Tag: Peace

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Can I Trust that God Accepts Me? (Study of Romans, Part 3: Romans 3:21–5:21)

Note: How do we find joy, hope, and peace in our lives? The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans is all about that. He teaches that we do it by having more faith, hope, and love. In the 3rd part of this study, we consider, can I trust and believe that God accepts me? This is the 3rd of an 8 part study of Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Key Thought: We can grow in joy, peace, and hope by learning to see and trust that God accepts us.

Introduction to the Virtue of Faith
What will govern how we feel? How we see. How we perceive reality is how we will feel. If we perceive that we will have opportunities and successes, then we will feel hope. If we perceive that we will have no opportunities or successes, then we will not feel hope. If we see people as basically against us, it will be harder to feel love for them. If we see people as made to connect with us, then we will find it easier to love them.

When it comes to people, there is an element of faith in our relationship. I can’t literally “see,” for example, the love my wife has for me. However, in her greetings, her actions, and her talks with me, I can “see” it, in a manner of speaking, with my eyes.

With God, the element of faith is greater. We can’t see Him face to face. We can’t see with our eyes that He is present with us. We may not see that He loves us.

So, how do we find a way to “see” Him? We develop faith. Faith is the virtue or excellence of the soul that enables us to see God. It is what we read in Hebrews, Moses “persevered because he saw him who is invisible” (Heb. 11:27).

Faith sees God and trusts that He is who He says He is, will act in accordance with who He is, and will do what He says He will do. Faith is what enables us to receive the righteousness from God that we could not have on our own. “For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith’” (Rom. 1:17).

Now, Paul was writing to the Roman Christians. He believed they already had this righteousness from God. They did not need to receive it. But they needed to learn to see it better and more clearly. That’s one of the big reasons he wrote this letter. It was not enough for them to simply believe once and be done with it. Faith is a virtue or character trait that needed to be developed. They needed to learn to see God more and more clearly. That was how they were going to return to joy, peace, and hope in their lives lives. So, it is for us as well.

In particular, Paul describes two things that we to “see” by faith that will enable us to experience joy, peace, and hope: justification and sanctification. We will consider justification in this post and sanctification in the next one.

Part 1 – Justification (Romans 3:21–5:21)
The Meaning of “to Justify”
Paul uses a word that is slightly difficult to translate to explain what God has done for us. It is a little bit of work to understand this word, but once you do, the wonder of what God has done in Jesus really opens up.

Paul writes, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). “All have sinned . . . but are justified freely by His grace” (Rom. 3:23 and 24). What does he mean by “being justified”?

“To justify” means “to declare righteous.” When you justify someone, you declare that they have done what is right. You don’t make them just or righteous. You say that they are. That is justification. The opposite of “to justify” is “to condemn.” So, if there is no condemnation, then there is justification (see Rom. 8:1).

One way to help someone understand this is to ask, can you justify God? To some people that seems strange. But, if “to justify” means “to declare righteous,” then you can certainly declare God to be righteous. Not only that, you should justify Him! That’s what the Bible says. Luke 7:29 tells us that the tax collectors and sinners justified God. How? They said He was right in saying they should repent. The Pharisees did not justify God. They said God was wrong when He told them to repent. Indeed, we can almost say that to be justified by God you must first justify God, but that’s just something to think about.

How God Justifies Us
Once we grasp the meaning of the word, we have a problem. How can God justify us? We are wicked and sinful. For God to say that we are righteous would seem to be a lie. Paul calls God the God who justifies the ungodly (Rom. 4:5). How can that be? It would seem like we should be condemned, not justified. It would seem that God is lying. How can He justify ungodly people? That is, how can He say that wicked, murderous, adulterous, immoral people are righteous?

God can justify us because God does not declare us righteous in ourselves. He declares us righteous because of what Jesus has done in His life and death and resurrection. Note well, “we are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). We are justified as a gift, but it is a gift because Jesus has paid.

Paul is aware of this tension. He indicates that there was a question of how God could be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). How can God do it? He sent Jesus as an atoning sacrifice. He took the wrath that the law demanded so that we would not have to experience it. Jesus was a true substitute.

How do we get what Jesus did for us applied to our account? We accept it as a gift by faith. We see the gift and say that we want it. “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (Rom. 3:22).

Paul goes back to the Old Testament to shows that this is true. Abraham was justified by faith. David was forgiven freely by faith (Romans 4:1–8). Forgiveness is a close synonym to being justified. It’s just a slightly different angle. Anyone who is justified is also forgiven of anything in the past. That’s the way that God has always done it. Adam brought in condemnation, but Jesus brought in justification (Romans 5:12–21). Where sin abounded; grace superabounded (Romans 5:20, see the original Greek).

The Result of Being Justified
And what is the result of all this? We have peace with God. It is a fact that God’s wrath is turned away. This is the foundation of our peace. Our conscience may condemn us, but justification tells us that God loves us, is for us, and forgives us.

By faith, we can have a sense of God’s love that transcends all our circumstances. As Paul put it so powerfully, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39). If we can truly perceive this by exercising the virtue of faith, then it will produce joy, peace, and hope.

I have had this experience innumerable times. I remember one time not too long ago that I was experiencing some real losses in my life. But then I read Romans 5:1, “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” I realized that I could have received the wrath of God, but God justified me instead through Jesus Christ. Nothing can separate me from the love of God. This is the most important thing. Everything else is just gravy. That is a foundation for joy, peace, and hope, no matter what happens. The better we can see this through the eyes of faith, the more we will feel joy, peace, and hope. Paul wrote at the end of his letter, “I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another. Yet I have written you quite boldly on some points to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me . . .” (Romans 15:14-15). Reminding ourselves of these things daily, hourly, and moment by moment will also grow our faith. It will enable us to have a foundation that is completely secure in the instabilities of this life. That’s the virtue of faith.

But that’s not the only thing we need to see by faith. We need to see that God is transforming us into something absolutely glorious. That’s what we will consider in the next section.

Outline to Construct Your Own Teaching on Romans 3:21–5:21

  1. What is the meaning of the word “to justify?” Do a careful study.
  2. Why is it such a problem to say God justifies the ungodly (Rom. 4:5)?
  3. How is it that God is able to declare ungodly people righteous?
  4. How do we get the righteousness of God applied to us?
  5. What is the concrete result of being justified?
  6. How do we experience and perceive better the results of being justified?

Questions for Reflection

  1. Do you understand what it means to be justified by faith and not by works?
  2. Have you been justified by faith in Jesus Christ?
  3. How are you doing at believing in your justification?
  4. What could you do to help you “see” it better?
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Why Do We Lack Joy, Peace, and Hope? (Study of Romans, Part 2: Romans 1:18–3:19)

Key Thought: a lot of things can take our joy, peace, and hope, but the main problem is our alienation from God.

What is it that keeps us from joy, peace, and hope? Many things. We make many errors in our thinking that cause us to lose these things. We exaggerate threats, make outcomes too important, tie our happiness to the wrong things, don’t see the good that we have, etc.

But Paul saw all these things as rooted in one key problem: our failure to make God central to our thoughts and lives.

We do not do this because we do not know who God is. We do know. He has made Himself clearly known (Rom. 1:19–20). It is because we refuse to take this knowledge into account and give God the glory, praise, and place He deserves. We suppress the truth.

The result is that God gives us over to our own desires. One part of our error and sin is that we want things too much. Because we have given up on that which truly satisfies us (God), we have to try to find satisfaction elsewhere. We become obsessed with other things. We take whatever gives us pleasure and make life all about that.

When we make the pleasures or experiences of life the center of our lives, we will find other people blocking our way. That’s where wars, hatred, envy, jealousy, and rage come from. And that’s where we, as a human race, are stuck.

Into this failure to keep God in our hearts and thoughts as the supreme object of devotion, people offer religion as a way to get God back into our thoughts. God Himself gave a religious system to His people in the Old and New Testaments. However, oftentimes, those who possessed this religion used it to exalt and gratify themselves and clothed their injustice in the righteous claims of their religion. They knew the Words of God. They had them. But they didn’t obey them (see Romans 2).

People will use anything to exalt themselves and place themselves at the center. Ironically, religion can be a means of escaping God and exalting ourselves. We make ourselves bigger by identifying ourselves with the transcendent. This is not a problem simply of the Jewish people, though Paul addresses them. It is a human problem. There is no tool that we use to subdue pride that cannot become a tool of pride.

Why is this? Why do we take the best things and abuse them? Because humans are bent in the wrong direction. They have a sort of acquired allergy to God that keeps them from doing the right thing. Even the people who had the clearest instruction on God went the wrong way, including Paul himself! We cannot not establish righteousness and goodness on our own. We can’t get back to joy, peace, and hope without intervention.

At this point, it is important to remember that our problem is not simply that we cannot be what God has made us to be. God is opposed to what we have become. Sin is offensive to Him. The wrath of God is being revealed against all the bad things people do (Rom. 1:18).

Some people may be offended at this idea, but here is the problem. Would we really want a God who didn’t care that people did bad things? No. We would not want to worship a God like that. We would think He was unjust. The trouble is that we think all the bad things are outside us. Instead, we need to see that they are also inside us. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 and see Paul’s summary of this in Romans 3:1-20).

When we get that, we will understand our need for reconciliation with God and transformation into a new people.

So, what is needed? A righteousness from God. That is what is revealed in the Gospel, the good news. That is what we will explore in the next section.

________

Outline for Making Your Own Study of Romans 1–3

  • Paul sees the basic problem as a failure to acknowledge God, think of God, and thank God.
  • This failure leads us to try and illegitimately find our satisfaction in things that can’t satisfy us.
  • This makes us mad at other people and causes all sorts of envy and evil thinking.
  • Religion seemed to be a help to this, but human pride even used this as a tool to escape God and His claims and look down on others.
  • The reason religion (even God-given religion) failed was because of human sinfulness, or our basic bent away from God.

Questions for Reflection

  • Where are you in your relationship with God?
  • What do you often seek to satisfy you? What happens when you don’t get there?
  • What can you use to make you feel good about your relationship with God that might hide your real need?
  • How do you feel about Paul’s evaluation of human beings as sinners?

________

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

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4 Mindset Shifts for Greater Peace & Productivity

Can we change and move forward? Sometimes it feels like we can’t change. We feel stuck. We feel like our emotions just are what they are. However, if there is one thing that the great teachers of the world agree on, it is this: people can change. We are not stuck in our current ways of looking at things. We are not stuck doing the same old thing. Humans have a capacity for change.

This question is particularly poignant in times of great stress in the international order like we are facing right now. In such cases, it’s easy to let our anxiety get the best of us. We may not be aware of it. What can help us maintain peace and productivity in the midst of the storm?

I have found some help for this in the writing of some ancient philosophers known as the Stoics. The Stoics weren’t perfect, but they wrote simply and clearly about some of the best of the ancient wisdom for living well.

They key to the whole process of change is this. The locus of change is not outside us. It is inside us. It is our judgments, how we evaluate things, that determine how we will live. How we think about sickness or death, for example, will determine how we respond to it. For example, the Stoic Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius says, “But I unless I think that what has happened is an evil, am not injured. And it is in my power not to think so” (Meditations, 7.14). He goes on to say: “If you are pained about any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it” (ibid., 8.47). It is how we think that determines whether or not something is bad or not. Of course, this is not about what we think at one particular moment. This is about our pattern of thinking. “Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind, for the soul is dyed by the thoughts” (ibid., 5.16). So, if we are going to be what we were created for, we will have to change our mindset.

What are these mindset shifts that can especially help us change for the better? Here I would like to set forth some general mindset shifts that can help us achieve the human telos, goal, or purpose. These mindset shifts are to trust the providence of God, focus on what is under your power, find joy in being human, and focus on living today.

First, trust the providence of God. Don’t just see the events as bad things that happen to you or things that are random. Instead, see them as coming from the good government of God. The philosopher Epictetus says that we should agree with the providence of God and not want anything other than what God’s government brings us. If someone leaves us, “Don’t wish at any price that he should continue to live with you, don’t wish that you’ll be able to remain in Corinth, and, in a word, don’t wish for anything other than what God wishes” (Discourses, 2.17). Seneca made it his habit when things went contrary to his desires not only to recognize that God wanted something different but to assent to what God wanted as the best decision. “‘Heaven decreed it otherwise!’ Nay rather, to adopt a phrase which is braver and nearer the truth—one on which you may more safely prop your spirit—say, to yourself, whenever things turn out contrary to your expectation: ‘Heaven decreed better!’” (Letter XCVIII). See everything as the result of the providence of God, and you will be able to live a life of virtue and peace. Continue reading “4 Mindset Shifts for Greater Peace & Productivity”

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What Would Our Society Do with Peace and Prosperity?

If we had basic provision, leisure time, and peace, what would our society do with it? What should society do with it?

Most of our time and energy is consumed with making sure that we will have enough provision, food, clothes, housing, security, savings. This is true on an individual level, and this is true on a societal level. If we do not feel we have enough, we want to figure out how we can have enough. If we do have enough, we worry about threats that would keep us from having enough.

But what if we didn’t have to worry about that, either on a societal level or an individual level? What would we do with our lives? What is the purpose of human life beyond merely staying alive and well-fed?

That’s the question that Aristotle considers in his books on ethics and politics. He believed that the question of politics was a question of what form of state would allow the most people to realize the ideal form of life (Politics, 2.1). For, as he said, “a state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only . . .” (3.9). His answer was that the best form of government was one “in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily” (7.2). So, politics should ask not only what is the way for people to have enough, to have mere life, but, how can they live well, how can they live the best life, and how can they live a happy life. Continue reading “What Would Our Society Do with Peace and Prosperity?”

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Why So Little Joy and Peace in Believers?

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

What a beautiful vision of the Christian life, a life filled with all joy and peace as we trust in Him. It’s a great aspiration.

In a series of talks John Ortberg did with Dallas Willard just before Willard’s death, he recounted a conversation that he had with Dallas about churches:

During one of the first times Dallas and I talked, I asked about the churches. Some churches are great at music and worship. Some churches are effective at evangelism or reaching folks outside of them. Other churches are teaching factories. Others are great at assimilating people. And still others are good at acts of justice and compassion. But, I asked Dallas, where are the churches that are producing abnormally loving and joyful, patient, courageous people in inexplicably high percentages?

It’s a great question. Why don’t we see more joyful, hopeful, and patient Christians? Is it even possible to see Christians who are “abnormally loving and joyful”? Continue reading “Why So Little Joy and Peace in Believers?”

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