Let's give attention to God's Word. Romans 5, verse 5. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." The very Word of God this morning. How confident are you this morning? How confident are you? Today? Throughout life? Do you have a sense of confidence? Confidence. Paul has been getting at that idea from a number of different angles. He's been speaking about what we could call a very specific kind of gospel confidence. And he's been hitting it from very different angles, using words and concepts throughout this chapter 5, encouraging us to confidence. He's used the word boast again and again. In our translations, it's written down as rejoice, but we said the word is boast. And he said, That's a confidence word, isn't it? We boast, we exalt. And he's talking about what we boast in. We boast in God. Verse 11, in what he has done. Verse 2, we boast in the hope of glory. That great promise that the glory of God will come in its fullness when Jesus returns and we'll be caught up in it, transformed by it. We even saw last week that our confidence is so strong that we can boast even in suffering, knowing that even difficulty is working in us for God's glory and our good. We boast. But Paul uses in this chapter another confidence word. He uses the word hope. Hope. That rock-solid assurance that God will keep His promises. And Paul again and again has said, We have this hope. Hope so strong that it's not crushed by difficulty. It's actually strengthened, even in times of trial and tribulation. Paul also, in the verse we read this morning, verse 5, says that we won't be put to shame. There's another confidence statement. We won't be disappointed. We won't be put to shame. Confidence. Confidence. And yet sometimes, often, we don't feel very confident. Often we don't find ourselves boasting in the Lord and exalting in our hope. Perhaps especially in times of trial, rejoicing in suffering. That just seems foreign to us. Often we're short on confidence. Lacking in confidence. Or, on the other extreme, sometimes we're confident in all the wrong things. Confident in our own accomplishments. Confident in our own privileges or abilities. Stuff that Paul says in Philippians is like trash compared to gospel confidence. So we either lack it or we find it in the wrong place. So Paul writes us and continues in Romans 5 to urge us on to where true confidence is found. And it's interesting what he gives us here. Writing to us who lack and struggle with confidence, what he gives us is not a list of things to do. He doesn't even tell us to go out and have some kind of new experience and gain confidence through that. Instead, what he urges, how he encourages us, is by revisiting the glory of the Gospel. revisiting and rehearsing and have us meditate on the wonders of our salvation. And we start to see what Paul is doing. The way we gain this confidence is not by going out and doing things. The way we gain it is, well, what he's going to say in chapter 12. It's by being transformed by the renewing of our minds. It's by filling our minds with the glories of not what we do, but what he's already done. And by filling our minds with these things, all the new aspects of that glory, by filling our minds with these things, we're changed by it. We are transformed by it. We grow in true and lasting confidence. So I want us to look at these verses from Romans 5 and look at this gospel confidence. Meditate on these truths to build up our strength in Him. And as we go, We're gonna take two little two little detours two little stops along the way To notice some important theological truth that that will help us I've called him scenic overlooks It's kind of like when you're driving down the highway and there's the little sign on the side is a scenic overlook and don't pull off the side and take a look for a little while and get back on the highway. We're going to see a couple of those along the way. We'll see that it's not really a detour. It helps us understand really what Paul's getting at. But it'll feel like we might be pulling off the side for a minute to get back. Well, confidence. You can be confident in the Lord because of three things. First, you can be confident because of the hard work of the Holy Spirit. We mentioned this briefly last week, but we'll take another minute to go over verse 5. He's been talking about hope, how we grow in hope even through difficulty. And he says, verse 5, hope does not put us to shame. It will not disappoint us. Well, why, Paul? How come? How can you be so confident? He says, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us That Paul says we can become more and more confident Because here is God doing a work inside of us and the work inside of us that he's doing is Pouring out his love You maybe perhaps even can picture that image from Psalm 23. Remember David talks about his cup that runs over, right? Picture that cup and you fill it up so high that it just keeps spilling out. That's the kind of abundance you have to give into the cup. And here God has that kind of image. That's what God's doing in our hearts. pouring out His love, which we'll talk about in a minute, this love and commitment that is eternal, that is demonstrated in the most mind-blowing of ways. It's poured out into our hearts, unto abundance. It overflows. So strong is this work within us that Paul says it takes the Holy Spirit to do it. So you have the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, God Himself, That the only way that this love of God can be truly and accurately communicated and poured out into us is if the Holy Spirit Himself does it. You can't just deliver the package any old way. If you have really something very, very valuable and you want to deliver it, you don't just throw it in the mail. You don't just send it UPS. This is really valuable. You're going to hand deliver this one. This gift is so valuable. You don't want it to get broken. You don't want it lost. And here's God saying, this love is so important, so significant, that God Himself is going to hand deliver it into our hearts. The Holy Spirit Himself dwelling within us to communicate God's love. And that's a constant thing for a believer. If you're in Jesus, the Holy Spirit is in you now. You might not feel it all the time, It doesn't matter. He's there. And part of His purpose, His goal, His job is to pour out that love and commitment of the Lord into your very soul. And that gives you a sense of confidence in Him. So you can be confident because of that hard work of the Spirit, but Paul's not done. You can also be confident because of the cross of Christ. And here we move into verse six, six through eight. For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would even dare to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So Paul says, If you want to know this love that's being poured out into our hearts, you want to know how serious and intense this love is, how real and sizable and valuable it is, Paul says, here's how God shows it. Here's how God demonstrates. Here's how He proves His love. Where do you see it most intensely? He says, look at the cross. There is Christ dying to pay the penalty for sinners. to set the ungodly free from sin and death, to take the wrath of God. He says if you want to see it, see the love of God, look at the cross. And to really bring it home, the intensity of this love, the strength of it, the value of it, he says you have to compare this love to human love. He says among humans, It's pretty rare that one person will die for another, sacrifice their life in order to save another. But he says, well, maybe, you know, for a good, a righteous person, someone might dare to die. Can you think of the individuals that you would be willing to give your life to save? Maybe it's one of these scenarios we sometimes see in the movies, you know, the terrorists come in and they take hostages and they give their list of demands and they start saying to the authorities, you know, if you don't give us our demands, we're going to start executing the hostages. And can you think if you're there, which people you would volunteer to save? No, no, no, no. Don't execute him. Don't execute her. Take me instead. Who would you be willing to do that for? Child? Your parents? Your brother or sister? Close friend? Spouse? What about for a complete stranger? That's harder. What about if the guy who's selected to be put to death, the guy who's selected, is someone you do recognize because you've seen him on TV? He was on America's Most Wanted. He's the thief, the murderer that's on the loose, and he happens to be among the hostages. Would you raise your hand and say, no, no, no, don't kill him, kill me instead? For him? Right. But it's there that we're starting to inch closer to the love that's demonstrated at the cross. Because what Paul is saying here is that the Son doesn't die for good people. The Son dies for criminals. Look at the words he uses to describe us in this passage. Verse 6, he calls us, as those in ourselves, apart from Christ, he calls us, verse 6, the ungodly. Verse 8, sinners. Verse 10, enemies of God. It's not a flattering picture. And you put it together with what we studied in chapters 1 to 3, Where there, Paul says, all of us, he even uses some of the same wording, right? Someone might die for someone righteous. Remember what Paul said in chapter 3? There's no one righteous. Not in God's sight. No one who does good. It's not like Christ went out and died for the good people. Because there are none out there. Not you, not me, and ourselves. And we go through Romans 1 to 3. We remember Who we are apart from Jesus and we're not the good upstanding Wonderful spotless people in God's sight, but we're the criminals We're the spiritual criminals. We're on God's top ten list God's most wanted And yet he dies for them The son lays down his life for those who didn't just die commit crimes against kind of other people or humanity in general. Think about our spiritual crimes. They're against God first and foremost. And so God lays down his life for those who have offended him. Would you lay down your life for someone who committed horrendous crimes against you? That's what God does. That's what God does. The Son goes and bears the wrath of God to set us free. That's how you see the power of the love of God. John Stott talks about that you can know the value of a gift. You can measure the value of a gift in two ways. By the amount it costs the giver and by the worthiness of the recipients. And so you take those two criteria and you apply them to God's gift to us in His Son, and you say, what it costs the giver? God gives Himself. There's nothing more valuable that you can give. The worthiness of the recipients. Who does Christ die for? He dies not for good, righteous people. He dies for us, ungodly, enemies, sinners. And so you have a gift of infinite worth, given. And that this above all things demonstrates to you, it's proclaimed to you by God, this is my love for you. This is how strong and eternal and everlasting and saving this love is. See how confident you can be in God's commitment to you? That God really is for you? I love the statement we'll get to in Romans 8 where Paul says, He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? You know what Paul's saying there? If he didn't spare his son, will he not also give us everything else we need? God gave the most valuable gift then you can be assured everything else you need for his glory and your good He will not withhold from you That's the kind of confidence we can have as we look at the cross of Christ. Here's our first little scenic overlook Noticing here in our passage the Trinity The work and and the the reality of the Trinity. First, just notice the reality of the Trinity coming through in our passage that we have the three persons of the Trinity all mentioned in one short passage. So you have verse five, the Holy Spirit mentioned. You have in verse 10, talk of the Son and elsewhere of Christ, second person. And then you have the one Paul calls God, which is made in distinction to the Son and the Holy Spirit. So clearly he's speaking of the Father, something that Paul likes to use that language to refer to the Father. So there you have the Trinity in one passage, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But also notice, you get a great picture of how the Trinity works. As the Trinity here in salvation works, there is this difference of role in work. And so you get the Holy Spirit working inside of us, in our hearts, pouring out God's love. You have the Son, who is the One who came and accomplished our salvation, laying down His life on the cross. You have the Father, pictured as the One who initiates and plans, sends the Spirit, sends the Son. And so you get this picture of God in this diversity of work. But yet, there's this complete unity. That Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are completely on the same page. Complete unity of purpose. One purpose, one will, one desire to save his people. To demonstrate his love and commitment to them. And so you have this beautiful picture of how the Trinity works. Three persons, one God, a diversity of work, but yet a unity of purpose. And, you know, it's not just a little detour. This is encouraging, even as we think about confidence. You can think how confident you can be because your salvation, your salvation took the entire Godhead committed together to save you. That your redemption is a Trinitarian conspiracy. That the entire Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit committed to working together to rescue you. See how powerful that is? How confident you can be. Well, one more. You can be confident because of the reasoning of redemption. In verses 9 and 10, we see Paul doing a little theological reasoning. It's a pretty straightforward argument. Basically, what Paul says in these verses is, if God has already done the harder thing, well, you can be really confident that he's going to do the easier thing. That's what he says. He says it twice, once in verse 9, once in verse 10. He uses a little different language, but that's basically what he's arguing. Verse 9. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. So, he says, God has already done the harder thing, which is, he has justified us through the blood of Jesus. that for the Christian, for the one whose faith is in the Lord, faith is in Christ, they have been justified. That is, forgiven of their sins, declared righteous in God's sight. So, God has already done the harder thing. He has justified the ungodly. If He's already done the harder thing, Paul says, How much more confident can you be that He's going to do the easier thing, which is deliver us from the coming wrath of God, from the coming final judgment? How much more confident? If He's already declared a sinner righteous in His sight, you can be sure that He's going to finish it and deliver us completely on the final day. He makes the same argument in verse 10. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life." Same basic idea. He changes the language a little bit. Now, as opposed to talking about justification, courtroom language, now he talks about relational language, speaks of reconciliation, but it's the same argument. If God's already done the harder thing, He's made peace between enemies. He's got to do the easier one. If he's already done the harder thing and brought about reconciliation, because that's what we are apart from God, we're enemies. Because of our rebellion and because of God's righteous wrath against sin. We were enemies and yet God has done the hard thing. Through the blood of the cross, He's made peace. He's reconciled us to Himself. If you're a believer, this is you right now. You're reconciled to God. You're at peace with Him. And if God has already done that, turning enemies into friends, into children, then you can be confident He's going to deliver you to the uttermost. He's going to completely rescue you through the resurrection life of Jesus, completely sanctify you, complete the transformation in you, and glorify you just like the Lord Jesus when the Lord returns. If He's already done the easier thing, the climactic turning point, how much more confident can you be? He's going to finish the work He started. And here we can take another scenic overlook that again will help us out. And this is what I'm calling the already not yet of salvation. Though that language really isn't mine. Say for example, let's explain it this way. Say for example, you're at a holiday Christmas party this Christmas season and there a friend or maybe a member of the family doesn't really know you very well But they're a pretty passionate evangelist type, and they come over to you and say, friend, are you saved? How do you answer that question? We'll say that you are a genuine believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. So this guy comes over, doesn't really know you, and says, friend, are you saved? What do you say? Well, one very biblical way to answer that question is to say yes and no. You might confuse him a bit by saying that, but that's actually a very, very biblical way to answer the question. And that's basically how Paul answers it right here. Paul talks about it. Now, of course, most of the time when people ask a question like that and talk about, are you saved? They're speaking about justification. Have you been forgiven of your sins and declared righteous in your sight? At least if their theology is good, that's their thinking. And of course, if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the right answer to give is yes, absolutely. Because of what Jesus did, not what I did, my faith in Christ, I'm righteous in His sight. Yes, I'm saved. But at the very same time, no, I'm not saved yet. Not completely. You notice even in verses 9 and 10, Paul uses twice that language of saved, and it's speaking about in the future. Shall we be saved by him? Verse 9. Shall we be saved by his life? Here not talking about justification, but here talking about the complete work, the fullness of our redemption, that we will be what we are not yet, which is completely transformed into the image of Christ, raised up in resurrection bodies, glorified with Jesus. So the right answer to the question is, yes, as a believer in Jesus, I am already saved, but no, I'm not yet completed. The work is not yet completed. I'm not yet completely saved, but I will be by His grace. And this idea is, if you get your mind around this, it'll really start to unlock a lot of how the Scripture presents God's work. This is written throughout the New Testament, woven into the fabric, this idea of the already and the not yet. The more you look for it, the more you'll see it. Think about, say for example, the Kingdom of God. Has the Kingdom of God come? Yes. No. Yes, it's already come. Because Jesus the King has arrived. And He's died and been raised and glorified and poured out the Spirit. And the church is advancing. So yes, the Kingdom has already arrived. But it's not yet arrived in its fullness. And it only will when Christ returns. Kingdom arrived? Yes. Already? Not yet. Think about the spiritual battle, right? The warfare against sin and death, the victory is already won, isn't it? And yet we continue to fight. Think about the evil one, a defeated enemy, and yet his menacing work is not yet finished with, but it will be. And so you start to see that this is our our redemption and God's fullness. It's already here, but it's not yet arrived. And we live in this period between the comings, between the first and the second coming of Christ, this period of tension. This period where God's already started to work in us, but it's not yet completed, he started to work in the world and it's not yet completed. so a period where the the war is won and yet we still fight a Period where we have can have real peace and contentment and yet we never feel completely at home because we're not at home And that too Paul uses that idea here to bring home this idea of confidence that you can have confidence even in that period of tension and And your confidence is this, if God has already started this work, and indeed done the harder thing, He's taken a sinner like you and like me, and through faith in Christ, declared you righteous in His sight, then how much more will He completely deliver you from sin and death? If He's already turned an enemy into a friend, how confident can you be that He's not going to let you go? but deliver you, keep you to the very end. You can be confident. You start to put these pieces together, and hopefully you're encouraged. You have good reason to be very, very confident this morning, this week, facing trials, facing good things. Of course, the linchpin is Jesus. There's the key. It doesn't work without Him. All this message of encouragement is given to those who have their hope firmly in Christ. And so if you're not sure or you're not trusting in the Lord Jesus, then without Jesus, you don't have this confidence. You can't have it. So there's the place to begin if that's you. You need to turn from your sin and turn to Jesus Christ in faith. But for for us who have the Lord Jesus, because our hearts have been made alive and we're trusting in him. We see we have good reasons for confidence this morning. And so it enables us to to speak into those those doubts, those things that tend to eat away at our confidence. Can you think of some of those things that some of those reasons why we're we're short on confidence? Perhaps for you, it's because you're fearful about the future. Fearful about what what tomorrow might bring or what tomorrow might not bring Can you use Romans 5 to speak into that? to challenge Yourself with the gospel hold it if God has already justified me Well, then my future is secure In that he'll even use even the difficult things that the future might bring even use those things to advance his work in me and I can be sure of his love. I look at the cross. I don't have to be afraid where perhaps for you One of the things that tends to eat away at your confidence is is how you feel about yourself How you feel about your flaws and failures or how you think other people feel about you? Again can you use Romans 5 to challenge that? Can you ask yourself well, okay? But how does God feel? Well, that's right. God has made it known. He has demonstrated His love to a sinner like me. And I see that because He laid down His life for an enemy, for a sinner, for the ungodly. If God can be for me, who can be against me? Isn't that true of you, believer? If God is for you, who can be against you? Others might deride you, might mock you, might do nasty things to you, yeah. But the One whose opinion is sure, the One whose opinion counts, has already finally made that declaration from all eternity past and demonstrated it in lifetime and space in His Son, applied it to your heart through the Spirit. You're in Him. You can be confident regardless of what the world says. You start to get the idea transformed by the renewing of your mind. Taking the truth of what God has done and putting it to work to give you real confidence. Not the proud confidence that this world shows. Not the confidence that exalts in our accomplishments and our abilities. All those things that will soon pass away. But the confidence that lasts, that's genuine. The confidence to glorify God. The confidence to face the difficulties with hope. The confidence to go out and speak of the Lord who has done this for us. The confidence to pray with boldness. We have that through God's love in Christ. Let's pray. Father, we pray for renewed minds through Your Word, that the Spirit would use the familiar message of Jesus and make it alive to our hearts. We pray that we would know His love better and live it out with true boldness, boasting not in ourselves, but boasting in You. Even today, even this week, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.