Just Peace

We're in our sixth week in this series, as we are going through the book of Romans. And we started at the end of Romans to show where we should be at the beginning, kind of like the destination at the end. And one thing that we saw that has been true all the way through Romans is the fact that Romans deals with two big issues that were going on in Roman society, and I dare say in our society today, and that is power and privilege. And we see at the end of Romans how slave and free, how Gentile and Jew, how male and female, were all at odds with each other, causing divisions within the church, let alone in Roman society, but how Paul said the gospel of Jesus Christ mends all those broken relationships and our broken relationship with God and how that makes all the difference. And it's not simply that we are looking at trying to be nice and egalitarian, like a lot of people in the world would like us to be and treat everybody the same. It's the fact that the gospel of Jesus Christ in reality, the gospel places us all at equal footing at the foot of the cross. And the gospel creates the reality that we are all justified, whether we are religious or irreligious, godly or ungodly, whatever condition, whatever age, whatever place in life, that we are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and the tangible evidence of the gospel, Paul says, is the way that you and I treat one another and treat people. Are they less than, more than? Are we playing the ladder and status game? Are we playing the division game that our society plays or are we sharing the gospel freely and completely We say it thrive often, you belong. You belong because Jesus Christ brings you in and draws you in and invites you in. So today we're exploring what I would say is, well, what I've studied in this passage and in this book, one of what's called the hinge passages. You know how a door has hinges and everything kind of turns on it? So Romans five verse one is one of those hinge passages. There's actually four of them in the gospel or in the book of Romans and in this gospel. We passed by one of them without me mentioning it and I apologize for that. It's in Romans three verse 20 and it says this, therefore no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law, rather through the law we become conscious of sin. Now, these hinge passages are all there because they're all start with the word therefore. Therefore, you have to ask why is that therefore there? Right? Why is therefore, therefore, you know, in a sense. And so this one is basically a summary saying, you know, whether you're Gentile or Jew, slave or free, male or female, it doesn't matter the age, the place, the location, the time you live in, the culture, no matter what. No one is gonna get justified by the works of the law. We're all sealed up. You're gonna need justification elsewhere. And that's where our next hinge passage comes, which is Romans five verse one. Therefore, since we have been justified, not by works, but by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We're gonna be exploring that today. The third one comes up in Romans eight, one, I think my favorite chapter in the whole book. And I did a series on this a couple of years ago, but it's therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And finally, the last one is from Romans 12 verse one, I appeal to you, therefore brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. So these are the four hinge passages and they wouldn't be bad for you to kind of look through and kind of, when I hope we're going through this whole book in these weeks, it's not just like a little snippet here and a little snippet there, but you get a holistic picture of what's going on and you can come back into the book of Romans and go like, oh, okay, now I kind of see how it all fits together, okay? So that's hopefully what you're doing. And by the way, you can get all of the notes for this sermon on the U version of the app, if you kind of go under events and you can click on that and get to that, okay? So you can check that out and get all of them under Thrive Community Church and then adding your own notes, it'll help you remember even more. What an idea, huh? Okay, so now we're going to develop this second hinge passage today. It's from Romans chapter five, verse one, we're gonna read 11 verses. And by the way, as I was studying this, the commentary I'm using from Douglas Moo, M-O-O, it's a book about this yay thick. So it's like how in the world, yeah, that's just one commentary in the book of Romans. He says that this passage, Romans five, is similar to Romans eight. It has some of the same themes. It's more condensed, it's not as well developed or fully developed out, but we're gonna see some of the same things when we get back in a couple of weeks to Romans eight. But now let's read Roma...