這是一段與《羅馬書》第五章有關的文字，請將文字翻譯為中文。考試時間為一小時。

When we are reconciled to the God who is our father, we discover that he wants not simply to enjoy this one-to-one relationship, but to enlist us in his service in working for his kingdom. And that will bring all kinds of pressures and problems which will require us to hang on in faith and hope even when we don’t sense his presence, even when it doesn’t ‘feel’ as though there’s anything happening. We mustn’t imagine that our feeling of being close to God is a true index of the reality. Emotions often deceive. Paul is summoning us to understand the reality, the solid rock beneath the shifting sands of feeling.

The first two verses of [Romans] chapter 5, then, celebrate our access into the very presence of God himself. We have ‘the right to approach’: this is the language of the Temple, where certain people get to come near to where God is. ‘Grace’ here is almost a shorthand for the presence and power of God himself. As a result of being justified by faith, we are, in the old phrase, ‘in a state of grace’, a status, a position where we are surrounded by God’s love and generosity, invited to breathe it in as our native air….

No wonder Paul can then go on to speak of celebration even in the midst of sufferings, the necessary path through which we travel as we share the father’s work in this still-corrupt world. Note, he doesn’t say that we celebrate our sufferings…. We celebrate, he says, in our sufferings. He sees a steady progression in which God uses our sufferings for the same purpose as he gives us his own presence and love: to transform us into the truly human people we were made to be. That progression leads from patience to character, and from character to hope. We live in a world that wants everything immediately; that has no stability of character except a hollow media image; that wanders this way and that because it has no idea where it might be going. The gospel of Jesus the Messiah calls us to swim against the tide on all counts.