To us (part 4)
So, what is this new life that opens up to us because we’re justified? Paul answers that in the very next verse after Romans 4:25.
Romans 4 ends with that verse, but Paul carries right on into Romans 5 as if there are no chapter breaks between chapters 4 and 5, because he opens verse 1 with “Therefore…”
And it ties right in with the previous verse, which Paul makes clear right off the bat by writing, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith” – or since we understood and believed our relationship with God has been restored and set to rights – “we (now) have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom,” verse 2, “we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.”
So, first of all, this new life we enter is about “peace with God.” Peace because, for no works or efforts or good deeds on our part, or by trying to make up for our lousy lives in any way, God totally restored our relationship with him for us simply believing Jesus did all the works and good deeds and making up for our lousy lives in himself.
It was “While we were yet sinners, that Christ died for us,” verse 8. Christ didn’t wait to see if we were repentant or making some sort of effort to be good. He died for us at our worst. We were already “justified by his blood,” verse 9, while we lived our rotten lives. With that knowledge in mind, then, Paul adds in verse 9, “Well, since we’ve been justified by his blood, that means we’ve been saved from God’s wrath through him too.”
So, never again do we have to wonder if God is angry at us. Because he isn’t. And no more wondering if God can love such a walking ruin like us. Because he does. And no more wondering if God accepts us after the way we lived for so many years, because, verse 10, “when we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” – reconciled meaning “relationship restored.”
And the reason God did that for us was verse 11, that we’d “rejoice in him through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation”…(more on this tomorrow)
Buck To Basics 