Romans 5:9

f. πολλῷ οὖν μᾶλλον : The argument is from the greater to the less. The supreme difficulty to be overcome in the relations of man and God is the initial one: How can God demonstrate His love to the sinner, and bestow on him a Divine righteousness? In comparison with this, everything else is easy. Now the Apostle has already shown (Romans 3:21-30) how the Gospel meets this difficulty: we obtain the righteousness required by believing in Jesus, whom God has set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood. If such grace was shown us then, when we were in sin, much more, justified as we have now been by His blood, shall we be saved from wrath through Him. ἀπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς : the wrath to come: see note on Romans 1:18. This deliverance from wrath does not exhaust Paul's conception of the future (see Romans 5:2), but it is an important aspect of it, and implies the rest. Romans 5:10 rather repeats, than grounds anew, the argument of Romans 5:9. εἰ γὰρ ἐχθροὶ ὄντες : this is practically equivalent to ἔτι ἁμαρτωλῶν ὄντων ἡμῶν. The state of sin was that in which we were ἐχθροί, and the whole connection of ideas in the passage requires us to give ἐχθροί the passive meaning which it undoubtedly has in Romans 11:28, where it is opposed to ἀγαπητοί. We were in a real sense objects of the Divine hostility. As sinners, we lay under the condemnation of God, and His wrath hung over us. This was the situation which had to be faced: Was there love in God equal to it? Yes, when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. κατηλλάγημεν is a real passive: “we” are the objects, not the subjects, of the reconciliation: the subject, is God, 2 Corinthians 5:19-21. Compare Romans 5:11 : τὴν καταλλαγὴν ἐλάβομεν. To represent κατηλλάγημεν by an active form, e.g., “we laid aside our hostility to God,” or by what is virtually one, e.g., “we were won to lay aside our hostility,” is to miss the point of the whole passage. Paul is demonstrating the love of God, and he can only do it by pointing to what God has done, not to what we have done. That we on our part are hostile to God before the reconciliation, and that we afterwards lay aside our enmity, is no doubt true; but here it is entirely irrelevant. The Apostle's thought is simply this: “if, when we lay under the Divine condemnation, the work of our reconciliation to God was achieved by Him through the death of His Son, much more shall the love which wrought so incredibly for us in our extremity carry out our salvation to the end”. The subjective side of the truth is here completely, and intentionally, left out of sight; the laying aside of our hostility adds nothing to God's love, throws no light upon it; hence in an exposition of the love of God it can be ignored. To say that the reconciliation is “mutual,” is true in point of fact; it is true, also, to all the suggestions of the English word; but it is not true to the meaning of κατηλλάγημεν, nor to the argument of this passage, which does not prove anything about the Christian, but exhibits the love of God at its height in the Cross, and argues from that to what are comparatively smaller demonstrations of that love. ἐν τῇ ζωῇ αὐτοῦ : the ἐν is instrumental: cf. Romans 5:9 ἐν τῷ αἵματι αὐτοῦ. The Living Lord, in virtue of His life, will save us to the uttermost. Cf. John 14:19.