CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 5:1.—We have peace, for Christ is our peace. Several manuscripts translate, “Let us have peace,” adopted by the R.V. Justification here spoken of as an act already done—i.e., when we laid hold of Christ by faith. Faith is the key of knowledge, and makes us children of God (Clem. Rom.).
Romans 5:2.—Implies dignity, firmness to resist, preparation for further walk and work. δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ—the expression denotes the heavenly existence of God, to share which is the highest good of the creature.
Romans 5:4.—Patience equals patient endurance. Not so much experience as proof; affliction is our touchstone.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 5:1-4
Happy fruits.—There are luscious fruits which grow on the spiritual tree which God has planted in the wilderness of this world—planted for the benefit of His believing children; and yet how much of their lives is passed in a state of spiritual leanness. The fruits cannot ripen and fall to he ground in a state of decay, for nothing can be lost in God’s material or moral world—lost to us for the time, not lost in the greatness and goodness of the divine purposes. Why should they be lost? Why should the golden fruit ripen and not refresh our parched natures? Why should we not go in faith and gather the rich grapes of the spiritual Eschol, and sweeten the bitterness and lessen the feverish heat of our wearisome earth-lives? What advantage is there in being justified if we do not enjoy peace? Let us seek to realise the full extent of our Christian privileges. The criminal is acquitted—let him not move through life as if he were afraid of the policeman; the dead has been brought to life—let him not wear the cerements of the tomb; the spiritual marriage has been consummated—let the bride deck herself with jewels. The eternal Father has welcomed the returned son—let him wear the best robe, and feast on the rich viands which paternal love has provided. What are the happy fruits of justification? They are:—
I. Peace.—This is the fruit in the divine intention and purpose, but too often only partially realised in the human experience, therefore may the apostle exhort, “Let us have peace.” May we thus amplify the apostolic injunction.
1. Let us possess ourselves in peace. If God be reconciled, why should we live and move as if He were unreconciled? We too often act as if the method of reconciliation had been forced from God, and as if He would relent and take back the offers of pardon and of peace. God relent? It was God’s loving heart that moved towards the children of sin and of misery. We lose much of peace by losing sight of the gracious thought that God’s love anticipated man’s sin, and provided the remedy. Let us have peace by taking large views of the love of God. Let us have peace by fully believing that the method of justification by faith is perfectly answerable to the divine requirements, and is fully harmonious with the divine nature.
2. Let us develop peace. We sing, “Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin?” Perhaps the words are idealistic. Perfect peace, in a nature racked, torn asunder, distorted, disfigured, by sin? Perfect peace, where chaos, dark confusion, and discords have dwelt? Perfect peace, where every power and faculty of the nature have been so long working in a contrary direction that they look as if any kind of peace were an impossibility? Happy soul that can by an act of faith enter into perfect peace! But we believe it to be a goal, perhaps never reached till we come to the land of perfect peace. Peace must grow; it can be developed.
3. Let us value peace. Let us have peace, not as a possession from which we would gladly part, but as a possession in which we rejoice, and which we hold dearer than material life. Who does not value peace? Let us show our high estimate by making sacrifices for its development. Let us assiduously train and practise the powers and faculties of our natures so that not one sound may be heard out of tune, and all may in glad union set forth the sublime anthem of peace.
4. Let us move joyfully through life as the children of peace,—peace the calm mother; joy the pleasant daughter: our joyfulness not of a boisterous character—a peaceful joy—a calm, unruffled happiness.
II. Gracious boldness.—Jesus Christ, our elder brother, takes us by the hand and conducts us into the glorious temple of peace, where we stand in the presence of the Holy of Holies, and see it illuminated and glorified with the sweet light of the divine favour. By the sin of the first Adam we are estranged from God. By the mediatorial work of the Second Adam we are brought into a state of friendship with God, and may have holy boldness, constant access into the divine presence. Access to God! How great the thought! How vast the privilege! Sinful men are raised high as the unsinning angels.
“The sons of ignorance and night
May dwell in the eternal light,
Through the eternal Love.”
III. Joyful expectation.—The believer is one who exercises foresight and forethought. He looks before and behind. He looks behind at his sins, and gratitude rises in his soul, as he sees them cast into the depths of the sea. He stands, a forgiven, a peaceful soul, between the behind and the before. And he looks forward with joyful hope to the glory of God. Glory will consummate and crown what grace has begun. Sublime hope!—the glory of God. Joyful expectation! To behold the glory of the All-glorious is a wonderfully entrancing idea; but, oh! can it be that the inglorious, the base, shall share in that glory? We shrink from the thought of final extinction when we consider that there may be the sweet prospect of rising to the high abode of the eternal light. Well may the apostle sing, “We rejoice in hope of the glory of God”! Dry logic could not restrain the ardour of his impassioned nature; and on the wings of rhetoric he rises to taste the outcoming influences of the upper paradise. In hope of the glory of God he trod the pathway of human suffering with heroic endurance. He counted all things but dross. Perils manifold, trials many, tribulations sore, were of no account to a spirit braced and inspired by the hope of the glory of God. Oh for this hope to be a practical force in our prosaic lives! Oh for this sweet light to pierce and dispel the murky clouds that too oft darken our lives! Why live in gloom when bright skies stretch ever our heads? Why dwell in a dungeon when we can escape and walk the glorious terraces whence we may behold the splendid outstretching landscapes of infinite love and glory.
IV. The sorrow which promotes joy.—We still hear the sound of the rollers in the early Church, and they rolled out in noble form patience, experience, hope. Sometimes we think that there is no golden grain equal to that which was thrashed out by the process of tribulation which was carried on by persecution. Perhaps another Paul may come, with keen vision, to find out the nobility, the heroism, of suffering souls in modern times. How few of us can say we glory in tribulations! Well, even the apostle did not say that. He gloried in tribulations as a means to an end; he welcomed sorrow, not in and of itself, but as the promoter of joy—the joy which hope ever inspires. What a glorious ascending scale—tribulation, patience, experience, hope! The sorrow of the world works despair and destruction; the sorrow of the heroic nature works hope and eternal glory. Sorrow has its important mission in the spiritual economies. Heart throbs may be beating out sweetest music. Tears may not be shed in vain. Ah, there will be no more pain, no more tribulations, in heaven! But may there not be the chastened yet joyful remembrance of the glorious moral work which pain and tribulation have done in time? The tears of time may become glistening pearls in the eternal crown. There are tears which are like petrifying streams, hardening the nature from which they flow. There are tears which are like the dewdrops collected from the surrounding atmosphere by the flower to its enrichment. The troubles of earth may be the root forces out of which grow the unfading flowers of the better paradise. Certainly we read “tribulation worketh patience; patience, experience; and experience, hope.” In the vale of sorrow let us gather the seeds of undying joy. Let us constantly enter the divine presence chamber, and in that sacred enclosure try to learn and understand the wide significance of all that happens in us and about us, and as the understanding grows and the sacred light increases we shall more and more rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Connection between faith and peace—
1. If there be one doctrine of more primary importance than another, it is that which relates to the question of our justification before God. Disguise it as he will, there is not a rational man who feels himself on terms of solid confidence with the Being who made and who sustains him. There is not one of them who can look God fully and fearlessly in the face, and say of Him, He is my friend. There is a lurking suspicion about him, in virtue of which the creature shrinks from the Creator, and flies away from the thought of Him, to such perishable vanities as may grant him temporary relief or occupation. Conceive his intercourse with the visible world to be in some way suspended, and the invisible God to draw near by some convincing manifestation, and he would not feel at ease or comfort in His presence. Let the feeling be as deep and inexplicable as it may, still is terror at God the real and the powerful and the constant feeling of nature. There is the consciousness of guilt. In these circumstances a restoration to the divine favour must be a question as big with interest to man as the question of a passage from death unto life. It stands identified with the main object of his existence. If it remain unsettled, all theology is superfluous and but the mockery of a heartless speculation. Let us, in the first place, explain the meaning of the term “justify”; in the second place, show how it is that we are justified by faith; in the third place, how it is that by this faith we have peace with God; and lastly, point your attention more particularly to Jesus Christ as the medium of conveyance through which we obtain so inestimable a blessing. We may then conclude with a few such observations as the whole topic is fitted to suggest. To justify a man, in the evangelical sense of the term, we cannot possibly make out a plea grounded on the fact of his own personal innocence; but still a plea is found, in virtue of which justice requires that he should be treated as an innocent person. God not only forbears to treat him as a subject of condemnation, but He treats him as a subject for the positive distribution of His favours. The man from an object of wrath becomes an object of fatherly affection. Let us now, in the second place, endeavour to explain how it is that we are justified by faith. He who is justified is in possession of a discharge from the penalties of a broken law and of a right to the rewards of an honoured and of a fulfilled law. But faith did not work out this discharge: faith barely imports these privileges from the quarter in which they are framed, and thus brings them into contact with the person of the believer. Christ reared the foundation—man leans upon it. Faith, though neither the procuring cause nor the meritorious ground of justification, is indispensable to it; and just as much so as the striking out of a window is to the lighting of an apartment. It is the medium of conveyance through which God hath ordained that all the blessings, purchased and wrought for us by the Saviour of sinners, shall come into contact and appropriation with the sinner’s soul. Faith is no faith at all if it embrace not the whole testimony of God. But the benefits annexed to faith are various. There is forgiveness promised to it; there is the plea and the reward of righteousness promised to it; there is strength for holy obedience promised to it But there is not merely a connection between the faith of the sinner and the cessation of God’s enmity against him, which is the first sense that we have given to the term of peace; there is also a connection between the faith of the sinner and a sensation of peace, which thereupon enters into the sinner’s bosom. He, obtains peace and joy in believing. Such are the truths of the Christian revelation, that, in the single act of looking outwardly upon them, there is a peace which enters into the looker’s mind along with his faith. There is a peace in the bare exercise of believing. The truths themselves are fitted to convey peace into the heart at the very moment that they are recognised to be truths.—Dr. Chalmers.
Romans 5:1-2. The believer’s blessings.—Having clearly put before us the great Christian doctrine of justification by faith in Jesus Christ, St. Paul here dwells upon the happy results which follow a hearty reception of it.
I. A brief but comprehensive view of the blessings secured to the true believer.—Blessings throughout his whole existence—past, present, future.
1. The past. He may look back upon his years gone by and see them stained by many sins, but they are all forgiven. They have been laid upon the Lamb of God (1 Peter 2:24), atoned for by the all-sufficient sacrifice, blotted out from the divine remembrance. He has peace—peace with God, “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”
2. The present. He may consider his present position and see that, weak as he is in himself, and without anything of his own upon which he can rely, in the covenant of grace he has a present and abiding security. The upholding power of the Father (1 Peter 1:5); the Son’s all-prevailing intercession (Romans 8:34); the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:15); the sure promises of God’s word,—all, all testify to the security of the foundation on which he stands.
3. The future. He may look forward into the unknown days of his future life—yes, even into the countless ages of eternity, though much is unknown and dark to his mortal eyes. The light of hope shines brightly on his course,—a hope that will never deceive (Romans 5:5); a hope that is an anchor of the soul sure and steadfast (Hebrews 6:19); a hope that fastens on the heavenly inheritance. He rejoices in the hope of the glory of God.
II. Let us mark well that all these blessings are obtained for us by the Lord Jesus Christ, and secured to us in Him—in Him alone.—To possess them we must believe in Him (John 6:35, etc.), receive Him (John 1:12), have Him (1 John 5:12), be found in Him (Philippians 3:9), abide in Him (John 15:5). If our faith justifies us, it is because it is the hand which lays hold on Jesus, the Lord our righteousness. If we have peace with God, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself is our peace (Ephesians 2:14); if we are standing safe in the covenant of grace, it is by Jesus that we have access into it; if we are rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, it is the same almighty Saviour Himself who is our hope (1 Timothy 1:1).—Dr. Jacob.
Justification by faith.—Man stands condemned at the bar of God. Can God be just and yet acquit the guilty? The gospel says, “Yes; man may be acquitted, or justified.”
I. Justification by faith.—What is it, and how effected? Justification just means getting put right with God; and we can be put right with God only by faith in the work of God’s Son for us. It is a gratuitous act. Christ says to the guilty, “You are unable to save yourself, yet your salvation is possible.” How? Not by propitiating offended deity or patching up a broken fellowship. Not by works; the law condemns. The ground of acquittal from the condemnation of the law is the imputed righteousness of Christ. It is received by faith, and faith itself is God’s gift; hence boasting is excluded. The guilty are acquitted in a way that humbles pride. Self-righteous efforts are of no help, but rather a hindrance. When they cease, the bitterness of death is past, and a new life opens up. The ultimate privileges are many and far-reaching, but the immediate consequence is reconciliation, or—
II. Peace with God.—The justified man, having received a new standing before God, feels himself no longer a culprit at the bar. The knowledge that God is at peace with him calms his guilty fears and raises him above the dread of condemnation.
1. His peace rests on a firm foundation. Confidence in the finished work of Christ and conscious reconciliation with God. That God is no longer angry is the pledge of forgiven sin, assurance that the danger is past and the soul is in safe keeping.
2. Peace that satisfies the soul. There are many refuges of lies, but there is no deception here. Conscience approves. “My peace I give unto you,” says Christ. How different from the world’s peace! “Lord, lift on us the light of Thy countenance, and give us peace”—Thy peace. This alone will satisfy the heart, the intellect, and the conscience.
3. This peace is progressive in its nature. It deepens and widens as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of God. Not like a mountain tarn, but like a brimming river, at first a tiny brook gathering as it goes, till on the plains it is strong and calm, broad and deep. “Oh that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.”
4. The peace of the justified is a permanent possession. Adversity may deprive you of earthly wealth and death of friends, but what comes as the result of union with Christ will outlive time, and pass with us beyond death. Oh for such a blessing as this: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”!—D. Merson, B.D.
Romans 5:1. Justification by faith.—The doctrine of justification by faith accepted by the Church gives strength and purity. “It was,” says a man of learning and good sense, writing of the Reformation, “the growth and expansion of one positive dogma, justification by faith, that broke down and crushed successively the various doctrines of the Romish Church” (Hallam’s History of Literature). Accepted by any soul, it gives life and peace. Consider: I. Justification; II. Its instrument—faith; III. Its result—peace.
I. Justification.—To justify, in Scripture, signifies always to count just or declare righteous. God is justified when He is declared righteous or shown to be just. The justification of God is not the infusion of righteousness into Him, but the manifestation or acknowledgment of His righteousness. The justification of man by God is His counting man as righteous. Romans 8:33 contrasts justification with condemnation, not purification: “It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?” In all other places the word has the same or a similar meaning (acknowledged by Dr. Newman in his Lectures on Justification).
1. Justification includes
(1) freedom from guilt, and
(2) divine acceptance. Not freedom from guilt alone, for the irrational animals who are incapable of moral good or evil are free from guilt.
2. Justification by the just Judge is always grounded on obedience to law. Justice and judgment are the pillars of God’s throne.
3. Justification rests either on the ground of personal obedience or righteousness, or on the ground of the accepted obedience of another in our place. In either case the obedience to law must be absolute and perfect in doing or suffering its penalty.
(1) Personal obedience justifies the unfallen angels. It cannot justify sinful men. “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in God’s sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).
(2) The obedience and suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ, accepted in our place, justifies sinners. No created being had the right to place a substitute for himself before the throne of justice.
II. The instrument of justification—faith.—Faith is trust in Jesus as the Son of God and Saviour of the world.
III. The result—peace with God.—Peace with man desirable, more so peace with God.
1. State before justification is either one of indifference through the sleep of a benumbed conscience, or of unhappiness through an unsatisfied heart and diseased conscience.
2. Reconciliation with God, when the law is seen to be honoured, justice satisfied, and God “just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus,” satisfies conscience, removes the dread of vengeance, and awakens loving, happy gratitude.
3. Lasting peace is to be found in no other way. Gratuitous pardon, without atonement, not able to give peace. To this ultimate question, in which conscience in full action impels sinners like Judas Iscariot to seek punishment even as a relief and “antedating their own misery, seek for that they would loathe to find,” nothing but pardon through satisfaction of justice can give relief. Endeavours, tears, sorrows, are vain. Nothing can satisfy the sense of justice in that state of mind to which every man’s conscience is aiming but trust in the justice-satisfying Saviour. That gives peace and joy.
“My heart for gladness springs,
It cannot more be sad;
For every joy it laughs and sings,
Sees nought but sunshine glad.
The sun that glads mine eyes
Is Christ the Lord I love;
I sing for joy of that which lies
Stored up for me above.”
J. C. J.
The grace, the joy, and the glory.
I. The grace.—It is here called “this grace,”—a well-known, most suitable, and sufficient grace, or free love; the free love of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This is “the true grace of God”; free love in the heart of God to the ungodly, to the unloving and unlovable.
II. The access, or introduction.—We do not create or awaken this free love by any goodness or qualification of our own. It exists independent of these. Nor did Christ, by His coming and death, create that love. This love existed before; it was this that sent Christ. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” Yet, without Christ, this love could never have reached us. He brings it to us, and us to it. He gives access and entrance and introduction; for the word implies all these, and is used elsewhere to signify the bringing or introducing one person to another (Luke 9:41; Acts 16:20); and is employed not simply in reference to the grace of God, but to God Himself (1 Peter 3:18; Ephesians 2:18; Ephesians 3:12). Our outward or objective introducer and introduction is Christ Himself; our inward or subjective introduction and introducer is faith.
III. The standing, or abiding.—In this grace, or free love, we have stood since we were introduced into it; and in it we are standing, and shall stand. “We stand in it!” This is a believing man’s true position. This free love is to him—
1. Abiding peace;
2. Abiding strength;
3. Abiding security. This free love is to him—
1. Sunshine;
2. Rain;
3. Food;
4. Water;
5. Medicine;
6. Wine. At this well he stands and drinks, in this sun he basks, to this storehouse he comes for everything. Have we used this free love as we ought? Are we using it constantly? O free love of God, what a fountain of life and strength thou art to the weary, helpless sinner!
IV. The rejoicing.—This grace is not merely stability for us, but joy and hope and glory. Standing in this grace, we are filled with joy. This joy comes not merely from the past and present, but from the future; not merely from the knowledge that we are beloved of God, but from the knowledge of what that love is to do for us hereafter. We rejoice because our future is filled with hope—the hope of the glory of God. Hence the apostle’s prayer, “The God of (the) hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.”
Take these lessons:
1. Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
2. Rejoice in the Lord.
3. Abound in hope.
4. Realise the glory. Keep the eye steadfastly fixed upon it, till its brightness fills our whole being.—H. Bonar.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 5:1-4
The state of grace.—What is this state? and what is this standing? The state is a state of grace, and means the privileged condition in which all Christians are found, though they were by nature the children of wrath. It is expressed by our apostle in the preceding words: “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we have access by faith into this grace.” It may well be called “this grace,” for it only flows from, and only proclaims, the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us, by Christ Jesus. But we may be reconciled to one another so as to be forgiven, and not be admitted into the intimacies of friendship. After Absalom was, through the intercession of Joab, allowed to return to Jerusalem, two years elapsed before he was allowed to see the king’s face. But God favours us with the most familiar intercourse and communion. We come boldly to the throne of grace. In everything, by prayer and supplication, we make known our requests. We walk with God; He honours us with His confidence, and trusts us with His secrets. This grace means also approbation and complacency. He takes pleasure in them that fear Him; He rests in his love; He joys over them with singing; they are His children, His bride, His jewels, His glory. Hence follows sympathy and compassion. What is done to them He resents as a personal injury; for he that toucheth them toucheth the apple of His eye. In all their affliction He is afflicted; though He corrects them, it is for their profit. In this grace they stand. Standing here intends “firmness,” “stability,” “permanence.” It is sometimes opposed to “condemnation”: “If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, O Lord, who shall stand?” Sometimes it is also opposed to “defeat.” “Take to you the whole armour of God, that ye may stand in the evil day; and having done all, may stand.” And of this they may be assured; for whatever disproportion there is between them and their enemies, the worm Jacob shall thresh the mountains. Some warriors have barely overcome—such another victory as they gained would have almost ruined them; but a Christian, having vanquished all his adversaries, stands with his feet on their necks, and is ready to engage as many more. “Yea, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” The more privileged any condition is, the more anxieties does it awaken. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what a Christian must feel if he apprehends any uncertainty as to the state he is in. But that state is as safe as it is blessed.—W. Jay.
The benefit of tribulation.—There are two benefits specified in this verse. The first, our present introduction into a state of favour and free access to God; and the second, the joyful “hope of the glory of God”—that is, the glory of which God is the author. The word “glory” is often used in reference to future blessedness, to show that the happiness to be enjoyed hereafter is connected with the exaltation of all our powers and of our sphere of activity. “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also.” Not only have we this introduction into the divine favour and this hope of future glory “but we glory in tribulations also.” Since our relation to God is changed, the relation of all things to us is changed. Afflictions, which before were the expressions of God’s displeasure, are now the benevolent manifestations of His love. And instead of being inconsistent with our filial relation to Him, they serve to prove that He regards us as His children. Tribulations, therefore, although for the present they are not joyous but grievous, become to the believer matter of joy and thankfulness. The way in which afflictions become thus useful, and consequently the ground of rejoicing, the apostle immediately explains. They give occasion for the exercise of the Christian graces, and these from their nature produce hope, which is sustained and authenticated by the witness of the Holy Spirit. “Tribulation worketh patience.” The word rendered “patience” signifies also “constancy,” “perseverance.” Tribulation gives occasion to exercise and manifest a patient and persevering adherence to truth and duty under trials. “And patience, experience; and experience, hope.” The word translated “experience” means properly:
1. “Trial” or “experiment.” “Great trial of affliction” (2 Corinthians 8:2)—that is, trial made by application.
2. It means the result of such trial, “evidence,” “experience.”
3. By another remove, “that which has been tested” and “approved.” As one or the other of these significations is adopted, the clause is variously interpreted. It may mean, “The endurance of afflictions leads to the trying or testing of one’s own heart”; or, “it occasions the experience of the divine goodness, or of gracious exercises”; or, “it produces a state of mind which is the object of approbation”; or, “it produces evidence, namely, of a gracious state.” This last seems most consistent with Paul’s use of the word. See 2 Corinthians 2:9, “That I might know the proof [evidence] of you, whether ye be obedient,” etc.; Philippians 2:2, “Ye know the proof of him,” etc. This sense suits the context also: “Tribulation calls forth the exercise of patience; and the exercise of this patience or constancy affords evidence of our being in favour of God, and therefore produces hope.”
“Let us have peace” the proper rendering.—“Let us have peace” was read probably by Tertullian, and is found in all, or very nearly all, the Latin manuscripts which were used throughout the Western Church. The same reading is repeatedly quoted and commented upon by Origen and by Chrysostom, who lived at Antioch and Constantinople A.D. 347–407. Neither of these writers seems to have known the other reading. The same reading is found in all existing Greek manuscripts earlier than the ninth century, and in some of the best cursives; also in the oldest Syriac Version used in the far East, and in the three other oldest versions. The earliest trace of the reading “we have peace” is found in the Sinai manuscript, in a correction of the other reading made perhaps in the fourth century. In the Vatican manuscript a similar correction was made, perhaps in the sixth century. Three of the later uncials and a majority of the cursive Greek manuscript give this reading. It is found in the existing copies of the writings of three fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries. But the point in question does not affect their arguments; and as the writings exist only in a few manuscripts written after this reading had become common, we cannot be sure that it was actually adopted by these fathers. No early version has it except the later Syriac, which exists here, I believe, only in one copy. The only difficulty is that Paul assumes in Romans 5:2; Romans 5:9-10, that his readers already stand in the favour of God, and are now justified and reconciled. To this difficulty a key is found in Romans 4:24, “Us to whom it will be reckoned.” Throughout this epistle Paul writes from an ideal and rapidly changing standpoint. He identifies himself with that which he describes. In Romans 2:1, Romans 3:9, he leaves out of sight those saved from sin by Christ, and speaks as though all men were still actually committing sin, and therefore at war with God. He writes as though he had never heard of the gospel. In Romans 3:21 we hear the proclamation of peace. In chap. 4 he discusses the terms of peace. As he reads the old record of Abraham’s faith and justification, he declares that it was written to confirm beforehand the good news to be afterwards brought by Christ. And as he stands by the author of Genesis he looks forward to the day when faith “will be reckoned” for righteousness to all who believe the gospel. A prospect of peace with God opens before him. While he contemplates it the gospel day dawns upon him. In this verse he calls us to wake up to the brightness of its rising. What he bids us do he realises to be actually taking place in himself and his readers. In the next verse the sun has risen, and we stand in the sunshine of God’s favour. As a witness that this change of standpoint is in full accord with the genius of Hebrew thought, I may quote Driver, Hebrew Tenses, p. 6: “One such peculiarity is the singular ease and rapidity with which a writer changes his standpoint—at one moment speaking of a scene as though still in the remote future, at another moment describing it as though present to his gaze.” That the very able commentators Meyer and Godet prefer the utterly unsupported reading,” We have peace,” rather than attempt to expound the common rendering of the reading adopted by all recent critical editors, and the evident dissatisfaction of Fritysche and Alford with their own expositions, embolden me to suggest the rendering and exposition given above. The objection that an exhortation would be out of place in a calm exhortation of doctrine vanishes when we notice that in this verse Paul passes from abstract and general doctrine to actual and individual spiritual life. He marks the transition by urging his readers to join him in claiming the blessing whose glorious results he is about to unfold.—Beet.
Different views of the opening verses.—“The apostle begins to demonstrate what he has affirmed of justification by its effects.” Tholuck entitles this passage “the beneficent pathologico-religious influence of this means of salvation.” Olshausen, “of the fruits of faith,” adding at the same time that the apostle could of course only sketch these consequences of faith here, but that he will develop them afterwards. Philippi, “the beneficent consequences of justification.” Reuss says, “the piece describes the effect of justification on the man who is its object.” Lange and Schaff, “the fruit of justification.” Hodge, “the consequences of justification:
(1) faith,
(2) free access to God,
(3) our afflictions auxiliary to hope,
(4) the certainty of final salvation.” Renan says, “the fruit of justification is peace with God, hope, and consequently patience.” Hofmann sums up thus: “Let us enter into this relation of peace with God, in which we have the hope of glory, consolation in trials, love to God, and the certainty of deliverance from final wrath.” Bossuet, “the happy fruits of justification by faith.” Meyer better, “Paul now expounds the blessed certainty of salvation for the present and future.” Holsten has some expressions which approach this point of view. Schott entitles it, “the certainty of the believer’s preservation in salvation, and of the final consummation of this salvation.”—Godet.
Fruits of justification stated in a popular manner.—But perhaps we may obtain a simpler view of the meaning by considering the expression before us merely as the general conclusion from the whole argument as stated in the preceding part of the epistle. The apostle has proved that justification in the day of judgment can be obtained only by “the righteousness of faith”; and he has proved further “that justification in the present life is freely bestowed on faith alone.” And in the passage before us he states, in a general and popular manner, the result of the whole reasoning,—knowing that, in order to obtain justification, we are not required to fulfil any law, moral or ceremonial, but that God of His own free grace bestows it on us, through Christ, in consideration of our faith, we have peace with God. This view corresponds with the whole preceding reasonings, and forms their proper conclusion. It is liable to none of the difficulties which are implied in other explanations, and therefore it may perhaps be thought to deserve the preference. It is of importance to bear in mind the different senses in which the word “justification” is used; for the principle on which it depends in one of its senses is not that on which it depends in another. When it denotes privileges merely external, it requires only a confession of faith in Christ; when it denotes the forgiveness of sin on earth and accounting us as righteous, its principle is a true and saving faith; but when it denotes the sentence of the sovereign Judge, accounting us as righteous in the day of judgment, it depends on faith producing the fruits of righteousness.—Ritchie.
Encouragement to believers.—To comfort the Roman brethren under the evils which the profession of the gospel brought upon them, the apostle in the beginning of this chapter enumerated the privileges which belong to believers in general. And from his account it appears that the privileges of Abraham’s seed by faith are far greater than the privileges which belonged to his seed by natural descent, and which are described in Romans 2:17-20. The first privilege of the spiritual seed is—That being justified by faith they have peace with God through Jesus Christ. This, to the Gentiles, must have appeared an unspeakable blessing, in regard that they had been taught by the Jews to consider themselves as “children of wrath” and “enemies” of God. Their second privilege is—By the command of Christ they are admitted through faith into the covenant made with Abraham and into the Christian Church. Thirdly, they boast in the hope of beholding the glory of God in heaven—a privilege far superior to that of beholding the glory of God in the tabernacle and in the temple on earth, of which the natural seed boasted, for it is the hope of living eternally with God in heaven. Their fourth privilege is—They boast in afflictions, especially those which befall them for the name of Christ, because afflictions improve their graces and render their hope of eternal life sure. But many, even of the believing Jews, denied that the Gentiles had any reason to hope for eternal life while they did not obey Moses. Wherefore, to show that they are heirs of that and of all the blessings promised in the covenant to the seed of Abraham by faith equally with the Jews, the apostle appealed to God’s shedding down the Holy Ghost upon them, even as on the Jews, and to Christ’s dying for them in their ungodly state, and told them, since they were already “justified” (that is, “delivered from their heathenish ignorance and wickedness”) and “reconciled” (that is, “put into a state of salvation by the blood of Christ”), they might well expect to be “saved” in due time from wrath by His life in the human nature, since in that nature He exercises the offices of Lord and Judge of the world for their benefit. The last privilege belonging to the spiritual seed mentioned by the apostle is, that being reconciled they can boast in the true God as their God equally with the natural seed, whose relation to God was established by the law of Moses only. And this privilege he told them they had obtained like all the rest—through Jesus Christ, by whom they had received “the reconciliation.” “We even boast of afflictions.” The apostle mentions “afflictions” as “matter of boasting to the spiritual seed, because their virtues were improved by afflictions.” This boasting, therefore, was much better founded than the boasting of the natural seed, who, by applying the promises of national prosperity and the threatenings of national adversity contained in the law to individuals, had taught themselves to consider prosperity as a mark of the favour of God, and affliction as a token of His displeasure. A remarkable instance of rejoicing in afflictions we have in Acts 5:41: “They departed from the face of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.” “Knowing that affliction worketh out patience.” This effect affliction produceth by affording to the afflicted an opportunity of exercising patience, and by suggesting considerations which naturally lead the mind to that virtue.—Macknight.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
Romans 5:1. A Romish student and the Bible.—When Thomas Bilney was a Romish student in Trinity College, he carried a burdened mind in a body emaciated by penance which brought no relief. Hearing his friends one day talking about Erasmus’s Testament, he felt a strong desire to possess it; but as it was a forbidden book, he did not dare to touch it. Hoping, however, that something might be found in it to ease his troubled mind, he purchased a copy, and shut himself in his room to read it. With a trembling heart he opened it, and read with astonishment, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” Then laying it down, he exclaimed, “What! Paul the chief of sinners? yet Paul sure of being saved!” He read it again and again, and broke out into an ecstasy of joy, “At last I have heard of Jesus—Jesus Christ. Yes, Jesus Christ saves.” And falling down on his knees, he prayed, “O Thou who art the truth, give me strength that I may teach it, and convert the ungodly by means of one who has been himself ungodly.” Bilney being justified by faith in and through Jesus Christ, possessed peace.
Romans 5:2. Philosopher and King’s son.—Without faith it is impossible to please God. Let us not otherwise dare to come into His presence. There is nothing but wrath in Him for sin in us. Joseph charged his brethren that they should come no more in his sight unless they brought Benjamin with them. We come at our peril into God’s presence if we leave His beloved Benjamin, our dear Jesus, behind us. When the philosopher heard of the enraged emperor’s menace, that the next time he saw him he would kill him, he took up the emperor’s little son in his arms, and saluted him with a potesne, “Thou canst not now strike me.” God is angry with every man for his sins. Happy is he that can catch up His Son Jesus; for in whose arms soever the Lord sees His Son He will spare him. The men of Tyre were fain to intercede to Herod by Blastus (Acts 12:20). Our intercession to God is made by a higher and surer way: not by His servant—by His Son.
Romans 5:3. The ministry of sorrow.—The ministry of sorrow and disappointment is to test the soul and to temper it to nobler issues, as the oak is tempered and beautified by the winter’s storms. Some great agony may be as a cup in which is a draught of moral strength. When we have drunk the repellent mixture, when we have felt the after-benefit, then shall we know that often apparent failure in life is in reality a success.
“Then welcome each rebuff
That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang, daring,
Never grudge the throe.”
Browning.