- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
March 8, 2026
Romans 5:1-11
Since I’ve last been with you in this pulpit… bad theology blended into our politics and government has helped to get us into another war. Today our everyday lives are awash in the consequences of the awful theological mixture of Christian Nationalism, Christian Zionism and certain bad theologies surrounding the apocalypse and the return of Jesus… or the end times theology that loves the boom. So… my response to all this today… is going to be Paul… and a theological teaching sermon because Christianity isn’t supposed to be some angry, hate-filled mess with a good stage show.
I also give this sermon today in honor of my theological professor, Dr. Daniel Migliore, who recently passed away. I teach you what he taught me.
Listen as God continues to speak to you today through the words of Paul in his letter to the church in Rome.
READ
This passage speaks to the core of our Presbyterian theology.
Any theological discussion from Romans can be tricky because it requires thought… deep reasoning thought done through both the mind of Christ and the heart of God. In this letter, Paul doesn’t waste a single word. That our reading this morning begins with the word “Therefore” shows us how Paul has already been laying the theological groundwork throughout the previous chapters just to get to this point on justification. To pick up this reading without considering what has been said beforehand can easily lead to misunderstanding because we haven’t heard his previous argument… or how that argument has defined the terms and phrases that Paul is now using in our passage.
It’s probably best that we start with the theological phrase “justification by faith”… and use that phrase to guide us through this passage. And it’s probably best that we even break that phrase down into its two parts… “justification” and “by faith”.
What does Paul mean with the word justification… an important theological term especially for us Presbyterians? Simply put, justification is God’s forgiveness of sin. And since nothing is simply put in Romans, now we also need to define sin… because there are two dimensions of sin. One… sin can be understood as the actions we do that violate the ways of God… how we behave toward one another in a way that is not Christ-like… the relational sin between human beings and the wrongs we do to one another. These are the sins we confess weekly seeking God’s forgiveness. Then there is the sin that describes the brokenness of our relationship with God. When we talk about original sin or a fallen humanity, this is the sin we’re talking about… the broken relationship between humanity and God. Justification focuses on this second dimension of sin. Justification is the repairing of the relationship between us and God. Paul uses the word reconciliation to the same effect that he does with the word justification. Forgiveness… reconciliation… justification… are all done by God and God alone through the atoning work of Jesus Christ.
Paul is clear that the cross has purpose in achieving our justification. In Paul’s theology, Jesus did not die on the cross simply because of the power of Rome… or because of the scheming of those in power to put him there… or even because it is natural in our fallen world that evil will always seek to destroy what is good. Paul’s theology takes this symbol of brutality and torture… and turns the cross into a symbol of God’s love and grace. In the death and resurrection of Christ comes forgiveness… comes justification… comes this work of reconciliation. While Christians may wrangle over the nuts and bolts of atonement theology… what Paul keeps pointing to is God’s self-giving love that is nevertheless behind it all… the self-sacrifice of God’s holy otherness for our sake… while we were still sinners.
The violence of the cross is offensive to us. We would rather have God’s forgiveness any other way than through the cross. Why couldn’t God just forgive us in the goodness of his heart? Or worse… we would rather God justify through the killing of the one we believe to be evil… that’s what we would normally do. Put all our problems and blame for everything on some other person or group of people. Point the finger. Rally round the idea of God’s justification coming from our killing those whom we have defined as the enemy of God. God is pleased… the wrath of God is satisfied when we kill God’s enemies. Except… that’s not the story is it? Paul… when he was the Pharisee Saul… killed or helped to kill those earliest Christians… killed God’s enemies to satisfy the wrath of God and justify himself. That power… that violence… those deaths… did not earn Paul God’s love. It was God’s love being revealed to him despite all that he had done that spiritually turned Paul inside out. In an instant… Paul went from highest holy of the self-righteous to the lowest of unworthy sinners. And in that instant he knew God’s truth of grace.
We acknowledge God’s grace given… we then live by a giving free grace. We don’t glorify God’s grace through war… or scapegoating… or materialism… or reveling in acts of condemnation to an eternal hell. Why would Christ die on the cross for any of these?
This question of God’s love. It is hard to accept that God loves us so much that God would do all of this for us… and while we were still unworthy sinners. This is a love we don’t deserve nor have we earned this love. And still… and still God loves us in this way. This is what grace is… and without grace… we would theologically argue… without grace you cannot understand God as revealed through Christ Jesus. If you look at… study… think about the three bad theologies I mentioned earlier… what you will find is that all three are lacking grace. There is something else at the center of those theologies that motivates each of them. Christian Nationalism is centered on power. Christian Zionism is centered on entitlement and guilt. “Boom” apocalyptic theologies are centered on fear.
How do we react to such an intense expression of undeserved love? This is the question… the motivation that drives Paul’s theology. The burden of sin is overturned through the cross. God’s love opens a new way forward now that we have been reconciled. How do we respond to God’s justification? It is tempting to take our eyes away from Christ’s sacrifice and put the focus back on ourselves… to imagine that we can somehow prove we deserved this undeserved gift… to try to earn what has already been freely given. We want to show God that choosing us wasn’t a mistake. But that instinct misunderstands grace. If justification is something we can accomplish ourselves, we can avoid the new sense of debt we now have from God’s love. We can earn and deserve this gift… even if retroactively… show that God did not make a mistake… not when it came to us. This undeserving sinner was worth the investment… but, I don’t know about those others. God may want to rethink them.
If we imagine we have some part to play in our own justification, then we no longer have to face the truth that God’s love comes before anything we do or believe. Paul pushes against that instinct by reminding us that justification is God’s work alone. We have to remember Paul’s context and the arguments he made against the Law. It’s not that the Law was useless or had no purpose. The Law was a great guide for all humanity. The Law was a great treatise on the ways of God. The Law provided a place where the fruit of our beliefs could be measured. But… Paul would argue… we could never follow the Law well enough to justify ourselves before God. We may wipe out a good portion of our ethical intentional sin… that first definition of sin… but our goodness could never repair our relationship with God… that vital second definition of sin. We do not have the power to reconcile ourselves to God. We cannot love enough or believe enough or be good enough. Only the love within God could mend the brokenness of our relationship with God.
Paul clearly puts justification occurring while we were still sinners... without condition… without qualification of where we are as sinners… or what we believe as sinners… or even what sins plague us. The love of God is an unquestionable constant. God’s love waits for no one. The cross, because it is about mending the relationship humanity has with God, is for all humanity and not just those who will come to call themselves Christian. Justification is not only for those who believe using some Christian theology. Again, that goes back to Paul’s arguments against the Jewish Law. If one could never follow the Jewish Law completely to attain justification, then no one could ever follow its replacement in Christian theology to attain justification… because to do so would be to eliminate grace. Paul is making the point that justification is not dependent upon our love for God, but on God’s love for us. And as I said, that love puts us into a mistaken feeling of new debt. But what we often mistake as a sense of debt is really the experience of reconciliation… the realization that we cannot return to the old patterns of fear and self‑justification. There is only the way ahead… the life of sanctification… the life lived with God. Being freed from that deeper brokenness opens us into a new way of living, a life shaped by gratitude and transformation.
This is the failure in our first reading. The freed Jews would rather resubmit to slavery than to take on the challenges of freedom. Slavery is more sure… more known than what awaits them in the sanctification of the wilderness journey.
We are justified by faith. God’s love overturns the burden of sin… and opens us into sanctification. We are now drawn forward by God’s gracious act of love. The second half of our phrase… “by faith”… again is not about our theology or how well we hold to the tenets of a certain religion. To describe what Paul means by the words “by faith”, he uses the example of Abraham. If we look back to the story of Abraham in the Old Testament there is one thing we will not find… and that is Abraham’s religious resume. We are told that Abraham is chosen and God makes promises to Abraham… but we are never told why God chose Abraham. Abraham has not earned this choice. He is not good enough to earn God’s choice. Abraham makes mistakes… big mistakes even after his being chosen. He constantly worries and tries to take matters into his own hands to achieve God’s promises. Truly, there is nothing in which Abraham can boast. Abraham experienced free grace from God and could only respond to God’s love. Abraham’s faith grows strong once he stops trying to earn God’s promise… and starts to live by God’s promise.
Paul writes about his experience of glorifying God… “We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given us.” Paul puts us to the point where Abraham found himself. Abraham had to finally give up the notion that he could achieve God’s promises and had to trust God would achieve those promises. We have to finally give up the notion that we can achieve God’s promises and have to trust God. We are then free to live with love by glorifying God in our lives… by living out the light of God that is in our imperfect theology… by participating in religion in such a way that glorifies God… by following the tenants of the Law that spread God’s love and grace into the world so that others may come to understand what it means to be justified… to love our neighbor as ourself… to be freed from the slavery of sin… to be reconciled to God.
So… we are justified by faith, we have peace with God… for by grace we have been saved through faith, and this is not our doing; it is the gift of God. Amen.