Loved to Death
About this series
Obviously we are always focussed on Jesus, but in our first series - Just Jesus - we’re going to look, over 13 weeks, at some of the high points in the New Testament that show us who Jesus is, why he’s so wonderful, what he’s done for us and what it means to live in the light of all that.
Sinclair Ferguson wrote, ‘We need to expend our energies admiring, exploring, expositing and extolling Jesus Christ’ - that is precisely our aim in the Just Jesus series. The more we see of Jesus, the more we’ll have to be delighted in and the greater will be our motivation to live for him in our everyday lives.
So, come with great expectation that the Holy Spirit will be powerfully at work leading us to know and love our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
About this talk
Scripture: Romans 5:1-11
In Romans 5: 1 - 11, Paul’s “Therefore” at the start of v 1 is the conclusion of his argument to this point:
Ch 1: All are guilty
Ch 2: God is righteous in his judgement of Jew and Gentile alike
Ch 3: None are righteous according to the law, but God has made known a righteousness apart from the law
Ch 4: Abraham, the great father of the faith was himself justified by faith, not by observing the law (since it wasn’t given until Moses)
Ch 5: “Therefore...we have peace with God”
This is the great issue for guilty sinners - to have peace with God rather than enmity. And it’s all come about by grace (cf. Ephesians 2:1-10). The wonder of all this is spelled out in vs 4-6: Christ died for the ungodly. It would be rare for anyone to be willing to die for an honourable person, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Absolutely extraordinary! But there is more! Given that God has treated ungodly sinners this way, there can be no doubt left that we will be both “saved from God’s wrath through him” (v 9) and “saved through his life” (v 10) - ie. we will be saved on the Day of Judgement and saved ‘into’ resurrection life. In result, we can say that we have been saved (vs 1-2), we are being saved (vs 3-5) and we will be saved (vs 9-10); salvation is past, present and future.
We can look further into:
What does it mean (and what doesn’t it mean) to say that God loves us this much? (There is much misunderstanding about the love of God).
What does it mean to stand in grace (v 2)?
God has demonstrated his love for us and poured out his love “into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (v 5).
What does this mean for our experience of being loved by God?
What does this passage have to say about the important matter of assurance?
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In Revelation 1, John sees a magnificent vision of Jesus. This chapter presents us with the magnificence of Jesus Christ - the Lion, the Lamb, the one of whom all in heaven and earth forever cry “Worthy.”