Where You Stand
Romans 5:1-2—Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Where you stand on certain topics can tell people a lot about you. Sadly, where you stand on certain topics has caused a lot of division lately in our land which not that long ago just made someone different, not an enemy to be feared and despised. The thing is, these earthly stands will only last here on earth, and yet people are more concerned about them than the one thing, which in the end, truly matters and makes a difference. It’s where you stand in your relationship with God.
By nature, from the very moment of our conception in our mother’s wombs, we stood completely separated and alienated from God. We stood, not in his good graces, but only as objects of his wrath. Why? Because of the one thing that creates a divide that cannot be bridged by anyone…except God. Our sins separated us from God. Both our sinful nature, and then once we came into the world, all the sins we commit every day which prove the existence of our sinful nature.
The great divider, sin, fixed an impassible chasm between us and God. There is no amount of goodness, no amount of sorrow, no amount of sincerity, no amount of money that could ever be given or paid to God to bridge the gap. And this sin of ours also makes us recipients, not of eternal glory in heaven, but eternal separation from God in hell.
Where You Stand in relation to your status before God matters. It matters eternally! And that’s why God stepped in. He has justified us through faith and has given us peace through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through all that Jesus is, what he did for us, how he suffered for us, how he rose again for us…through all this God has justified us, that is, he has declared us forgiven for the sake of his Son, Jesus, who is everything we are not.
And this has changed everything. Through the gift of faith, your relationship with God has entirely changed Where You Stand before God. You now stand in grace! You stand before God as forgiven! You stand before God as pure and holy in his sight as his own Son because it is his own Son’s purity and holiness that has been made your own. You are now united with God and shall be forever in heaven!
Professor Siegbert Becker put it this way: “Think of a room. By faith I walk into that room, and the name of the room is what? Grace. The ceiling, walls, floor, all grace. You live inside God’s grace, his love, his forgiveness. You are always forgiven. You must not think of forgiveness as something that takes place in your life every once in awhile, that you pile up sins for a time and then you get forgiven. You are forgiven all the time…You are living inside the forgiveness of sins.”
Friends, this is why we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. It is because you know Where You Stand before God now and what he will say when you stand before him on the Last Day. “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world” (Mt. 25:34).