Romans 5

==Romans 5:1==
1Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
This conclusion is a segue into the next point. Christians, who have been justified by the same kind of faith as Abraham outside of the OT law, have peace with God. We have been reconciled to God and are no longer separated from Him by sin (Isa. 59:1-2-) which is spiritual death.
==Romans 5:2==
2By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
By Jesus Christ (vs. 1) we have access by the same kind of faith as Abraham into God’s grace wherein Christians stand. That grace is the gospel (Eph. 6:10-17; Romans 1:16), the power of God, wherein we stand.
We rejoice in the hope ofthe glory of God, which is the hope of being with God in Heaven.
==Romans 5:3==
3And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
Not only do Christians hope, but they gloried in the persecutions they faced for the cause of Christ, knowing that such trials teach patience. Their main persecution was at the hands of the Jews who did not convert to Christianity.
==Romans 5:4==
4And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
Self explanatory. Christians suffered tribulations which made them patient in the expectation that Christ would deliver them. It gave them experience to endure whatever came their way to challenge their faith in God, and that experience increased their hope, made it a solid hope that kept them on the strait and narrow through all that they would face during this first century of the church’s existence.
==Romans 5:5==
5And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
Christians felt no shame in keeping their faith because they knew of God’s love for them. That love which was in their hearts by the preaching of the gospel now written in their hearts (Heb. 8:10; 10:16) which was inspired by the Holy Ghost given to the first century church in the immediate physical sense.
# It is the gospel that teaches Christians and it is all sufficient.
# This was written to the Christians at Rome and does not apply directly to us in the same way.
# The Holy Spirit does not dwell in us in the same way as it did them (circa 1 Cor. 13:8-13; Acts 8:14-21). He dwells in us in the same way that Father and Son do, through our obedience (John 14:23), in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:17), not our bodies.
==Romans 5:6==
6For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
Strength here is speaking to Paul’s audience’s ability or power to save themselves (and by implication all others who had sinned and needed saving). 
However, in the correct time frame within Biblical prophecies (such as Daniel 2),Christ came and died to save those that Paul was writing to (and again, by implication, all others that needed saving), doing what they could not do in and of themselves.
==Romans 5:7==
7For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
Paul emphasizes what Christ did by highlighting the type of men other men might die for. One might give his life for another if they thought that other person worth dying for.
He also implies here that there are actually righteous men, good men showing again that his statements in chapter 3 were generalizations.
==Romans 5:8==
8But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
In contrast, Christ died while Paul and those at Rome were still sinners, enslaved to sin with no capacity for redemption. It is important to keep in mind Paul’s audience as he writes. Too many people automatically make the leap of implication to them selves and by extension all other men, but that leads to assumption and then error. It cannot logically apply to us today since Christ came and died before we were ever conceived. Again, Paul is speaking in generalities, about kinds of people (Jew vs Gentile) not about specific individuals as this verse cannot include anyone living today.
==Romans 5:9==
9Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
Further caution for understanding who Paul is writing to. Those who he is speaking to are those he is speaking about. The Christians at Rome and Paul were being continually justified by the blood of Christ (see 1 John 1:7) and would be saved from the wrath to come. In the greater context of the NT, this wrath is the destruction of Judaism and the Jews as well as those whose lampstands are removed (Rev. 2-3), who are unprofitable servants (Matt. 25:24-30).
==Romans 5:10==
10For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
Through the death of Christ, those who had been enslaved to sin, became no longer separated from God by sin because by the death of Jesus, their sins were taken away. So, being reconciled to God we are continually saved by living the type of life that Christ showed us how to live.
==Romans 5:11==
11And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.
Paul and the Roman Christians took joy in God for keeping His promise to Abraham in sending Jesus to die by which they became saved.
==Romans 5:12==
12Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Now we get to an area where the Calvinists always get confused. Before Adam and Eve sinned, there was no sin in the world. This is interesting because Satan lied before Adam and Eve sinned which says something about Satan. When Adam and Eve sinned, spiritual death (not physical) that is to say separation from God (Isa. 59:1-2) entered the world. Spiritual death passed to all types of men (remember back to the first three chapters – that context of generalities and nationalities vs individuals still holds) because both those under the law of Moses (Jews) and those outside of the law of Moses (everyone else) had no means of salvation once they sinned. 
It is also important here that Paul does not write that death passed to all men because Adam sinned. He says that death passed upon all because all have sinned, associating spiritual death with only those sins committed by the individual. There is no such thing as inherited guilt of sin (Ezek. 18).
So what about Adam, then? Adam introduced the propensity for sin into the world by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He changed the environment from one of peace and purity to one of pressure to sin. That is what we inherited from him. It is what David speaks of in Psalm 51 when he says that he was shapen in iniquity and his mother conceived him in sin.
The sin is not David’s, the sin is the people around him in the world into which David was born. David chose to give into that pressure and sinned (with Bathsheba for example).
==Romans 5:13==
13(For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
Thus begins a long parenthetical statement of explanation of his last thought. He is going to continue with the contextual foundation he has already established. Until “the law”, the Law of Moses, sin was still in the world. However, sin cannot be added to the accounting sheet without any kind of law.
It is important that we understand the word “imputed” here. This is not a simple declaration of sin, or some label, it is a reckoning of the ledger, a financial term. Sin is in the balance scales with nothing to pay the debt at this point, even outside the law of Moses.
==Romans 5:14==
14Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
Spiritual death (physical death is irrelevant to this context up to this point) ruled from Adam to Moses because there was no means to balance the scales, no payment for the debt. Even those who did not sin Adam’s sin, eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, were guilty of sin, having made their own transgressions of God’s will (either under the Patriarchal laws or the Mosaical law). Adam, though, is a type pointing to Christ as the antitype.
==Romans 5:15-19==
15But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. 16And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. 17For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) 18Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. 19For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
This passage is where the Calvinists fall off understanding. Through Adam’s sin, many died spiritually. But whatever Adam did, Christ more than undid. The free gift, Christ (again, the definition of saving grace as I have constantly used it), is more powerful than Adam’s sin.
Even if hereditary guilt were true up to this point, whatever Adam did, Christ undid it. For anyone to still be teaching hereditary guilt, sin nature, or whatever other man-made doctrine that is like to these, that person is teaching that Adam’s sin is more powerful than Christ’s blood. Since none of those man-made doctrines are actually true, its really a moot point, but it was worth pointing out. 
Herein Paul then proclaims that where men did not have the power to save themselves, Christ provided the means of salvation (that’s what grace is). Through his obedience to God, he 1) provided the means by which we can be saved, 2) the pattern for us to follow, a faithful life, without which we walk in darkness and die anew (1 John 1:6).
=== Sin Inherited From Christian Parents? ===
Even if we grant - for the sake of argument - that inherited sin is true and still around, Christians who have been washed in the blood of Christ through immersion in water according to God's instruction are freed from sin. Any children they have after becoming Christians would not be infected by inherited sin because their parents no longer have any sin to inherit.
If you believe Christ's blood is more powerful than sin.
==Romans 5:20==
20Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:
When the Law of Moses entered, sins grew even more (because sin is transgression of law [1 John 3:4]). The Mosaical Law showed the world how much it needed the coming Messiah, that a man could not save himself once he sinned. The Law was the schoolmaster that brought us to Christ (Gal. 3:24-25). But where the Mosaical Law caused sin to abound (because there were more laws to transgress without means of cleansing), grace (Christ and his teachings, the new and better law) were more powerful in that grace can actually cleanse sin.
==Romans 5:21==
21That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
So the conclusion of this section is:
# sin rules sinners, enslaves them, and the result is spiritual death.
# grace (Christ and the NT) rules through…uh, oh…righteousness (that is living right, obedient faith) unto eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord (the Christian’s ruler, their king, for Christians are a part of the kingdom of Christ which is the church of Christ).
In Truth and Love.Category:Apocalyptic
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