We are looking this morning at Romans Chapter 5:1 thru 11.  It’s a passage full of promises and twists and turns, and it presents us with great theological concepts such as justification and perseverance and reconciliation.  How all these themes and ideas hang together can sometimes seem like trying to tie up the loose ends of a grand mystery.

Viewed as a whole this passage is one full of promise.  It promises that peace with God is possible.  It speaks of rejoicing in hope.  It tells us that even the cruddiest parts of life, those times when we pass through trials and suffering, can produce unexpected benefits.  Above all it points us to the love of God that is able to triumph over even our greatest defeats.

But is it all just hype?  Can the love of God really make a difference?  In our twenty first century world of compromises and complications can Paul’s message of hope truly turn our lives around?

A key word in the passage is ‘justification’.  Romans 5:1 states, “Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Justification by grace through faith is a key concept of Christian understanding.  But what can it mean for us on a daily basis? What does it mean to have lives that are justified before God?

The best way I can think of describing it is by turning to my word processor for inspiration.  Like many of you who use computers, you know that there is a place you can click on the screen that decides how the words are going to be set out on the page.  

You can usually decide if your text is going to be all straightened out on the left margin, or the right margin, or even use a column style with all the margins justified.  When used as a publishing term, ‘justification’ is about how all the words and letters and dots and commas and paragraphs and headings on the page relate to one another.  It’s about putting everything in its rightful place.

Paul speaks about his life in relation to God as being ‘justified’.  Everything to do with God was in the right place - the spaces, the commas, the little things, the big things, the headlines, the small print.  It was all in order, and it looked good.  And when things that came along that could make it look bad, things like sin or suffering, Paul rejoices that it was truly the work of grace to sort everything out again.

This work of justification comes about because God has chosen to redeem the world through the life and work of Jesus Christ, through His death upon the Cross and resurrection to new life. Elsewhere in the book of Colossians Paul writes, “In Him (that is in Jesus) all things hold together.” (Col 1:17).

We are justified before God, not because we are good at sorting everything out; on the contrary our lives can seem to be a murky, ink-blotted page of disconnected scribbling.  We are justified because God in Christ came to put everything in it’s rightful place, and as we open up our lives to the influence of the Holy Spirit, God starts to do the same thing in our lives.

Now how it all works out is a mystery that is even beyond Sherlock Holmes.  We are not at the final page of the novel; we’re caught up in the midst of its pages.  We carry with us as many questions as we do answers.  But by faith it is possible to perceive that in the midst of all the confusion there is an unseen hand at work.

When we look back over our lives we often see how things that have happened to us in the past, which made absolutely no sense at the time, have determined the direction of our life and led us to the place we currently stand.  That if the tragedy or success had not occurred, then the road we are traveling would have turned out to be very different.  We can see how we would have missed out on gaining skills or a perspective that we now find useful.

Having a life that is justified before God means having a life in which we are allowing God to sort things out!  It requires trust in God and confidence that God desires our absolute best.  Such a confidence can be ours as we reflect on verses such as Romans 5:8 - “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Hope comes as we realize that whatever in our life we may have done that would truly put us at odds with God, then the action of Jesus Christ in giving His life for us upon the Cross has it more than covered.  As Eugene Petersen paraphrases verse 10, “If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we're at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! “

This is more than hype.  Many people can testify as to how God has led them to places and into situations and through circumstances that they would never have dreamed up in a thousand years. I cite my own life as an example.  Who would have thought that a kid from the suburbs of Liverpool, England, who until he was in his late teens rarely set foot inside a church building, could end up on a spiritual journey that has led him to be currently preaching in a pulpit in a place called Beckley, West Virginia? 

I guarantee that if you could go back and ask my guidance counselors or teachers at the High School I attended if they saw that one coming, they would answer with a resounding “No”.

But that’s what happens when you allow God to be the one who is justifying your life.  Being put right with God is not just about having a personal relationship with God.  It encompasses having a life – past, present, and future – in which God is working out His purposes through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in knowing that whatever barriers we place in the way of that happening, God has overcome them through the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

As we come to the table of communion we have a chance to ask God to justify our lives, to put everything within us and around us in the right place, to sort us out, to make us right.  The little things.  The big things.  The headlines.  The small print.  To put us in order so that we can help others to get their lives back on course.

For sure every one of our lives can be something of a mystery story.  But if we trust in God to get us through, I believe God can do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves.  Justification by faith.  Righteousness through faith.  Saved by grace we can find confidence to walk through life with Christ as Lord and the Holy Spirit as our Helper and Guide.

Let us thank God that Jesus Christ died upon the Cross that our lives may be justified; that we may be set right.  May the Holy Spirit’s work within us truly be one that sorts us out and brings God’s design to be seen in our relationships, in our work, in our hopes, and in our dreams.

To God’s name be the Glory.  

Amen.