Romans 5:1-11, What It Means To Be Acceptable to God

1By faith we have been made acceptable to God. And now, because of our Lord Jesus Christ, we live at peace with God. 2Christ has also introduced us to God's undeserved kindness on which we take our stand. So we are happy, as we look forward to sharing in the glory of God. 3But that's not all! We gladly suffer, because we know that suffering helps us to endure. 4And endurance builds character, which gives us a hope 5that will never disappoint us. All of this happens because God has given us the Holy Spirit, who fills our hearts with his love. 6Christ died for us at a time when we were helpless and sinful. 7No one is really willing to die for an honest person, though someone might be willing to die for a truly good person. 8But God showed how much he loved us by having Christ die for us, even though we were sinful.


9But there is more! Now that God has accepted us because Christ sacrificed his life's blood, we will also be kept safe from God's anger. 10Even when we were God's enemies, he made peace with us, because his Son died for us. Yet something even greater than friendship is ours. Now that we are at peace with God, we will be saved by his Son's life. 11And in addition to everything else, we are happy because God sent our Lord Jesus Christ to make peace with us.

As a child I memorized the King James version...which I still prefer. "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ".

And this is why Paul spent so much time talking about a relationship with God through faith. It takes a lot of faith to believe the death of Jesus...2,000 years ago...can somehow influence our relationship with God today. Add to that...the resurrection...and God is asking a great deal of us. Of course, we already know the alternative.

But remember..."Abraham believed God"... 

And nobody can make it more clear than Paul, right here. "God has accepted us because Christ sacrificed his life's blood". We might prefer to play a greater role in our own salvation but there doesn't appear to be any room for that.

As an addict, this is quite a relief. It makes these first three steps quite a bit easier...
Step 1 - If we can just believe God about our sinfulness, we can admit we are powerless over our sin addiction. We move on to step two... Step 2 - If we can just believe God about the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ, we can believe that Jesus has the power to restore our relationship with God. We move on to step three...
Step 3 - If we can just believe God about the gift of His Holy Spirit, we can make a decision to turn our lives over to the care of God. We are part of the Family of God...Born again!  We move on to step four... 

Of course, this is where it gets exhausting for an addict...we have now committed ourselves to the life-long discipline of giving God room to work at killing the power of addiction in our lives. To the degree we give God room...we will see marvelous incidents of grace and mercy.

But remember...this work is not the work of salvation...that's been accomplished. This is the work of letting God do miracles...for our benefit and His glory. A.W. Tozer calls this the work of sanctification...becoming "set apart" as God's exclusive property.

It looks something like this... 
Step 4 - Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
Step 5 - Admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
Step 6 - Have God remove all these defects of character
Step 7 - Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings
Step 8 - Be willing to make amends to all the persons we have harmed 
Step 9 - Made amends except when to do so would injure them. 
Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
Step 11 - Seek, through prayer and meditation, to improve our relationship with God. Praying for knowledge of His will  and the power to carry that out
Step 12 - Try to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs

It's the life of an addict...It's enough to keep us busy for a lifetime, But...we have a lifetime. God then,  gave it to us...

Live boldly out there today...