Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Romans 5:8

"But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." — Romans 5:8 (ASV)

Having dwelt on the powerful influence of the divine love ministered to the hearts of believers by the Spirit, Paul goes on to explore the depths of that love, finding it in the cross of Christ. The demonstration of God’s love in Christ came “at just the right time” (cf. Galatians 4:4). The law had operated for centuries and had served to expose the weakness and inability of people to measure up to the divine standard of righteousness (cf. Romans 3:20; 4:15). No further testing was needed. It was the right time for the Messiah to come into the world.

“Powerless” (GK 822) is the translation of a word that commonly means “weak” or “sickly,” but here it has a somewhat specialized force of the inability for us to work out any righteousness for ourselves. A still more uncomplimentary description of those who needed the intervention of Christ’s death on their behalf is “ungodly” (GK 815; cf. 4:5).

A third word descriptive of those for whom Christ died is “sinners” (GK 283). The verb “to sin” (GK 279) has been used in 3:23 to summarize the human predicament traced in the opening chapters. We need to see how Paul prepares the way for the impact of this term by contrasting it with both “righteous” (GK 1465) and “good” (GK 19). He puts aside for the moment the technical theological force of the word “righteous” in the sense of “justified” and uses it as it is used in ordinary parlance. Likewise, he ignores the fact that in 3:12 he has quoted “There is no one who does good” from Ps 14:3, and then proceeds to use “good” as we do when recognizing kindness and benevolence in one another. In other words, Paul is illustrating a point from ordinary life. It is a rare thing, he says, to find a person ready to die for an upright person, but conceivably it would be easier to find one willing to die for a good person. Evidently the “good man” stands on a higher plane than the “righteous man.” Now Paul is ready to proceed to his main point. It was for “sinners” that Christ died—for people who were neither “righteous” nor “good.” The stark contrast is between the tremendous worth of the life laid down and the unworthiness of those who stand to benefit from it. Behind the death of Christ for sinners is the love of God (v.8): God loved; Christ died. Paul does not attempt to deal with the Savior’s reaction or motivation. He leaves much to Christian awareness of the intimate bond between Father and Son—the whole truth about God being in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:19) and Christ being motivated by love for the lost . What he puts in the foreground is the love of God for the unsaved, and this Paul underscores by designating it as God’s “own love.” It is distinctive, unexpected, unheard of (cf. Jn 3:16).

Four times in these three verses the expression “die for” occurs, and in each instance Paul uses the Greek preposition hyper (“on behalf of”; GK 5642). This word expresses the substitutionary character of the sacrifice of Christ plus the additional element of action on behalf of another in line with the loving empathy of God in Christ.