Matthew Henry Commentary Romans 5:6-11

"For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath [of God] through him. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life; and not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation." — Romans 5:6-11 (ASV)

Christ died for sinners—not only for those who were useless, but for those who were guilty and hateful, such that their everlasting destruction would be to the glory of God's justice. Christ died to save us, not in our sins, but from our sins; and we were still sinners when He died for us. Indeed, the carnal mind is not only an enemy to God, but enmity itself (Romans 8:7; Colossians 1:21). But God designed to deliver us from sin and to bring about a great change.

While the sinful state continues, God loathes the sinner, and the sinner loathes God (Zechariah 11:8). That Christ should die for such as these is a mystery; no other such instance of love is known, so that adoring and wondering at it may well be the employment of eternity. Again, what idea did the apostle have when he supposed the case of someone dying for a righteous man? And yet he only presented it as a mere possibility.

Was not the purpose of His undergoing this suffering so that the person intended to be benefited might be released from it? But from what are believers in Christ released by His death? Not from bodily death, for that they all do and must endure. The evil from which deliverance could be accomplished only in this astonishing manner must be more dreadful than natural death.

There is no evil to which the argument can be applied, except that which the apostle actually affirms: sin, and wrath, the punishment of sin, determined by the unerring justice of God.

And if, by divine grace, they were thus brought to repent and to believe in Christ, and thus were justified by the price of His bloodshedding and by faith in that atonement, much more, through Him who died for them and rose again, would they be kept from falling under the power of sin and Satan, or from departing finally from Him.

The living Lord of all will complete the purpose of His dying love by saving all true believers to the uttermost.

Having such a pledge of salvation in the love of God through Christ, the apostle declared that believers not only rejoiced in the hope of heaven, and even in their tribulations for Christ's sake, but they also gloried in God as their unchangeable Friend and all-sufficient Portion, through Christ only.