John Calvin Commentary Romans 4:25

"who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification." — Romans 4:25 (ASV)

Who was delivered for our offences, etc. He expands and illustrates more fully the doctrine to which I have just referred. It indeed concerns us greatly, not only to have our minds directed to Christ, but also to have it clearly made known how He attained salvation for us.

And though Scripture, when it treats of our salvation, dwells especially on the death of Christ, yet the Apostle now proceeds further: for as his purpose was more explicitly to set forth the cause of our salvation, he mentions its two parts. He says, first, that our sins were expiated by the death of Christ, and secondly, that by His resurrection our righteousness was obtained.

But the meaning is that when we possess the benefit of Christ’s death and resurrection, nothing is lacking for the completion of perfect righteousness. By separating His death from His resurrection, he no doubt accommodates what he says to our ignorance; for it is also true that righteousness has been obtained for us by that obedience of Christ, which He exhibited in His death, as the Apostle himself teaches us in the following chapter.

But as Christ, by rising from the dead, made known how much He had accomplished by His death, this distinction is calculated to teach us that our salvation was begun by the sacrifice by which our sins were expiated, and was ultimately completed by His resurrection. For the beginning of righteousness is to be reconciled to God, and its completion is to attain life by having death abolished.

Paul then means that satisfaction for our sins was given on the cross. For it was necessary, so that Christ might restore us to the Father’s favor, that our sins should be abolished by Him. This could not have been done if He had not, on their account, suffered the punishment which we could not endure. Hence Isaiah says, the chastisement of our peace was upon him (Isaiah 53:5). But he says that He was delivered, and not that He died, because expiation depended on the eternal goodwill of God, who purposed to be pacified in this way.

And was raised again for our justification. Since it would not have been enough for Christ to undergo the wrath and judgment of God and to endure the curse due to our sins—without His emerging as a conqueror and being received into celestial glory, so that by His intercession He might reconcile God to us—the efficacy of justification is ascribed to His resurrection, by which death was overcome. This is not to say that the sacrifice of the cross, by which we are reconciled to God, contributes nothing towards our justification, but rather that the completeness of His favor appears more clearly through His coming to life again.

But I cannot agree with those who refer this second clause to newness of life, for the Apostle has not yet begun to speak of that. Furthermore, it is certain that both clauses refer to the same thing.

For if justification means renovation, then the statement that He died for our sins must be taken in the same sense, as signifying that He acquired for us grace to mortify the flesh—a meaning which no one admits.

Therefore, just as He is said to have died for our sins because He delivered us from the evil of death by suffering death as a punishment for our sins, so He is now said to have been raised for our justification because He fully restored life to us by His resurrection. For He was first struck by the hand of God so that, in the person of the sinner, He might bear the misery of sin; and then He was raised to life so that He might freely grant righteousness and life to His people. He therefore still speaks of imputative justification, and this will be confirmed by what immediately follows in the next chapter.