Evidence of Eternal Security

Romans 5:1-2

Evidence of Eternal Security- Part 02

Standing in Grace

Romans 5:1-2, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

We have been studying through the heart of the book of Romans, chapters 3, 4, and 5. Of course, this is Paul’s great treatment of the gospel, spiritually powerful, life-transforming truth.

Romans 3:21 to 4:25, the faith of Abraham we have seen it all in detailly.

What we have learned in this great passage is that salvation is by faith alone, through grace alone.

We are going to begin to look at chapter 5.

• The message of chapter 5 is Justification.
• The message of Chapter 6 and 7 is Justification embraces sanctification.
• The message of chapter 8 is Justification embraces glorification.

Paul presents six great links in the chain that ties the Christian eternally to the Saviour. Six great truths inherent in salvation, which constitute its eternal character, its eternal nature and therefore, the divine guarantee.

The six things are familiar to us. There are six gifts that come with salvation. They are six components that define salvation. 1. Peace with God, 2. Standing in grace, 3. Hope of glory, 4. Assurance of love,

5. Certainty of deliverance, and

6. Joy in God. These are the six articles in the guarantee of your eternal salvation, so we need to learn them well.

1. Peace with God

V1, “Therefore, having been justified by faith,” ➢ God is the enemy of the sinner, and ➢ The sinner is the enemy of God.

• God is at war with the sinner, and
• The sinner is at war with God.

The unregenerate hate the Bible.

Psalm 7:11, “God is angry with the wicked every day.” Every day. So, justification, which is another way of saying being just or being right with God, being righteous before God, is the initial reality laying the foundation of a relationship to God, and it carries with it a whole host of things that show us the eternality of this relationship. Since we have been justified by faith, the first one, we have peace with God.

We have as a present possession. We currently have peace with God.

The peace Paul is talking about is not psychological tranquillity.

• It is not emotional security.
• It is not feelings of confidence or well-being.
• It is not subjective at all.
• It is not even talking about the kind of peace you feel or the kind of peace you sense or the kind of peace you experience.

It is talking about an actual relationship that can be defined as a relationship of peace. Justification by faith is that God declaring you righteous, God declaring you just, that very act of God establishes a new relationship between you and God. Whereas before you had been at war, you had been the enemy of God, you are now at peace. That's the issue here.

It's talking about an objective peace. The issue is not your attitude of confidence.

• It is not your emotional sense of well-being.
• It is not the absence of fear and doubt.
• It is not the presence of tranquillity.

That's not what he's talking about.

What he is talking about here is a relationship of peace rather than animosity. ➢ You have ceased to be an enemy of God and you have become a child of God. ➢ You have ceased to be a hater of God, and you have become a lover of God.

➢ You have ceased to be a child of Satan and become a child of God. You have been passed out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son and the relationship of animosity has been dramatically altered and become a relationship of intimacy and loving fellowship.

The unregenerate man is the enemy of God. He hates God and God is angry with him. Psalms that God hates the wicked. He is at war with God and God is at war with him and according to Ephesians 2 he is the target for the eternal wrath of God.

God is the enemy of Satan and God is the enemy of sin and since every unsaved soul is in sin and under Satan, God is at war with that soul.

Romans 5:10, For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

We are under condemnation. We are the enemies of God and the enemies of righteousness. God is angry with the wicked, and the Scripture indicates that God will act destructively against them. Peace with God means the war is over.

Peace God with means God is no longer fighting us nor we Him. He is not our enemy any longer. Peace with God is the new status. It's the new definition of our relationship that flows out of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, where the gospel is called the word of reconciliation and gospel proclaimers are called ministers of reconciliation.

We go around and we say be reconciled to God. It is the peace of reconciliation that we are talking about. Our sin paid, for in full on the cross by Jesus Christ, propitiates or satisfies the justice of God on our behalf and God in His great mercy accepts Christ as our substitute, treating Him as if he lived our lives and treating us as if we lived His by imputing his perfect righteousness to us.

Justification, reconciliation, they are indistinguishable.

They are distinguishable as terms, but they are indistinguishable in terms of reality. Having been declared righteous we are therefore reconciled to God. This peace then is the definition of the new reality of a person being made right with God.

It is the opposite of Romans 1, "being under the wrath of God." God's wrath towards us, which would ultimately consign us to eternal hell, is removed.

Why? Because it has been fully satisfied since Jesus bore in His own body our sins on the cross. The wrath of God was satisfied as He punished Jesus as if He committed every sin ever committed by every person who would ever believe.

God's justice being satisfied, Christ's righteousness being granted to us, we entered into peace with God. It isn't through anything we did or can do. V 1, "It is through our Lord Jesus Christ." All spiritual blessings are in Christ, including peace with God.

That is a spiritual blessing of monumental significance that, like all other spiritual blessings in the heavenlies, are in Christ.

Because of our relationship to Him, we enter into that peace.

1 John 1:9, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Romans 8:1, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Romans 8:35, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No one is able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have entered into a relationship of permanent eternal peace with God because our sins have been paid for and the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. That is the peace with God. By the way, that is to be distinguished from the peace of God, which is the sense of tranquillity and joy and confidence and freedom from anxiety that comes to an obedient believer. This is the great initial link that the apostle Paul identifies in this unbreakable chain.

Psalm 37:24, Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; For the Lord upholds him with His hand.

That's a great confidence! We stumble. We fall. We will never utterly be cast down because the Lord is holding us with His hand. 2. Standing in grace, V 2, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Again, Paul says it's by faith and it's through Christ into this grace in which we stand. This is one of the great statements in all the Bible. This truth is so rich, its boundaries are untouchable. Its boundaries are unreachable.

It is infinite. It is vast. It is profound. “Through whom,” The forerunner of that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything is because of Him. We have peace with God because of Him. We stand in grace because of Him.

Standing in grace. The key thought is that the mediation of Christ brings us all these things. Someone might bring up a passage of Scripture and say that you can be in grace, but you can fall from grace.

Galatians 5:4, You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.

This is often the argument of the people who want to deny that our salvation is secure. It says it to people who try to get saved by law.

Galatians 5:2-3, Indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. 3 And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. Christ is of no use to you. You don't need Him. He is profitless because you can be saved by your surgery. In other words, if you think you can be made right with God by your law-keeping, your self- righteousness and your own religious works, then equally Christ is useless to you.

These are the kinds of people who are fallen from grace.

What does it mean? It means that you have fallen away from the grace principle of salvation. It really isn't defining Christians in terms of salvation. It is defining non-Christians, people who come to God, as it were, or attempt to come to God some other way than through grace. You are fallen, as it were, away from the true principle.

The true principle that saves is grace. It is not teaching us that a Christian standing in grace can fall out of grace. The context would be utterly foreign to that concept. We who are saved through the Spirit.

Galatians 5:5, For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. So, it is simply falling from the principle of grace as a way of salvation. Now, Christ's death, then, provides for us these two things: Peace with God and standing in grace.

We have access, it says, into this grace in which we stand. It refers to access to God. Through Christ we have access by faith into God's realm where grace abounds. Do you understand what that would mean to a Jew?

Through all the history of Judaism, the Jews knew God as One who was separate, who was distant, to whom they had no access. God dwelt in the Holy of Holies and who alone could go in there? The high priest.

How many times? Once a year. The High Priest had to make sure he was cleansed. He had to do all the thing’s necessary ceremonial. Make the sacrifice before he could go in there and he had to wear little bells on his robe and in case the bells stopped tinkling, you knew he was dead because God had struck him dead because he had come in there in an impure way.

The idea of access was foreign to that system. There just was no access. The way God set it up the people were kept at great distance from God, which was to demonstrate their utter sinfulness. The whole Old Testament system of sacrifices, both in the tabernacle and later in the temple, was to demonstrate that God was inaccessible. God was not available.

Only the high priest could go in once a year. The Jews could get so close. The men could get a little closer, the women a little further away, the Gentiles a little further away, but God was not accessible. If you went where you weren't supposed to go and tried to access God on your own, like Uzzah did, and tampered with holy things, you could be killed on the spot.

Uzzah, Nadab, Abihu, Korah, Dathan, Abiram, etc., all those people in the Old Testament were killed because they sought to access God on their own terms. If the high priest, who went into the Holy of Holies once a year, wasn't right before God, he would die in there. He would be buried in shame.

Access was not a word in terms of man's relationship to God. Sinful man had no access. But Christ's death altered that. Of course, the monumental thing that occurred to demonstrate that at the death of Christ was the ripping of the veil between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies in the temple from top to the bottom. When Jesus was dying God supernaturally just ripped that veil to expose the Holy of Holies to everybody.

Access was made by Christ and that's the glory of the New Covenant.

Jeremiah 32:38-40, They shall be My people, and I will be their God; ³⁹ then I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me forever, for the good of them and their children after them. ⁴⁰ And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from Me.

The believer side of our security is that we have access to God, and He will never leave us. He will never depart from us. So, this whole idea of access, we could say a lot more about it but suffice it to say that for now. The whole idea of access is a brand new and glorious and wonderful reality. We have access to God.

Access to God is one thing and surviving it is something else! The Jews were frankly frightened about that. Manoah, the father of Sampson, came home one day and said to his wife, write the will, we are dead.

What happened, Manoah? I saw God. We are dead.

What did Manoah mean?

He saw God. God saw him. He saw holiness. God saw sin. He's dead. People in the Old Testament had a dread of seeing God. Even in the New Testament, the disciples were afraid when the storm came up and they were more afraid when Jesus stilled the storm because they realized God was in their boat and that was enough to panic them.

So, it's one thing to say, oh isn't that great, throw the veil open. There's access to God. No more barrier. There is access through Christ. I am so glad for the invitation. I am glad for the access, but I am not sure I can survive it.

V 2, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. We have access by faith into this Grace. You have access into a sphere of grace. It's in this grace in which we stand.

Histmi in the Greek meaning Abide. We live in this Spirit.

When you became a Christian, wonderful reality is that you entered into intimate access to God.

• You came into communion with God whereby you became a child of God.
• You became a member of God's kingdom.
• You became a member of God's family.
• You enjoy intimate fellowship and friendship.
• You became as close to God as is possible for a creature to be. you came and you had access, but you wouldn't survive it one second unless it was an environment of grace.

We are firmly fixed. Histmi means to stand firm, to abide. We are firmly fixed in a state of grace. This is the comforting reality. Where sin abounds Grace much more abounds.

Romans 5:20, Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, So, it's one thing to say wow, we have access to God isn't that wonderful and let us go rushing in.

God's not going to throw you out.

Why? Because it's an environment of Grace. We stand firm in an atmosphere of grace. We are immovable. We breathe the air of grace. We abide in grace. That is why we are secure because it's a place of grace. If it was a place of law, we wouldn't cut it. We would be out of there in a few moments after we arrived.

If it was a place of law, we would know no security. If our sins were manifest there, we would be expelled. But it is a place of grace.

What is grace? God's unmerited favour and forgiveness to sinners.

How can He do that? Because all the sin was paid for by Christ! Because He has imputed the righteousness of Christ to you.

Ephesians 2:8-9, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.

➢ Your peace is established with God, purely on the merits of Christ's work. ➢ Your grace, your access into this sphere of grace is purely on the merit of Christ's work on the cross.

• You stand before God in a relationship of peace.
• You stand before God in an environment of grace.

All because of what Christ has done. That's what makes our salvation permanent.

• When sin shows up, grace shows up.
• When sin abounds, grace abounds.

This is the immense reality that captures our hearts. We stand in grace. The state of salvation is a state of grace. It was with Christ's death and his gracious mediation and the wonderful saving work of the Holy Spirit that brought us into this state of grace, that brought us into this state of peace, and it is that which keeps us there.

John 17:11, Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as

We are. Keep them, Father.

Hold onto them. That was the prayer of Jesus.

John 17:15, I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.

It was the prayer of Jesus. That's a perfect glimpse of His intercessory work. What Jesus does as a faithful and merciful high priest? He prays for us. He prays according to the will of the Father. He is able!

Hebrews 7:25, Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

When the accuser of the brethren who is Satan comes before the throne of God as he does night and day. I see that individual. Jesus is there saying, I paid for that.

What about this sin? Covered. I paid for all of that.

The Father's promise to the Son is that He would keep those whom He had given to the Son.

Jude 1:24-25, Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, ²⁵ To God our Saviour, Who alone is wise, Be glory and majesty, Dominion and power, Both now and forever. Amen. ✓ God will keep you. ✓ Christ will keep you. ✓ The Spirit keeps you.

The Holy Spirit keeps you through His intercessory work. Romans 8. We have been accepted in the beloved One.

Ephesians 1:6, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. If it were just us, we wouldn't make it but we are in Christ and as the Father accepts Christ, He accepts us because we are covered by His righteousness. A.W. Pink "It is utterly and absolutely impossible that the sentence of the Divine Judge should ever be revoked or reversed.

Sooner shall the lightnings of omnipotence shiver the Rock of Ages than those sheltering in Him again be brought under condemnation."

Romans 8:1, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Our maintained salvation is not because of our maintained goodness. It's because of grace, grace, grace, grace. ➢ Some people would think that the state of peace with

God is unstable. It's not. ➢ Some people would think that our state of access to God is unstable. It's not. We are not introduced by Christ into some precarious relationship. We stand in grace firmly. We abide in grace. He has the divine strength to enable us to keep from falling. He holds us. We persevere.

When sin does come and it comes, the grace on which we stand provides complete forgiveness because Christ has paid the penalty in full.