The Wide Angle View: Sermon Romans 5:1-5

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

Have you ever been on vacation and see other tourists taking so many pictures that you thought that the camera was actually a part of their face? I know people like that, they spend so much time taking pictures of their vacation that I wonder if they actually enjoy their vacation, and they work so hard to get the perfect shot that they miss the big picture. I was watching a show on the Travel Channel this week about the Earth’s natural wonders and one of those wonders was the aurora borealis or the northern lights. A crew went to Fairbanks, Alaska and shot not only the phenomena itself, but also the thousands of tourists who had braved the cold weather to see it. There was a husband and wife there and the husband had his face stuck behind a camera trying to get that perfect shot and his wife was fussing at him by telling him that by looking through the limited view of the camera he was missing the big picture around him. He was missing the whole experience of the beauty of the northern lights.

Sometimes I think we do this in our faith, we limit our view of God’s grace and we fail to see the whole, big picture that God has in store for us. Justification refers to the reconciliation that we have with God through Christ. We are justified meaning that we are made right; we are forgiven of our sins and brought back into the fold of God through the sacrifice of the cross. Justification is often equated with salvation in the sense that we are forgiven so that we can enter heaven. There are a lot of preachers and evangelists who base their whole ministries on salvation for the afterlife. While I was at school there was a local church that sent young people to the library on Tuesday nights and they would bombard the students as they left with questions like “If you died tonight where would you go?” and “Are you right with God if you were to meet him tonight?” They would hand our gospel tracts and try to get instant conversions outside the library. This always bothered me in different ways. First, asking college kids about their own mortality doesn’t really work. When you are 18 or 19 years old you’re not thinking about death, but living life to the fullest. Secondly, it makes people scared of God, if you don’t do this and this and this then you’re going to hell. And thirdly, it presents the grace of God in a very limited view; Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was only for salvation and nothing more. They were looking at the grace of God through a narrow lens.

Now I am not saying that Calvary is does not include the theme of salvation. That is an important part of justification that is where the story begins and ultimately ends. We are given blessed assurance that we will be united with lost loved ones and dwell in the House of the Lord forever. However, there is so much more that God opens us up to, a wide array of graces are made available to us. This is the view that Paul wants us to have, a wide open view of God’s love.

Paul writes to the church in Rome, the church he started and encourages them to open their minds and their spirits to God’s fullness. Paul spends the first half of the letter telling the church that on their own they are nothing. They are not righteous, they are less that dirt, and they have taken God’s gift of life and squandered it. Paul then turns it around and spends the rest of the letter explaining the joys that we can have in God through Christ despite our sinfulness. Because we believe, because we receive, we can join in the fullness of God’s grace not just salvation, although that is an important part it is not the whole. There is so much more that God has in store for us. Paul speaks about three aspects or parts of God’s grace that we often forget about because we focus so much on the narrow lens.

First there is access to God. “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand…” (vv. 1-2) We have access to God through Christ. As we open the door to ourselves for Christ we see that God has always had the door wide open for us we just couldn’t see it. We access God because of the cross and we have the ability to access God through the Holy Spirit. Think of it as a holy telephone connection. The Holy Spirit connects us, toll free and without tax, to God. Through the Holy Spirit we have access to God’s peace that is part of the blessed assurance, but there is so much more.

I have always said that God is relational in nature meaning that God desires a relationship. This relationship is not like the kind one would have with a king, but the kind one would have with a friend. God wants us to talk to him like he is our friend, because he is our friend. Have you every heard a child pray? They talk to God like they were talking to a buddy, openly and honestly. As we grow up we become so formal, we have to assume the position and we are very structured in our prayers. It’s almost like filling out a form at the driver’s license office. Sometimes we talk to God like a technical helpline, we tell God the problem and tell God how we want it fixed. It’s a wonder God doesn’t reply back with “Do you want fries with that order?”

I really don’t think God cares about the structure of our prayers, but the honesty and the openness of our prayers. God wants to converse with us, to talk to us. And the thing about conversation is that it is a two way street. We tell God all our problems but we don’t wait for God’s response. We are to busy for that, we just want it short and sweet. “Here are my problems God, could you have them fixed but next week.” That is the narrow view, but we have to open ourselves up to the fullness of God the access that we have to God. We are so privileged in this that the creator and sustainer of the universe wants to have a personal relationship with us and too often we feel too busy to talk.

Paul also says that we can boast in the Lord. “We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” Through justification we can boast in the Lord because we share in God’s glory, we have been included as heirs in the glory of God, but not only this but we share in God’s glory even now, every time a person comes to Christ we share in it, when a hungry mouth is fed we share in it, we a homeless person receives shelter we share in that glory. We boast because we covered in the grace and love of God and that God, the being of all beings, the originator of all things, the Alpha and the Omega wants to know us and wants to be our friend. Because of this “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord”.

Paul goes on to say that we also boast in our sufferings and in our troubles. This seems kinda strange, almost ludicrous. We boast not because we have troubles, Paul says but “we also boast in our sufferings” not because of our sufferings. Paul says that we boast because our troubles bring endurance. We become stronger as people, we become wiser because of our troubles. Its like tempered steel. If they want to make a piece of steel super strong they put it in the fire and keep it hot for a certain amount of time and it comes out stronger than it was before. We come out of our troubles stronger than we were. Let us be clear Paul does not say that God brings the troubles. God does provide us with the grace and the strength to get through whatever life might throw at us. As we endure, we build character. We become better people because of our troubles, we learn from our mistakes and we also learn from the mistakes of others. We learn from our past experiences and we learn what paths to take and which ones to avoid. We boast because God is always with us in our troubles. Like the story about the footprints, when there where only one set of footprints it was not that God left us, but it was when God carried us.

This is just a small example of the vastness and the wonders of God’s grace. The question we might be left with is why? Why do we have this access? How do we look beyond the narrow and into the wide view of God? Answer- God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. All that we are and all that we do as Christians is because of God’s love for us. God, out of love, created us special, only a little below himself. When we rejected God, God did not abandon us, but became human himself to teach us a better way. We rejected God again and God’s love was nailed to an old, rugged, cross. God, in his love, rose out of the grave and defeated death and hell and Satan. And it is God’s love that remains with us through the Holy Spirit. It is because of God’s love that we can look into the wide, beauty of God’s grace.

We access God through that love; we can talk to God like friends because of that love. We boast, even in the midst of our troubles because of that love. We do and will continue to share in God’s glory because of that love. We must be willing to open ourselves wide in God’s grace and love. Not through the narrow lens like that of a camera, but through the wide lens of love.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen