Charles Ellicott Commentary Romans 5:1

"Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;" — Romans 5:1 (ASV)

Being justified. The present chapter is thus linked to the last. Christ was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification. Being justified then, etc. This opening has a wonderful beauty that centers on the Christian idea of peace. After all the gloomy retrospect that fills the preceding chapters, the clouds break, and light steals gently over the scene. Nor is it merely the subsidence of storm, but an ardent and eager hope that now awakens, and looks forward to a glorious future.

We have. A decided preponderance of manuscript authority compels us to read here, “Let us have,” though the older reading would seem to make the best sense. A hortatory element is introduced into the passage, which does not seem quite properly or naturally to belong to it. It is just possible that there may have been a very early error of the copyist, afterward rightly corrected (in the two oldest manuscripts, Vatican and Sinaiticus, the reading of the Authorized Version appears as a correction) by conjecture. On the other hand, it is too much always to assume that a writer really used the expression that seems to us most natural for him to have used. “Let us have” would mean “Let us enter into and possess.”

Peace. The state of reconciliation with God, with all that blissful sense of composure and harmony that flows from such a condition. “Peace” is the special legacy bequeathed by Jesus to His disciples (John 14:27; John 16:33); it is also the word used, with deep significance, after miracles of healing, attended with forgiveness (Mark 5:34; Luke 7:50).

Boswell notes a remark of Johnson’s on this word. “He repeated to Mr. Langton, with great energy in the Greek, our Savior’s gracious expression concerning the forgiveness of Mary Magdalene: Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace (Luke 7:50). He said, ‘The manner of this dismissal is exceedingly affecting’” (Life of Johnson, chapter 4, under the date 1780). For other illustrations of this supreme and unique phase of the Christian life, we may turn to the hymns of Cowper, especially those stanzas beginning “Sometimes a light surprises,” “So shall my walk be close with God,” “Fierce passions discompose the mind,” “There if Thy Spirit touch the soul”; or to some of the descriptions in the Pilgrim’s Progress.

On verses 1-11:

A description of the serene and blissful state that the sense of justification brings. Faith brings justification; justification brings (let us see that it does bring) peace—peace with God, through the mediation of Jesus.

It is to that mediation that the Christian owes his state of grace or acceptance in the present, and his triumphant hope of glory in the future. Indeed, the triumph begins now. It begins even with tribulation, for tribulation leads by gradual stages to that tried and approved constancy that is a virtue most nearly allied to hope. Such hope does not deceive. It is grounded on the consciousness of justifying love assured to us by the wonderful sacrifice of the death of Christ.

The one great and difficult step was that which reconciled sinful man to God; the completion of the process of his salvation follows by an easy sequence. Knowing this, our consciousness just spoken of takes on a glow of triumph.