Someone
messes up and he’s really hard on himself.
“I can’t believe I did that!”
I’ve experienced this and you probably have too. I fumble or say something I shouldn’t,
something hurtful. Or, I forget
something, and it’s the 4th time.
My forgetting disrupts things for other people. My mistakes hurt not only me, but
others.
“I’m such dope,” I say, being hard
on myself. But then a friend comforts
me. “Don’t worry about it,” he says
trying to smooth things over, “You’re only human.”
Only
human. Is that the mark of
humanity? Do we understand our humanness
by the blunders we commit? You’ve heard
that old saying. “To err is human, but
to forgive is divine.”
God had something else in mind when
humans were created. “Let us make
humankind in our image,” God said (Genesis 1:26). To err is human? Not according to God. From God’s standpoint, to be human is to be
the zenith of creation, the high point.
To be human is to be that created being that is most like God and
related to God in a way no other created thing is.
I make a mistake and shrug it off,
“Well, I am only human.” No says
God. When we sin, we’re something other
than what God intended for humans. But
we all sin and history has shown we don’t have the will power to stop. We give in to temptation. We say hurtful things. We turn away from God’s path. We lie, cheat, steal, and hoard. Some even kill. We disrespect, disregard, withhold help,
withhold forgiveness, and withhold love.
That’s why Jesus came. The only way to conquer sin was to allow it
to reach its ultimate consequences – death.
When Jesus went to the cross, he carried sin with him. When he died on the cross, he killed the
eternal effect of sin. When he rose, he
conquered death. In 2nd
Corinthians 5:17, the Apostle Paul writes that in Christ, there is new
creation. Commenting on this and on
Paul’s concept of what happens when we turn to Jesus, the scholar N.T. Wright
says, “Paul points to a new way of being human.”[i]
However, when we think back to God’s
original creation intent, this ‘new way of being human,’ which is, I think the
correct way of seeing Paul’s vision, this new way is actually a reclaiming of
God’s original idea. It’s not that we go
back to Eden and live the way Adam and Eve did there. But, we have the life with God that God
always wanted humans to have with Him.
To be human is to be in relationship with God, free from sin and with no
fear of death.
Let’s follow Romans 5 to see how
Paul presents a new kind of humanity that we experience and live when we give
our lives to Jesus and decide to follow him as our master and Lord.
First we must refer back to Romans
4. There Paul talks about Abraham the
great man of faith in the Old Testament.
Paul’s point about Abraham is that he was considered righteous by God,
but not because he did anything great. Abraham
did not earn the righteousness credited to him.
God gave Abraham favor because Abraham believed God (4:3). Abraham trusted God and changed his entire
life because God told him to. Abraham
moved his household to a new place because God told him to.
At the end of Romans chapter 4, Paul writes
this was true not only of Abraham, but also of us. When we believe in God who raised Jesus from
the dead, when we follow Him, and when we give our lives to Him, we are counted
as righteous. Everything Paul writes about Abraham and about faith applies now
to people who follow Jesus.
What does this mean?
To be counted as right with God because we
believe in Jesus and live in his grace means we have peace with God. Sin makes peace with God impossible. When we benefit from lies and deception and
get ahead in life by pushing others back, we can’t have peace with God. When we participate in racist systems and
fail to fight the evils of our day, our relationship with God is injured. When we speak harshly to one another and do
not show love, we’re cut off from our Heavenly Father. But in Christ, all sins are forgiven and we
have peace with God.
Because of this peace, it says in verse 2 that
we have access to God. God may be a
mystery we will never fully understand, but we are invited to step into that
mystery. We become a part of it. Within
that mystery, because of Jesus, we are sons and daughters of God. We stand in grace, and though we have made
mistakes in life, those sins no longer cling to us or color us. We are seen differently. At the end of Romans 5:2 it even says we
share the glory of God. I don’t honestly
know what that means. I only have
glimpses. But I joyfully hold on to the
promise that I will know more and more of the glory of God as I grow in Christ
and even more when I enter the promised resurrection. The blessings are here and then more so in
the future.
Yet this is not just feel-good,
pie-in-the-sky, babble divorced from reality.
Paul knew better than most the hardships of life. In 2nd Corinthians 11 he recites
his own resume of pain, suffering that came precisely because he was Jesus’s
disciple. Shipwrecked, flogged, beaten
with rods; it all came about in the course of following Jesus. In our reading, Romans 5, Paul declares the
benefits of even these painful experiences.
He sees God in the suffering and the suffering
produces endurance. He finds out who he
is as a man in the most trying of times.
I have sat with people in hospital waiting rooms, visited people
incarcerated, had conversations at the funeral home; people often have their
most profound moments with God in these hard places. From righteousness affixed to us by God when
we believe, to an invitation into the mystery of God, to the audacious promise
of sharing in God’s glory, to the sense that we even meet God in times of
suffering, we grow into a knowledge of how life is different when we follow
Jesus.
Without Christ, we think money, or the things
money can buy, or the security money and power can provide will give us
peace. We are told fantastic experiences
like a trip to Hawaii or sky diving or a golf vacation, or even simpler things
like a “gold-level” credit card or a certain kind of look or body image will
bring happiness. I am not railing
against vacations or material prosperity.
I am not railing against anything.
I am suggesting that the things we can buy are not the things that will
give our lives meaning. Nor are
materialistic delights the source of transcendent joy.
When we talk about the different kind of human,
the people we will be in the Kingdom of God, maybe the distinction is most
easily seen in how individuals orient their lives. The woman or man who is of the world has
happiness as his or her ultimate life pursuit.
The new kind of human, the one living as God intends his image bearers
to be has love as the determining force in his or her life.
Why love?
We’ve talked about sin being nailed to the cross and death defeated in
the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
We’ve talked about the ways our life shifts when we are in Christ. We have peace with God, we
have access to God, and in our sufferings and in hard times we grow closer to
God. Why we would claim that love is the
ultimate value for the new kind of human?
Romans 5:5 says, “God’s love has been poured
into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Note the direct connection between love and the
Holy Spirit. With the Holy Spirit in us,
love is in us. Imagine you are a coffee
mug, one full of fresh, glorious, hot coffee; full to the brim. Now imagine someone pouring a brand new pot
into you after you’re already full. It
flows out everywhere. That’s the Holy
Spirit pouring into us. That love of God
keeps coming and coming until it spills out, and those around us are drenched
with God’s love.
Some Bible readers rightly point out that the
term ‘trinity’ is never mentioned in the Bible.
So, they ask, why do we insist that we know God as three – one God
existing in three distinct person, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? I think the answer is love. Jesus – God the Son, God in human flesh – was
asked, what is the greatest commandment?
He answered, “Love.” “Love the Lord
your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your
strength.” “Love your neighbor as
yourself.” Jesus gave these as the
ultimate commands for how human beings should live under God, but Jesus also
knew that it would be impossible us to keep this command on our own power. He never meant for us to live on our own
power. To be the kind of people wants us
to be, we live in constant contact with God, depending on God for help in all
things. When Jesus gave these commands,
he add this: we are to follow Him.
When Paul writes Romans, Jesus has already
risen, ascended, and is seated in Heaven at the right hand of the Father. But thought he has gone there, that does not
mean we are without help. At the end of
John’s Gospel, Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit onto his followers (20:22). In Acts chapter 2, the Holy Spirit spread
like a wild fire to the hearts of people and they became followers of
Jesus. And here in Romans 5:5, it says
God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Jesus came, died, and rose, why? Because God so loved the world. Jesus in the flesh is God’s expression of
love for us. When asked how we should
live life under God and into eternal life, Jesus said, “Love. Love God and love people.” Paul writes that love is poured into us by
way of the Holy Spirit. What holds the
Trinity together? Love. How do the persons of the Trinity, Father,
Son, and Spirit, work together to redeem humanity? God shows love, exercises love, and gives
love to the point of overflowing.
This brings us back to the quote from N.T.
Wright I shared at the beginning. Romans
5:5 is but one of many places where Paul hints at this new way of being human. Filled with God’s love, love then pours from
us in hundreds of ways.
·
A
mom is forced to travel to another country and so has to leave her oldest child
in charge of the younger ones while she’s gone; another mom brings that family
food while she is away.
·
A
husband takes a week of paid vacation so he can sit by his wife’s side as she
recovers from a difficult surgery.
·
A
small church offers financial help to a woman who cannot pay her medical bills.
·
A
community of believers comforts a grieving family when the mother/grandmother
dies.
·
A
small group rejoices when one of the members gets a new job and throws a
celebration/goodbye party. At the party
there is laughter and congratulations along with tears because they are happy
for him and at the same time sad because he is moving.
·
A
young professional who is just starting to make money in his first job, sets
aside part of his paycheck to sponsor an impoverished child in another country
because he wants that child to have a chance in life and to know Jesus.
These things are not exceptions and they are
not few and far between examples. These are
normal occurrences for followers of Jesus because that Holy Spirit love has
filled the church’s heart and now is pouring over. When love floods out of the church, all in
its path are blessed.
N.T. Wright recalls the famous quote from
Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.”
Paul’s teaching about God topples over this old axiom. My existence is not affirmed by the fact that
I have self-awareness. That I think is
not proof of my existence, and more importantly it is not why I exist. Per Romans 5:5, we say, “We are loved,
therefore we are.” Love is why God does
what God does, and when we are in Christ, love is why we are who we are and why
we act as we do.
As we sing our final song, think about how you
have experienced God’s love and how the experience has changed your life so
that you live differently now because of it.
If you’d like to, go to the witness wall, as we are singing. Go write
a little note about how you’ve been changed as a result of experiencing God’s
love.
If you don’t know what I mean, come and pray
with me or with one of the others waiting to pray with you. Come and ask God to pour His love into you
today. Come and do that as we sing.
AMEN
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