Paul has spent a chapter proving that Abraham was justified by faith, and now comes a small word: "Therefore." Since we have been justified by faith, 1"we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." The distinction matters, because a person can feel calm and still be at war, or feel anxious and still be entirely safe. Paul describes a fact settled outside us before it is ever felt inside us, the state of the relationship itself.
Through Christ, Paul says, 2"we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand." The word he chooses was used in his world for being formally ushered into the presence of a king, a privilege guarded around Caesar and granted to no one who simply wandered in. Paul says every believer, however ordinary and however far from powerful, now stands escorted into the court of the King of the universe. It is a settled position we permanently occupy.
Then something that would have surprised anyone who thinks peace with God means an easier life. We rejoice in our sufferings, Paul says, because 3"suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." Each link does work on the one before it. Endurance is what suffering trains into a person over time. Character, in Paul's word, is closer to a veteran's temper than a recruit's, a steadiness that comes only from having been tested. And that hope, forged through testing, does not put us to shame, because it rests on something already proven.
What proves it is named directly. 5"God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Poured, the kind of abundance that floods a heart. This is why the hope holds under pressure. Suffering can shake a hope built on circumstances improving. A hope built on a love already flooding the heart from the inside stays fixed.
Then Paul makes his case for that love with an argument no one could call sentimental. Greek culture had its category of noble death, dying for a good person, rare enough that everyone noticed it. Paul puts Christ's death in a different category altogether: 8"while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." 6"While we were still weak," Christ died for the ungodly. Weak, then ungodly, then sinners, and by verse 10, 10"enemies," each word a rung lower than the last. He died for people actively opposed to him, with nothing in them to draw out that love.
From there Paul builds his argument to its full height. If God did the hardest thing imaginable, reconciling his own enemies through the death of his Son, then the lighter task of finishing what he began is guaranteed. "Much more," Paul says, twice in two verses. Having been justified now, we will certainly be saved from wrath later. Having been reconciled as enemies, we will certainly be saved by his life now that we are friends. The hardest part is finished, and what remains is the easier half of the same rescue.
Paul closes on the giver himself. 11"We also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ," beyond every gift named, forgiveness, access, and hope, into God himself. Peace with God was always meant to end here, in a relationship with the God who made peace with his enemies at the cost of his Son's blood and who delights to be rejoiced in by the people he reconciled.
When you doubt that God will finish what he started, remember which half he has already done. Then rejoice in him, before you feel ready to.
Prayer
Father, thank you that our peace with you is something Christ accomplished for us while we were still your enemies. Thank you for the love you have poured into our hearts by your Spirit. Teach us to rejoice even in suffering, trusting the character and hope it is producing in us. When we doubt that you will finish what you started, remind us that you have done the hardest part. In Jesus' name, amen.