Like Him We Rise | Christ Died for Us

Have you ever wondered what is really wrong in your life and in the world? Do you long for peace with God that is deeper than changing circumstances? Do you need hope that can hold when suffering is real? In Romans 5, Jesus meets us with the gospel, the good news that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. His love is not distant or delayed. In Jesus, God gives us a foundation that holds, steadies our souls, and brings us home to peace, grace, and reconciliation.      

This message speaks to anyone asking how to explain the gospel, how to know if Jesus loves you, or how to find hope in suffering. Through the Roman road, this sermon shows that salvation is not about proving yourself worthy. Jesus died for the ungodly, opened the way to new life, and invites you to trust him with your whole heart. When you belong to Christ, you are not just picking up new ideas. You are welcomed into eternal life, healed by grace, and held by a hope that does not shame you.    

Scripture: Romans 5:1 to 11
“We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1
“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the First Praise Sermon Podcast, where each week we dive into Scripture, wrestle with truth, and discover how faith intersects our lives. God's word meets us where we are, challenging, shaping, and calling us into something greater. No matter where you are on your journey, you belong here. And we're praying that this sermon might help you take a next step in faith towards Jesus. Hey, let's dive into today's message together.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Amen. Good morning, church. Let's open our Bibles to Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter 5. We're studying Romans together. And uh we're looking at Romans 5, 1 through 11 today. So as we open our scriptures, let's open our hearts before the Lord in prayer. Lord, today is no day for a dead letter on a page. That's not what this moment is about. We've come to hear from you. And we know that you can open our hearts and our minds, that we can actually hear your voice as you speak to us through your word. That we can hear and not only just hear, but understand, and understand and believe, and in believing have new life in your name. So Jesus, we just pray for this moment. Would you speak to us, be present to us, help us to hear your word? In Jesus' name we pray. And the church said, Amen. Romans 5, 1 to 11. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings. Because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person. Though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him? For if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life? Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. This is the word of the Lord. Amen, amen, amen. How do you explain the gospel? How do you tell the story of what God has done in Christ to save, to bring us home to salvation? There's an old method that's called the Roman road. Anybody ever heard of the Roman road? The Roman road. There's a method of sharing the gospel. And first of all, have you ever seen a Roman road, a real Roman road? Has anybody ever seen a real Roman road? They're pretty good, right? I mean, there they are. They're solid. These Roman roads are solid and they've been there for 2,000 years. Roads in Colorado Springs are disposable. It's like you just lay it out there for like a few days. You're happy if it's like, you know. But these Roman roads are solid. In fact, that's a lot of times when people read the Bibles and you hear phrases like we hear today of at the right time, at just the right time, Jesus came at the right time, the fullness of some people think maybe it's like this season where actually they had these roads that could extend all of a sudden to the all the known reaches of the world. The gospel could go out. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a method of evangelism, the Roman road. The Roman road is a way of walking through Romans to help someone who doesn't understand the gospel, a non-believer, to know what God has done in Jesus. And ultimately to know or to be introduced to Jesus. We want to introduce people to Jesus. We want to let them know who Jesus is. And there's four stops on the Roman road. And the second stop is actually in our passage today Romans 5 8. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus of Nazareth didn't just die as an accident of history. Christ died for us. He died for us. We want to understand that today. In our series, Like Him We Rise, studying through Romans, we want to understand, we want to understand this crux of the Christian faith, this keystone, this heart of the gospel, that Jesus Christ, we profess, we believe that Jesus Christ died for us. Christ died for us. So the Roman road, it has four stops. And some people debate you know, is this still the best way to share the gospel in our times? Things are very, you know, different in our era. Umbe this is too simple. You know, things are pretty complicated, complex. I have a friend uh named Don Everts. He wrote a book uh that's called I Once Was Lost. It's a great book about sharing the gospel. And he says, look, it's pretty complex. And people who are non-believers, they really need to pass through like five thresholds to be able to get from lost to confidently believing in Jesus. I mean, the first thing they have to they have to do is just know a Christian, knowing and trusting a Christian. That's the first step. And then you you hope that they get to the place of becoming curious, that they're curious about what they understand about the world. And then you're watching for them to step through a threshold where they're open to change. Like I've been curious, but now I'm open to change. And then maybe they will start to seek God, and only then can they really have a confident faith and enter the kingdom and believe in Christ. And walking friends through these five thresholds, that could be just an hour of coffee, but more often it's it's years, it's decades, it's it's a lifetime of patiently showing a little bit more of Jesus. Maybe a quick walk through the Roman road isn't the way it's it's done in our times. But I gotta tell you, when I was a new Christian, this was so helpful for me, just to understand the basics, to get the basics on the table. What has happened? What do we believe? So it's a method of evangelism. Whenever you talk about a method of evangelism, I always think of uh this famous quote from D.L. Moody, Dwight Moody, a great evangelist in Chicago. And someone came up to him and said, I don't like the way you evangelize. It's like it's too emotional. And so he said, Well, how do you evangelize? And she said, Well, I don't. And so D. L. Moody turned to her and he said, Well, I like the way I evangelize better than the way you don't. It's a method, it's imperfect. But we want to share the gospel. We want to know how to share the gospel. What has God done? The Roman wrote us four stops. Stop number one is Romans 3.23. Come on, write this down, underline it in your Bible. Step one, Romans 3.23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Yes, the conversation starts with sin. So you're like, let's have a conversation about faith. How about number one, we talk about sin? I mean, I actually like to talk about the love of God first, like God loves you, wants a relationship with you. But Romans 3.23 just kicks it right off. Just puts a finger right on the problem. There's something wrong. There's something broken. We've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There is something wrong in this world, and it needs to be fixed. And you know, everyone you talk to believes that. Whether you're talking to a believer, non-believer, a pre-believer, post-believer, whether you're talking to someone who's, you know, never thought about it before, everybody that you talk to has some theory in mind of what's wrong with the world. Because this is a worldview question. And you can't actually go through life without having this in your worldview that there's something wrong. I have never had a conversation with somebody. You tell me if you have, who's come up and said, actually, I think everything in the world is perfect. No, everybody believes there's something wrong. The difference is the notions that people have about what is wrong and how it might be fixed. Romans 3 23 puts a finger on it. We have a broken relationship with God. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. A broken relationship with God. I was having breakfast with um Travis Williams. He's uh he leads our Springs Rescue mission. He's devoted his life to meeting people on the streets and helping them to get out of homelessness and into human flourishing. And and he said, Tim, the more I mean I've been at this for years, and the more I learn, the more I read, the more I pray, the more I talk to people. It all comes down to one thing. I said, What's that? It all comes down, he said, to broken relationships. I mean, they've got a broken relationship with their family, a broken relationship with themselves, a broken relationship with God. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, we have broken our relationship with God. The second part of the Roman road is what's on our passage today, Romans 5, 8. And this is what you're memorizing today. So let's read this together. This is the second part of the Roman road. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He didn't die as an accident of human history. His death was intentional, his death was a gift. Somehow he died for you. This is what we call atonement, a payment for sin. God had a way through history of covering over the sins of the people to mercifully defer his justice and wrath. God is a God of justice. Injustice cannot be left to stand. But God mercifully gave his people a way to cover over the sin, to defer his justice and wrath. What was that? That was the temple sacrifice where the animal sacrifices would be made, and the blood was spilled over the altar. And what did it do? It covered over the sin. It covered over the sin and deferred God's justice and wrath toward down the road. And then in the fullness of time, Jesus came. And Jesus Christ, God's own Son, He gave his life, His body and His blood on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sin. What does that mean? That means it didn't cover over the sin. It didn't wait to defer justice. No, Jesus took all the sin on himself. He took our sin in his flesh and bore it on the cross. He took the sin of mankind and he carried it in his flesh to the cross. And when he died, it was not just that he got crossways with Rome. It wasn't just that there were people who didn't like him, religious people who threw him into the into the false judgment and all that. He gave his life. He said, I'm free to give it, I'm free to lay it down, and I'm free to take it up again. And he gave his life on the cross so that that sin would not just be covered over, but that it would be paid for. When Jesus died, it wasn't just a pushing off of God's judgment and wrath. No, the sin of mankind was in his flesh, and God poured out his wrath. He poured out his judgment, he poured out his justice on his own son, Jesus Christ. And Christ died on the cross. An atoning sacrifice for our sins. Paid, finished, settled. There's no weight, there's nothing left, there's no debt that lingers. It's been paid in Jesus Christ. Christ died for us. Why? Because he loves us. Because he loves you. And when you love, you give. At the heart of love is sacrificial giving. When you love, you give. You remember this when you maybe if you've when you fell in love with somebody. You know, in my day, uh, you might go to the movies. You know? So you go to the movies and and you're you're you when you fall in love, you're not counting nickels, right? You're not counting like you're not worried about the cost. So you go and and you and your date wants to buy like the big bucket of popcorn. You know? And you're like, the big bucket? It's like 14 bucks. You don't say that, do you? No, you don't say that. That's that's for late, that's for 30 years of marriage after that. That's when you say that. But when you're falling in love, you just give, you just give, you just give, yeah, get the big bucket, get two, get three. I don't care. Get them all, you know? Just bring it all. You just waste, you just waste. Because when you love, you give, and you just you give your money, you give your time, you just waste your time. You're just you're on the phone. Again, when I was in this state, you know, the phone was on the wall. You're hanging, you're you're hanging on the phone. No, you hang up. No, you you hang up, no. You just hours ago, you don't care, you just waste. Why? Because you love. It's just waste. You know? You pay you don't pay attention to work, you don't pay attention to your friends, you don't pay attention to your responsibilities, just waste. But you do go to church. Every good relationship starts in church. God so loved that he gave. Christ died for us. Why? Because he loved us. For God so loved the world that he did what? He gave. Love gives. God so loved the world that he gave. And what did he give? He gave his one and only Son. That whoever believes in him, whoever believes in him, will not perish, but have eternal life. God loves, so God gave. But why did Jesus have to die? The third and the fourth stops on the Roman road, we're gonna study as we go on in our series, but I want to give them to you quickly. The third one is this Romans 6, 23. For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The wages, the wages. Work earns a paycheck. Work gets you wages. You do the thing, you get paid for it. With sin, there's a wage, there's a payment, a natural recourse, the natural result. Sin, missing the mark of holiness, turning away in disobedience from God, pursuing my own selfish ends. This is a way of earning a wage. You've earned a wage by that. And what have you earned? It says the wages of sin is death. When you turn in sin, you turn away from God. When you turn your back on the author of life, you're turning yourself towards eternal death. You're pitching your soul away from God and into death. And the wages of sin is death. But the gift is different. The gift is something entirely different. You don't earn the gift, it's not an earned wage. It's a prepared gift. And the gift is prepared by God, an eternal gift, a gift of eternal life. And that gift, that gift is for the sinner. It's prepared for the ungodly, for the disobedient. God prepares a gift. Now a gift is something you've got to receive. You don't just leave your presence under the tree, do you? What do you do with your presence under the tree at Christmas? You open them up. Because you want to know, you want to receive that gift. You want to bring it into your life. Do you know that last year in the United States, uh, Americans left behind$27 billion worth of unused gift cards? Whoa. You're thinking right now, where's that gift card? Spend it. Go home. Get it. Those things expire. Don't leave a gift. Open it. So you ask, well, okay, Lord, you've done all this. How does it come home to me? How does what Christ has done over here enter into my life, my soul, my heart? The fourth stop on the Roman road is Romans 10, 9. If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. You have to, there's something on your lips. There's something different when you say it out loud. Are you willing to say with your lips, Jesus is Lord? And there's a belief, a trust, a faith in the heart, not just in these ideas, but in Jesus. There's a faith that says Jesus came, Jesus died, Jesus rose from the dead. When you have that profession of faith, that confession of belief, when you rest your life on him, here's what happens. When you're willing to say you believe, when you're willing to speak to Jesus, if you do this, it's not just an adaptation. You're not just adding information to your life. This isn't just taking on a new philosophy, adopting a new worldview, stepping into a new direction in your life. No, when you speak to Jesus and you say to him, You are my Lord. You are my Savior. I believe in you. When you're willing to say that to Jesus, look, something happens. And what happens is a total transformation. The old life is gone. The new life has come. You haven't just added a philosophy or an idea. You've been made new. Every time you meet somebody, your life changes just a little bit. Everyone you meet changes your life just a little bit. When you meet Jesus, you have a new life. A new creation. The old is gone, you've been forgiven for your past. And from the inside out, you become a new man, a new woman, a new person living in Christ. The Roman road. Romans 3.23. Romans 5.8. Romans 6.23. Romans 10 9. This is just a way to explain. This is what God has done. The gospel is not a philosophical proposition. The gospel is news of an event. What God has done in Christ to save you. To save the whole world. And how do I bring it home? By believing in Him. But let's go deeper into our passage today. We're studying Romans. You've got the Romans road? Romans 5. Therefore, since we've been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, that means there's a pivot here. For four chapters, we've had a really careful and thorough argument about where the Romans sit in the world. And the Romans have been sitting in some uncomfortable places. They've had some problems. If you roll back to Romans chapter 1, you see that Roman self made morality is bankrupt, that the Romans had a tendency to worship the created things instead of the creator. And that idolatry had left their soul malformed and bent, and everything in their life was upside down and inside out. And the Jewish background believers in this new Roman church, they were having superiority contests over the Gentiles. And the Gentile background believers, they were carting in all kinds of Roman priorities that they wanted to be a part of the church. And finally, Paul said, Listen, you are not going to be saved just by doing it right. All of us. We need to kneel down at the foot of the cross and receive salvation by grace through faith. Give your life to Jesus and believe in him, and you will be saved. Now we get to verse 1. Therefore. Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we've been justified, we've been made right before God, made righteous before God, what is this new life going to be about? Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have, what do we have? We have peace, number one. We have peace with God. All peace begins with peace with God. Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, what do we have? We have access, number two, access to God the Father. Look at this. Romans 5, 2, through whom we have gained access by faith into his grace in which we now stand. What does that mean? That means you can rest in the presence of God. Your relationship isn't broken anymore. You have access to God. Third, we have hope. Therefore, since we've been justified by faith, we have hope. Hope in God. Hope in the glory of God. And we hope in His glory. And we don't hope the way other people hope. And our hope is not a sort of blind optimism. Our hope is an assured expectation that what God has promised is coming about. And we hold on to hope. And forth, what do we have? Therefore, we have peace, we have access, we have hope. And the fourth thing we have, church, is we have a different way of suffering. We suffer differently. Look at this now. Christians suffer. All people suffer, but we suffer differently. Verse 3. Verse 3. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings. We glory in our sufferings. That's different. Why? Because we know that suffering produces perseverance. How good is perseverance? Perseverance, character, how important is character? And character produces hope. And this isn't hope that disappoints. This isn't blind hope. Why? Because God has poured his love into our hearts. This is hope we can trust in. Hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us. Listen, it's one thing to suffer in this life. All people will suffer in this life. But as we suffer as Christians, we suffer differently. We don't have to ask, why me? Why me? But understanding that God is at work, that God is producing something, that God is in charge, we can ask, what for? What for? What is this suffering going to produce in eternal measure, this temporary suffering? We suffer differently, and it changes us to the glory of God. How is all this possible? Why do we enjoy these rewards? Look at verse 6. Well, you see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person. It's very rare to see that. Although someone might possibly dare to die for a good person, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Christ died for us. A soldier may be called upon to lay down their life for the unit, for the mission, for the nation. A police officer puts on the kit and leaves home for a shift, morning or night, not knowing if the end of that shift will mean coming home. Only Jesus can give his life for all. For all. Trust in him. And he didn't wait for us to be worthy. He didn't wait for us to prove that we were worthy of his sacrifice, did he? No, while we were yet sinners, while we were still in disobedience, while we were still shaking our fist at God and saying, I'm not with you, I'm not with you, I'm not for you, I'm not for you. He said, Well, I'd give my son for you. Christ died for us. This means God has intentions for us, for our blessing, things that we can't even fathom. Verse 10, for if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, you see? If while I was over here shaking my fist at God, I was reconciled to him, even as I'm an enemy, because he sent his son ahead of me to die, the death that I was pitched headlong toward when he that happened, well then what's going to happen now? Now that we're back in relationship, now that I'm home with Jesus, now that I'm reconciled to God, what kinds of gifts are gonna be conferred through his life? If I've been saved that way in my disobedience by his death, what God has for you cannot fathom. This is the gospel. This is the Roman road. This is the way to declare God's love, what God has done. This is our faith. You didn't prove yourself a good person worthy of the sacrifice of Jesus. It all starts with God's love. Christ died for us. Amen. And I've used the Roman Road. I hope you write it down. I've used it in uh retreats and talks and sermons and mission trips and testimonies, walked through the Roman Road, but as I was studying this and preparing, I remembered one time that I actually sat with a friend in high school and shared the Roman Road. Julie was uh uh uh at my high school, Cheyenne Mountain High School, and and we went off to Frontier Ranch, which is a Young Life weekend. And Julie was the center of the girls' basketball team. You know what that means? She's tall. And that also meant that she often felt kind of out on the margin of things. And and she went to Frontier weekend with Young Life, and she had a great time, but then she came and she confessed to me and she said, it was a great time, but I didn't really understand what they were saying about God, about Jesus, what that really meant. And I said, Well, let's sit down and talk about it. And so I smuggled my Bible in to Cheyenne High School, you know. It felt very like radical. And we sat in English class, and I opened my Bible in between periods and in the classroom and walked through the Roman road. This is what it says, this is what I think it means. This is what I think it means. The next morning at school, she walked straight at me in the hall. Her face was beaming. She had gone home that night, she had knelt by her bedside and opened her heart to Christ. And what she said was, Tim, what I didn't expect was this love to pour in. It was like a love poured in, like a waterfall of love. It talks about in this passage. And she said, and my my room kind of lit up. It was like a light in my room. And I just grabbed the gospel. I wanted to read about Jesus, I wanted to know more of Jesus, so I grabbed, I read the Gospel of John, and I just read it straight through. I couldn't stop. And when I got to the end of it, I wanted more. I went back, I read Mark, I read Matthew, I read Luke. I just wanted more of Jesus. And she stayed up all night reading the Bible. She was so hungry for the word, and she said, and then I turned and I started reading Genesis, and that's where I got stuck. So, yeah, that's where you get stuck. She had new life in Christ. It's not just an adaptation, it's not just a new way of thinking, it's a new person. Jesus called it being born again from above. A new person, a new man, a new woman. Forgiven, redeemed, reconciled, peace with God, access to his grace, hope like you've never understood. Suffering's totally different. You've got a future, you've got a purpose, you've got a meaning. Eternal life. Saved. Those words, those are not just words for what happens after the day you die. Those are words for what happens when you meet Jesus. When you open your heart to Jesus. Eternal life. Eternal life is not just life that goes on forever. It's not chronology. It's a different quality of life. It's a different character of life. It's life that overflows with God's eternity. And it begins when you open your heart to Jesus. It begins when you know the Lord. Eternal life. Saved. Saved doesn't just mean that you are kept from the terrors of hell after the day you die. No, saved. That word means healed. Whole. The wounds they start to get better. The painful burdens of guilt and shame, they get lighter and lighter and they start to fall off the back of your shoulders. The rupture starts to get knit together, the broken relationships saved. It happens when you say yes to Jesus, when you confess with your lips, when you believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord. God lifted him up out of the grave. Jesus walked a Roman road. It's a road in Jerusalem called the Via Dolorosa, the road of sorrows. And down that road he carried his cross. And he gave his life. Do you believe? Do you know him? This is a moment where we're going to take some time. Because as we're gathered, as we've come into this space together, into this time together, to hear and understand what Christ has done, how Christ died for us. There's some of us in this room that we kind of know all this. Like I've known this for a while, believed this for a while. I've walked with Jesus for a while. But there's some of us in this room that have been exploring, trying to understand, trying to put it on. I want a new worldview. I want a different philosophy of life. I want a different way, and I've been trying to find it. There's people always who've been sitting in church their whole life and have never actually said a word to Jesus. There's kids who grew up in the church and you think you got it. I got it. It's not about your mom's faith, it's not about your parents' faith, it's about your heart. So I want us to take some time and just say what we need to say to Jesus. I want you to say what you need to say to Jesus. We're going to do that in some silence, and I'll lead us in prayer. Would you bow your heads? Just open your hearts to the Lord and speak to him. Christ died for us. He gave his life. Speak to him now. Jesus, your death was not an accident of history. But out of love, divine love, you gave your very life. And Lord, we want to speak with our lips. We want to say it with our lips what we believe. If you want to say it with your lips now, if you want to say these words with your lips, then just follow after me. Follow after me in prayer. Jesus, I believe in you. Thank you for dying for me. Thank you for new life. Open my heart to eternal life in your name. In Jesus' name. So, Lord, bless and reach every heart. Open every heart to your grace. Open our hearts to your love. Give us faith, Lord Jesus, that we can trust in you. Here's my belief. Help my unbelief. Lord, it's like a mustard seed. I can barely hold on, but you hold on with a firm grip. So gather us up in your grace and lead us in your ways to life everlasting, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace with God, no longer enemies, but friends with God Almighty, walking into newness of life, fullness of life, the fruit of your spirit. Lord Jesus, come into our lives and let us be a people who know you. And Lord, in your mercy, in your mercy, we pray for divine appointments this coming next two weeks. We pray for moments when those that we love who do not know you, when those that we're in relationship with who cannot see you, would open their hearts, would be curious, and that we, Lord Jesus, might be able just to share. This is what I think Jesus has done for us. It's in Jesus' name that we pray.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

Amen. Hearing God's word is just the beginning. What connected with you? What challenged you today? Maybe it's surrendering something, stepping into community, or simply trusting Him more deeply. Whatever it is, don't leave it for later. Act on it today. We're praying that this message moves you closer to Jesus. And we'd love to walk with you in that journey and answer any questions you've got. Connect with us by visiting firstpres.org. Hey, if today's message encouraged you, take a moment and subscribe so you never miss an episode and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Check in next week and we'll continue to grow in our faith together. See you next time.