Daily Thoughts from Romans: Safe in the Lifeboat (5:1-11)

Daily Thoughts from Romans: Safe in the Lifeboat

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.  (Romans 5:1-11 ESV)

The result of being justified by faith is peace with God.  No longer are we at war with Him, seeking to establish our own righteousness, but we stand in His grace and anticipate ultimately no longer falling short of His glory.  And now when sufferings come our way we know they are not His judgment but instead are tools used to shape our character, and we experience His love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit whom He gave us.

These become marks of our changed lives:  peace, hope, joy in suffering, developing character, and God’s love filling us and spilling over.  This didn’t come about by doing the works of the law to gain God’s favor.  It was a gift from God in response to our faith in Christ as Savior.

Our assurance that we are His comes from seeing how in Christ He made the ultimate sacrifice for us, the sacrifice of His own life.  And because He loved us this way while we were in fact His enemies, now that we are his friends, now that we are reconciled to Him, He loves us even more.  We will never experience His wrath, only His salvation.  We are eternally secure in His love.

And this is true whether we feel secure or not.  I had a wonderful teacher in college who liked to illustrate this with a lifeboat.  We’ve been pulled into the lifeboat, rescued from perishing in the sea, where we had no chance of rescuing ourselves.  We are in the lifeboat for good, never to be cast back into the ocean foam.  We may get fearful along the way and wonder if we are really saved, but we are saved regardless.  God doesn’t lose anyone along the way.