<p>5:5&nbsp;<i>And hope does not put us to shame</i>- A significant theme in Paul and Peter (Rom. 9:33; 10:11; 1 Pet. 2:6).. The believer in Christ will not be ashamed at the last day judgment, with which &ldquo;shame&rdquo; is so often associated for the rejected (Dan. 12:2; Lk. 14:9; Jude 13; Rev. 16:15). If we have confident hope that we will not be rejected but will be saved at the last day, that we will not be ashamed then- therefore nothing in this life should make us feel ashamed, not even our own sins, for the shame of them is taken away by God&rsquo;s declaring us right.</p><p><i>Because God's love</i>- Gk.&nbsp;<i>hoti</i>&nbsp;isn&rsquo;t necessarily causative but it can be demonstrative. Paul may not therefore mean that we are unashamed&nbsp;<i>because&nbsp;</i>the love of God is in our hearts; he may mean that we are unashamed, as the final end result of God&rsquo;s justification process, we stand before Him uncondemned, not in shame as are the rejected sinners; and&nbsp;<i>therefore</i>&nbsp;the love of God becomes shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. This latter option is how I interpret&nbsp;<i>hoti</i>&nbsp;here, because Paul has been building up all throughout the letter to the reason why we are unashamed at judgment- it is because we are declared legally right before God&rsquo;s judgment by God the judge of all, due to our faith in His grace which operates through Jesus. Nothing has so far been said about the Holy Spirit in our hearts being the basis for this unashamed position. Our standing before God justified, declared right, forgiven, accepted at judgment, rejoicing in sure hope of eternity in the glory of God&rsquo;s Kingdom- this leads to the love of God filling our hearts. His love for us elicits our love for Him, and it fills our hearts.</p><p><i>Has been poured into our hearts</i>- Tit. 3:6 uses the same word to speak of how God&rsquo;s grace has been &ldquo;shed abroad&rdquo; abundantly upon us. The word is of course frequently used about the shedding of Christ&rsquo;s blood; because of God&rsquo;s colossal gift to us, of His Son, bringing about our justification if we believe in Him&hellip; then in due turn, the awareness of God&rsquo;s love is likewise shed into our hearts. Whether we have really believed and accepted the good news is answerable by whether or not we feel and know God&rsquo;s love to have been shed abroad, to have gushed out, into our hearts. Paul gives the hint several times in Romans 1-8 that this situation is not drifted into; the idea of gushing out or shedding suggests a one-time moment when this happened. &lsquo;Justification&rsquo;, the being declared legally right, is always spoken of grammatically as if this is a one off defined event which happened to us at a moment in the past. This moment is defined by Paul in Romans 6 as baptism, when we become &ldquo;in Christ&rdquo;. Note that he is writing to Roman Christians who had already been baptized and believed in Christ- rather than seeking to convert unbelievers. They may well not have felt any watershed moment at their conversion or baptism. But Paul&rsquo;s whole point is that even though they may not have felt it emotionally, this is actually how it is in reality, and we can now appreciate it and feel the wonder of the status into which we entered, even if it was unappreciated by us at the time. It is this feature more perhaps than anything else which makes this letter so relevant to we today who read it, who like the Romans have already believed, been baptized- and yet likely fail to appreciate the huge implications of the position we have now entered.</p><p><i>Through the Holy Spirit which has been given unto us</i>- the whole argument so far in Romans has said nothing about the Holy Spirit. Note the comments under &ldquo;Because&hellip;&rdquo; above. This isn&rsquo;t teaching that the Holy Spirit zapped our hearts and therefore all these wonderful things are true. We are unashamed, at the end of the process outlined in Rom. 5:3-5, because we stand at judgment day even now uncondemned, not ashamed as the condemned are, because of our faith in God&rsquo;s grace. This is how we come to be unashamed- not because the Holy Spirit zapped us. It is God&rsquo;s grace, justification, which has been given unto us. We could read in an ellipsis here, as often required in reading Romans, and understand this phrase as referring to how the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts &lsquo;by what the Holy Spirit has given unto us&rsquo;. This would associate &lsquo;the Holy Spirit&rsquo; with the power of God by which He has orchestrated and executed this entire wondrous plan of His.<br />Serious meditation upon the Lord's work ought to have this effect upon us. Can we really see his agony, his bloody sweat, without a thought for our response to it? It's impossible to passively behold it all. There is something practically compelling about it, almost in a mystical way.<i> Because</i>&nbsp;&ldquo;Christ died for the ungodly&quot;, because in the cross &ldquo;the love of God&quot; was commended to us,&nbsp;<i>therefore</i>&nbsp;&ldquo;the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us&quot; (Rom. 5:5,6,8). As the smitten rock gave out water, so the smitten Saviour gave out the water of the Spirit. This link between the shedding of the Lord&rsquo;s blood and the shedding of love in our hearts is surely because an understanding and relation to His sacrifice brings forth in the believer a response of love and spirituality. As the love of God was shown in the cross, so it will be reflected in the heart of he who truly knows and believes it.</p>