PEACE AND HOPE

PASTOR RYAN LADEN – DEVOTIONALS

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This week we will draw our devotions out of Romans chapter five. There is so much of great value in this message from God to you.

Are you able to appreciate someone else’s work? 

Specifically, if you fancy yourself as being pretty good at something, maybe even bordering on being an expert, can you set aside your own style and preferences and just enjoy the hard work and skill of another person’s work?

Sometimes church can be like that for people like me. Listening to another preacher open the Bible and teach SHOULD bring me joy, after all, we share the same beliefs and passions. The same goes for the worship leader, or the greeter, or even the drummer (yes, drummers are people too 🙂 ). 

Yesterday I attended a great local church and was blessed by a fellow preacher as he taught out of Romans chapter five. After I stopped thinking about all the ways I would have presented this passage differently than he did, I stopped and actually listened to what the Lord had placed on this man’s heart as it related to the powerful message of the following passage:

1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 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. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 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.

(Romans 5:1-5 NIV11)

Verses 1-2

There are two big ideas found in verses one and two that I wanted to stop and comment on today. These two ideas are represented by the words, “peace and hope”.

Peace

First off, let’s look at the peace that is found here in verse 1. This is a special kind of peace that comes from God’s gift of grace as experienced on the cross of Christ. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have had our sins, our acts of rebellion against what we know of God removed from us and paid for through the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb of God.

We have peace in the sense that we are no longer at war with God. This is the powerful point that the Apostle Paul made in the following passage:

21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

(Colossians 1:21-22 NIV11)

Enemies

We were once enemies of our creator. We rejected his law and his authority and crowned ourselves kings and queens of our own hearts. In this we have failed on an eternal scale. 

But because of the love of Christ, our creator has rejected our rejection and has paid the price of our rebellion. Jesus Christ died in our place, bearing the eternal costs of our eternal rejection. 

Friends

And it is because of this expression of love that we are able to have real and lasting peace with God. He has made a way for you and I to draw near to the one we nailed to the cross with our foolishness and rebellion. And so the one who receives this gift of peace by faith can live with the knowledge that even though they were once enemies of God, they are now friends of Christ Jesus. 

Hope

Briefly, let’s look at the idea of hope that was expressed in Romans 5:2, “And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.” This kind of hope is a great expression of what hope in Christ looks like. Hope in the things of God or hope because of God is best summed up in the following:

Christian hope is confidence in the promises of God based on the past actions of God. 

This means that we can trust in the future glory of God, the gift of heaven itself, because of what we have seen and experienced from the Lord in the past. 

This is one of the great purposes of the message of the Bible. We look at the past action of God to gain confidence in the future promises of the Lord. As we learn about God’s expressions of love and grace to those who have gone before us, we can be more certain that the God who does not change like shifting shadows will remain the same in our futures.  

Let’s focus on these two gifts today. 

•  Let’s pay attention to the peace that we have been given thanks to the work of Jesus Christ.
•  Give God praise for what he has done for you in the past. 
•  Allow these completed actions to grow real faith in you as you think about the promises of future blessing given to you by the Lord in the message of his word. 

In Christ, 

Ryan Laden

PASTOR RYAN LADEN

Former Senior pastor at Warnbro Community Church

Studies at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

Studied at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

Studied at Baylor University

Studied at Texas Tech University

Went to Castle Hills First Baptist

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