Or, The Radical Salvation of Rebels Romans 5:6-11 May 8, 2022 Lord’s Day Worship Sean Higgins

Introduction

Is there a more important thing in the universe than love? Of course there are many other important, even vital commodities, things such as water and time, existence and awareness. But what is more powerful, more desirable, and so also in this fallen world more perverted, more defined and redefined to death, than love?

The Ten Commandments can be categorized as love for God (first four) and love for neighbor (last six). The Greatest Commandment is to love God, the second is to love our neighbors. The first part of the fruit produced by the Spirit in believers is love.

The Spirit and love were related together in the last part of Romans 5:5. In that case it isn’t Spirit-produced love but it is love poured out by the Spirit. It isn’t man’s love for God, or neighbor, but God’s love for man.

The reason we love at all is because we are made in the image of the God of love. God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

What other than love moved God to create the cosmos and in particular to create other persons? His love is glorious like a fountain: it overflows. There is no need in His love; His love is always source, always abounding, always sloshing over. His love is more powerful than the gravity that holds the stars in place and keeps the planets in their orbits. His love, between the three eternal Persons, and then out is like the sun of our solar system.

And perhaps because it is so deep, divine, determinative, it dares shallow men for simplistic treatment. Unbelievers call attraction love, or good feelings love, or appreciation of certain qualities love. Many Christians in response have said that love is not a feeling at all, but it is an action. They’ve tried to pin it all on agape, as if the Spirit invented the word rather than inspired the use of it.

But both of these have problems. The worldly view makes it seem that love is mostly a response; and sure, response can be a part of it. The pietist view makes it seem that love is a duty; again sure, love is a command to men. Yet in Romans 5 love is a force, and an energy that creates shameless hope, an effectual gift that is and leads to glory.

The gospel in Romans 5:6-11 is three hundred proof. The gospel of God’s love in potent overflow will put hope on your chest. The gospel is the power of God to salvation because love is stronger than death.

You don’t have to read this paragraph as a Calvinist, but that’s just making extra work for yourself. Man is simply in no condition to be offered God’s love, nor does man want God’s love, nor is he capable of asking for it apart from God’s initiative, unconditional love. You could read this paragraph looking for a self-esteem boost, trying to find inherent worth in men that caused God to send His Son to the cross. But you would have to read the Ego Massaged Paraphrase to find that (which doesn’t exist).

Here is love vast as the ocean. The glory isn’t that a fish can be made wet, the glory of the ocean is that it makes wet everything it touches.

Three things: our condition (verses 6-8), our chances (verses 9-10), and our attitude (verse 11).

Our Condition When Christ Died (verses 6-8)

The key in these three verses is found in the repetition of “Christ died.” It is that He died to show God’s love and not because we were lovely.

Verse 6 shows our condition at the time of Christ’s death.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6, ESV)

We were weak and ungodly. More words pile on as the paragraph progresses, but “weak” (ἀσθενῶν) at least means that we lacked the strength to do anything for ourselves; we wouldn’t be the ones chosen by a team captain[...]