“Reading Romans: The Results of Justification”

Can you imagine? Faced with our willful, continuing sinfulness, God chose to justify us.

[1] Painting in the Grotto of St. Paul, Ephesus, late 5th century

Romans 5:1-8

June 28, 2026

Dr. Todd R. Wright

We began this series, “Reading Romans”, last week by familiarizing ourselves with Rome in 57 AD, and the Christian community that developed there. Now we will turn our attention from the audience to the author – Paul.

If you had grown up with him, and then lost touch, you would be surprised to hear that he had written such a letter. He would probably admit some surprise about the turn his life had taken, too!

He described himself, as he once was, in a letter to the church in Philippi. Eugene Peterson paraphrases it this way in The Message:

“You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.”[i]

Wow! Can you imagine having to sit next to a person like that on a cross-country flight?

He sounds like an alphabet of pride: Arrogant, Boastful, Conceited, Dripping with smugness!

Perhaps he had reason to be proud.

His Jewish name was Saul, “perhaps after King Saul, the first king of Israel, who was also a member of the Tribe of Benjamin,”[ii] one of the twelve tribes of Israel that each claimed pieces of the Promised Land.

According to the Acts of the Apostles, he was a Roman citizen. So, “his parents, and perhaps their ancestors, must have been Roman citizens as well.”

As such, “he bore the Latin name Paulus, meaning small, which was not a result of his conversion as is commonly believed, but a second name for use in communicating with a Greco-Roman audience” – a common practice at the time.

He was born in Tarsus, (in modern-day Turkey), which sat “at the [intersection] where the land and sea routes connecting the Cilician plain, central Anatolia, and the Mediterranean Sea met; a grand city with palaces, marketplaces, roads and bridges, baths, fountains and waterworks, a gymnasium, and a stadium. In the Roman period, the city was an important intellectual center, boasting its own academy.”

Speaking of education, “while he was still fairly young, he was sent to Jerusalem to receive his education at the school of Gamaliel, one of the most noted teachers of Jewish law in history,” giving him an expert grasp of the Hebrew Scriptures.

No wonder he was proud!

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But that all changed on the road to Damascus[iii] when he was knocked off his high horse by God and confronted with a vision of Christ asking, “Why do you persecute me?” Humbling!

Blinded, he had to be led into the city by the hand, like a little child. Humbling!

For three days he was stuck in the dark, with time to reflect on the fact that neither his citizenship, nor his education, nor his zeal were doing him much good. And then a man named Annanias – a Christian, (one of the ones he had been coming to arrest) – came, laid hands on him, called him brother, and healed him in the name of Christ! Humbling!

Apparently it took, because when he finishes telling the Philippians about his pedigree, he says:

“The very credentials [I waved] around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash — along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant — dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him.”[iv]

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I tell you all this about Paul, because I think it helps us make sense of what he writes to the Romans in this letter.

When he writes about justification, he writes as one who had been humbled. That’s baked into being justified. He also writes as one who has been blessed with grace. That’s baked in too!

Can you imagine? Faced with our willful, continuing sinfulness, God chose to justify us.

One scholar explains: “Justification involves more than just declaring us to be right. Justification also entails making us right, repairing us and the world.”[v]

Paul feels this personally. He has obtained access to the grace – been justified, made right, repaired body and soul – through Christ. Not through his upbringing in a crossroads of trade and culture; not through his education at the feet of a master; not through his zeal or his hard work. No, his access to grace came only through Christ, the one who knocked him to the ground and raised him to new life, transforming him into an instrument to spread the good news!

So that’s the first result of justification: access.

Like a key-card that lets you enter your hotel room, or a pass that grants you access to an airport lounge, or a dropped name that permits you to go backstage, justification granted Paul access to grace.

And so, he wants to share this good news with the Romans! Whether they can claim to be children of Abraham with all the right things on their religious résumé; or came late to the party after renouncing all the Roman gods, they too have been justified by Christ, left dripping with grace.

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A second result of justification, Paul explains, is that our “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us!”

He wants the believers in Rome, who have seen their share of suffering, to know that suffering does not indicate that God is against them. But for some this must have been a hard sell.

One scholar writes,

“Some believers could be just starting out on the suffering-to-hope journey. They may be experiencing suffering as just that: suffering. For them suffering [produces] anger, sadness, [or] pain well ahead of any promised endurance.”[vi]

He continues,

“Paul’s route for this trip may be clearly mapped out, but for some it’s not a trip on a straight interstate highway at 65 miles an hour. Instead, it feels more like a dizzying drive on a road with steep climbs, narrow bridge crossings and warning signs. On this winding road, the journey takes on a new dimension. Those words — suffering, endurance, character, [and] hope — are like signs for small towns you ride [past]. They are not the backdrop for the trip, but part of the experience. Paul [has] traveled this road [– he has been lashed and imprisoned, slandered and chased out of town]. He knows the curves and uphill climbs, and he knows the little towns along the road. He has lived in each of them — some for short periods of time, in others [for] longer than he had anticipated.”

And what Paul wants the believers in Rome to know is that God was with him all the way, transforming suffering, and him, into something better.

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The final result of justification is that it is clear proof of God’s love for us – there is no other explanation for why Christ died for us.

It wasn’t like Christ did it for perfect people, shining examples of God’s holiness; Instead, Jesus went to the cross for people who were still weak, still sinful, still useless to the kingdom.

No, God set this plan in motion, and followed through, out of sheer love for a rebellious, broken people, because that is who God is. Paul experienced that love on the Damascus Road and in the years that followed. He wanted the Romans to grab hold of that love. Us too! Amen

[i] See Philippians 3:4-6

[ii] Here and following, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle

[iii] For the whole story, see Acts 9:1-19

[iv] From The Message, Philippians 3:7-8

[v] From “Made Right” by Greg Carey in the Christian Century, 6/12/20

[vi] Here and following from “Are we there yet?” by Felipe Martinez in the Christian Century, 5/31/05