Bible Commentaries
Romans 5

Verses 1-11

13 As further developed in Galatians, the law was not given till hundreds of years after Abraham was counted righteous. The promises he received in connection with it were unconditional, dependent only on God's faithfulness. They were given without any reference to the law and do not depend on any legal observance for fulfillment. When the law did come it did not confirm these promises. It was brought in to show how impotent their own efforts were when they sought to attain to Abraham's divinely given righteousness by the keeping of the law. The law hindered rather than helped. Instead of making them just, it drew down God's indignation for their failure to live up to it.

16 Faith has not the least merit. We do not deem it meritorious to believe an honest man. It is no effort. It is not work. It is the simplest, easiest, freest channel God could choose to convey His righteousness to us. Let us exult in His explanation that it is of faith that it may accord with grace. In Ephesians we have the further truth that such a salvation-through faith-calls for further favor in the future ( Eph_2:8 ).

17 Abraham believed God when all the evidence was against Him. He was, for all practical purposes, as good as dead himself, and Sarah, his wife, was worse, if that could be. He faced the facts. He considered his own condition as well as that of his wife, yet never doubted that God could and would do as He had said. He believed in a God Who was superior to death, and thus made it possible for God to vindicate him. Apart from death we can see how God could pardon his sins, or cover them by means of atonement, but it is only as having died to sin, and being alive in resurrection, that we can realize that Abraham is justified .

23 Thus, we, too, are justified, by the simple process of believing God. We do not believe concerning our seed, as Abraham did, but concerning his Seed, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who actually died for our sins and was roused because the sin He bore was all gone, and we were vindicated.

CONCILIATION

1 Justification is the ground of peace. Sin no longer bars us from the presence of God. Yet peace is a favor infinitely beyond justification. God's affections are not satisfied with clearing us from all guilt. He craves our love and our adoration. Righteousness alone does not give us a passport into His presence, but this further grace of reconciliation urges us into full and affectionate fellowship with Him. And we are aware that He will not rest in having us clothed in forensic righteousness only, but will make us all that He desires, to satisfy His own love.

5 His way of winning our response is to pour His own love into us first, as exemplified in the death of Christ for us while we were most undeserving of His favor. The grace of it lies in the entire lack of anything in us to draw out His affections toward us.

9 The blood of Christ is a memorial of the abiding efficacy of His death. It fends us from all future indignation. If Christ died for us as sinners, surely we have no need to fear aught now that we are justified!

10 We now take up the new subject of conciliation. We leave the atmosphere of the court for the closer ties of the family circle. Now it is not Christ dying for sinners , but God's Son dying for His enemies . The effect is not justification, but conciliation, peace. Furthermore, we are not only unafraid of future wrath, because of the abiding value of His death, as figured by the blood, but we have the living Son of God Himself as the surety of our salvation. We shall be saved by His life .

11 Christ did not obtain "atonement". That was a mere temporary covering for sin made by the blood of bulls and goats, and utterly failed to take away sin. Let us not degrade Christ's work by calling it an "atonement". But let us glory in conciliation, the ripened fruit of God's great effort to win the fealty and affection of His creatures. Few things indicate more clearly the necessity for using sound words than the constant reference to the work of Christ as "the atonement."

Verses 12-21

12 Death entered through sin at first, but now sin is transmitted through death. All sin because they are mortal. Christ brings life, which disposes of both death and sin.

14 The type covers the period of time up to the giving of the law, from Adam to Moses. During this period there was no transgression, for there was no law. So it is today. The law was not given to the nations, hence they do not transgress it. Nevertheless death reigns, even as it did before the law was given. The type, however, is in the nature of a shadow, whose dark outlines do not clearly depict the present grace. The reign of Sin corresponds to the reign of Grace, Adam's single offense to Christ's one just act on Calvary, bringing life where Adam brought death. But the type fails utterly in a number of particulars.

15 A simple reversal of the offense would put us where Adam was before he transgressed. But the gratuity through Christ is infinitely more than a mere recovery from the effects of Adam's offense.

16 One sin brought condemnation to all mankind. Grace recovers, not from one sin only, but from many offenses.

17 Adam enthroned death, but Christ gives believers not only a full vindication from all guilt, but life and the right to reign with Him.

18 The parallel here is perfect. Adam's one offense is counteracted by Christ's one just award. The act of Adam actually affects all mankind . So Christ's work, eventually, must also actually justify all mankind. This cannot be during the eons, hence will not be fully accomplished until after the eons are past, when all are made alive in Christ ( 1Co_15:22 ). If Adam's offense only gave each one an opportunity to sin, so that some become sinners and others not, then we might say that Christ's work brings justification to all subject to their acceptance. But we must acknowledge that man has no choice in becoming a sinner, thus also will it be through the work of Christ. Both are actual and universal.

19 The contrast here is between one and many , not between the many and the all of the previous statement. The many here are the all of verse eighteen.

20 Here we have the true character and function of the law. It crept in. It was not a normal necessity, nor did it make any vital change. Its effect was to alter the character of sin so that it became an offense. Just as Adam's sin was against God's expressed command, and thus was a personal affront to God as well as a misdeed bringing harm on his own head, so those under the law, by sinning against light, greatly increased the sinfulness of sin. Obedience to the law would have banished sin and death. Disobedience enhanced their power. But grace not only exceeds the effects of sin, but superexceeds the offenses of those under law, so that now,

Grace has dethroned sin .

1 The absolute despotism of Grace is set forth in the startling suggestion that if we should be persisting in sin, grace would increase . While the following argument is against persistence in sin, it confirms the sovereignty of grace. Let us not deny this marvelous doctrine. It will give us rich, exultant liberty, ridding us of the thralldom of Sin, and giving us power to avoid the very sins which unnatural logic supposes we would eagerly follow, now that there is no condemnation even if we should sin.

2 This and the following chapter are a digression, discussing the effects of the reign of grace, first without, and then with, law. Deliverance from sin comes, not through victory over it, but through death to it. It is useless to struggle against sin, or to fight with its practices. Rather we should acknowledge its force and reckon ourselves as dead through it and to it, yet alive in resurrection, where sin has no place.

3 The spiritual values of baptism into the death ( Luk_12:50 ) and entombment with Christ, as shown in this chapter, indicate that spirit baptism is in view here ( cf 1Co_12:13 ). "For in one spirit also we all are baptized into one body."

8 As we did not die, but Christ was crucified for us, we may reckon His death as ours, fully finishing our connection with sin, and His resurrection as ours also, for in Him we enjoy an unclouded life in the presence of God.