The Security of Salvation
Romans 5:1-11
For the last several weeks we have been concentrating on the doctrine of salvation; why some miss it, how to know you have the real thing, and what you’ve got when you get it.
Many of God’s people never fully appreciate the security of their relationship with God. That’s why we’ve been spending much time in Romans 5, because there we find one of the premiere passages of Scripture that speaks to the eternal security of the believer.
There we find six links in the chain that tie us to the Lord, and secure us forever to Him. They are all built off of a relationship that is found by professing our faith in the Lord Jesus.
When that faith is exercised, it results in our “justification”. That means our standing before God is forever changed, and we are made righteous and holy in His eyes because of the finished work of Jesus Christ. We find that in verse 1, “Therefore, being justified by faith. . .”
What results from that is then explained by Paul in the following verses. He identifies six primary results that flow from being justified by faith. I’ve been calling them links.
First of all, he says we have peace with God. Then he says we are standing in grace, we are rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God, and God has poured His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
There are two more that I want to cover with you today.
The fifth link in the chain is
The Certainty of Deliverance.
This one sort of builds on the point of peace with God.
verse 9
What are you saying here, Paul? Well, he addresses again the significance of our justification. In verse 1, we are justified through an act of faith, verse 9, trusting what Jesus did by shedding His blood.
Now remember, that is an event from the past.
He goes on to say, “and we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” That’s future.
So Paul puts down these two statements of fact. We've been made right with God by His blood.
Question: for how long? For how long will we be made right with God through the blood of Jesus? How long will our justification last?
Paul says, long enough to protect you from the wrath of God in the future.
Listen: Biblically speaking, there is no such thing as a part-time salvation. You can only understand salvation in its fullness and so because we were made right with God by the blood of Jesus Christ, we will be saved from the wrath to come through Christ. That transaction covers past, present and future.
Now what specifically is he addressing when he talks about wrath?
That is the eventually punishment for sin that all rejecters of Christ will receive. That is the lake of fire described in Revelation, chapter 2O, the lake that burns with fire and brimstone where the godless are sent forever.
Now that lake of fire, and other Biblical descriptions that accompany it, are vivid reminders of the wrath of God.
God is a God of wrath. That wrath will ultimately be poured out. But here’s the deal: That wrath has already been satisfied. That wrath that will eventually be poured out on all unbelievers has already been poured out on Jesus and when we put our faith in Him that wrath is set aside and we are no longer the bull's-eye for the guns of God's judgment. We have been saved from wrath.
That's the promise Paul made to the Thessalonians. In 1 Thessalonians 1:10, he says, we are “to wait for His Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivered us," past tense, "from the wrath to come."
Later in chapter 5:9 he says, “For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain (future tense) salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ..”
Listen: No Christian is ever going to stand in judgment. No Christian is ever going to know the wrath of God.
The full fury of wrath for your sin as a Christian was poured out on Jesus Christ. So, we will be delivered in the future.
You may say, But how can you be so sure?
Watch this, Romans 5:10
Now follow Paul's reasoning.
“If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God," in other words, if God brought us to Himself when we were enemies, and reconciled us to Himself, how much more reconciled are you now that you are not the enemy of God, but the friend of God?
I mean if God reconciled us to Himself when we were His enemies, don't you think He'll keep us now that we're His friends?
You say - Oh. but sin gets in the way. No, no, no, you don't understand. You see, when He reconciled us in the first place we were wretched, rotten, vile, Godless. impotent sinners. We'll never be worse than that. That’s when sin was in the way. And if that was not a barrier to His reconciliation then, it poses no barrier to keeping us reconciled now. Do you understand that?
So, being now justified, reconciled, when we were enemies, don't you think much more we'll be kept when we're His friends? If He redeemed us when we hated Him, do you think He will not keep us when we love Him?
Now that really doesn’t deal with the heart of the passage. Look at the verse again.
Here it comes:
Now, what is this saying? Here it comes. If Jesus saved us in His death, don't you think He could keep us in His life? In other words, if a dead Savior on the cross can redeem us, can't a living Savior keep us?
That’s a great truth, isn't it? If Jesus in death provided our salvation, what can He be doing now in glorified resurrection life? You see, that's the whole point. If He could save us in His death, He can keep us in His life.
By the way, blood in verse 9, and death in verse 10 are synonyms. And he is arguing from the lesser to the greater. Which is harder, to get us saved in the first place or keep us saved once we are saved?
See the thought? If God already did the greater, saved us when we were wretched sinners, will He not to the lesser, keep us? If Christ did the greater when He was dead, can He not do the lesser now that He's alive?
I like the way a commentator named Trapp said it: "It is a greater work of God to bring men to grace, than being in the state of grace to bring them to glory, because sin is far more distant from grace than grace is distant from glory."
And would you notice this? It's all through Jesus Christ,
verse 1, "We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Verse 2: "By whom also we have access."
Verse 6: "In due time Christ died for the ungodly."
Verse 8: "Christ died for us."
Verse 9: "Justified by His blood, we're saved from wrath through Him." "Reconciled to God,"
verse 10, "by the death of His Son." We shall be saved by His life." "
And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
It's always through Christ.
God never loved us because we were lovable. We were not lovable. He saved us in the midst of our sin and He did it for His own glory, to show what a glorious, gracious, merciful, loving God He was, to put Himself on display throughout all eternity, and what kind of God would He be if He turned His back on us? There would be no glory in that.
And if He did the greater. He will do the lesser. If He saved us, He'll keep us. We were enemies, but He made us His friends. He reconciled us to God.
So, we're secure, kept by God because He's faithful. And the means by which He keeps us? Peace with God, standing in grace. hope of glory, possession of love, certainty of deliverance and a last one in verse 11.
We'll just call it
Joy in God.
"And not only that. . ." That’s Paul’s way of saying, “and if that isn’t enough.”
Another reason we know we belong to God is because He fills our heart with joy. The fruit of the Spirit is...what?...love, joy, peace, joy.
Remember, salvation is not just a past fact, although that’s good. And it is not merely a future certainty, as good as that is.
It is a present and abundant joy. And one of the ways that you know you belong to God and one of the great securities is that internal joy.
It's already been talked about. Verse 2: "We rejoice." Verse 3, "We exult, or we rejoice greatly." This is the third time it's mentioned. We have joy in God. The concept here is to exult again, to rejoice jubilantly, to be thrilled. And so our present sense of joy is an additional guarantee of future salvation. That sense of inner joy produced by the Holy Spirit.
The believer's joy is all in God. You don't joy in your own righteousness, you don't joy in your own ability, your own worthiness.
You joy in God and that's why the psalmist says: "O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together."
That's why when Bro. Gary leads us to sing, we're not just reading words off a page or a screen, but we're sending messages out of a joyful heart to the God who loved us and saved us and secures us.
That's why in the midst of death or disaster we don't lose our perspective because we joy in God who keeps His own.
The psalmist said: "I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation, I will go to the altar of my God, my God, my exceeding joy."
And so, we don't boast in ourselves. We don't rejoice in ourselves We don't say - Hey, how wonderful we are. We're not the kind of religious people who pat ourselves on the back about how good we are. We joy in God.
I think the hymn writer said it right when he said:
"O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise. The glories of my God and King, the triumph of His grace.
My gracious Master and my God, assist me to proclaim, to spread through all the earth abroad, the honors of Thy name.
Jesus, the name that charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease. "Tis" music in the sinner's ears, "tis" life and health and peace.
He speaks, and listening to His voice, new life the dead receive, the mournful broken hearts rejoice, the humble, poor believe.
He breaks the power of cancelled sin. He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean, His blood availed for me.
See all your sins on Jesus laid. The Lamb of God was slain. His soul was once an offering made for every soul of man."
And then this verse above all: "Hear Him, ye deaf, His praise, ye dumb. Your loosened tongues employ. Ye blind, behold your Savior come, and leap, ye lame, for joy."
The final link that anchors us to the blessed Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, is that we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have received the reconciliation with God.
So, we're secure. What a great, great hope is ours. Let's bow in prayer.
I guess we need to ask a question, at this point, at the last minute of our time tonight.
Do you have the security we've talked about? Do you know without a shadow of a doubt that you belong to Jesus Christ now and forever? If you don't, one of two reasons has caused that.
First, you do not know Christ, you're not a Christian. You don't have the Holy Spirit. You're not secure because you have no salvation. Today that can all change. . .
But, there are some of you who may not sense security, you may not feel assured in your salvation and it may be that you have lost that internal witness of the Spirit, affirming the love of God to you, and you've lost your joy in the reconciliation provided because you're walking in sin, you're living in disobedience.
And it may be a small thing, you know, you may not be able to see some glaring evil that is very obvious to the whole world, it may be some small sin that is choking out your sense of assurance.
You confess, ask the Spirit of God to search your heart, give you that full sense of God's love and joy in the Spirit.
