Someone has said there is a God-shaped vacuum in every one of us. There is a part of us that, until we invite God into our lives, is empty. No matter how well we are doing; no matter how successful we are; if we do not have peace with God, there is an emptiness in our hearts. We have a God-shaped vacuum.
Someone else has observed that nature abhors a vacuum. If you ever have had an empty closet, you know how true that is. Most of us tend to accumulate stuff as long as we have a place to put it, and an empty closet usually doesn’t stay empty for long.
Our lives are the same. All of us have a tendency to fill that God-shaped vacuum with all sorts of things that take the place in our lives that rightfully belongs to God. Often, without even realizing it, we search for meaning in all the wrong places, filling our God-shaped vacuum with everything except God.
Jesus came so that we might have a way of having God at the center of our lives, in that place at the center where God belongs. When God is at the center, we have peace with God.
When God is at the center, everything else has a way of working itself out. If God is not at the center, we might assume that having God in our life would complicate things and add to our already busy lives. The truth is, having God at the center gives our entire life focus.
This morning, we sang several songs that refer to the Holy Spirit. Today is Trinity Sunday.
We believe in one God. But we also understand God as the Trinity—the threefold God. God is one, but God is also three. There are three persons in the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son (that is, Jesus Christ), and God the Holy Spirit. They are distinct from one another, and yet they are the same.
We have a hard time getting our minds around this. We try to explain it using models, but none of these models completely work. One model is H2O, water. Water can be liquid water, it can be frozen into solid ice, and it can evaporate into steam. It is water in three different forms. But this model doesn’t really hold up because water cannot be all three at one time.
Another example is an egg. An egg is composed of a shell, a yolk, and a white. This works insofar as each of these elements is separate from each other, and yet is part of the egg. Where it breaks down is that an eggshell by itself is not an egg; a yolk by itself is not an egg; and an egg white is not quite an egg either.
Each of the members of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is fully God. The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God. But they are also distinct from each other: Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son.
Now, if you have all that straight, you are smarter than most people! At the end of our service, I often give a simple benediction that says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
That benediction points to the fact that each of the three members of the Trinity has an area of specialty, and yet all of them share in all of those traits. So while we know God’s grace through Jesus Christ, the Father and the Holy Spirit also are full of grace. While we think of love as a characteristic of the Father, love is also a characteristic of the Son and the Spirit.
Fellowship is another characteristic that describes all three, and in particular their relationship to one another. There is never tension or disagreement between the members of the Trinity—they all work in unity. In John 14:9, Jesus said “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
The text for this morning is from the book of Romans. Romans was written by the apostle, Paul. Paul was the theologian for the early church, and still explains things about God for us as well today. In this text, Paul really gets to the heart of the meaning of our faith in Jesus Christ.
In the chapters before our text, he discussed the fact that all people are sinful and are in need of God. In chapter three, verse 23 of Romans, he says “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Paul emphasizes that we can’t save ourselves from our sinfulness—we must put our faith in Jesus.
This morning we are looking at chapter five. This section is so dense in meaning that I’m going to take it one or two verses at a time, and talk about each section as we go along. We won’t completely dissect this passage—that would take us a long time!
If you have your Bible, or if you would like to take one of the Bibles in the pew and follow along, that would be great. Romans is the fifth book in the New Testament, and this passage is found on p. 1181 in your pew Bible.
I’m reading Romans 5, beginning at verse one.
1Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
In this sentence, the goal is peace with God. Earlier, I mentioned the God-shaped vacuum in all of us. There is something in each of us that wants to be at peace with God. The problem is that God is holy and pure and completely without sin. Unfortunately, that does not describe any of us.
As Paul said in Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” God’s glory is one of holiness and purity, but we fall short of that glory.
When Paul says we have been justified by faith through our Lord Jesus Christ, he means that because Jesus died for our sins, he has made everything right between us and God. When Jesus forgives our sins, we become pure and holy, and able to be in fellowship with God. That’s why we have peace with God.
Without that forgiveness, our relationship with God is so lopsided that there is no peace. Our sin cuts us off from God’s holiness, but the forgiveness we have through Jesus restores us to peace with God.
It says “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” That we stand in grace means that because of Jesus’ work on the cross, we stand forgiven. I think of a person standing in a spotlight. This spotlight of grace shines on us and surrounds us and presents us before God completely forgiven and cleansed from all sin. And all of this we accept simply by faith. We don’t to anything to earn our salvation: we simply accept it by faith.
Paul goes on to say,
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. This spotlight of grace that shines on us won’t go away. Because of God’s grace, we are totally forgiven for all eternity, and we can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Our hope is not just in this life, but for all eternity. The hope of the glory of God is the firm belief that we will be with God, in all his holiness and glory, forever.
Paul goes on to describe how this hope works in us to bring us to maturity.
3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Sometimes Christians will try to tell you that Jesus will solve all of our problems. Come to Christ, they say, and everything will be wonderful. There is, of course, some truth to that. As I said earlier, when we come to Christ and put him at the center of our lives, our lives just make more sense.
But Paul reminds us here that we still may encounter sufferings. But suffering has a purpose. And because of that, even if we suffer, we can rejoice, because suffering produces perseverance; perseverance produces character, and character produces hope.
As we encounter suffering with Jesus Christ, the result is not hopelessness, but hope. And Paul comforts us with the knowledge that hope based on our relationship with Christ will never disappoint us. Here’s where the Trinity comes into the picture. God the father pours out his love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
When we accept Jesus Christ into our lives, God gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Comforter. It is the Holy Spirit who assures us of God’s real presence in our lives. It is the Holy Spirit who leads us and guides us and fills our lives with the presence of God.
Paul goes on to say,
6You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus’ death on the cross was a demonstration of God’s great love for us. Paul makes the point first of all that it is pretty rare for anyone to die for another person; even a good person. But God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were still sinners—and in fact, because we were still sinner—Christ died for us.
Here’s where we sometimes get a little confused about the Trinity. Sometimes we think that Jesus died in order to save us from God’s anger. I really like this passage because it talks both about God’s incredible love for us and also about God’s wrath. This is difficult to understand. Let me back up and read verse eight along with the rest of the passage. Because if we stop at verse eight, that’s fine, but we avoid the issue of God’s wrath.
Even though it’s a little confusing, in order to really understand, we need to understand that God is both a God of love and a God of wrath!
8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! 10For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
How can God be a God of love and also a God of wrath? Actually, it’s not all that hard for us to understand this. If you truly love someone, does that mean you never feel anger towards them? On the contrary! Those we love the most can make us very angry, don’t you think? If you don’t care about a person, why bother being angry? Someone you love very much can make you feel very angry, because you care about them.
God created us, and has always wanted to have fellowship with us. But God is holy, and God calls us to be holy as he is holy. We are to be set apart to live lives of holiness. The problem, of course, is that we can’t achieve holiness, no matter what we do.
Through Jesus’ death on the cross, we have forgiveness. That’s what it means that we have been justified by his blood. That we are reconciled means that as far as God is concerned, our slates have been wiped clean. God is not angry with us! He loves us. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, when God looks at us he sees us as completely forgiven and holy in his sight. That’s how amazing our salvation through Jesus Christ is.
And through the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are invited into a relationship of intimacy with God. When we come to Christ and receive his forgiveness, we enter into a relationship with God. We receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who leads us and guides us.
Does this mean the Holy Spirit comes in and takes over? No. The Holy Spirit leads us and guides us and encourages us. But we still have the freedom to go our own way, and much of the time that is exactly what we do.
But through Christ, we now have the power—the capability—to live as God calls us to live. We live in him by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we experience the love of God our Father, and we have fellowship with God through the gift of the Holy Spirit.
As we come together to receive the gift of the bread and the cup in communion, let us remember what this truly represents. Jesus says this bread is his body, given for us, and this cup is his blood, shed for our sins, so that we might be forgiven of all our sins and have fellowship with God—both now and for all eternity.
Prayer:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we worship you in awe. May our hearts be forever grateful for the gift of Jesus body and blood, so freely given for us—not because of any merit on our part, but while we were still sinners. Thank you.
Help us, as we come to accept these simple elements of bread and juice, to know that you are here with us; that just as you loved us enough to die for us long before we were born, you love us today.
Holy Spirit, breathe life into us so that we might truly be the people of God. Fill us with your presence; with your love; with your holiness.
Amen
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