“The Spirit’s Abundance”

Romans 5:1-5

If as you’re listening to this morning’s sermon you begin to think that it bears some resemblance to Ezekiel’s wheels within wheels, your thinking will be correct. This text is packed with all kinds of good stuff: that whole business about justification by faith through the grace of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit are but two issues addressed by the Apostle Paul. And on this Trinity Sunday 2010 we cannot neglect the Doctrine of the Trinity. We are confronted with the notion of hope in suffering. Above all we are confronted by God’s immeasurable generosity.

Let’s start there. “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Or as found in The Message: “… we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!” Wow, what a thought! Our hearts can’t contain the overwhelming abundance of God’s love as it is poured out for us by the Holy Spirit.

That’s how the text ends. Reading again from The Message let’s go back to the text’s beginning: “By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us – set us right with him, make us fit for him – we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at that moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we would stand – out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.”

So goes Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the first two verses of Romans 5, verses that have had a mighty impact on the church throughout its history. These verses sparked the Reformation. These verses sent Karl Barth off on a quest for what was to become the most vital theological movement of the 20^th Century: Neo-Orthodoxy.

The verses are powerful, so powerful that they are worth repeating in a more traditional translation: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”

By way of God’s grace we are justified by faith instead of works. There is no arcane system of legalisms to master. There is no spiritual mystery to solve. We are set right with God – we are reconciled with God – by the mighty acts of God we know as the incarnation, atoning death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t have to earn our salvation. It has been freely offered to us in Christ. All we have to do is take this wonderful gift that God has so graciously made available to us. We don’t have to batter down God’s door. It’s already open. We simply have to walk in.

Because of that gift we can boast in our hope of sharing God’s glory. We can stand tall and shout our praises to God, assured that we will ultimately see and experience the glory of God in its fullness. Again, wow!

“God is good. (All the time.) And all the time (God is good.)”

It gets better. Again using The Message: “There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in by troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary – we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit.”

Good times and bad we are surrounded by God’s love. Good times and bad the gifts of the Spirit just keep coming. In joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, our God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is with us. Once we’ve turned our lives over to him we are his – his people, the sheep of his pasture. In Christ, again by the power of the Holy Spirit, God can use our suffering and troubles to instill within us what Eugene Peterson translates as passionate patience.

Passionate patience: a term I’d never heard before. It is the same thing as endurance, but being passionately patient is a more appropriate way of describing how Christians can deal with suffering. It’s a better description of how to deal with suffering than is endurance. Knowing that we are justified by faith gives us a peace by which we can exercise patience in all circumstances. This patience is passionate because it is built of the strong base that is our hope in God. We don’t just endure suffering; we are passionately patient in the midst of it.

This patience pays off as it produces character, or virtue. Moving through our times of suffering with passionate patience has the same affect on us as does a fiery furnace on steel. We are tempered. We are strengthened. This strength produces a hopeful alertness for whatever God might be doing in our lives and in our world. And going back to the text as it is paraphrased in The Message: “In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite to the contrary – we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!”

Please note the word “generously.” God is never stingy with his grace, love, and hope. He is generous beyond our comprehension. His gifts are poured out more abundantly than our hearts have the capacity to contain them.

“God is good. (All the time.) And all the time. (God is good.)”

As was mentioned earlier today is Trinity Sunday. As a very simple, maybe even simplistic, way of dealing with the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity I’ll say more about God’s goodness. God the Father is good – all the time. Jesus Christ the Son is good – all the time. The Holy Spirit is good – all the time. Together as the Holy Trinity God is good – all the time. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: one God in three persons. This God is good – all the time.

Obviously this still leaves us with the ongoing mystery of the Trinity. That’s okay; there is much about God that is a mystery. There is much about God that we can neither define nor understand.

And we don’t have to define or understand such mysteries. By way of that same faith by which we are justified we are able to believe what we can never define or understand. As it is written in the 11^th Chapter of Hebrews: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The best way to understand God is to understand that he is good, and merciful, and forgiving, and loving, and patient – all the time. In sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow God is good.

“God is good. (All the time.) And all the time. (God is good.)”

Now we’re going to circle back around to the beginning of the text as we take a closer look at that phrase “justification by faith.” Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase defines the term this way: entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us: set us right with him, make us fit for him. To be justified by faith – to be put right with God by way of our faith in Jesus Christ – is to attain righteousness – a right relationship with God – that we can never attain on our own.

This justification occurs not because of anything we do, but because of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. That’s because no matter how hard we try our best is never good enough. The benefit we reap from this justification is the peace of God that passes all understanding. More importantly we attain peace with God. We are no longer estranged from him. Reconciliation has taken place. The peace we experience is the inner serenity that comes from knowing that our relationship with God is no longer threatened by our own sinfulness and that we have good hope of experiencing God’s glory and peace in all of their fullness.

“God is good. (All the time.) And all the time. (God is good.) And together the people of God now say, “Amen.”