Let me invite you to turn to Romans chapter 5 this morning. Romans chapter 5. And while you're turning there, let me just say a word of praise to God for Women of the Word started this past Tuesday. I believe we had 145 women studying God's Word together. And so it's still early in it. I want to encourage you ladies to consider being a part of that as they study God's Word. It's a great time for fellowship in the Word and prayer. And so I hope you'll be taking advantage of that. And then I'd also like to encourage you, I'm beginning a new series tonight from 1 Corinthians 12. And so I'd like to invite you, but also challenge you, if you're a member of our church, the next five Sunday nights, Lord willing, we're going to spend in 1 Corinthians 12, looking at what it says about the life of God in the life of the body. And so I hope you'll plan to be here for that. I know there's a lot of things that get in our way, but I'd really encourage you to come and be here on Sunday evenings at six o'clock as we worship together and look at God's word. Look if you would please chapter five in verses six through eight. Chapter five, verses six through eight. For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man, someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We've been working our way through Romans 5, and as we do, I think it's important for us to recognize, I think that one of the most effective tools that the devil has in his toolbox is to take biblical terms and keep the term, but fill it with different meanings. All right, so example, a classic example would be the word inspired. You talk about the Bible being inspired and you could have a conversation with somebody who is of a liberal theological persuasion who would go, oh yeah, I believe the Bible's inspired. But what they mean by that is that it's inspired like Shakespeare's plays are inspired or like some great speech that has lasted through the decades and people read it and are amazed by it and they say, well, that's an inspired speech. They don't actually mean that the very words we have in scripture come from God. They're breathed out by God and in fact are God's word. The same thing happened with the deity of Christ, or a long time ago, it used to be called the divinity of Christ, that Jesus was divine, that they would say, oh yeah, he is. But then if you press them on it, like one famous modernist said, basically, I can't believe anybody accused me of denying the divinity of Jesus, I've never denied the divinity of any man. What he meant was, well, all of us have a spark of divinity within us, so sure, Jesus is divine. And so what he means by that is not at all what the Bible means by that. And that's the way that error can work its way in and subtly erode the truth of God that we desperately need. In terms of our text or passage, two of those kinds of words are the words hope and love. All right, hope has been turned into sort of a positive sentiment or possibility. And we do use it that way in English, right? Hope springs eternal means maybe someday the Lions will win the Super Bowl, right? We can at least hope. And when we say it, we know we're just sort of wishing it would be the case. And so what ends up happening is people talk about hope and you need to have hope, you need to believe, you need to trust this, and they don't actually mean what the Bible means by hope, which isn't a wish, but is a certainty, a conviction, a confidence of the truth. And love has been twisted out of shape. Right, so love is without judgment. It's unconditional positive regard, unconditional acceptance. It has no moral components. Love is love. Right, so we have this sort of absolute willingness to talk about love as Christians. but a kind of love that clearly isn't found in the Bible. Because nothing in the Bible about love would whitewash all of what scriptures say about truth and righteousness and repentance, right? So what we have to do is make certain that we are actually pursuing the definitions and understandings of these things from God's word. Because man-made definitions are like a placebo. It might help you feel better, because you have better thoughts, but it actually doesn't address the disease or the illness. There's no medicine there. The truth of God is the only medicine for our soul. So we can't be thinking, well, maybe the Bible will give me something that'll change my attitude, and if my attitude changes, then everything will be better. No, we're much, much too sick for placebos. We need real medicine. Or if I can change my metaphor, it's the difference between walking out onto a thin layer of ice that looks like it could sustain you and walking out onto some ice that you'd have to drill deeply to get through because it's virtually impenetrable. Right? False definitions give you the impression that they will sustain your weight, but they will not. Only the scriptures and what God has to say provides a foundation which can sustain the weight that is at stake for us in this life and for all of eternity. And in chapter five, Paul has been helping us see the benefits of justification, that God makes sinners righteous by virtue of what Christ has done, being credited to their account when they trust in Christ, that if we are justified, these great benefits work out of it. The first of which he says, we have peace with God. There is no longer conflict between us and God. God has made peace and he's made it through Christ because by Christ, we begin access to this standing of grace where God receives us as his people graciously. And because of that, we can actually exalt in the hope of the glory of God. We can have a confident joy about the promise of God's glory. We have a confident joy that one day the glory against which we rebelled and from which we fell, we will actually enjoy in the presence of our Savior and God. We can exalt in that, but that's out in the future. What about right now? Well, we can actually have confident joy in the midst of our tribulations as well. And that's what he began saying in chapter five in verse three. We can exalt in our tribulations. And the reason we can do that, we saw last week, was because God is in fact confirming our confidence about his glory through the tribulations, because they are triggers for transforming growth. God uses it to grow us, to transform us. And when that happens, It changes us, and therefore we have greater hope of the glory that he's promised to us because we see God at work in our hearts. He's transforming us in the midst of the trouble, but it also provides a fresh experience for us of God's love. Notice again, verse five, we didn't look at it yet this morning, but notice the first words of verse five, and hope does not disappoint, and here comes, An explanation why, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. That in the midst of our trials and tribulations, we are aware of God's love for us by the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. So we have a fresh experience of the fact that God loves us. Now notice the first word of verse six. for while we were still helpless." So the first word of verse 6 is there because it helps us understand the relationship between verse 5 and verses 6-8. Verses 6-8 are actually an explanation about something in verse 5. And the something in verse 5 that he's going to explain is the relationship between hope and love. All right, we have a hope that will not disappoint us. Why is that? Because God's love has been poured into our hearts. Well, really, what about God's love gives us that kind of invincible hope? All right, because that's what he's talking about. The hope will not disappoint us. So this hope won't sort of take you to the brink and then drop you. It actually is an invincible hope that will accomplish the purpose that God intends. So what about God's love produces that? And that's what verses six through eight answer. And basically answer comes in two parts. The timing of God's love, and the nature of God's love. Look why I say the timing of God's love. Notice the words in verse six, for while we were still helpless. All right, so it's talking about something about when God loved us, while we were still helpless. And notice it says then, at the right time, Christ died for sinners. And then look down to verse eight, the second part of verse eight, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So there's the timing. Paul's gonna say, you can have an invincible hope because of God's love, in part, because of the timing at which God loved you. And so we have to look at that in a moment. But then also it tells us about the nature of God's love, that it was a love expressed by God in the death of Christ, in the death of Christ in verse six, and in the death of Christ described in verse eight, and that is the demonstration of God's own love toward us. So let's think for a moment from this text of scripture about the timing of God's love. And I think there's two aspects to it. The first is this, is that God's love was timed perfectly according to his plan. And I think that's in those words in verse six, it says, at the right time, at the right time, Christ died. Now it is possible that that simply means something like at the appropriate time, that we were helpless and sinners and ungodly. The kind of help we needed had to be that kind of appropriate help for it. But I think there's a larger thread in the scriptures that talks about the death of Christ being at the right moment in terms of God's plan. Remember what Galatians 4 says about Christ coming? When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might redeem us. The book of Hebrews in chapter nine says, but now once at the consummation of the ages, Christ died. So there was something about the sovereign outworking of God's eternal plan that placed the cross right where it was. The timing of Christ's death was not accidental. It wasn't something that just sort of tumbled out and said, oops, plan A didn't work, let's go to plan B. No, that God had beforehand ordained that Christ would die at the hands of sinners, that was His will and purpose. And in fact, He had orchestrated ages and empires to see that that would be the case. Right, he controlled the outworking of history so that in fulfillment, for instance, of the prophecy of Daniel about when the death of Christ would happen, would happen, it happened. That Christ would be born, live, and die was all the outworking of God's plan. And that's important to understand here when we're talking about God's love. Right, that this is an initiative rooted in the sovereign hand of God to carry it out. That's the love that Paul's gonna anchor our hope in. that God at the right time provided the offering that we need. But it also was perfectly timed for our plight. And that's what he says in verses six and eight, while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. And then down in verse eight, God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So if you're keeping score, there are three statements about us. We were helpless, we were ungodly, and we were sinners when Christ died. And in fact, there's a contrast with those to help bring it clear to us. Some might die, right? No one would die for, hardly anyone would die for a righteous man, verse seven, though perhaps for a good man, someone may dare to die. And that's helping us understand again, the nature of what's going on here with God moving toward us in love in the death of Christ. We were not in fact righteous. We were not in fact good. We were actually helpless and ungodly and sinners. That's the contrast that Paul's developing here. And it might be natural and potentially normal for someone to die for somebody that they love, who has been good to them. Right, the good, the benefactor. It might be normal or natural for someone to lay down something for that which has benefited them, but not to do so for your enemies, in the language that comes a few verses later. that you and I were in a desperate condition. That's what I think that word helpless is saying, that we were without spiritual and moral strength. We were weak and could not rescue ourselves. We couldn't save ourselves. And so there was a helplessness to us. This word, it's used a variety of ways in the New Testament of physical disability, of spiritual weakness, All right, so it's got that kind of language to it. And in this context, it clearly, because it's set alongside of ungodly and sinners, he's not talking about a kind of physical incapacity. He's talking about a spiritual or moral weakness or helplessness that we couldn't save ourselves. We couldn't rescue ourselves, we couldn't redeem ourselves. We needed someone to rescue us from the penalty of sin and the power of Satan. We were held captive by him and we were unable to escape. We were under a sentence of death and could not bring ourselves to life and God moved toward us. All right, so it is the fact that sinners are not near to God seeking God. They're actually far from God and without spiritual life and without spiritual ability to rescue themselves. And yet God loved us when we were like that. Right, we just sang a beautiful, I think poetic expression of this. Hands that should discard me bid me come. Right, the love of God has its glory in the fact that he actually had every right to say away from me, but instead he moved toward me. He moved to my need when I was helpless. Notice the character of sinners is described in this word ungodly and sinner. they reflect, I think, the same root problem of where we are as those, like chapter one says, who've turned away from God. The word here ungodly means a lack of reverence toward God, that we have no fear of God before our eyes in the language of chapter three. That instead of being creatures who look to the creator with a kind of reverence and awe, We actually exchanged his glory for the things that he had made. We worshiped the creature instead of the creator. We don't live in fear and reverence of God. We actually live in disregard for God, turning away from his purposes, taking the beauty of his creation and corrupting it. taking the good things that he's made and using them in evil ways. There's an ungodliness. A sinner falls short of God's glory through rebellion against his will and rejection of his right to rule. So here's the first component of Paul's argument. Why does God's love instill you with a hope that is invincible. Because God loved you when you were not lovely. And that, I'm gonna come back to this, but that doesn't sit well in our, I mean, our whole culture and world has brainwashed us against something like that. Because the greatest love of all is learning to love yourself And the word of God comes along and says, there's not really anything there that would actually draw that kind of love. That love came to you when you didn't deserve it. It came to you when you actually deserve something different than that. Okay, so just hold on to that. Let's add the second component in because it's important to get them and hold them together. Notice the nature of God's love as described in this text of Scripture. All right, we can say, I'm gonna use three words to describe it, sacrificial. Christ died for the ungodly, verse 6. In verse 8, Christ died for us. And the language of the text is very clear that it is the death which is the demonstration of God's love. So when you talk about God's love, the demonstration of that love is in the death of Christ. All right, and in fact, I think it's a powerful witness and testimony to who Jesus is, because think about this, God's love is demonstrated in that Christ died for us. So there's an absolute oneness in the outworking of God's love so that the Father's plan is carried out by the Son's sacrifice of death. And the extent of this love is demonstrated by the extreme sacrifice that Jesus made for sinners. He died as the sacrifice that atones for sins. Our attitude toward God, ungodly, of irreverence and a lack of regard and respect for God and our actions toward God of disobedience, falling short of his glory. Our attitude and action deserves a righteous penalty of death. Romans chapter six and verse 23, you could probably quote it, for the wages of sin is death. All right, so here's Paul's first demonstration of why this shows God's love so clearly. It's because there was a penalty that deserved condemnation and Christ actually paid that penalty. All right, that he bore our sins in his body on the tree. that he died the just for the unjust. The death of Christ is the greatest demonstration of the love of God. But I think we need to look at carefully at the words that are used here, because it's a sacrifice, but another word we need to put there is substitution. Right, and that's in the words here. Notice in verse six, it says Christ died for the ungodly. And at the end of verse eight, Christ died for us. And the language that Paul uses points toward representation or substitution. That he's saying that Jesus stepped into the place of the ungodly. He stepped into the place of sinners. Right, because here's the point. It's our attitude of irreverence and disregard for God that brings the wrath of God from heaven, chapter one. It's our disobedience against his will, our actions of rejecting him. of going our own way, those bring a righteous sentence of condemnation. And here's the problem, right? I cannot pay that debt. We're just saying, I mean, the debt is mine. And I'm without resources to pay it. I'm helpless and ungodly and a sinner. So I am in a world of hurt here, right? I have a debt which I actually owe and I cannot pay. But God in his love provides a way for him to be righteous and also be one who can make me righteous. As chapter three says, so he can be just and the justifier. And that's that the Son of God, eternal Son of God, took to himself a human nature, lived in perfect righteousness, so there is no sentence of death on him. He has no debt. He lives perfectly in obedience, full and complete righteousness. and then willingly stepped into the place of sinners to satisfy the righteousness of God against sinners, the penalty. He died in the place of, he died on behalf of sinners. His death was not for any debt he owed, but was for the debt of sinners. He's a substitute, he steps in the place of them. And that's really crucial because there's a lot of theory, and I'll put it in the air quotes, theories of Christ's death that try to remove substitution from, right? You can't actually, I mean, I suppose you could somehow make it up that Christ didn't die, right? And some did try to deny the resurrection by saying he didn't die. But people accept the fact that Jesus died, can say, yeah, oh yeah, he was a sacrifice. But what they could do is reduce it to his sacrificial death was a great moral influence over us. Just like, hey, remember the people who died at such and such an event. Let's not forget about them, and because they died there, we need to live out our freedom. And we just went through this a little bit in 9-11, right? Never forget, always remember. Think about the people who sacrificed their lives to rescue other people, and that should change the way you live, right? So there's people who talk about the death of Christ like that. Jesus died, and it's the overwhelming, powerful, moral example of what love looks like. So you should be loving like that. Or they try to make it abstract. There's some moral principle of God's government that has to be satisfied. And so Jesus dies and satisfies that. And it's just like this sort of abstract concept. But Paul won't let us think like that. Paul says he died for us. He stepped into the place of sinners so that if you think about it this way, and all analogies have their breakdown, but I'm on my way to my eternal judgment. I'm stepping up to the execution of righteous wrath against me. And Jesus steps in and he takes it. Right, the wrath that I deserved was poured out on him. He steps into my place, he becomes my substitute. He's the one who bore that wrath so that I wouldn't. It wasn't just some abstract concept or some great theater of God to show us how much he loves us and therefore it should change us. but that there was a real sentence of death passed against Dave Doran because Dave Doran is a sinner. And Jesus stepped into my shoes and died in my place so that I would never face condemnation. There is now nothing left for me to pay. I mean, we sang it this morning. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. There is no debt for me to pay. There's not one ounce of penalty left on the books for me. There's not one second of eternal punishment that will ever come my way. because Jesus paid it all. That's the message of the gospel. And if we think we're supposed to go, okay, thank you, Jesus, let me work off the rest. Let me get busy making sure I cover my bases and if I get to the end and I haven't quite all done, I'm gonna go spend a little time paying for it in purgatory until hopefully people pray me out or it's purged out of me and then I'll end up in heaven. That is blasphemy against the full sufficiency of the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ. When Jesus paid the debt, he didn't leave you to take care of the tip. All to him I owe. He paid it all, that's the point of it. And here now where the timing and the nature of this sort of fit together, I'm gonna use a word which I've struggled with using this word, but I think it really does catch it if we understand the meaning. It's sacrificial and it's substitutional, but it is also, and think with me on this, it's spontaneous. So here's what I mean by that, because that word means something without external constraint. Right? It's something that comes from within without external control. Another way we would say it is that God's love is free, but obviously in our day, that has weird connotations too. But what we mean by that is that God exercises it freely without external constraint. Okay, that the source of God's love, the prompting of God's love, the energy of God's love does not actually find its source in the sinner. It doesn't find its basis in us, but it is in God. Right, and again, this is a part of how we have to wrestle through things, because we sort of think about Love is just sort of happening, right? It just like, it just, you know, I fell in love. But here's the thing we have to recognize, even that, I mean, I don't like the concept, right? But even there, that would be different than what we have here. Because you know what? I've never met anybody who said, I fell in love, who wasn't actually thinking about how lovely the person they love is. Right? I mean, I hate to do this to you, all right? Because some of you will have this in your brain the rest of the service. But there is a song that covers just about every generation in here. Hey, I'm a believer. Right? I thought love was just a fairy tale. And then it says, but then I saw her face. Right? The person thought love was impossible. And then I saw her face. Now I'm a believer. Right? That person's face drew out love. And it feels like just an emotion and spontaneous, but actually it wasn't. It was triggered by someone outside. It wasn't sourced in the choice of the lover. It actually feels like something they can't help doing because of the object. Now think about this. What's the object? Here's what the text says. When we were helpless, when we were ungodly, when we were sinners, God demonstrated his love for us. God was not in heaven going, you know, I really wanna judge you, but man, I just can't help loving you. Not at all. God had every right to exercise the righteous consequence of our rebellion against him. But because of God, because of God, he loved us. He loved us in spite of ourselves. He loved us when we hated him. Chapter A will say, He loved us when we were his enemies, a few verses later are. Okay, so now let's step back into our theme. Why does that kind of love produce an invincible hope? It's because the hope isn't built that we're worth it. My hope isn't grounded in my behavior. My hope isn't grounded in the fact that I get with it and I live up to it and I be worthy of it, right? If my hope is rooted in me, it is gonna be up and down and up and down and up and down. My hope is in the Lord who loved me when he could have judged me with condemnation. Do you realize when God redeemed me, right? I was as wicked in the eyes of God as wicked can be. I'm his child now. Do you think he would withdraw his love at this point? His love was never based on my performance. His love was never based on me earning it. His love was never based on my specialness. His love was rooted in the fact that He is love. That's what the scriptures say. It was rooted in the fact that he loved me in such a way that his son would be the sacrifice for my sins, that he would be the substitution for me so that now if I am in Christ, I have a peace with God that didn't spring from me. Lord, I'd like a truce. I'll be good. It was God sent terms of peace in his son and established it for me. It's rooted in him. And it's really important to get this right, because here's the thing, that you take these pieces of the puzzle in our day, and they can sit wrongly with us, right? Here's the thing, all right? I'll just be real specific, all right? If you're here today and you don't know Christ, I have to tell you two things that might sound contradicting. You are helpless, ungodly, and a sinner who deserves the wrath of God. And God loves you and sent his son to die in your place so that you can have eternal life. Right, here's what I'd say is the culture, this is one where the devil has won our culture. is because to say the first is anathema. Oh, you can't win people to Jesus by telling them they're sinners. You can't tell people to come to Christ by declaring that they're ungodly. I mean, you need to have a more positive message. So let's sort of talk that away and let's just talk about how much God loves them. But here's the problem. Right? You won't actually understand the nature of God's love until you realize how much you didn't deserve it. And if you don't realize that you don't deserve it, then you will never repent of your sin against God and look for the Savior who can rescue you from it. I mean, there has to be a coming to grips with the reality that sin destroys and is deadly so that we can turn to a Savior who loves us and will rescue us. And if I love you, I'm going to tell you the truth. You're not gonna walk into the doctor's office riddled with cancer and have them go, hey, take these two sugar pills and think about how much God loves you. You would consider that malpractice. And it is malpractice for a preacher of God's word to ignore both of these truths. We must have both of them to understand the reality of God's love. His love is so extraordinary precisely because it was poured out on people who rejected and rebelled against him. He loved us to the point of his son's death on the cross. But this is also really important for believers because here's the nonsense that's being peddled in our day. that actually says you won't grow and you won't be able to serve until you recognize how special you are, how important you are, how much value there is in you because of God's love, right? God loved you, so therefore you must be special. And it's, as I've said before, it's pop psychology that creeps into and distorts biblical theology in that regard. Because real change doesn't happen by looking inward. It happens by looking outward. Right, so, because here's the thing is this kind of a way is really saying, man, you're never gonna really grow, you're not gonna really succeed and move forward until you learn to love yourself and believe in yourself and have confidence in yourself. And it takes human living kinds of stuff and stuffs it into a vertical relationship. so that the way I will grow is when I change my self-perception. The fancy way of saying it now is I get a better sense of identity, right? My self-perception changes, then I will grow. All right, but here's, I mean, there's lots, I think lots of things wrong with it, but really at the root of it, it discounts and downplays the reality that we were helpless, ungodly and sinners. And I hate to say this, I want you to understand it's coming from love, but we're still a mess. There's not a person in this room who still doesn't struggle with the flesh, There's not a person in this room who actually doesn't sin. So if you're truly looking in the mirror, you can say all the positive affirmations you want. I mean, you can tell yourself all that stuff till you're blue in the face, but the reality of it is in your heart of hearts, your conscience testifies that you're far short of those affirmations. You are not what you ought to be. And you are not what you will be. So your hope and strength better not be rooted in your self-perception. It better not be rooted in you trying to convince yourself that somehow, You have a specialness that enable you to serve God better or grow in grace. The answer is not in us, right? The deep level flaw here is that it thinks sanctification, sin and sanctification are a programming flaw. Your programming is written badly, that's why you're not performing properly. You need to rewrite your programming, then you'll actually perform better. You need a different script. If you had had the right script, you'd be doing okay, because you are basically okay. You just gotta straighten out the script, and once you get the script straightened out, everything will be good. That might work for like Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Shuler and all the people who have a kind of fuzzy depravity, but folks, my problem is not a programming problem. It's deep in actually the hardware. I'm a sinner. I'm a sinner. and no amount of just changing the script about what I say about myself is gonna change that. It actually works just the opposite. It's not me looking inward to find strength for growth and service, it's me looking outward to God's love for that. Learning and understanding, in the words of Ephesians 3, what is the depth and breadth of the love of God? It's actually me recognizing that God's love toward me is my only hope in life and death. And in fact, because our love is a reflexive love. 1 John, we love because he first loved us. So where does my attention have to be? It has to be on God's love for me. When I look at God's love for me and contemplate God's love for me and understand its depth and breadth and height, then it produces in me love for Him. It constrains me, the language of 2 Corinthians 5, the love of Christ constrains me so that I no longer live for myself, but for Him who died. The answer for growth, the answer for service is an ever deepening appreciation for the wonder and amazement of God's love for us. That's why it's so often in our songs. See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns composed so rich a crown, were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small, because love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all. Do you see what the contemplation there was? when I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. I look outside of myself to the love of God. I look at Christ and what he did for me. He died in my place. He rescued me from condemnation. And God did all of that when I was running away from him. When I love myself more than him. God loved me like that. When that gets a hold of my heart, when that takes root, then I love him. And I'm loyal to Christ more than any of his rivals. Nothing matters more than Christ when we understand how much he loves us. how much he gave up for us, how much he lives to save us. It's crucial to our hope. If our hope is built on us, it's shaky ground, but because it's built, it's built on the extraordinary, invincible love of God. My hope will never disappoint me. Your hope in Christ will never put you to shame. because his love will never abandon his sheep. Let's pray. Father, please help us to recognize in a world that is so centered on us, that we're being sold a bill of goods, that true, true love comes as a response to your love. because your love is genuine and true and real. It springs from your very nature and it came to us when we did not deserve it and secured for us peace and hope and we praise you for it. Lord, help us to see that love more clearly day by day to rest in it, to rejoice in it. And I pray this morning that that love would be the foundation of our hope, that no one here would be trusting in some other shallow offer, but that they would trust in the love of Christ poured out on the cross and vindicated in the resurrection. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.