The Benefits of Justification (Romans 5:1-5)

Big Idea: Our new position with God brings remarkable blessings.

I want you to imagine inheriting a substantial amount of money. I’m not talking about a small amount; I’m talking about enough to change your life, pay off debts, and provide security forever. You’re notified that the inheritance is yours. You patiently wait. The check arrives in the mail, and you acknowledge it's real. You even tell others about it.

But you never deposit it. Instead, you continue to struggle financially, working extra jobs, feeling stressed about bills, paying off your mortgage while feeling like you’re not really making progress, all while that massive amount of money sits unused in a drawer.

Ridiculous, isn’t it? And yet I’m convinced that many Christians find themselves in a similar position. We’ve received massive benefits as a result of being justified by Jesus Christ. We’ve received much more than we could ever ask or imagine, grace upon grace, and yet many of us live without the confidence and boldness that comes from these benefits.

Today we're beginning a new section in Romans. Paul has been building a careful case. In 1:18 to 3:20, he showed us our desperate need for justification: we stand under God's wrath because of our sin. Then, in 3:21 through chapter 4, he revealed the provision of justification. The solution is found entirely in what God has accomplished through Jesus Christ. Through the gospel, God grants us right standing before him by faith alone, completely apart from our own efforts. The atoning death of Christ is the unchangeable foundation of our justification. God didn't wait for our improvement; he moved toward us while we were still his enemies. Our justification means we have a radically new status before God.

But now Paul shifts his focus. Having shown us how we're justified, he's ready to show us the benefits of justification—the blessings that flow from our new standing. Paul is about to unveil an avalanche of benefits, showing us all that God provides through Christ. What we've been given isn't merely forgiveness; it's an inheritance that changes everything about how we live.

Four Benefits

The passage we just read is like a tasting menu. It’s just a sampling of the benefits we’ve received. My goal today is simple. I want to help you understand four of the benefits that belong to anyone who’s been justified by Jesus, and to help you live them out.

Peace with God (5:1)

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (5:1)

Here’s the first benefit that you get to enjoy. It signifies the transformation that has taken place in your relationship with God. Here is your condition before justification: you were at war with God, not at peace. There was enmity between God and humanity. God was rightly wrathful against us because of our sin, as Paul has been pointing out. Every sinner was and is under his holy judgment and storing up more wrath for the future. That is the condition of every single person who has not been justified by Jesus Christ.

But Jesus came and changed everything. What has changed? Through what Jesus did for us at the cross, your sins have been dealt with and are no longer counted against you. There has been a massive change in relational status between us and God. When Paul talks about “peace” he’s not talking about an internal state of mind or a feeling of contentedness. He’s talking about a transformation in our relationship from a state of war to a state of peace with God. All friction, fighting, and fomenting are finished forever. An eternal change in the relationship's status has occurred. This is not a one-time event but an ongoing, continually possessed, and exercised reality. We have peace with God. God has not only forgiven you but he has befriended you.

This peace, this cessation of hostilities, means that you can feel peace in your hearts. It is both a fact and a feeling. I love how Jack Miller puts it: “There is nothing you can do to make God love you more.” Your objective reality is that you are at peace with God; now enjoy it.

If you are not a Christian, you cannot make things good between you and God on your own. You need Jesus Christ, the only mediator between God and man. But if you have been justified by Christ, you are on good terms with God. He is at peace with you. You can live with a holy boldness and confidence because they have eternal peace with God and 24/7 access to him. God is on good terms with you. You are on good terms with God. This peace can give you peace. It is yours in Jesus Christ.

Here’s the second benefit Paul mentions:

Access to Grace (5:2)

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand… (5:2)

What does this mean: access by faith into this grace in which we stand? If you have been justified, you have entered a new way of living characterized by grace.

Picture having a harsh, exacting boss. Nothing you do is ever good enough. You live in a continual state of stress knowing that no matter how hard you try you will not measure up, and your performance will be unsatisfactory. In fact, the harder you try, the worse it goes. Then picture that you enter a new workplace, and you feel like you can just breathe, where you are accepted and valued. You feel secure.

That’s a little like what Paul is describing here. You used to live under the law. The law is very demanding. No matter what you do, you can never measure up. But now, declared righteous, we are no longer under the law. We are brought into a place of freedom, where we can breathe. This access is not occasional but continuous and secure; it is where we live, where we're standing, where we get to stay. Our daily experience is one of knowing we are fully accepted as a son by God, that he loves us, has good for us, and loves to be gracious to us.

You live in a state of grace. God’s free giving to us does not stop when we become Christians. You have entered into grace and you continue to live in grace. It’s not like you fall in and out of God’s favor as some people believe. Your relationship with God It continues to be poured out on us so much that we can be said to live in a constant state of grace.

You have peace with God and you have continuous access to a new state of grace.

Hope of Glory (5:2)

Verse 2 continues, “and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

This word “rejoice” is surprising. Paul has talked at length about the fact that the gospel excludes boasting. Because we contributed nothing to our salvation, we have nothing to boast about.

But the word “rejoice” in this verse could be translated “boast.” Boasting is not wrong; what matters is the object of our boasting. What should be boast about now? We can boast in the absolute confidence we have in an absolutely certain outcome. That’s what “hope” means in Scripture. It’s not a wish; it’s a certainty. And what is our certainty? The glory of God: that we will one day see his radiant splendor. It will be the sight for which we’ve longed our entire lives. One day the curtain will be raised and we will behold the glory and beauty of God in Jesus. We will not only see his glory, but we will be changed by it.

It will be the most beautiful thing they can ever imagine! His glory will be so beautiful, and they will be so happy, that they will never be sad or disappointed by anything ever again. Their enjoyment of him will keep growing, without stopping or slowing down, forever and ever and ever. (Samuel Parkinson)

Peace with God. Access to a new and permanent state of grace. The certainly that we will one day see God and be deeply satisfied by him. There’s one more blessing that this passage says is ours because of Christ:

Joy in Suffering (5:3-5)

I liked what Paul was saying up until now. You would almost think that we get to live a trouble-free existence from now on. Not so fast. Paul tells us about one more benefit we enjoy as a result of our justification by Jesus:

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 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. (5:3-5)

As a believer, you are going to suffer. Everyone suffers. What changes now that you’re in Jesus? You can find joy even in the middle of suffering, because you can know that your suffering accomplishes something. You can boast in your sufferings, because God works through your sufferings to bring produce something good in your life.

The term "sufferings" is a general word for troubles, encompassing oppression, distress, tribulation, troubles of every kind. These are the difficulties Christians face by virtue of living in a fallen world, a consequence of the curse. There are thorns and thistles, pain and sweat.

Troubles are a part of life for every human being, and Christians should never be surprised when they encounter them. But Christians are called to have an entirely different perspective on their troubles, even to rejoice or boast in them. Why? Because God uses our trials. There is a clear, sequential process:

• Suffering produces endurance. It teaches us to persevere, to keep going, to hang on when enduring something painful.
• Endurance produces character. This has the idea of being tested or approved. It matures us. It produces mature character that has passed the test.
• Character produces hope. It reenforces our conviction that our future is secure as we see that God is at work in even in our sufferings. It assures us that the our future hope is not an illusion. “Just as resistance to a muscle strengthens it, so challenges to our hope can strengthen it” (Douglas Moo)

This means that for a Christian, troubles are never wasted; every single one serves a good purpose by increasing the quantity and quality of your hope. We can know that God is always at work even when times are hard, even when we suffer. There are no useless trials.

As if this wasn’t enough, Paul says in 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.” It’s like, on top of all of these blessings, God gives us what we need most. We need to know that we’re loved. God pours out his love into our hearts. He does this by the Holy Spirit. This is the first mention of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but it’s not the last. I want you to see that this is deeply personal. God gives the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to dwell in every believer. God himself takes up residence within us. God himself comes to dwell in us. Amazing.

And this is just a sample. Peace with God. A sure standing in grace. Confident hope in glory. Joy even in suffering. And at the center of it all: God's love poured out through the Holy Spirit himself.

These benefits all have a common theme. They are designed “to show us the absolute character, the fullness and the finality of the salvation which comes to us in the way he has already described, namely, as the result of justification by faith” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones).

It would be incredibly foolish to possess all these amazing benefits and ignore them. And yet many Christians appear to live without the confidence or boldness that comes from using these benefits. Paul wants to give us rock-solid assurance that these benefits are yours, and you can live with total confidence that you can enjoy them, a confidence that grows as you enjoy these benefits.

Here's the beautiful truth: all of this is already yours in Christ. Not someday. Not if you measure up. Right now. You have peace with God; the war is over. You stand in grace, secure and favored. You possess a hope that suffering can't steal and a joy that pain can't extinguish. God's love has been poured into your heart, and the Spirit himself lives within you.

Paul wants you to know this so deeply that it changes everything: how you pray, how you persevere, how you face tomorrow. So treasure these realities. Return to them again and again. Let them sink down into the depths of your soul until living justified becomes as natural as breathing. These are your blessings. Don't just acknowledge them. Live in them. Rest in them. Rejoice in them. Because they're yours, fully and forever.