A message for Akron Alliance Fellowship Church, Akron OH, Sunday, August 30, 2026
In continuing with the second part of our study in Romans chapter 5, I trust that you will be able to see the importance of looking at your faith in Jesus and focusing on the methodology of growing your faith as you learn more about Him. It takes effort on your part to keep Jesus close every day. Make time for Him, He will always be present in your life. He goes with you during your daily commute to the office, or during your visit to the hospital or the grocery store. Include Him in your quiet moments of reflection as you read the Bible and meditate on His Word. Move away from distractions and spend quality time with Him. He will provide wisdom and guidance as you grow in your faith.
And we got a taste of all of this in last week’s message. Today, for the second part of this short series on Romans 5:1-11, we will pick up where we left off with Romans 5:5 and include it within today’s reading. We last covered passages 1 through 5 noting the importance of peace with God through faith, His wonderful grace (undeserved privilege), that we are “not guilty” in spite of our sinful nature, and we are to live as believers and endure whatever the enemy throws at us. In all of this, we learn through the presence of the Holy Spirit how to be joyful and experience His sanctifying power that builds our character.
Turn your Bibles and electronic devices to Romans 5, and we’ll start by reading through our passage for today—Romans 5:5-11:
Romans 5:5-11 NLT
5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.
6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. 7 Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. 8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 9And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. 10 For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. 11 So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.
Starting again at verse 5:
5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.
We are revisiting the key phrase within the passage of God’s love for us. When the Bible speaks of God’s love for us, it is always the highest form of love—agape love. Agape is a love that gives without keeping score and doesn’t operate under conditions.1 The description of this love is captured in 1 Corinthians 13. Remember that we also mentioned the undeserved privilege that we experience from God—His grace! Grace is a product of God’s love. It is selfless, sacrificial and unconditional. His love is a reflection of His character. Our existence is not accidental. It was intentional, and He loves us through the presence of the Holy Spirit, a definitive Helper that was promised to us by Jesus Christ.
John 14:16-17, 26 NLT
16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. 17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.
26 But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.
This reference to the Holy Spirit is the first mention that Paul makes of Him in the epistle. The Holy Spirit is to be the closestperson to us in our relationship with Jesus. He is our Comforter. He is our Counselor. And you, as a believer, know Him and are familiar with Him as you invite Him in your life every day. I trust that you are becoming more and more familiar with Jesus with time well spent in the Spirit. We are confident in His salvation for us because of His love for us.
Let’s pick up from there and move to Romans 5, verse 6:
6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.
We were helpless because of what we already know from Romans 3:23 and 6:23. Our sin separated us from God and led to death, but God, at the appointed time, sent Jesus to be our living sacrifice (Galatians 4:4).
There are several references in Scripture that refer to God’s timing or His appointed time. The timing refers to the biblical holy days introduced by God that He “set apart” to establish the importance of God’s relationship with His people.2 These were the high holy days that include the Sabbath, Passover, Pentecost, the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Tabernacles and Purim. These were a sample of days within His divine timeline. Jesus was sent to die for those who were deemed helpless and ungodly for them to receive eternal life when they believed in Him. He went to the cross as a sacrifice to save us—at God’s appointed time.
There are people who make a concerted effort to live in a manner not acknowledging God—let alone His love for them. Their effort to live outside of God’s presence does not change God’s love for them one iota. He loves everyone just the same. God’s agape love is unlike any other love that we know of. He does not change how he loves us based upon our behavior or whether we love Jesus or not.
With this in mind, always note that God is active in the redemption of His people. He is not actively or even dismissively condemning people to hell. People who refuse to acknowledge the saving power of Jesus effectively condemn themselves.
Verse 6 (of Romans 5) is a reminder of how dependent we are on the benevolence of Christ’s actions because He loved us.
Look again at verse 7 in Romans 5:
7 Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good.
I believe that Paul is making this statement to make a person think more deeply about what it means to give your own life for someone else. I won’t get too deep in hypotheticals, but I know that I would give my life for my lovely bride, and I’m confident that if it were up to her, she would do the same for me. But Paul is providing this verse to make us think about the magnitude of the act of Jesus willingly giving His life for you and me. First responders to disasters often put themselves in harm’s way to rescue people who are in immediate danger, but I don’t believe that their acts of heroism are the same as those who willingly decide to give up their life. Verse 7 should give us even more emphasis upon the amazing, incomparable love of Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross and, according to the words of hymn writer John Newton, “that saved a wretch like me.”3
Now on to Romans 5, verses 8 and 9:
8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 9 And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation.
God’s predetermined mission was to send Christ to die for our sin. He knew that there was no other remedy for us, and it is through the shedding of His blood that our sins are covered and we are no longer destined to live apart from Him for all eternity. Jesus became the One to take on the curse that we were under because of our sin.
Being in sin is very much like being in bondage. Jesus frees those who believe what He accomplished on the cross. That is why we are declared free from sin and receive His righteousness.
2 Corinthians 5:21 NLT
For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
Galatians 3:13 NLT
But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” (from Deuteronomy 21:23)
Romans 8:1-3 NLT
1 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. 3 The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins.
With these passages, we are to be reminded that, by faith, Jesus has given us the freedom from sin and the promise of eternal life with Him:
Romans 6:20-23 NLT
20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. 21 And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. 22 But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
The gift of salvation is freedom in Jesus Christ (John 8:36).
Let’s look at Romans 5:10…
10 For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son.
This verse reminds me of the phrase, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”4 That phrase implies, whether in jest or all seriousness, how some friends can be more harmful or adversarial than your actual enemies. Do you have “friends” like these that make you lose sleep at night or make you constantly look over your shoulder? Maybe I should ask, “What did you do to them??”
I wonder if the Lord feels the same way about us at times? After all, He reminds us in Scripture that our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), which certainly makes us enemies of God on its very surface.5
In addition, please don’t be the one who claims to know Jesus but has nothing to show for it:
1 John 1:5-10 NLT
5 This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. 6 So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.
8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.
Thankfully, Paul tells us in this passage that we are no longer enemies but friends with God because of Jesus, our Redeemer.
James 2:23 NLT
And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” He was even called the friend of God (from Isaiah 41:8).
It was determined long ago in the eternal past that Jesus would redeem us through His death and resurrection, and we are not just His friends:
Ephesians 1:4-6 NLT
4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. 6So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.
Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
We are reminded over and over throughout Scripture of God’s plan and purpose for us through His redemption of all mankind. He knew all along that we needed this, and for this reason, we can indeed rejoice:
Look at Romans 5, verse 11:
11 So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.
I trust that you do not have to go out of your way to find reasons to celebrate. That may have been your approach when you were much younger (it was like that for me), but I know much more now about having great appreciation for Jesus, because He comes first. I celebrate His love for me, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and His gift of grace. It’s very reassuring to know that He cherishes me as His child of God, and He certainly can do the same for you when you go all in for Him in your life. All it takes is to just believe in Him, and you too can be a child of God.
When you study the words of Paul here in Romans 5 as well as other parts of Romans and throughout his epistles, make sure that you internalize the goodness of God and rejoice as a believer in Jesus.
Philippians 4:4-5 NLT
4 Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! 5 Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon.
Copyright © 2026 Melvin Gaines.
1 William, L. (2026, August 20). What is Agape love in the Bible? (meaning & significance) – the bible christian. The Bible Christian. https://thebiblechristian.com/what-is-agape-love-in-the-bible/
2 God’s appointed times: A practical guide for understanding and celebrating the biblical holidays by Barney Kasdan. Messianic Jewish Publishers. (n.d.). https://www.messianicjewish.net/products/gods-appointed-times
3 Wikimedia Foundation. (2026, August 24). Amazing Grace. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace
4 With friends like these, who needs enemies – wiktionary, the free dictionary. Wiktionary. (n.d.). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/with_friends_like_these,_who_needs_enemies
5 Jeremiah 17:9 – the sin and punishment of Judah. Bible Hub. (n.d.). https://biblehub.com/jeremiah/17-9.htm
Melvin Gaines 