Romans 5:6–11 - God’s Love Demonstrated - by Scott Sperling

⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

⁹ Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ¹⁰ For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! ¹¹ Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. — Romans 5:6–11

God’s Poured-Out Love

In Romans 5:5, the verse preceding the current passage, Paul declared: “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” In the current passage, Romans 5:6-11, Paul offers the most compelling and irrefutable evidence of that “poured-out love” of God — the atoning sacrifice of Christ Himself.

The Objective Proof of God’s Love for Us (vss. 6–8)

⁶ You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Paul presents facts to support that God “poured out his love for us”: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (vss. 6-8). This is not speculation, not inference, not the subjective feeling of the believer’s heart, but rather a demonstrated, objective, and historical fact: “Christ died us.”

And take note: The sacrifice that Christ made upon Calvary’s tree is not merely an expression of His own love — though truly it is that — but it is also and equally a demonstration of the Father’s love, just as Paul states: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this, Christ died for us” (vs. 8). To create the heavens and the earth, to suspend the stars in their courses, to command the seasons in their procession — those mighty works, though they testify to the power of God, cost Him in truth very little by comparison. But to redeem humanity back unto Himself, to accomplish our redemption through the offering of His own beloved Son, who endured the wrath of heaven poured out upon Him — that “demonstrated” a love so profound, so sacrificial, so alien to all worldly calculation, that it transcends the comprehension of the natural man. It is an undeniable proof that God loves us.

The ancient evangelist John captured this truth in words of penetrating clarity and beauty: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Mark well the progress of that sentence: first, the declaration of love — “For God so loved”; then, the gift — “that he gave”; then, the result — “eternal life.” The Father’s love for us is not some abstract principle or distant benevolence, but a love so tangible, so concrete, so demonstrable that it manifested itself in the giving of His Son. In this one act of supreme sacrifice, God poured forth His love in its fullest and most irrefutable measure.

And, astoundingly, God “demonstrated” that love, despite the utter unworthiness of those for whom Christ died. Note carefully how Pauol describes the recipients of this love. He employs three distinct terms, each illuminating a different aspect of our spiritual destitution and corruption.

First, we were “powerless” (vs. 6). By this word, Paul signifies that we possessed no ability whatsoever to please God through our own efforts, no capacity to save ourselves from the just condemnation which our transgressions had merited. We lay, as it were, in a state of complete spiritual paralysis, unable to lift ourselves from the mire of our own depravity, unable to work any true righteousness before our Maker. The strength of human will, the virtue of human effort, the dignity of human achievement — all these avail nothing in the presence of the Holy God. We were “powerless,” utterly and irremediably “powerless.”

Second, we were “ungodly” (vs. 6). This term strikes at the very essence of our corruption. To be “ungodly” is not merely to be imperfect or to stumble occasionally in our religious observance. To be “ungodly” is to be wholly unlike God, to be fallen creatures in a fallen world, far removed from exercising any true godliness, unjust and unrighteous in our very nature, striving ever in pursuit of our own self-interest and the gratification of our disordered lusts. The “ungodly” person does not approximate the character of God; he stands in direct and open opposition to it.

Third, we were “sinners” (vs. 8) — and not “sinners” by mere accident nor through occasional infirmity, but sinners by our own free and deliberate choice. Paul speaks of us as those who freely and wantonly performed acts of sin, deeds which God hates with a perfect hatred. We were not innocents led astray, but willing rebels against the Almighty, servants of unrighteousness, workers of iniquity.

And note how the Apostle emphasizes our utter unworthiness by directing our gaze toward the extraordinary rarity of human self-sacrifice: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person” (vs. 7). Paul observes that people simply do not willingly lay down their lives for one another. Even if the object of such sacrifice were righteous — a person of proven virtue and spotless integrity — such a death would be exceedingly rare. And if the recipient were merely a good person, possessed of some admirable qualities, someone might possibly “dare to die” for him, though even this would be unusual enough to merit remark. But we — we who were “powerless,” “ungodly,” and wantonly sinful — what possible cause could move anyone to die for us? Yet “Christ died for us” (vs. 8).

Let us focus now on those precious four words: “Christ died for us.” In those four words is contained the very essence and substance of the Gospel, the good news for humanity. In those words is concentrated all that is miraculous, all that is redemptive, all that is incomprehensibly generous in the economy of grace. If ever the human soul harbors doubt regarding God’s love, if ever the believer finds himself seized with the terrible apprehension that perhaps he has exceeded the bounds of divine mercy, if ever the conscience whispers that surely God cannot love one so deeply stained with iniquity — let him take refuge in this fortress of truth: “Christ died for us.”

And he did so not when we were virtuous, not when we had reformed ourselves, not when we had sufficiently demonstrated our worthiness. No! But “while we were still sinners” (vs. 8). And note, the manner of His death — a death of unimaginable ignominy and torment — reveals how seriously God regards our sin. Christ died the death that we deserved. He bore the punishment that justice demanded. He exhausted the wrath of God upon Himself, that we might go free. This truly is a demonstrated love.

Excursus: The Fullness of Time

In verse 6, the Apostle Paul raises the significance of the timing of Christ’s sacrifice. He states, “... at just the right time... Christ died for the ungodly.” When the Apostle declares that Christ came “at just the right time,” he is not speaking as one ignorant of history, but as one who perceives the hand of God orchestrating the very events of nations and empires to serve His eternal purpose.

In his epistle to the Galatians, in a verse that similarly speaks of the timing of Christ’s Incarnation, Paul employs a Greek word of extraordinary theological significance when he writes of the timing of the Incarnation: “But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship” (Gal. 4:4). The phrase “the set time had fully come” renders our word “time” using the Greek word kairos — a term distinct and separate from chronos, a word that expresses the ordinary measurement of sequential time. Where chronos speaks merely of the passage of hours and days and years, mere clock-time indifferent to significance or meaning, kairos refers to an appointed moment, a divinely ordained season, the perfect juncture when all conditions converge in the accomplishment of God’s sovereign will. The very employment of kairos in reference to the Incarnation signals to us that Christ’s coming was no accident of history, no mere contingency dependent upon the chance concatenation of earthly events, but rather a sovereign divine appointment ordained from before the foundation of the world.

The wisdom of God in the timing of the Incarnation manifests itself in a convergence of historical circumstances so remarkable that no person of learning can regard it as merely fortuitous. First, consider the political order that existed at the coming of Christ. The western world lay beneath the dominion of Rome, and Rome, at that season, was in an era that historians call the Pax Romana — the Roman Peace. The great wars of conquest had largely ceased; the empire had consolidated its power; and a relative calm pervaded the lands from Britain to Syria, from the Rhine to Egypt. This peace, though bought at the terrible cost of military subjugation, nevertheless provided the necessary conditions for the spread of the Gospel. The apostles and early Christian missionaries, had they been forced to labor during seasons of widespread warfare and civil turmoil, would have found their labors infinitely more difficult. Yet in the sovereignty of God, they labored during the Pax Romana, in an epoch of comparative tranquility.

Furthermore, the Romans had constructed an unprecedented network of roads throughout their dominion. These roads, built and maintained by soldiers, served not only military purposes but also facilitated commerce and travel with a swiftness that the ancient world had never known. The apostles and their successors could journey from Jerusalem to Rome, from Antioch to Ephesus, from Syria to Spain, with a degree of safety and speed which would have been impossible a century before. These Roman roads became, in the providence of God, the very highways upon which the Gospel traveled to the uttermost parts of the earth.

And of equal or perhaps even greater importance was the fact that a common language of commerce and culture — the Greek tongue —pervaded the Mediterranean world. When the apostles and evangelists went forth proclaiming the risen Christ, they could do so in a language understood across the breadth of the civilized world. The Gospel message, clothed in the Greek tongue, could penetrate and spread with an efficacy that would have been vastly diminished had no common language existed. The very conditions which made possible the rapid dissemination of the Gospel had been prepared, as it were, by the hand of Divine Providence through the military and political achievements of prior centuries.

Beyond all this, the timing of Christ’s coming reveals an even more profound dimension of divine providence when we consider it in relation to the history of Israel and the Jewish faith. The Temple at Jerusalem, that most sacred edifice wherein the daily sacrifices were offered according to the law of Moses, stood in Christ’s day in all its glory. Yet within a single generation — a mere forty years after the Resurrection — in the year 70 AD, the legions of Rome marched upon Jerusalem, besieging it with terrible might, and in the end laid it utterly to waste. The Temple was destroyed; not one stone was left upon another; the great building was reduced to rubble and flame.

Consider the profound timing herein! It was necessary — divinely necessary — that Christ should come and the Christian church should be established before this catastrophic event. For the destruction of the Temple signified nothing less than the definitive close of the Old Covenant era. The Jewish religion, as God had ordained it through Moses, centered upon the offering of sacrifices in the Temple. When the Temple fell, the Jews possessed no sanctuary wherein to offer those sacrifices which the Law required for the atonement of sins. Yet the sacrifices were needed no longer, for Christ Himself had come and had offered the one perfect sacrifice that fulfills and supersedes all the shadow-offerings of the ancient law.

The author of the epistle to the Hebrews expounds upon this truth with penetrating clarity: “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest [Christ] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:11–14). And in another place:

“Unlike the other high priests, [Jesus] does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself” (Heb. 7:27). The repetition of the phrase “once for all” in these verses emphasizes the finality and sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice. The daily sacrifices of the Temple priesthood could never truly take away sin; they were perpetually repeated because they were perpetually insufficient. But Christ, having made one offering, sat down — the posture of one whose work is complete — for His sacrifice makes perfect forever all those who believe in Him. All of these things reveal that Christ and His sacrificial work render unnecessary the Temple in Jerusalem, and so God allowed the Romans to destroy it.

Christ Himself prophesied the very destruction of the Temple. As He stood in it, His disciples came unto Him, pointing out the magnificence of its construction: “And Jesus said to them: ‘Do you see all these things? Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down’” (Matthew 24:1-2). At the time when Christ uttered these words, the Jews lived in comparative peace, free to exercise their ancestral religion. It would have seemed to the natural eye an impossible thing, that this great edifice would be destroyed. Yet the prophecy was fulfilled with exactness to the letter, confirming the divine omniscience of our Lord.

Yet the timing was providential in yet another regard. Centuries before the coming of Christ, the prophet Jeremiah received from the Lord a prophecy of a new covenant that would supersede the old:

“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord,

‘when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel

and with the people of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors

when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt,

because they broke my covenant,

though I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord.

‘This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel

after that time,’ declares the Lord.

‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God, and they will be my people.

No longer will they need to teach their neighbor,

or say to one another, “Know the Lord,”

because they will all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord.

‘For I will forgive their wickedness

and will remember their sins no more’” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

This prophecy, spoken when the first covenant was still in full vigor, declares that God would one day establish a covenant, not based upon external law written upon tablets of stone, but upon forgiveness and upon a law written upon the human heart itself. When Christ came and died and rose again, He inaugurated this New Covenant. The Old Covenant, with its external observances and its repeated sacrifices, was fulfilled and brought to an end. The New Covenant, wherein forgiveness is offered freely to all who believe, became the operative principle of God’s dealing with His people. And note, the very destruction of the Temple confirms that the old order had passed away, and the new order in Christ alone endures.

The doctrine of the kairos, the appointed moment of God’s providence, extends not merely to the first coming of Christ but equally to His second coming. Many have mocked the Christian faith, declaring that Christ had promised to return but had failed to do so. The apostle Peter addressed this objection with words of surpassing wisdom: “In the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, Where is this coming he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation... The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:3-4,9).

Note well the Apostle’s response to the objection. The apparent delay in Christ’s coming is not owing to forgetfulness on God’s part, nor to an inability to fulfill His promise. Rather, the delay itself is an expression of the patient love of God. The Lord, in His mercy, delays the final judgment that all might have opportunity to repent and believe. The kairos of the Second Coming, like the kairos of the First Coming, is appointed by God in perfect wisdom and perfect love. When that day does come, it will be at precisely the right moment, ordained by Him who sees all things from beginning to end.

And this same God, who governs the great movements of history according to His sovereign wisdom, does likewise govern the appointed moments of every individual life. The trials that come upon us, the deliverances we receive, the providences that shape our days — all are governed by that same holy kairos that brought Christ into the world at the perfect moment. Nothing that befalls us is accidental; nothing is outside the governance of Him who has numbered the very hairs of our heads.

Assured Salvation and Reconciliation (vss. 9–11)

⁹ Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! ¹⁰ For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

¹¹ Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

In verses 9 and 10, the Apostle Paul employs a form of reasoning which, though simple in its logical structure, carries within itself implications of the most profound and comforting character. He states: “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” This is an argument proceeding from the greater to the lesser — from what is more difficult to accomplish to what is less difficult; from what is more extraordinary to what is more ordinary. The reasoning proceeds thus: If God has gone to such extraordinary lengths in demonstrating His love for us by justifying us through the blood of His Son — if He has taken enemies, powerless and ungodly sinners, and has reconciled them to Himself through the death of His own beloved — then surely He will not abandon His work halfway. If He has accomplished the more difficult thing, how much more certainly shall He accomplish the less difficult thing, which is our present salvation and our preservation unto glory!

Consider the magnitude of what God has already done. He has taken His Son, spotless and sinless, and has caused Him to bear the accumulated weight of the world’s transgression. He has poured out upon the innocent Head of Christ the full measure of wrath which justice demanded on account of our sins. He has justified us — declared us righteous — not on the basis of our own merit, which is non-existent, but on the basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed to us. If God has done all this — and history attests that He has — then is it not manifest that He will not leave us to perish? Is it not clear that He will not suffer us to be snatched from His hand? If He has reconciled us when we were His enemies, how much more surely will He save us now that we are His friends, now that we are His adopted children, now that the barrier of sin has been broken down?

The argument rests upon the nature of God Himself. God is not capricious; He does not begin a work and then abandon it. God is faithful; He completes what He has begun. If we believe — and we must believe this — that God has truly justified us and truly reconciled us to Himself through Christ’s death, then we must equally believe that He will continue in that reconciliation, that He will preserve us, that He will bring us at length to the glory which He has promised.

The Apostle does add a further dimension to this assurance when he speaks of being “saved through [Christ’s] life” (vs. 10). Christ’s atoning death is past; it occurred once, in history. Yet Christ Himself lives forevermore. He sits at the right hand of God the Father, making intercession for us, presenting our cause before the throne of grace with an efficacy which no human advocate could ever possess. When our consciences are troubled, when we are assailed by doubts and fears, when the Enemy whispers to us that surely we cannot be saved, Christ — our risen, living Savior —stands forever on our behalf. “Through His life,” which is eternal and immutable, “we are saved.”

This is the great pastoral comfort which the Apostle bestows upon the struggling believer. Your sins — both those committed in the past and those which you may yet commit in the future — are covered by Christ’s death. He died for all of your transgressions, past, present, and to come. You need not look over your shoulder in perpetual fear and trembling, wondering whether today is the day when God shall cast you off. Your salvation is grounded not upon the fragile and uncertain foundation of your own constancy, but upon the unshakeable foundation of Christ’s sacrifice and Christ’s intercession. Your are justified; you are reconciled; you shall be saved. And though the Holy Spirit diligently convicts the believer of sin — drawing him back from the path of transgression, sanctifying him gradually through the power of grace, as Paul shall develop at length in the chapters that follow — the point proclaimed here in the fifth chapter is luminously plain: those who have believed in Christ possess their salvation entire and unabridged.

Paul continues in verse 11, layering blessing upon blessing: “Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” The word “reconciliation” carries within itself implications far deeper and more personal than the mere settlement of a legal dispute or the negotiation of a business transaction. In its true sense, “reconciliation” speaks of the restoration of a broken relationship, the healing of a rift between persons who were once united, the renewal of intimate fellowship after a season of estrangement and alienation. When two persons are reconciled, it is not merely that their external differences have been adjusted; rather, it is that the love and trust which once united them has been recovered and renewed. The language of legal transaction — pardon granted, debt forgiven, penalty remitted — describes one aspect of God’s work in Christ. But the language of “reconciliation” speaks of something yet more precious: the restoration of that personal, intimate, face-to-face relationship which sin had shattered.

The Apostle’s employment of this word signals to us a truth of supreme importance: our God is not an aloof and distant Deity, not a cold mechanical force indifferent to the creatures He has made, not an impersonal principle of abstract justice. Rather, God desires a personal relationship with us. He desires that we know Him; He desires that we speak to Him; He desires that we feel His presence abiding with us. The reconciliation which Christ has accomplished is not merely an objective change in our legal status before the bar of divine justice, but rather the opening of the door whereby we might once again draw near to God, might once again experience His fellowship, might once again walk arm in arm with the Lord of the Universe.

How greatly does this truth rebuke the false philosophy of deism — that cold and cheerless doctrine which affirms that God, having created the world, has thereupon withdrawn from His creation to attend to matters of greater moment, leaving His creatures to their own devices in a universe bereft of His guidance and care. According to the deist, God is like a divine clockmaker who winds up the great clockwork of the cosmos and then departs, concerning Himself no further with how the mechanism shall run. It is a conception of God as one who is thoroughly occupied with His own affairs, who has no genuine interest in the welfare of His creatures, who demands obedience and reverence from those whom He has abandoned to their own resources.

Yet the testimony of this passage utterly confounds and refutes such a conception. God is not absent from His creation; God is not indifferent to the plight of His people. What is truly important to God? What captivates the attention and moves the heart of the Divine Nature? The answer rings forth from these verses with perfect clarity: God’s deepest concern is that we be reconciled to Him, that we be restored to that fellowship with our Maker which sin has broken. So profound is this desire that God demonstrated it by sending His own Son to die for us. No deist could ever conjure such a God; no deist philosophy could ever account for such an act of sacrificial love.

God desires intimacy with us. He desires that we know Him — not merely as one might know facts recorded in a book, but as one might know a beloved friend, through long acquaintance and deep conversation. He desires that we speak to Him — that we bring to Him our joys and our sorrows, our thanksgivings and our petitions, our deepest spiritual longings and our most urgent earthly needs. He desires that we feel His presence — not as a distant and abstract concept, but as an immediate and tangible reality, a presence which sustains us, comforts us, and guides us through all the circumstances of our mortal pilgrimage. He desires that we walk with Him — day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment — in that sweet and blessed communion which the redeemed know and which the unredeemed cannot even imagine.

Is this not the deepest truth concerning God’s nature? Is this not the revelation which shines through every page of Scripture? God made humans in His own image, not merely that His creation might reflect His power and glory, but that His creatures might commune with Him, might experience His love, might reciprocate His affection. In the garden of Eden, before sin had introduced its poison and separation, Adam walked with God in the cool of the evening. That was ever God’s design — not a distant servitude, but an intimate fellowship; not a fear-based obedience, but a love-based communion. When sin shattered that relationship, God’s response was not to abandon His purpose, but to accomplish a redemption which would restore it. At infinite cost to Himself, God has reconciled us to Himself in Christ, that once again we might know the joy of walking with our God, that once again we might experience the blessed communion of the redeemed with their Redeemer.

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