Romans 5:1 “Therefore since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God, because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.” (NLT)
God opens this portion of scripture by drawing a conclusion. He says, “Therefore…” the word “Therefore” is an adverb. It is used in the English language to state a consequence of some other statement or group of statements.
Such as Southern Avenue is in the West End of Louisville, Bethesda Church is on Southern Avenue, Therefore Bethesda Church is in the West End of Louisville. The word Therefore is a word that suggests a conclusion to an idea. It is the word we use to say based upon what I just said you should arrive at these beliefs.
The word is being used here in the same fashion. God is telling us something which He knows we should believe and gain confidence from our belief in this truth. God says to us today, THEREFORE. Look here you should believe this; you should gain some confidence in this because of what follows the “Therefore” in this passage.
Now there are Five things I want to lift up for you out of this passage of Scripture and then I will take my seat. We will move on from here to our chicken dinners and watch the game or catch a good little Sunday Afternoon nap.
God has just laid out for us to see some exciting truths about us in the previous chapters that we will look at in weeks to come in the first 4 chapters of Romans. He has detailed the glorious plan which He set in motion and brought to a conclusion in Jesus Christ. His plan is to redeem His people from the destruction that comes from being separated from Him.
I will let you in on a little secret. God is the God of Life, He is The One True and Living God. And because He is, then anyone who is separate from Him is cut off from the true source of life. Now that is a secret, but I don’t want you to keep it to yourself.
The first of the Five Glorious Truths in chapter 5 is that “We have been made right…” Now this truth is good news all by itself. “We Have Been Put Back In Our Proper Place”. That is Good News you see, because we have a word in the English that describes something that is not in its proper place. You remember that time you went to get your car keys on the kitchen table only to discover that they were not where you remember putting them. You looked and you looked around in disbelief, in shock and amazement. You may have even said something like this,
“I know I put my keys on this table when I came in.” You start asking everyone in the house, “Have you seen my keys, I put them on the Kitchen table when I came in?” Then some one says yes, I put them on your dresser because I needed to wipe off the table. Until that moment, your keys which were not in their proper place, were “Lost” to you. Even though someone else knew where they were, they were not in their proper place. The proper place for the keys you own is wherever you put them last.
Since Adam’s disobedience, we have been out of our proper place with God the Father.
We were out of place with God, we were cutoff from the Blessings and Joys of His Grace and Salvation, but one day something happened. Someone interrupted our Lost state and Made Us Right with God. Notice what the Scripture says here, “We have been Made Right!”
God states this truth in the passive voice, meaning that we have been made Right by the actions of someone other than ourselves. There is great power in this truth. We have been made, just as those keys could not find their way back to their proper place, into the care and possession of their owner, we could not find our way back to The Care and Keeping of our Creator. We were in the wrong place, But God in His Grace chose to Make us Right.
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