everyone how guilty they are. I don’t have time to cover all of that this morning, but that was his mission. Then in chapter 5, verse 1, he says, therefore, we are being justified, made right. We were not right. We did not have a right standing with God. But something happened that declared us right before Him. If you are a human being with breath in your lungs, that should make your ears perk up. What is the answer for the broken? By faith.
Justified by Faith
Faith means belief. It means trust. Faith doesn’t require me to do anything; faith requires me to believe something. And what am I supposed to believe? That we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Bible tells us there is a holy and perfect God who owns a world full of unholy and broken people. Because He is holy and just, He has only one choice: to declare a righteous judgment on those who are unholy. Unless somebody who is also holy can take the punishment for the ones who actually deserve it.
Throughout eternity there has been one named Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He and God the Father are one. This Son was perfect, just as the Father was perfect. He never sinned. He never fell short of God’s expectations. Everything we wish we could be, He is. Before God said, “Let there be light,” the Father and the Son made a covenant with each other that one day, because His created people would rebel against Him and reject Him as the rightful King of the universe, the Son would come down into creation, take on the same flesh you and I are wearing, and die. He would pay the price you and I deserve to pay.
Jesus came down and did nothing but love people, heal people, and care for people. He pointed them to a path that would rescue them from their brokenness and told them the way that would make their lives right before God. And instead of the world saying, “Thank you for your love, your grace, your healing, your truth,” they led Him up a hill and hung Him on a cross, after they beat Him, tortured Him, spit on Him, and mocked Him relentlessly.
You may say, “Justin, it sounds like God messed up somewhere along the way.” But what happened on the cross was all part of a bigger plan. At the end of the day, it was not the Roman soldiers who put Jesus on that cross. It was God the Father. Isaiah tells us it pleased the Father to bruise Him. While Jesus hung there silently, the whole world went dark. God turned off the lights for a little while, and nobody could see what was happening in that darkness. Something far more important than what the Roman soldiers did was taking place. God filled up something with all of your sin, all of my sin, every mistake we have ever made, every wrong we have ever done, every wicked word we have ever spoken, every bad thought we have ever had, and He poured out every bit of it upon His Son.
Why would He do that? Look at verse 6:
For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
“Without strength” means we did not have the strength to make ourselves right with God. “In due time” means in the right time. Who is going to give their life for somebody righteous? Perhaps for a good man, one who does good to others, some might dare to die. But look at verse 8, here is the answer:
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
“Commendeth” is an old King James word that means reveals, and that “-eth” makes it present tense. He is currently revealing His love toward us, in that while we were still in our sin, Christ died for us. That is amazing. A perfect God was not happy with you spending eternity paying the price for your own sins, so in His love, grace, and mercy He sent His perfect Son into the world to die in our place and take the punishment we rightly deserved.
If we will simply believe that Christ is the Son of God, that He died in our place, that His sacrifice was enough to cover the cost of our sin, and trust our lives to that, then by that faith we will be made right with God. That is staggering. Some may even say it is scandalous: an innocent man dying for the guilty. But God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, and whoever believes on Him will not have to pay the price for their own sin, because your sin and my sin have already been put on Jesus Christ. We can be right with a holy God.
What Can You Expect If You Believe?
You may say, “That sounds great, but then what? If I place my faith in Jesus Christ, I’m justified. That means I’m no longer guilty. But then what?” Paul tells us here. Quickly, there are three things.
1. Peace With God
This peace is not talking about inward tranquility. In the context of this passage, it is a peace-treaty kind of peace: enemies coming together and having a relationship they did not once have. Look at verse 10:
For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
If we believe on Jesus Christ, we will not only have our sins forgiven, we will have peace with Almighty God. We no longer have to fear Him as an enemy, fight against Him, or run from Him. We can enter His presence and enjoy relationship with Him. We can talk with Him the way a friend talks with a friend and know Him on a personal level. I can have a relationship with the very God who created this world and has the power to control and lead it. At one time I was His enemy. Now I am at peace with Him.
2. Favor With God
Not only peace, but His favor and affection. Verse 2:
By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand.
We throw the word “grace” around a lot as Christians. It simply means unmerited favor. When I enter the presence of God, I am not just entering as one who is at peace; I am entering with the same kind of love and affection a father has for a child.
I like kids. I love being around them. It’s fun to watch them live in their little world and explore. They can be rambunctious sometimes, but that’s part of the package. But I have a special kind of favor for my children. I don’t buy Christmas presents for everybody’s kids, but I make sure I buy them for mine. I don’t show up to every sports event in town, but when my kids start playing sports, you better believe I’m going to be there. Why? Because I have a love for my children that drives me to extend that love to them.
When the Bible says we stand in grace, it doesn’t mean we have peace with God and can now go do whatever we want. It means God loves you the way He loves His Son Jesus Christ. He cares about you the way a father cares about a begotten child. You have the love and favor of Almighty God, and that means He will not do you harm. He is only going to do you good.
You may say, “But Justin, not everything that happens in my life is good. Sometimes I have to go through some junk, and I can’t help but wonder if God loves me.” Paul answers that a few chapters later: all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. You may go through some junk, but God has allowed it because there is a gift you are going to receive in it that you would not receive any other way. That is why Paul says in the very next verse, verse 3:
And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope.
You can be sure the God of this world loves you and cares about you, and through His Son Jesus Christ you not only receive forgiveness of sins and peace with God, you receive His unmerited favor and love.
3. Hope Through Him
What is hope? Hope is something looked forward to. You say, “I hope the Dolphins win this week.” (Sorry, Scott.) Or, “I hope the weather is good for my birthday party.” But as Christians we have a hope that goes beyond the weather and beyond our favorite sports teams. We have a hope that goes beyond this world.
That hope is that we will not only be forgiven of our sins, not only have peace with the God who was once our enemy, not only experience His undeserved love and favor in this world, but that when we take our last breath here, we have an eternity of joy, peace, and the personal presence of Almighty God that will never end. The Bible says on that day He will wipe away every tear, and sin will be thrown into the lake of fire. Death will be no more. There will be no more sorrow, no more suffering, no more pain, no more loss. You will no longer say goodbye. That is the hope of the Christian: a day is coming that is better than this one, and when it comes, it will never end. It will be the definition of perfection.
This Is What Christianity Is All About
The unifying factor in all of this is one person: Jesus Christ. That is why we are called Christians. In the Greek, the phrase meant “little Christs.” We are Christians because we have placed our faith in the Son of God, who gives us access to new life, forgives our sins, heals our brokenness, shows us love and favor, and extends the very mercies of God to our sad and sorrowful souls, giving us a hope that one day we will live forever in peace and joy. This is what Christianity is all about. There is nothing more precious in all the world than an eternal relationship with a perfect and loving God.
If you are here and you are already a believer, if you have lived as a Christian all this time, I want to call you back to what your faith is actually about. It is about Jesus Christ. It is not about your routines, your rituals, your church name, your tithes, or the good deeds you do. It is about Him and the grace we have received through Him.
And if you are here and have not experienced that life-changing encounter with the Son of God, everything I just described can be yours today. You can have that forgiveness, that love, that peace, and a hope that carries you through your hardest days. No matter who you are or where you are, Jesus Christ is the answer.
Leave a Reply