“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1
“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand…” Romans 5:2
Who has access to God? According to the world we all do. Modern America would have you believe that the Lord is no more than a cosmic Santa. This is, of course, grossly unbiblical.
Let’s be clear: Paul has put forth an airtight case against sin. In the previous chapters of Romans he’s detailed the dreadful condition that man has descended to through the moral madness that is rebellion against God. He’s defined what sin is – the exchanging the truth about God for a lie…the Great Exchange. The truth about God is so obvious through the unavoidable facts of creation, that none of us has an excuse. Our unbelief is, therefore, a willful suppression of the obvious so that we can live the con.
The devastating downward spiral that follows is inevitable because to reject the truth about God doesn’t, in fact, change the truth. Thus, sin places us on a course contrary to reality. We live as our own gods. We worship varied things – money, power, fame, sex, the state…you name it. Sexual sin and false worship (idolatry) mark the downward path.
But then we learn what God has done about this. By sending His own Son for sin, God condemned sin in the flesh. Starting from mid-way through Romans (3:21) and continuing through chapter 4 we learn that we are saved by faith, not works. Man’s religion is worth nothing at all. No more than a child can bring in a flower he picked along the side of a road to pay for something in a store does man have the currency of righteousness to save himself. Romans 2 details the sham of human works. Paul hammers the point home because it needs to be hammered home.
We can’t save ourselves.
But now we find ourselves in a new place – a remarkable place. Something incredible has happened and Paul is going to take the rest of the book to explain it (especially through Romans 8:39). We were told in Romans 1 that “we know…” several times. Basic knowledge about God and our responsibility to worship and thank Him are plain to all. Romans is stunning to us precisely because we’ve been suppressing the truth. Man can be understood only in this context. Man is the truth denier and suppressor. This fact has important ramifications.
First, it means that we convince ourselves of the lie of human effort toward salvation. Paul has, as we’ve said, obliterated this. Human religions and philosophy are like performing surgery on a dead man. Remember this elemental fact of life and the gospel is clear.
Second, this fact explains our hostility to the gospel. We find all manner of human doctrines intriguing, even fascinating. The gospel alone is offensive because it brings the truth about what we’re suppressing (sin) to the table. It explains why “all religions are the same” in that they’re works based. Only in Christ do we have salvation by faith alone. Why should sinners be so offended by an offer of a free gift if not for the fact that it shatters their pretense of righteousness?
Third, this pattern of suppression means that we have no clue how ugly and deadly sin is. To spend a lifetime ignoring God, actively shutting out His general revelation in nature (Romans 1) and in our consciences (Romans 2) leads us to a place where our hearts are seared. Unless the Holy Spirit is given as a gift, no one will understand. They’re all turned aside.
There’s also another thing. We’re awaked from the dead, as it were, and in a state of confusion. The Christian life that awaits us is what Paul is going to explain over the coming chapters. And these things must be studied and prayed over for the simple reason that our previous condition was so bad. We have no frame of reference unless we’re told. We’re like a man who was in a coma for many years suddenly awakened. Imagine the shock of someone stepping out the door today who had last experienced life in the year 1999. He would have no idea about many things. Others he did know would have changed so much that he’d be nearly paralyzed with amazement. (The coma is a very weak analogy, of course, in that we’re literally dead in sin).
Well, this is all small stuff compared to what Paul is saying to us. To say that we have access to God is mind-blowing.
Like we said, modern life thinks this access is no big thing because they have a humanistic idea in their head. But access to the holy God is the ultimate thing about life and no one who is in sin can possibly be in fellowship with Him. To say, therefore, that we have peace with God, and access to Him, is to say that the war with Him is over. We did not negotiate the terms of the treaty. He conquered sin on the cross. We can’t negotiate the terms anymore than the Nazis could have negotiated with the Allies. The Christian faith is the unconditional surrender of sinners to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And His terms are amazing. They are that the one who has faith in Jesus is declared righteous. By faith, God imputes the righteousness of His Son to us and sees us ever thereafter in that covenant relationship, covered by grace. A sinner approaching God without Christ is like a Nazi presenting terms to Eisenhower. There is no peace with God, nor access to Him, outside of faith in Christ. We are either in Christ or dead in our sin. We either come to Him in Jesus’ name, agreeing completely to His terms, or we come for war.
The doctrine of access to God is amazing. And humbling. If sinners have access to Him outside of Christ, He is a slave to man. He’s a cosmic bellhop. There are more passages of Scripture where God promises not to answer prayers than where He says He will.
There are two errors we must address.
First, Jesus is not “a” way to God; He is the way. It’s a doctrine of the Devil to turn people to any other interpretation. Christ is our peace and our access. It’s Christ alone.
Many false religions have this in common: they take the focus off of Christ as our peace with and access to the Father. Catholics believe that God is distant due to our sin. How could Jesus resist His mother, they reason? Jesus won’t resist His mother, and the Father won’t resist His Son. So, they pray to Mary or to departed loved ones or various saints. But Scripture tells us right here that we have access in addition to peace. Because of our brokenness we muddy the waters.
Many have strained relationships to which they project onto their own understanding of the believers with God. They slip, they stumble, they backslide and they run back to that bush in Genesis, hiding from God. In ignorance and fear, they forget this doctrine. Would Jesus Christ have to go through Mary to speak with the Father? Where is that in Scripture? We are sons of God in Christ. How is that the son needs an intermediary with his own earthly father?
In Matthew 12:47, after His family has approached Him, perhaps to smooth things over (Jesus had really gotten into it with the religious authorities), He eviscerates the notion that He can be approached based on earthly ties. The grace of God is pure unmerited grace. We must be ever vigilant to remind ourselves that we have peace with God through faith alone lest the Enemy convince us to put false hopes in between.
We go to Jesus Christ alone. We are sons of the living God through faith alone. No trinket, no relic, no special prayer, no special knowledge, or any deceased relative, saint, or angel can come between us. We are sons of God.
Second, and this is also an issue of recovering sinners, still groggy from coming out of the tomb.
Alexander Maclaren said this about our access into the grace of God:
“I said that the Apostle was using a metaphor here regarding the grace as being an ample space into which a man was admitted, or we may say that he is thinking of it as a great treasure house. We have the right of entrance there where, on every side as it were, lie ingots of uncoined gold, and masses of treasure, and we may have just as much of the wealth of God we shall possess. We have access to the treasure house; and this permit is put into our hands. The size of our sack that the man brought in the old story determined the amount of wealth that he carried away. Some of you bring very tiny baskets and expect little and desire little; you get no more than you desired and expected.”
He goes on:
“That wealth, the fullness of God, takes the shape of, as well as is determined in its measure by, the magnitude of the vessel into which it is put. It is multiform, and we get whatever we desire, and whatever either our characters or our circumstances require. The one gift assumes all forms, just as water poured in a vase takes the shape of the vase into which it is poured. The same gift unfolds itself in an infinite variety of manners, according to the needs of the man to whom it is given; just as the writer’s pen, the carpenter’s hammer, the farmer’s ploughshare, are all made out of the same metal. So, God’s grace comes to you in a different shape from that in which it comes to me, according to our different callings and needs, as fixed by our circumstances, our duties, our sorrows, our temptations.”
“So, brethren, how shameful it is that, having the possibility of so much, we should have the actuality of so little…there are a great many Christian people who ought to be ashamed of their moderation. They have gone into the treasure house; socks of jewels, jars of gold on all sides of them – and they have been content to come away with some poor little coin, when they might have been rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Brethren, you have access to the fullness of God. Whose fault is it if you are empty?”
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