CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 5:7. Righteous and good.—That is, the one righteous; the other good, merciful, benevolent.
Romans 5:8.—Christ’s death a vicarious death, but not necessarily expressed by the preposition here used. Divine love compared with human. The latter infinitely below the former.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 5:7-8
Incomparable love.—Of one of the daughters of our Queen it was said that she shed sunshine wherever she went. Divine love sheds sunshine in its passage through this cold world. It was thought and said that love incarnate would at once command the admiration of mankind. Divine love was incarnated, and the incarnation was treated with contempt. Divine love has been conspicuously set forth, and yet how many are blind to its excellence! Strange word, “commendeth.” We should as soon expect that the flowers would have need to commend their beauty, the birds their songs, the pearls their chastened lustre, the sun his brightness, the moon her clearness, the stars their brilliance, as God to commend His love. The word means “gives proof of,” “establishes” His love; and yet how suitable the other word when we think how slow men are to appreciate the incomparable love of God! He makes His love glorious above all human love—above and beyond our furthest reach and highest conception of love. The love of God is incomparable:—
I. On account of the greatness of the divine nature.—Love often stretches out towards something higher than itself. Love finds, or thinks it finds, the complement of its nature in the excellence of the person loved. When we love beneath us, it is because we think there is below us a pearl of excellence by which we should be enriched. Love stretches out its tendrils to clasp the tree which has some kind of fruit which we deem needful to our welfare. Love aspires. Whereunto shall the love of God aspire? How shall the infinitely great stretch itself out to something higher and nobler and vaster? Above God there is none, and He alone is great. Below God is none who possesses any greatness which cannot be found in the divine being. Incomparable love, because not drawn out by any superior worth.
II. On account of the self-sufficiency of the divine nature.—How selfish at the best is human love! How often our love for others is but another aspect of self-love! Surely God is for Himself all-sufficient. If indeed He created the world that love might find a fresh channel for its overflow, it could not be that He felt any void. It must have been on account of the exuberance of His benevolence. The vastness of divine love overflowed. Unfallen natures were refreshed by its streams; and though men have sinned, it still flows on with divine fulness and life-giving influences. Incomparable love, because not moved by any inward necessity.
III. On account of the holiness of the divine nature.—We sometimes talk about loving the sinner and hating his sin; but it oft requires something like superhuman power to separate the sinner from his sin. “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself.” How graphic the touch! The mere word “solidarity” has not yet killed out of society the Pharisees who stand by themselves. Sinners who go beyond respectable sins shut themselves out of respectable society. The word “respectable” is a strong word in certain circles. Respectable sinners we may love; disreputable sinners we shun. And yet we are all sinners. If we could stand on the high plane of the infinite purity, we should see how infinitesimal the difference. The holy God loves the unholy. Sin is the one abominable thing which God hates. “He is not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness; neither shall evil dwell with Him.” Incomparable love, because uninfluenced by moral worth in the objects.
IV. On account of the completeness of the divine relationship.—Mysterious words “God the Father and God the Son.” Two, and yet not separate. Speaking after the manner of men, we say that perfect love subsisted between God the Father and God the Son; and yet the eternal Father gave proof of the incomparable nature of His love by giving His Son. Incomparable love, because it spared not the choicest gift.
V. On account of the extent of the divine sacrifice.—If God had given His Son to walk for thirty-three years with unfallen Adams and sinless Eves in a paradise of perfect beauty, it would have been a demonstration of love—such a demonstration as is received among men with gratitude. The love of a monarch to some distant part of the empire is shown by sending a son, and his sojourn is made a triumphal passage—everything ministers to his delight. God sends His Son, not to a glorious paradise, not to palaces of pleasure, but to a disordered planet, to haunts of sin and of sorrow. We are sometimes told that Jesus came into this world to be a teacher of moral truth. If that were so—which is not here allowed—it would have been a demonstration of divine love. What a task to teach truth to unreceptive natures! To incur the obloquy which is the portion of every moral reformer! If God had thus given His Son for a few years to teach the ignorant sons of men, and had then translated Him back again to His preincarnate condition, it would have been a demonstration of love. But He gave Him up to death. This was purposed in the eternal councils; this was prefigured in the old economy, foretold by the prophets, and kept in view by Jesus Himself as the great object of His mission. What a word is “death”! We do not understand its full significance. Hardened scientists tell us that death is but the taking down of the human house. Does the house think and feel? Is it capable of infinite longings and yearnings? Does it soar beyond the material? Can it dwell in the eternal? Surely death is not a mere material shock, a repulsion of united molecules of matter. Considering the death of the eternal Son, we are lifted out of materialism—at least, ought to be, for too many dwell upon its mere physical aspect. The sublime Sufferer teaches us that death has far more in it than the anatomist’s scalpel can unfold. The death of Jesus, with its infinite anguish, with its intense soul darkness, with its awful sense of a desolate forsaking, is a mournful demonstration of God’s love; for we may be allowed to think of God the Father making a sacrifice in allowing His Son to enter such a gloomy vale.
1. If God has thus shown His love, let us admire;
2. If God thus loves, why should we fear?
3. If God has thus shown His love, let us show our gratitude;
4. If God has thus made love conspicuous, let it be conspicuous in our lives;
5. If love died that love might be pre-eminent, let us not shrink from the sacrifices which love may demand.
God’s commendation of His love.
I. God commends His love to our attention.—To speak of love always secures attention. Proved by the popularity of the modern novel. Word carries thoughts to family circle and its earliest associations—to spots where words are spoken and embraces given and received. Noble deeds of love recorded in ancient and modern story. Is there any love like this?
1. Consider its choice of objects. We choose for excellences real or fancied—fair face, happy temperament, great mind, warm heart. God chooses the unworthy, loves the unlovely. The objects of His love are the “ungodly” (Romans 5:6), the impious, who have no love of Him, no reverence for Him, who try to get rid of the thought of Him. He does not wait till we give signs of coming to a better state of mind; He loves us when “without strength” (Romans 5:6), unable to leave our miserable condition—loves us in our misery. If the Queen were to visit small-pox patients in London garrets, the whole country would be loud in her praise. How much more wonderful the King of kings visiting those stricken down by sin! He has loved “sinners,” active in wickedness. A pure girl thrown into the company of foul-mouthed, brawling drunkards. He has loved “enemies” (Romans 5:10), who hate God so much that they try to get Him out of their thoughts, and reject with proud disdain His offered gift of salvation.
2. Consider what love chooses to do for us. In pity we say, Give money to the miserable wretch, wash his filthy face, and move him to a cleaner house. The love of God goes to the root of the evil. Boy bitten by mad dog—no use putting piece of sticking-plaster on wound. He has saved from “wrath” (Romans 5:9). The word opens before us a dark abyss, which becomes blacker the longer we gaze. God alone knows the depth of that abyss, the contents of that awful blackness. He knew what needed to bring out of the horrible pit. Only one who could go down low enough to meet men at their lowest point of need—His own Son. In love He gave His Son, the Christ, to die for us. No need to perplex ourselves with the theological question how His death removes our penalty. The same God who has so loved us as to give His Son assures us that the death is for all who will take the benefit of it.
II. God commends His love for our approval.—Difference between our relation to other deeds of love and to this. Personal interest—-present interest. Efficacy of Christ’s death as fresh to-day as eighteen centuries ago. Eternal fate depends on our approval or disapproval of this deed of love.
1. Do we approve of the interference of His love—that all the glory of salvation belongs to Him?
2. Do we approve of the course taken by love? Some think less might have sufficed than that the Son of God should take our place before the law and meet all its demands. Am I willing that Christ should take my place and bear my wrath—willing that if there is any praise for salvation He shall have it all? (Revelation 1:5-6.)
3. Do we approve of the place given to us in that deed of love—to receive justification as a free gift of God? God demands present response to His appeal. He says, Behold the Substitute. Do I accept of Him? Willing that my sins be laid on Him—to be justified by His blood? For that God is waiting—holding back the fires of wrath, because not willing that any should perish. Jesus Christ is delaying His return, though the Church is pleading “Come quickly,” that sinners may come unto Him and find peace and life through His death for them.—G. Wallace, D.D.
The best thing.
I. The best thing commended.—“The love of God to man.” Not His wisdom, power, holiness, or wealth, but His love, unsolicited, unmerited, free, unparalleled, towards us, the most undeserving of His creatures.
II. The best thing commended by the best Judge.—“God commendeth His love.” “God only knows the love of God.” A man may know the love of man, an angel may know the love of an angel; but only the Infinite can gauge the infinite.
III. The best thing commended by the best Judge in the best possible way.—“In that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were at the worst He did the best for us. “He died for the ungodly.” “He tasted death for every man.” “He came to seek and to save that which was lost.”
IV. The best thing commended by the best Judge in the best possible way, and for the best purpose.—That we might be “justified by His blood,” “saved from wrath,” reconciled to God by the death of His Son,” and “saved by His life”—yea, “joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ”; in a word, have everlasting life.—D. Brotchie.
Redemption to the right and the secure.—Here are two subjects for useful thought.
I. The moral wrongness and danger of mankind.—The text contains the words “sinners,” representing “men that are in the wrong,” “transgressors of the divine law.” It contains also the word “wrath,” implying “danger” and “danger in consequence of the wrong.” Wrath in God is not an angry passion, but a benevolent antagonism against wrong. It is a benevolent principle, not a malign passion. The opposition of love is for many reasons a more terrible thing than the opposition of anger. Men as sinners oppose God, and God as the all-loving One opposes them, and His opposition is called “wrath,” and wrath because “it is a terrible thing.” The other subject for thought in the text is:—
II. The moral deliverance and rectification of mankind.—There are two words in the text that express these two things, “justified” and “saved.” I take the word “justified” not in a forensic but in a moral sense—the sense of being made right. The word “saved” I take in a spiritual and not in a legal or material sense. It means “the restoration of the soul to lost intelligence, lost purity, lost liberty, lost love, lost friendship, with God.” Now mark how moral rectification and spiritual salvation come:
1. They flow from God’s love. “God commendeth His love [or, as some read, His own love] towards us.” His love is the ultimate cause, the primal font.
2. They come from God’s love through the love of Christ. Christ is at once the demonstration, the emblem, and the medium of God’s love. Christ demonstrates the reality and strength of this divine love by His death. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” His death therefore becomes that mighty, moral force to make the wrong right, the lost safe.—D. Thomas.
Divine love for sinners.—We infer:—
I. That God has love.—He is not sheer intellect; He has heart, and His heart is not malign, but benevolent. He has love, not merely an attribute, but in essence. Love is not a mere element in His nature—it is His nature; He is love. The moral code by which He governs the universe is but love speaking in the imperative mood. His wrath is but love uprooting and consuming whatever obstructs the happiness of His creation.
“O Love! the one sun,
O Love! the one sea,
No life has begun
That breathes not in Thee;
Thy rays have no limit,
Thy waves have no shore,
Thou giv’st, without merit,
To worlds evermore.”
Yes, love is the one sea. All created existences are but waves rising out of that sea, and breaking on the shores of eternity.
II. That God has love for sinners.—“While we were yet sinners.”
1. This is not a love that is revealed in nature. Not on one page in the mighty book of nature is it written that God has love for sinners. Nature was written before sinners had existence. It is exclusively the doctrine of the Bible, and the central and cardinal doctrine. “God so loved the world,” etc.
2. This is not the love of moral esteem. The holy One cannot love the corrupt character; it is the love of compassion—compassion deep, tender, boundless.
III. That God’s love for sinners is demonstrated in the death of Christ.—“Christ died for us.”
1. This demonstration is the mightiest. The strength of love is proved by the sacrifice it makes. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” “He delivered Him up for us all.”
2. This demonstration is the most indispensable. The only way to consume in me any enmity that I may have for a man is to carry into my soul the conviction that he whom I have hated loves me, and has always loved me. This conviction will turn my enmity into love. God knows the human soul, knows how to break its corrupt heart; hence He has given the demonstration of His love in the death of Christ.—D. Thomas, D.D.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 5:7-8
The design of Christ’s death.—All those who have paid their lives to the injured laws of the country have died for us; and if we derive not improvement from it the fault is our own. But are we going to rank the death of Christ with such deaths as these? We would rather class it with the death of an apostle. “If I be offered,” says Paul to the Philippians, “upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you.” This was noble. But was Paul crucified for us? No. “It is Christ that died”—His death is peculiarly pre-eminent. This was indicated by the prodigies that attended it. The question is, What was the design of Christ’s death? Some tell us that it was to confirm the truth of His doctrine by the testimony of His blood, and to suffer, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. And this is true, and we believe it as truly as those who will go no further. But is that the whole or the principal part of the design? We appeal to the Scriptures. There we learn that He died for us as an expiation of our guilt, and to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. He died to redeem us from the curse. Exclude this, and the language of the Bible becomes perfectly embarrassing and unintelligible. Exclude this, and what becomes of the legal sacrifices? They were shadows without a substance. For there is no relation between them and His death, as He was a martyr and an example; but there is a full conformity between them and His death, as He was an atonement. Exclude this, and with what can we meet the conscience burdened with guilt? with what can we answer the inquiry, How shall I come before the Lord? with what can we wipe away the tear of godly grief? But we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” His death was an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour. The all-sufficiency and acceptableness were evinced by His discharge from the grave and His being received up into glory. There within the veil our soul finds anchorage. Yet even this is not all the design. Christ died for us, not only to reconcile us, but to renovate; not only to justify us, but to sanctify. The one is as necessary to our recovery as the other, and both equally flow from the cross. “For He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.”—W. Jay.
Greatness of divine love.—“For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.” The greatness and freeness of the love of God are illustrated in this and the following verse by making still more prominent the unworthiness of its objects. It is hardly to be expected that any one would die in the place of a merely righteous man, though for a good man this self-denial might possibly be exercised; but we, so far from being good, were not even righteous; we were sinners, ungodly, and enemies. The difference between the words “righteous” and “good,” as here used, is that which in common usage is made between “just” and “kind.” The former is applied to a man who does all that the law or justice can demand of him, the latter to him who is governed by love. The just man commands respect; the good man calls forth affection. Respect being a cold and feeble principle compared to love, the sacrifices to which it leads are comparatively slight.—Hodge.
Singular goodness in Christ.—The apostle goes on to show the singular goodness of our Saviour in submitting to death in place of the ungodly. Romans 5:7: “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.” By a righteous or just man appears to be meant a man of virtue and integrity, who does no injury; and it is certainly true that a man would not lay down his life to save from death a person who merely adheres strictly to the path of righteousness. “Though peradventure for a good man,” as it is in the original, “some would even dare to die.” By the good man appears to be meant a man of eminent virtue, a public benefactor, who does much good in society; and to preserve the life of such a man some might even venture to die. This is so true that there have not been wanting instances of persons saving the life of such a man at the expense of their own.—Ritchie.
“God commendeth His love toward us.”—We should observe the commendation of God’s love towards us: He “commendeth His love.” The word συνίστησι signifies God’s interposing, to make us know and be assured of that which otherwise we knew not, and which is exceedingly strange and incredible to us. There is another such word used for the very same purpose (Hebrews 6:17): “God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath.” The original is, He “interposed Himself,” as it is in the margin, or came in between by an oath, in order to show the unchangeableness of His counsel of love to the heirs of promise. So it is here. God would make known, would make plain and incontestable, His love towards sinners, so that they should have no room left to question it. Well, and what way does He take for the purpose? Does He give them His word for it, and interpose Himself by an oath to confirm that word? No; both these He had done before. He comes in between, therefore, with the incarnation of His only begotten Son, and causes Him, while we were yet sinners, to die for us. As if He should have said, I will have you know the love which I bear towards you; and because I know how hard it is for you to believe any such thing, lo! I will cause you to be satisfied of it without dispute. I set forth My Son in the midst of you, and give Him to die for you before your eyes. Look on that, and acknowledge My love towards you. Now, brethren, is not this speaking love? Does not this declare the love of God in terms which cannot be mistaken? Who can think of this and charge his ruin on a want of goodwill in God?—S. Walker.
The great love of Christ.—Christ has obliged us with two of the highest instances of His love to us imaginable:—
I. That He died for us.—The love of life is naturally the greatest, and therefore that love that so far masters this as to induce a man to lay it down must needs be transcendent and supernatural. For life is the first thing that nature desires, and the last that it is willing to part with. But how poor and low and in what a pitiful shallow channel does the love of the world commonly run! Let us come and desire such a one to speak a favourable word or two for us to a potent friend, and how much of coyness and excuse and shyness shall we find. The man is unwilling to spend his breath in speaking, much less in dying, for his friend. Come to another, and ask him upon the stock of a long acquaintance and a professed kindness to borrow but a little money of him, and how quickly does he fly to his shifts, pleading poverty, debts, and great occasions, and anything rather than open his own bowels to refresh those of his poor neighbour! The man will not bleed in his purse, much less otherwise, to rescue his friend from prison, from disgrace, and perhaps a greater disaster. But now how incomparably full and strong must the love of Christ needs have been that could make Him sacrifice even life itself for the good of mankind, and not only die, but die with all the heightening circumstances of pain and ignominy—that is, in such a manner that death was the least part of the suffering! Let us but fix our thoughts upon Christ, hanging, bleeding, and at length dying upon the cross, and we shall read His love to man there in larger and more visible characters than the superscription that the Jews put over His head in so many languages—all which and many more were not sufficient to have fully expressed and set forth so incredibly great an affection. Every thorn was a pencil to represent and every groan a trumpet to proclaim how great a love He was then showing to mankind. And now surely our love must needs be very cold if all the blood that ran in our Saviour’s veins cannot warm it; for all that was shed for us, and shed for that very purpose that it might prevent the shedding of ours. Our obnoxiousness to the curse of the law for sin had exposed us to all the extremity of misery, and made death as due to us as wages to the workman. And the divine justice, we may be sure, would never have been behindhand to pay us our due. The dreadful retribution was certain and unavoidable; and therefore since Christ could not prevent, He was pleased at last to divert the blow and to turn it upon Himself, to take the cup of God’s fury out of our hands and to drink off the very dregs of it. The greatest love that men usually bear one another is but show and ceremony, compliment, and a mere appearance in comparison of this. This was such a love as Solomon says is “strong as death,” and to express it yet higher, such a one as was stronger than the very desires of life.
II. The other transcendent instance of Christ’s love to mankind was that He did not only die for us, but that He died for us while we were enemies, and, in the phrase of Scripture, enmity itself against Him. It is possible indeed that some natures of a nobler mould and make than the generality of the world may arise to such an heroic degree of love as to induce one friend to die for another. For the apostle says that “for a good man one would even dare to die.” And we may read in heathen story of the noble contention of two friends, which of them should have the pleasure and honour of dying in the other’s stead, and writing the inward love of his heart in the dearest blood that did enliven it. Yet still the love of Christ to mankind runs in another and a higher strain; for admit that one man had died for another, yet still it has been for his friend—that is, for something, if not of equal, yet at least of next esteem to life itself in the common judgment of all. Human love will indeed sometimes act highly and generously, but still it is upon a suitable object, upon something that is amiable; and if there be either no fuel or that which is unsuitable, the flame will certainly go out. But the love of Christ does not find but makes us lovely. It “saw us in our blood” (as the prophet speaks), wallowing in all the filth and impurities of our natural corruption, and then it said unto us, Live. Christ then laid down His life for us, when we had forfeited our own to Him. Which strange action was as if a prince should give himself a ransom for that traitor that would have murdered him, and sovereignty itself lie down upon the block to rescue the neck of a rebel from the stroke of justice. This was the method and way that Christ took in what He suffered for us—a method that reason might at first persuade us to be against nature, and that religion assures us to be above it.—South.
A peculiar contrast.—The δέ, “but,” indicates this contrast. What man hardly does for what is most worthy of admiration and love, God has done for that which merited only His indignation and abhorrence. On the verb συνιστάναι: here it is the act whereby God establishes beyond question the reality of His love. The apostle says τὴν ἑαυτοῦ�: His own love, or the love that is peculiar to Him. The expression contrasts God’s manner of loving with ours. God cannot look above Him to devote Himself, as we may, to a being of more worth than Himself. His love turns to that which is beneath Him, and takes even the character of sacrifice in behalf of that which is altogether unworthy of Him. Ὅτι, “in that,” is here the fact by which God has proved His peculiar way of loving. In the word ἁμαρτωλός, “sinner,” the termination ωλος signifies “abundance.” It was by this term the Jews habitually designated the Gentiles. The ἔτι, “yet,” implies this idea: that there was not yet in humanity the least progress toward the good which would have been fitted to merit for it such a love; it was yet plunged in evil. The words “Christ died for us” in such a context imply the close relation of essence which unites Christ and God in the judgment of the apostle. With man sacrificing himself Paul compares God sacrificing Christ. This parallel has no meaning except as the sacrifice of Christ is to God the sacrifice of Himself. Otherwise the sacrifice of God would be inferior to that of man, whereas it must be infinitely exalted above it. Finally, it should be observed how Paul places the subject Θεός, “God,” at the end of the principal proposition, to bring it beside the word ἁμαρτωλῶν, “sinners,” and so brings out the contrast between our defilement and the delicate sensibility of divine holiness.—Godet.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
Romans 5:6-8. “None of them died for me.”—Interest in the lepers, those special objects of the Saviour’s help, has been greatly revived of late, and attention is justly drawn to the noble deeds wrought by Protestant missionaries in India. The Rev. Dr. Bowman, of the Church Missionary Society, was enabled to erect a place of worship in connection with the Calcutta Leper Asylum, and an aged woman, over eighty-two years old, was there led by the preacher to the divine Healer. A sceptic asked her if the many gods and goddesses of her own religion would not suffice; but she had an answer ready for him: “None of them died for me.”—Henry Proudfoot.
Christ’s sacrifice for sinners.—In the early ages of the Christian Church many slaves were carried prisoners out of Italy into Africa. Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, redeemed many of them, until at last his fortune was exhausted. One day a poor widow came and besought him to recover an only son who had been carried away captive. Being unable to ransom him with money, Paulinus sailed for Africa and induced the prince whose slave the young man was to set him free and take himself in exchange. The bishop performed the duties of slave so faithfully that the prince grew attached to him, and on learning his rank gave him not only his own liberty, but that of his fellow-countrymen who were in bondage.—W. H. Hatch.