but God commends *his* love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us.
Paul has just said that the Holy Spirit pours God's love into believers' hearts, but here he points away from the heart to one event in history. The question this verse settles is not how much we feel God's love, but where anyone can go to be certain of it.
Feeling and evidence are not the same thing. One writer keeps the two apart. What we enjoy is one thing. What proves the fact is another.
Notice something more. We enjoy this love by the Holy Spirit living in us. But the knowledge and proof of it lie in a work done outside us, one we had no part in. It was done for us while we were evil and completely helpless. "For," the apostle continues, "when we were yet without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Ungodly, and without strength — that was our state when the glorious work of God's love was accomplished for us.
The word "His" carries the weight of the sentence. Our love always answers to something; God's did not.
That is why it is called His love — because it is a love that belongs to God alone. With us, there must always be something in another person to draw out our love. There must be something to love. But God loved us when there was nothing in us to love, when our hearts were hostile toward Him and we were nothing but a mass of sin.
It also settles where to look for evidence:
When I come to the proof, I turn away from myself to God. This is the teaching of God's love, and it was all on God's side. The result is that I can count on what that love produces.
"Sinners" is one of four words used of us here. Each one removes a motive God might have had.
If God had found any sign of love in us toward Him, or any willingness to obey Him, His love would not have been perfect. He would have found a motive in us for His love. But what was our real state? We were ungodly, without strength, sinners, enemies. Our open hostility, seen in these four words, only gave His perfect love its deepest occasion to show itself.
The verse just before sets up a contrast. Human devotion has a ceiling, and the cross rises above it.
A righteous man has some merit, and a good man more. It would be surprising, but someone might still be willing to give his life for such a person. But who will die for a sinner? Who will die for someone who is neither righteous nor good, who has no merit at all, who has fallen short of God's glory and deserves nothing but His just judgment? Who will die for someone like that? … CHRIST. He will; He has done it.
Paul does not stop at admiring the love. He reasons from it, and the direction of the reasoning matters — from what God is, not from anything about us.
The reasoning is not at all from divine purposes about us or promises made to us, but from what God is; and He is love — love proved in Christ's dying for us, while we were yet sinners. "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God." The conclusion is sound and certain.
This love turns the whole matter around.
It is no longer a question of our commending ourselves to God; but He commends His love toward us. Christ died for us while we were still sinners. And when we believe in Christ, the Holy Spirit given to us pours the love of God into our hearts. When the soul knows and enjoys this, it must have a practical effect. We love God, and we love one another.
- Source — God's love had no cause in us; He loved when there was nothing in us to love, so its source is what He is in Himself.
- Proof — the evidence is a finished work outside us, not a feeling inside us. The Spirit gives the enjoyment; the cross gives the certainty.
- Timing — He acted while we were still sinners, ungodly, without strength and enemies. That strips away every motive but His own.
- Measure — human love may rise to dying for a good man; only Christ died for those with no merit at all.
- Result — the reasoning starts from what God is, so it runs forward with confidence. We are justified now, saved from wrath, and made people who love God and one another.
Much rather therefore, having been now justified in [the power of] his blood, we shall be saved by him from wrath.
Paul has just pointed to the cross as God's proof of love: Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Verse 9 draws the conclusion from that proof: if God acted for us at our worst, what can the future hold but safety?
The argument does not start with anything found in us. It starts with what God showed Himself to be at the cross, and then reasons forward.
The reasoning does not start from God's plans about us, or from promises made to us. It starts from what God is; and He is love — love proved when Christ died for us, while we were still sinners. "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God." Nothing could be more sound or more conclusive!
Some treat justification and salvation as two separate things, so having one is no guarantee of the other. Faith reasons the other way:
The author of the "Remarks" says this passage makes it plain that salvation and justification are separate things. So, though we are justified, that does not make us sure of salvation — I suppose because of our own weakness and sinfulness and frailty. But faith sees God step in with His power, and leans on it. Faith knows it has been justified, and from that justification it concludes with certainty that it will be saved.
Scripture puts justification in more than one way. Each phrase answers a different question.
We may note, by the way, that Scripture speaks of justification in three ways, because man is unrighteous by nature. We are justified by His grace (Titus 3:7), if we speak of the source. We are justified by His blood (Rom. 5:9), if we look for the cause that obtained it in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we are justified by faith, if we ask how the soul is personally brought into the blessing (Rom. 5:1).
Being justified is more than being let off. The verdict rests on what God sees in the blood of Christ, not on anything He sees in us.
The true believer has "now been justified by His blood." God clears him completely from every charge, and imputes righteousness to him — that is, He puts it to his account, though the believer has no righteousness of his own. It is a perfect justification, because of the perfect value God sees in the blood of Christ.
The verse does not describe a hope of one day being justified. It describes a state already entered, and one that cannot be undone.
Being justified by His blood is always the same and never changes. It is not that, once justified by His blood, we need justifying again. Once we are justified, it stands forever. His blood is always the same before God, since it has atoned for all our sins. So we are always justified by His blood. There is no change.
Wrath is God's judgment against sin. The letter announced it earlier, and it is still ahead in time.
That blood is what earns our justification before God. He needed nothing more to show Himself righteous in justifying ungodly people. So we shall be saved from wrath through Christ. God will pour out the wrath He has already revealed (Rom. 1:18) at the appointed time. But believers wait for God's Son to come from heaven, and He delivers them from the wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:10).
Salvation in this verse reaches further than a cleared record:
It is clear that salvation here is not just that a person is cleansed from guilt. It is the real application of Christ's work in all its fullness — only we do not have it yet for our bodies… salvation means more than guilt removed through His blood. It means that we ourselves are kept, and brought through every difficulty, past, present, and future.
The two halves of the verse rest on the same Person in two conditions — dead for us, then alive for us.
In verse 9 the apostle has the ground of justification in mind; so he says, "justified by His blood." But if the death of Christ has provided a righteous basis for our justification, then He who died to provide it has risen from the dead… He is the living One, the source of life to us, the One by whom and in whom we live. He stands forever between us and wrath.
- Cause. Grace is the source, the blood is the price, faith is the way in — three angles on one act, not three routes.
- Now. The tense is settled, not pending; the blood keeps the same value before God, so the verdict never has to be renewed.
- Much more. If God acted for us while we were still sinners, our rescue is certain — faith reasons from justification to salvation; unbelief pulls them apart.
- Wrath. What we are saved from is real judgment still to come — and the blood that justified us is what carries us past it.
- Through Him. Safety is not a legal document but a living Person, who died to clear us and now lives between us and the wrath.