Just before Christmas, Charles Woodson, a cornerback for the Oakland Raiders, came out with his teammates to play the Denver Vroncos. To watch him run you would never have guessed that anything was wrong with him. But he didn't play that day. He had a hairline fracture in his leg, and the painkiller, administered in the dressing room, lasted about five minutes after he got out on the field. Truth is to living what bones are to the body - invisible but indispensable.

When I preach to you, I don't want you to go away just feeling good. I want us to engage the truth and mystery of God. That means we have to look at what the Bible actually says. That requires patience. One more reason for my gratitude to God is that He gave me a congregation like you that has that patience. You want to know what the Bible actually says. You want to engage the truth and mysteryof God.

That is very important as we enter a new section of Romans today. To hear what Romans five says we need to remember the context that precedes it. The apostle's first conclusion in Romans came in chapter 3:9. He concluded that (we) are all under sin.

In other words, human nature has become ensnared by the force called sin. It does harm to human life. It contradicts our good intentions. It can mushroom into demonic, global proportions. We all have first hand experience of it in large and small ways. This dominion by sin is just as true of religious people as it is true of irreligious people, and no one can shake off this power just by trying. This brought Paul to his ultimate conclusion in Romans 3:19 that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Not only can we not shake off the power of sin, but God also holds us responsible for it. That conclusion defines the human dilemma.

Now, inasmuch as humanity is answerable to God for repeated and willful sin, how can we have grounds for hope on the day of God's wrath, when He judges us impartially according to our actual deeds? Does God demonstrate to us clearly now that He will treat us with mercy then? All right thinking about the human dilemma starts with that question.

The apostle frames Christianity's answer this way. But now (now that Christ has come) a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known (3:22). When the Bible talks about the righteousness of God, it means not only that He demands what is right; He also acts to make right what has gone wrong in the human family.

His decisive act is called justification. All who believe in Jesus Christ are justified freely by his grace (3:24). "As a gift, without paymen," (Dunn, I, 168), by "sheer generosity," (ibid. 179) God absolves us of guilt for our sins.

The death of Christ makes that possible. His death at first looked like a particularly cruel and unjust way to die. But when God raised Jesus from death, people took another look at His death and found a new and powerful meaning. Guided by the Jewish Scriptures, the apostles came to view the death of Christ as the permanent and material sign of God's merciful intentions toward humanity.

We can have hope on the day of God's wrath, when He judges us impartially according to our actual deeds, because the death of Christ atoned for the sins that separated us from God. We know that God loves us, because the death of Christ embodies that love for all to see.

These benefits of Christ's death come to bear on human life through faith in Jesus Christ. Our faith in Christ releases the power of His atoning death into our experience, and God's merciful offer of forgiveness becomes personal for us. I hope faith in Christ and God's forgiveness have become personal for everyone of you.

Pease with God
All of this now leads Paul to his second major conclusion in this letter, Romans 5:1. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The key words here are peace with God. What do they mean? First, they mean a change of status for us. Verse two clarifies this. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

We now live in a permanent state of grace. For us who have faith in Christ our life is a stable condition marked by the sheer generosity of God toward us. It's a new day. We don't have to be looking over our shoulder in fear of what may be pursuing us. This new and permanent relationship of peace with God makes possible something powerful. The rest of verse two states it.

The Virtue of Hope
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. In Romans 1:22-23 Paul had said, Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. In Romans 3:23 he summed up the old condition of humanity by saying, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the hope is back that the glory we lost can be regained. That hope is what verses 1-11 are all about; so I need to say two things about hope.

First, when we hear people say, "I hope," it usually means they have some doubts. "I hope I'll feel better tomorrow, but I'm not sure." The hope the apostle is talking about here is a confident hope. He will show us the basis for such confidence a few verses later.

Second, hope is the sugar that sweetens life. Can you imagine going to school with no hope of graduating or going to work with no hope of achievement or reward? The present is bearable only when we have something in the future to look forward to. That is a fundamental law of human nature.

Christianity does not destroy nature; it perfects it. It holds out to us the confident hope that the glory we lost can be regained thanks to Jesus Christ. We can call that glory heaven on the New Jerusalem or the Garden of Eden or the city whose architect and builder is God. That's our destiny. Now that we have peace with God, we have turned our hearts toward our true destiny. Before the apostle details the basis for this hope, he shows us its power in verses 3-4.

When I am not thinking about human evil and suffering, I am by nature a happy man. When the realities of human evil and suffering get my attention, they easily prevent me from being happy. I assume this is a normal experience. What captures my attention about the early Christians and contradicts this normal experience is their capacity to rejoice in the midst of suffering. Let's give what Paul says a careful hearing.

Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. The first important thing about suffering is to see it through. That is perseverance. I like what the English commentator, C.K. Barrett, says about perseverance. "It is not simply the ability to support affliction and distress, but the attitude that looks through affliction and distress to find their meaning in God," (Romans, 104). It is the ancient faith of Job in his suffering: Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him, (Job 13:15).

Persevering through suffering in the confidence that God will some day, somehow give it meaning produces character. More specifically, it produces character that is marked by hope. Let me show you what that hope looks like.

Do you know the name Ruby Bridges? She was the first black girl to integrate the Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in the fall of 1960. For months she was the only child in the school, because the white population boycotted the school. Federal marshalls had to protect her from angry crowds as she came and went each day, because the New Orleans police refused to protect her.

Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles got to know Ruby and her family. Deep into that unforgettable year, Coles learned from Ruby's teacher that she seemed to be talking to the angry people who waited for her each morning and afternoon. Coles said to Ruby, "Your teacher told me that she saw you talking to the people in the stree."

"Oh, yes. I told her I wasn't talking to them. I was just saying a prayer for them."

"Ruby, you pray for the people there?"

"Oh, yes."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Why do you do that?"

"Because they need praying for."

"Do they?"

"Oh, yes."

"Ruby, why do you think they need you to pray for them?"

"Because I should."

"Why?"

"Because I should," (Finding God in Harvard, 37).

I want you to hear Coles' conclusion. "We do have a lot to learn about what makes for good people in the living of life. I do not mean 'good people' in the sense that developmental psychologists mean it. For example, 'Let's see, Ruby, we have some tests here for you. We'll find out about the stage of your moral development. Answer these various scenarios that we're presenting to you. What would you do under these circumstances? We will then grade you and give you a score.' These may be very interesting hypothetical scenarios. But do we know that someone who does well at answering those scenarios, put to one in a laboratory, is then going to go out into the street and be honorable in everyday life? this ought to haunt us," (ibid. 39-40).

Ruby learned to pray for her enemies from her parents, her Sunday School teacher, and their pastor at their Baptist church. She found the meaning of her suffering in God, and out of her suffering flowered her moral character that was marked by a hope that saw her through the dark days of the 1960-1961 school year.

Is such hope an illusion? The apostle says in verse 5, And hope does not disappoint us. Some versions say, "Hope won't make us ashamed." Why? In his answer the Apostle Paul uses an important word for the first time in Romans.

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Isn't that amazing? For the first time in this letter her uses the words God's love. I think he uses it only two or three other times in Romans. Where we blather on about love, he restrains himself. His purpose is to give substance to the word. He does so in verses 6-8.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Don't miss Paul's language about people here. In verse six he describes us as powerless. We all experience our weakness from time to time. In the context of Romans I suspect Paul had in mind the fact that no one can shake off the power of evil that dogs our steps just by trying.

At the end of verse six he describes people as ungodly. That description has more of edge to it, but it squares well with our experience. It is striking how easily we can live as practical atheists. We lie or betray or just drift into appalling behavior, as though God did not exist or did not matter.

In verse eight the apostle uses a descriptor that offends people with a high esitmate of their own goodness. He calls people sinners. This word contains the notion of willfulness, deliberate wrongdoing. From one angle it evokes images of evil knowingly inflicted on innocent people.

The apostle's fourth description comes in verse ten where he calls us God's enemies. I think it was Thoreau, who contemptiously responded to the Christian message of God's forgiveness by saying, "I ddn't know we had quarreled." We, less enamored by liberal optimism about human nature, can see the apostle's point much better.

I said, "Don't miss Paul's language about people here." Don't miss how he is using it. He is not discharging misanthropic bile on unsuspecting readers. Of those who are powerless and ungodly he says in verse six, You see, at just the right time, when we were still pwerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

Of those who were sinners, including those accountable for the crucifixion of Jesus, he says in verse eight, But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And in verse ten he writes, When we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.

Paul employs his unflattering language about humanity in order to highlight the love of God for humanity as a "divine energy manifesting itself in an overwhelming embrace of once godless creatures who are smothered with his opennes and concern for them," (Fitzmyer, Romans, 398). The permanent and material sign of such divine love for unlovable humanity is the death of Christ. That is the basis for Christian hope.

Now in verses 9-10 the apostle is saying, "If that is how God loves us when we were His enemies, what will He do for us now that we are His friends?" Here are his own words. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! May I commend something necessary to your conscience?

Our lack of love is not primarily a failure to love God as we ought. It is a failure to know that God loves us. I hope it doesn't disappoint you for me to say that. Maybe you think there is more to say. We think that, because we think we already know that God loves us.

We know the words. We know they are the right words, the orthodox words, the buzzwords that admit us to the good opinion of those whose esteem we cherish. Now words are like maps. It is possible to sit at home with your map of Eurpoe and look at the brown colors and black numerals that measure mountains, and have at your elbow a color photo of the mountains.

But we would trade the best maps and finest photos for a leisurely drive through Sitzerland, and for the chance to stand there with the wind in our face and see before us old, hard, creased, and capped with snow the Alps filling heaven and earth.

We never read a map and talk as though it were the same as being there. But we do it with words. "God loves us." We hear it said and say it to ourselves so often that it serves no purpose but to tell others we are orthodox. The experience behind those words has slipped away or never came at all.

But when the experience behind them reaches us and we know the death of Christ means that God loves us, that He gives Himself to us "without restraint, in a way unparalleled by any human love" (ibid.), then we will know in the marrow of our bones that the old war between heaven and earth is over, God and man are reconciled, and we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Not only is this so, says verse 11, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Sheer exuberance for God will fill our lives, even in times of affliction and distress. May it be so to every mother's child among us!