Is there a more important thing in the universe than love? Of course there are many other important, even vital commodities, things such as water and time, existence and awareness. But what is more powerful, more desirable, and so also in this fallen world more perverted, more defined and redefined to death, than love?

The Ten Commandments can be categorized as love for God (first four) and love for neighbor (last six). The Greatest Commandment is to love God, the second is to love our neighbors. The first part of the fruit produced by the Spirit in believers is love.

The Spirit and love were related together in the last part of Romans 5:5. In that case it isn’t Spirit-produced love but it is love poured out by the Spirit. It isn’t man’s love for God, or neighbor, but God’s love for man.

The reason we love at all is because we are made in the image of the God of love. God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

What other than love moved God to create the cosmos and in particular to create other persons? His love is glorious like a fountain: it overflows. There is no need in His love; His love is always source, always abounding, always sloshing over. His love is more powerful than the gravity that holds the stars in place and keeps the planets in their orbits. His love, between the three eternal Persons, and then out is like the sun of our solar system.

And perhaps because it is so deep, divine, determinative, it dares shallow men for simplistic treatment. Unbelievers call attraction love, or good feelings love, or appreciation of certain qualities love. Many Christians in response have said that love is not a feeling at all, but it is an action. They’ve tried to pin it all on agape, as if the Spirit invented the word rather than inspired the use of it.

But both of these have problems. The worldly view makes it seem that love is mostly a response; and sure, response can be a part of it. The pietist view makes it seem that love is a duty; again sure, love is a command to men. Yet in Romans 5 love is a force, and an energy that creates shameless hope, an effectual gift that is and leads to glory.

The gospel in Romans 5:6-11 is three hundred proof. The gospel of God’s love in potent overflow will put hope on your chest. The gospel is the power of God to salvation because love is stronger than death.

You don’t have to read this paragraph as a Calvinist, but that’s just making extra work for yourself. Man is simply in no condition to be offered God’s love, nor does man want God’s love, nor is he capable of asking for it apart from God’s initiative, unconditional love. You could read this paragraph looking for a self-esteem boost, trying to find inherent worth in men that caused God to send His Son to the cross. But you would have to read the Ego Massaged Paraphrase to find that (which doesn’t exist).

Here is love vast as the ocean. The glory isn’t that a fish can be made wet, the glory of the ocean is that it makes wet everything it touches.

Three things: our condition (verses 6-8), our chances (verses 9-10), and our attitude (verse 11).

Our Condition When Christ Died (verses 6-8)

The key in these three verses is found in the repetition of “Christ died.” It is that He died to show God’s love and not because we were lovely.

Verse 6 shows our condition at the time of Christ’s death.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (Romans 5:6, ESV)

We were weak and ungodly . More words pile on as the paragraph progresses, but “weak” (ἀσθενῶν) at least means that we lacked the strength to do anything for ourselves; we wouldn’t be the ones chosen by a team captain. “Ungodly” (ἀσεβῶν) means we are in the opposite state of what God made us for.

The weak and ungodly share a lack of glory, a falling short of God’s glory, and it was at that time Christ died. To say at the right time could be a reference to the “fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4) on the historical timeline (1 Timothy 2:6; Titus 1:3). But the context here shines light on the right time when we needed it. He died when no one else would have.

Verse 7 follows up on the surprise.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— (Romans 5:7, ESV)

The indefinite subjects make a general case. People just don’t die for jerks on purpose, because it is unusual for people to die for others they like. The righteous and the good are the sorts of people you’d respect. They would be the sort of person that you’d want to keep around being a positive influence. Even for that kind of man though, such a sacrifice rare. It’s an adverb party, scarcely, perhaps with dare , meaning that it’s really improbable.

These should be added onto our condition as what we’re not. This is the setup. We’re not even like this. So we are weak, ungodly, unrighteous, and evil; as Orwell might have written, double-plus-ungood.

Which is what makes the centerpiece of the paragraph so striking.

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8, ESV)

On display is not just God’s grace, righteousness, and power. God shows His own love to us. Love comes, to be clear, while we were sinners , a summary term, the cherry on top of the depravity dung pile of our ingratitude and self-righteousness. Love is made known in the sending and sacrifice of the Son for sinners.

God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:8–10, ESV)

On to grow on: God is not glorious because forgiven rebels love Him, but because He loves rebels into forgiveness and glory.

God’s love bestows loveliness. God loves the unlovely into salvation and abundant life and hope and eternal blessing. This is radical love, radical in both senses of rooted and thoroughly effective. Love turns rebels into rejoicers.

Our Chances Because Christ Lives (verses 9-10)

As “Christ died” came twice in verses 6-8, so here in verses 9-10 see the double use of “much more…saved” (πολλῷ μᾶλλον, a phrase used four times in this chapter alone). It builds on love.

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. (Romans 5:9, ESV)

Peace with God is a present reality based on “having been justified by faith” (verse 1), and the same thing here. Justification is by His blood , a way to speak about His death, and it has ongoing and certain blessings: we will be saved , future tense, from the wrath . It is the end time judgment, and once truly saved then certainly saved. Much more is that future for real.

The argument is from the greater to the lesser; it’s also called an a fortiori argument: “used to express a conclusion for which there is stronger evidence than for a previously accepted one” (New Oxford American Dictionary).

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10, ESV)

Another, and last term: weak, ungodly, unrighteous, bad, sinner, enemies . We were on the wrong side of God. Yet He sent His own Son , a word used for the first since chapter 1 (Murray), reminding us of the Triune love at work.

We were spiritually dead, disobedient, ungrateful, and hostile. We were rebels against His glory, and deserving of His glorious wrath. But much more love. Christ’s death reconciled us and Christ’s life, His resurrection (see 4:25) means we have life.

Our Attitude As Reconciled Rebels (verse 11)

“More than that” is just okay, but in full it would be “Not only but also.”

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:11, ESV)

After reading verses 6-10 we should be humble, duh. And as true as that is, Paul doesn’t call for an acknowledgement of our worm status. We also rejoice !

Here is the third rejoicing /exulting in the chapter. We rejoice in hope, we rejoice in trials, we rejoice in God.

We were rebels, and therefore we did not rejoice in the glory of God (verse 2), we could not rejoice in our trials (verse 3), we would not rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ (verse 11).

Paul apparently doesn’t mind the repetition. Rejoicing is through our Lord Jesus Christ (also verse 1), making this a bookend of the section. It also connects peace to reconciliation with God.

Conclusion

Some of the current so-called intellectual dark web exhortations, especially to men, include: get discipline, endurance, find meaning in suffering. But those messages, as counter-empathetic as they are, do not include love. Love is not a motivation, either as recipients or givers. It certainly isn’t divine or eternal love. Also, we have to do it all on our own, no grace, no gift of glory. Real endurance and hope comes not by our own bootstraps but by His blood.

The demonstration of love from this paragraph: it is Trinitarian, it is effectual (on the unlovely for their redemption and rejoicing), it is sacrificial, it is exponential as in eternal. It is much more love than we could have asked or imagined.

One of my favorite John Bunyan questions:

Couldst thou (sinner) if thou hadst been allowed, thyself express what thou wouldst have expressed, the greatness of the love thou wantest, with words that could have suited thee better? (All Loves Excelling, 37)

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Charge

There is nothing in Romans 5:6-11 about our love for God or for our brothers; there is no command or exhortation. That does not mean that there is no application. The first application is, say Amen! Then there’s follow up. He loved us (1 John 4:9-10, Romans 5:8), so, beloved, we ought to love one another (1 John 4:11). When the Spirit pours out God’s love in our hearts we are filled to overflow.

Benediction:

[A]ccording to the riches of his glory may he grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16–19, ESV)