The Letter to the Romans
by Brett Burrowes

Resentment versus Rejoicing: Romans 5:1-11

In the first four chapters of Romans, Paul has said that justification before God is based only upon God’s grace and is to be received or enjoyed only through faith, since human beings are universally sinful and guilty before God. No human being has lived in such a way that they can claim to be in the right before God. So to be justified by faith means that we have given up all attempts at self-justification–that our actions and life really have not been that bad. It means we have thrown aside all attempts at rationalizing and minimizing the utter evil of our behavior, that we accept God’s verdict on our lives that we are evil and rotten to the core, and that our only hope is to throw ourselves on the mercy of God, admitting our powerlessness to save ourselves. Our only recourse is to entrust ourselves to another who has the power to save us. Of course that means we must humble ourselves and admit our powerlessness to save our-selves.

Justification by Faith (5:1)

In Romans 5-8 in general, and 5:1 11 specifically, Paul explores some of the implications of justification by faith for the Christian life. First of all, Paul says in 5:1 that since we are justified through faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. Peace here does not refer to tranquility and freedom from anxiety, a meaning which it hardly ever bears in Scripture, but to the cessation of hostility after a war–a peace treaty, if you will. God who was once hostile towards us because of our sins, has now ceased to he hostile because of the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Now it may seem surprising that God was ever hostile towards us, especially if we have been reared on the concept that God is love, but we must remember that God is not only supremely loving and merciful, but also holy in His absolute hatred of sin. God is absolutely just and He must punish sin–He cannot break His promise that the wages for sin is death (6:23). So within God there exist two apparently conflicting desires–the desire to be just and to punish sin, and the desire to be merciful and loving. But in Jesus Christ these apparently contradictory aspects of God’s character have been reconciled in complete harmony. By pouring out His wrath on His only Son, God is able to be both just and merciful towards us. His love is not mere leniency, but utterly just as well. And so because of Jesus Christ, God’s hostility toward us has been transformed into mercy. He has offered us terms of peace if only we will accept them and cease our hostilities toward God. Of course God was absolutely justified in His hostility toward us, for we have all rebelled against His will, whereas there is absolutely no justification for our hostility towards God. There is only the fact of our perverse self-will to pursue our own way in life despite the consequences.

God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense (5:2)

But despite this perverse self-will, God now offers us access into His grace, entry into His unmerited, unearned favor. Grace is God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. Grace is a free gift bestowed without regard to whether we deserve it or not. As a result of God’s grace, we can rejoice in the firm expectation of the glory of God. We must remember that hope in Scripture is not mere wishful thinking, but firm expectation based on the solid ground of God’s word and promise. Faith is the firm assurance that whatever God has declared to be so is in fact the case, whereas hope is the firm assurance that whatever God has declared will happen, will in fact hap-pen. Thus, hope is faith directed toward the future. The only basis for such faith and hope is not our present outward circumstances or feelings with regard to those circumstances, but the character of God as revealed by what He has done for humanity in the Scriptures. In other words, all we have to go on is God’s promises as recorded in Scripture. The presence of faith in our hearts is its own internal witness so that we only have the inward knowing or conviction that what God has said in the Scriptures is true. There are no external evidences or proofs that God is trustworthy. Faith has nothing else to rely on except the character of God Himself. But if we have such a faith in God, we can also be assured of our future destiny, because the same God who saves us in the present will surely save us in the future.

We are Defenseless (5:6)

Since verses six to eleven discuss our present and future salvation in greater detail, I will discuss those verses first and return to verses three to five later in the article. In verse six, Paul explains how it is that God can be so gracious towards us. He explains our position as one of absolute powerlessness. In this context, the sense is not so much of powerlessness to stop our-selves from sinning, a theme Paul deals with in chapter seven, but our powerlessness to defend ourselves before God. It is as if we stand before God the judge with no defending attorney to plead our case. In other words, we are defenseless, naked before God’s judgment, without any excuses or rationalizations to cover up what we have done. The death sentence is about to be carried out, and at just the right time, Christ assumes our place, takes the punishment that we deserve upon Himself and endures death in our place. The infinite worth of the Son of God’s self-sacrifice is sufficient to cancel out the guilt that our sins have brought upon us.

God’s Solution for Us (5:7-8)

In verses seven and eight, Paul goes on to emphasize the lengths to which God is willing to go to demonstrate His self-sacrificial love for us. He mentions how rare it is that one could find someone to die in the place of an innocent or righteous man. Imagine someone willing to take the place of a serial killer in the electric chair or take their lethal injection! Of course, our sinful pride attempts to reassert itself with the thought, "But I’m not that bad!" But if we were not that bad, Christ would have had no need to die.

Paul does concede, however, that for the public good one might be willing to die, since we have many heroic examples of people willing to die for their country. The translation "a good man" is probably incorrect here, since the word "man" is not in the original Greek and it doesn’t make sense that one would be willing to die for a good man but not a righteous man. Don’t "good" and "righteous" mean essentially the same thing? That a human being would die for the public good makes a lot more sense in this context. But even if one found someone willing to die for an innocent man or for the public good, God goes to much greater lengths than these. One might say that the innocent man or one’s country was worth dying for, but the ungodly? God demonstrates His love in His willingness to send His only son to die for us while we were yet ungodly sinners. The term ungodly doesn’t just refer to immoral behavior, but to an attitude of irreverence towards God, living life in such a way that does not take God into account. Deep down we like to think that we are basically nice people–in direct contradiction to what Scripture says about us–that we are ungodly sinners. Unless we accept the verdict of Scripture about ourselves, we can never truly accept God’s love. As long as we persist in living in denial, in the lie that we are basically good with a few flaws or besetting sins, we will never truly be able to know inwardly the love that God has for us in Christ. For God’s love is revealed precisely in saving us despite our ungodly rebellion against Him.

Our Vindication at the Final Judgment (5:9-11)

In verses nine to eleven, Paul reassures us that since we have now been justified by His blood in the present, that is, that we have been found not guilty on the basis of Christ taking our place and bearing the death penalty for us, that therefore we have nothing to fear from God’s wrath at the final judgment. Christ will save us effectively not only in the present time, but for all time. If the death of God’s own Son sufficed to reconcile us to God and to atone for our sins despite our hostility toward God, then how much more will it suffice at the final judgment. Paul says that at that time we will be saved through His life. The resurrection of Jesus was God’s vindication of Him, that is God’s declaration that He was not guilty of sin. Those who are spiritually joined to Christ share in His des-tiny and fate. Since He was vindicated by being raised from the dead, so God will vindicate or justify us at the final judgment. The resurrection or life of Christ is our assurance of our resurrection at the end of time, our assurance that we will not endure God’s wrath forever in hell. But as Paul says in verse two, it is only by faith that we gain entrance into this experience of grace, into the full enjoyment of the gift of salvation that God has provided for us.

Joy and Suffering (5:2-3)

Returning to verse two, Paul says that we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Joy must not be misunderstood as a mere feeling of happiness over which we have no control. Instead joy is an attitude that we take towards life and the circumstances God presents us with in life. Joy is a choice, not a feeling that happens to us. The joy that Christians are to experience is rooted not in the difficult situations in which we find ourselves, but in the fervent expectation of participating in the glory of God, experiencing Him face to face at a direct spirit-level. It is this expectation that gives Christians the ability to look beyond the immediate circumstances and to delay pursuing immediate gratification in the things of this world and to wait for the world to come. Our joy is not based upon whether our desires for immediate gratification are fulfilled.

But in verse three, Paul makes the surprising statement that we rejoice not only in our future hope of sharing in God’s glory, but in our present sufferings! First of all we must now that Paul considers suffering to be the normal Christian life. Otherwise how could he say that we rejoice in them? The Christian life does not consist in discovering ways to avoid suffering, but rather in changing our attitude towards them. Now Paul says that suffering produces patient endurance. How can this be? Suffering seems to produce in most people neither joy nor patient endurance, but anger, self-pity and resentment. We ask: "Why me God? Why did you allow this to happen?" Or, if we are particularly honest with ourselves, we say "Why are you doing this to me, God?" Or perhaps we find some person or institution to blame and resent for the suffering which we are enduring. But even in this case, we are ultimately resentful towards God for the circumstance that placed this per-son or institution in our life.

Our Wrong Reactions to Suffering
Why do we fall into this trap of self-pity and resentment so easily rather than rejoicing in our trials as Paul describes? at is at the root of our resentments? Resentment arises from thwarted desires or dashed expectations. We want something and we don’t get it. When we don’t get what we want or circumstances don’t turn out as planned, we get angry and begin to feel sorry for ourselves. If our life situation has taught us that we can get what we want through raging or through the manipulation of others, we do so. If, on the other hand, our experience in life has been one in which our powerlessness has been made all too clear to us, we turn the anger inward and indulge in self-pity and depression. At root, however, the two conditions are the same: our desires are thwarted by some person, institution, or circumstance, and we resent having our powerlessness shoved in our faces.

The problem comes from having the wrong desires or expectations. All desires ultimately come from one of two spirits which move and motivate all behavior, the spirit of Satan and the Holy Spirit. The word spirit in both Greek and Hebrew has the sense of a blowing wind. When applied to human beings, the word refers to what fundamentally motivates or moves a person into action. Thus, we have resentments because the wrong spirit is motivating us and expressing his desires through us, desires that are not in accord with the plan of God for the universe. Since we are not in harmony with the true and sovereign God, it is inevitable that when we are operated by the Satanic spirit that our desires will be frustrated and that we will get resentful.
 
The False Sense of Entitlement–Began In the Garden

But what is character of this Satanic spirit? Ultimately, it is the belief that we are God, and that we are entitled to have our every desire immediately fulfilled. It is not only that Satan desires something for himself, but that he believes he is entitled to immediate gratification, regardless of the consequences to others. This false sense of entitlement is what fundamentally moves Satan. He believes he can be God and is entitled to be treated as God. This is the opposite of the true divine Spirit of love manifested in the cross. Whereas Christ sacrificed Himself for us even when we were hostile towards Him, Satan will sacrifice others to pursue fulfillment of himself. Christ, on the other hand, finds His fulfillment not merely in the exercise of absolute power, but in the fulfillment and joy of others. God desires that we may experience the same joy in Him that He experiences in Himself. For Satan, and those operated by him, human persons are just means to his end of self-fulfillment at the expense of others.

These wrong desires ultimately come from a wrong perception of what is good. All human beings desire what they perceive to be good for them, what they perceive will bring them joy and fulfillment. For a desire to be wrong,
then, it must come from a wrong perception of what is good for us. This wrong perception of what is good is the work of Satan, who convinces us that what is forbidden to us by God is the sweetest form of self-fulfillment. In other words, Satan convinces us that God has withheld something good from us when He gives a command. We find this Satanic spirit at work in the garden of Eden, creating resentment in Eve before she breaks God’s command. Satan planted in her the seeds of resentment when he told her that God was trying to deprive them of something good when He commanded them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The implication was that God was less than perfect love for her, that God was afraid of the possibility that she and Adam would become His equals. Whenever we become resentful in the face of trials, then, we repeat the same sin that Eve committed in the garden: blasphemy. We attribute to God evil motives of withholding something good from us. But God has withheld nothing good from us despite the way our circumstances appear. In fact, if God sent His own Son to endure the death penalty on our behalf that we might have eternal life, why should we complain about the life we now have? We deserve far worse. It was not God who caused Adam to sin and lead humanity into their present rebellion. If we suffer now as a consequence of our sin, who are we to complain? But even if we suffer for reasons that are not our fault, we still have now grounds for complaint, for Paul says we are to rejoice in our trials.

Our Right Reactions to Suffering

Now we can understand we ought not to resent God for sufferings, but rejoice in them? The reason that Paul gives is that suffering produces perseverance or patient endurance, that endurance produces proof, and that proof produces hope, a hope which does not disappoint us because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us. But suffering can only produce patient endurance if we have a larger frame-work in which to understand that suffering. Only if we know that there is a purpose to such suffering can we endure it without resentment towards God. We may not always understand what that purpose is, but we must trust God that such a purpose exists, just as Adam and Eve were not given a reason why eating of the tree of knowledge was bad for them, but were to trust in the goodness of God that He was not withholding something good from them. For suffering to produce patient endurance, we must have a fundamental attitude of trust in God and His plan despite the appearance of the circumstances. As Paul says in II Cor. 4:16-18, we must look at our sufferings in the eternal perspective of the divine plan and not from our own limited perspective of the sufferings of the moment: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed daily. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

Patient endurance, in turn, produces proof of character. What Paul means here is that in responding rightly to the trials God brings into our lives, we have proof that we are saved because the character of Christ is being manifested through in our choice to patiently endure and rejoice in our trials rather than to resent God for them. But Christ does not merely suffer for the sake of suffering, rather He endures suffering for the sake of others. By bringing trials into our lives, God is reproducing the life of the crucified Christ in us, giving us the opportunity to participate in His plan to redeem others. Of course, Christ’s atoning work on the cross is His alone, but Paul speaks elsewhere of filling up in his body what was lacking with regard to the sufferings of Christ (Col. 1:24). We cannot atone for sins, but our suffering and patient endurance in the midst of suffering becomes the means by which God expresses in the present time His self-sacrificial love through us. Thus, the proof is the presence of God’s self-sacrificial love poured out through us by the Holy Spirit. It is this proof which gives hope, for if Christ is manifested through our lives in the present, we can be assured that we will share in destiny in the presence of God’s glory. Christ in us is the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). When our true hope is for God’s kingdom to be manifested in the lives of others, when this desire constitutes the one holy passion of our lives, then we can rejoice in our sufferings, because it is precisely these sufferings that God has brought into our lives for the redemption of others. Thus, we have no excuse to complain and become resentful in the midst of our trials. Is it not our hearts’ desire to express the nature and character of Christ? And was not the character of Christ displayed supremely on the cross? Do we think that Christ can be expressed through us apart from the cross? No, just as Christ endured the cross for the joy set before him (Heb. 12:2-3), namely us His church, so we also should view our sufferings as the daily laying down of our lives that God may redeem others through us.