Romanschapter 5
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Speaks with:Romans 5×81 Corinthians 15×5Ephesians 2×4Romans 6×4James 1×32 Corinthians 5×3
Summary
Chapter summary
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Tribulation worketh patience; God commends his love in that while yet sinners Christ died for us. The two-Adam comparison unfolds: one man's disobedience brought death upon all; one man's obedience brings righteousness and life to many. The law entered to enlarge the reckoning of sin. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Wesley stresses the breadth of the benefit. As broad as Adam's curse, so broad is Christ's remedy, for all who receive him.
Context
Epistle · Paul — Romans overview
- A. 1–5 Peace With God and Rejoicing in Tribulation
- B. 6–11 While We Were Yet Sinners, Christ Died for Us
- C. 12–21 Two Men, Two Races: Adam and Christ
The outline
A.Peace With God and Rejoicing in Tribulationvv. 1 to 5
Read vv. 1 to 5 →B.While We Were Yet Sinners, Christ Died for Usvv. 6 to 11
Read vv. 6 to 11 →C.Two Men, Two Races: Adam and Christvv. 12 to 21
Read vv. 12 to 21 →
The world behind this chapter
Romans 5The history
"Peace with God" and "reconciliation" were words from diplomacy and war. Rome's proudest boast was the peace it enforced across the world, celebrated on altars and coins, and it was made by conquest and treaty. Paul uses that vocabulary for a peace made at the enemy's cost by the offended party.
The comparison he draws — dying for a righteous man is rare, for a good man perhaps someone would dare — reflects a real ancient ideal. Stories of a friend dying for a friend were celebrated in Greek and Roman literature as the height of virtue. Paul's point is that Christ died for people who were still enemies, which had no parallel in those stories.
The chapter's second half sets Adam against Christ as two heads of humanity. Ancient thinking about family and nation assumed that what the head did bound those under him, so a single man's act shaping the destiny of many was not a strange idea to Paul's hearers — it was how they understood ancestry, tribe, and kingship.
What it meant to them
To believers under pressure, the chain running from suffering to endurance to proven character to hope reframed hardship as something being formed rather than something merely endured, backed by love poured into their hearts through the Spirit.
And the Adam comparison told them where they now stood. They had been transferred out of one line and into another, and the gift was not merely equal to the damage but far greater than it.
Sources cited
- F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free
- John Calvin, Commentary on Romans
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Romans 5. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Connections from this chapter
v. 3 · Written to them
Patience, experience; experience, hope
topics/suffering→MannaFest topical index
v. 6 · A picture of Christ
Wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities
Isaiah 53:5→But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
MannaFest topical index
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.