Wednesday 5/18/2022

Happy Wednesday everyone, I pray you are having a great week in the Lord. Today, we are continuing to look at vs. that deal with justification-gearing up for Sunday's message.
Romans 5:1-5
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations ,knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; 
4 and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; 5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

We could read the book of Romans every day for the rest of our lives, and on our final day, having read the book countless times, still come away with something new.  In the beginning part of Ch. 5, Paul is saying that because we have been justified, or been made holy, we can rest assured that we are no longer subject to God's wrath.  Because of this, we have the ultimate hope (eternity spent with our Savior). Not only that, but even when things go bad, we have  an opportunity to learn from such experiences and grow, to become more like Christ. These words should bring us great comfort-this is the opposite message that we find in the book of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon got to the end of his life and found out that without God, everything is truly meaningless. Paul's words should bring us comfort.