Romans 5:7

‘For scarcely for a righteous man will one die. For peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die.'

And lest it be thought that he is overstressing this description of men as ‘ungodly' Paul now underlines the fact for us. It was for men who were neither righteous nor good that Christ died. It was for sinners (Romans 5:8). We could, says Paul, possibly have understood someone dying for a strictly righteous man, although it would have been unusual. We could even more have understood a man dying for someone who was not only righteous but truly good, one of those jewels in the world whom all have to admire. But what we cannot comprehend is that Christ should have died for the ungodly, for sinners, while they were yet sinners, that is, for what might be seen as the rag-tag of society.

There is probably in Paul's mind here a memory of how he, along with many Pharisees, had sought to be righteous, and even good, and had despised those who had failed to conform. And of how some had even appeared from a human point of view to get very close. But he is bringing out that unless such men were willing to align themselves with the ‘sinners' whom they despised, there could be no hope for them. ‘Sinners' were those who came short of God's requirements in the eyes of all. This therefore, of course, removes any temptation to suggest that Romans 5:2 somehow represent a way by which sinners can be accepted as righteous in God's eyes through their own activity. They progressed in the way described because they had first recognised that they were ungodly and sinners, and had come to Christ in order to be ‘accounted as in the right before God'. It was as a consequence of ‘having been justified by faith' that they progressed, not as contributors towards that justification. For that justification was not for the righteous or for the good. It was for the ungodly, for sinners.