Romans 5:1-8

This may sound strange and maybe even a little silly, but one of the ways to understand what the Christian message is like is the experience of sneezing. That’s because sneezing comes as a relief. If you’ve ever had the experience of feeling like you need to sneeze, but can’t and your eyes water and you close them and can’t really talk – when the sneeze finally does come, it comes with a great deal of relief. You let out a sign of relief and the other person probably says ‘bless you’. In a way, that is how the Christian message, the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is to be received – as a message of relief.

The next question then is what are we relieved from? If you’ve been in church for any length of time, you would probably answer ‘sin’. The gospel relieves us of God’s anger over our sin. And while the Christian message is forgiveness of sins, we don’t want to think or believe too small. The relief offered by God in Jesus Christ is like a big sigh of relief, an exhale for the whole world.

There is a channel on YouTube called The School of Life. They have a video titled ‘How to Get Married’. In the video, if you care to go home and watch it, they propose to redo what has become of weddings. Instead of this picture perfect venue and the couple exchanging words about living their dreams together, or believing in the possibility of their love, or promising to let nothing hold them back, the School of Life proposes that weddings should include a ritual of humility, a ritual of charity, and then the wedding vows.

Here’s how their reimagined wedding would go. After the bride walks down the aisle, they do a ritual of humility. In the video, both the bride and groom confess their imperfections to each other and the congregation gathered. The bride goes first. She says (personal to her), “I am not good at communicating my feelings maturely. I won’t say what’s bothering me and instead sulk, and expect you to read my mind and get furious at you when you can’t. I can be quite self-involved. I tend to assume if you’re upset, it’s with me, and I can get quite jealous, and be petty and hurtful.”

The groom goes next. “I confess that I am a failed, broken human being, not in every way, but in some ways, so much so that at some point I will be a grave burden to you.”

The bride and the groom then read from their ‘Book of Imperfections’, which they wrote as part of the wedding counseling. Next, the congregation is invited to respond, much like we do call and response in worship. Here is the congregation’s response to the couple’s confession:

We are all broken. We have been idiots and will be idiots again. We are all, in our own way, difficult to be with. We sulk and we get angry, blame others for our own mistakes, have strange obsessions, and fail to compromise. We are here to make you less lonely with your failings. We will never know all of the details, but we understand.

That would be quite a different way to start a wedding. But it would be an honest way to start a wedding. And while the School of Life is not Christian, it’s secular, it’s a very Christian way of understanding human life. We are all deeply flawed, and yet we are loved and are capable of love. 

The relief of the gospel, the relief of the good news of Jesus Christ, is that no one is perfect (therefore we should not pretend to be perfect), no one has it altogether (so we shouldn’t pretend that we do), and no one is entirely good or entirely bad (so we shouldn’t put people on pedestals or call them pure evil). When you stop trying to be perfect at your life, or your job, or in your faith, it frees you to try to be good and mature – to have a good marriage, to do what is right even when it’s costly, and to use the gifts that God has actually given you to use because you are freed from the need to be perfect.

That is the apostle Paul’s message in our reading from Romans this morning. It’s a message of relief. It’s a spiritual sigh of relief that is a gift from God.

Here is Paul’s logic, starting with verse one. “Therefore, since we are justified [made right] by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” To be justified means to be made, declared right, to be accepted. The Christian message is that we are made right, we are accepted, with God because of Jesus Christ. Christ’ was given for our trespasses, our sins, and raised from the dead for us and our salvation. The result of Christ’s action, his death and resurrection by the God’s doing, is that we have peace with God.

The next four verses are the fruits, the outcomes, of what peace with God looks like. In verse two, peace with God looks like grace and hope…”therefore, since we have been made right with God by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained [been given] access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of sharing the glory of God.” Grace is the love, favor, joy, mercy, and peace of God. If someone is full of the grace of God, the fruits of God’s Spirit are real in their life. They share in the glory of God. They are full of God’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

The other important thing that having peace with God produces in us in the ability to face suffering and hard times with dignity, self-respect, and love. Every single human being will suffer in some way, at some point in their life. The simple truth is that we can suffer well or we can suffer poorly, in terms of how we approach it and the spirit and character with which we do so. Peace with God allows us to handle our suffering with a certain level of maturity, dignity, and self-respect and respect for others, even when you are suffering. Here is how the apostle Paul says peace with God shapes suffering:

We also have joy with our troubles, because we know that these troubles produce patience, and patience produces character, and character produces hope. 

Do you see the logic? Having faith, being a Christian, does not give us a get out of jail free card to suffering, troubles, or difficulties. It’s why that reimagined wedding format we talked about earlier is so powerful, because it is honest. It tells the truth that at times we have screwed up, and are screwed up, and that brings grave consequences to us and those who we love. Faith doesn’t get rid of the consequences of our actions. But what the Christian message does do is set us free – to have peace with God, and to mature and develop our character with God’s help, even in our sufferings and troubles.

How can we do that when things are bleak and when troubles come our way? Because God is with us in a very personal way. Here is the apostle Paul again, verse five: “…hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” God pours his love into your heart. That is true when things are going well, and it is equally true when things are going badly. 

Paul ends this section by reminding us that one of the things we can do as Christians is breathe a great sigh of relief that we do not have to be perfect or have it altogether to be acceptable to God. If someone looks like they have it altogether on the outside, remember that looks can be deceiving. Instead, the gospel frees us from the need to appear perfect. The order is reversed in the gospel. God accepts us and makes us right with him, and then because we are accepted and made right with God by God’s power, we can’t help but want to get our act together. Here are the apostle Paul’s words.

…for while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly [those living against God]. Very few people will die to save the life of someone else. Although perhaps for a good person someone might possibly die. But God shows his great love for us in this way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners.

The joy of the gospel, the Christian faith, the good news of Jesus Christ comes from knowing that you are free. We are each freed by God from needing to pretend that we are perfect. We are also free to let go, to turn away from the very things that shackle us, our sins. The freedom that God gives us in Christ is like a great sigh of relief. And when you breathe a sigh of relief, it means your lungs are working. Your spiritual lungs can breathe in the things of God and can you can grow and mature and become more Christ-like and full of the Holy Spirit. 

Amen.