Romans 5
The consequences of justification unfold: peace, access, hope — and then the largest structural claim of the letter, the parallel between Adam and Christ as heads of two humanities.
Summary
Romans 5 opens with the first direct description of what justification has produced in the life of the believer. Since we have been justified by faith, Paul writes, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access into this grace in which we stand. The peace is not a feeling but a status — the hostility between the human being and God, described through chapters 1-4, has been resolved. The access is a term from the vocabulary of royal courts: the right to come into the presence of the king. And they stand in grace — not earning access visit by visit, but dwelling in it. Paul then works through a chain: tribulation produces endurance, endurance character, character hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. The death of Christ for the ungodly — while we were still weak, while we were still sinners, while we were enemies — is the demonstration that the love is real.
From verse 12, the chapter introduces the most structurally ambitious argument of the letter: the parallel between Adam and Christ. Through one man, sin entered the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all because all sinned. The line is the christological argument run in reverse — as Adam is the head of the old humanity in which all share the condition of death, Christ is the head of the new humanity in which all may share the gift of life. Paul is careful to say the gift exceeds the trespass: if by the one man's trespass many died, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for the many. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more — the final verse of the chapter, one of the most quoted in Paul. The chapter sets up everything that follows in chapters 6-8: the new humanity, the new life, the new Spirit.
- Romans 1Chapter 1 is the opening of a long letter to a community Paul did not found and has not yet visited.
- Romans 2Chapter 2 is the turn in Paul's argument.
- Romans 3Chapter 3 is the hinge of the letter's first movement.
- Romans 4Chapter 4 is Paul's exegetical demonstration of justification by faith, built entirely from the figure of Abraham.
- Romans 5Chapter 5 opens the second major movement of the letter (chapters 5-8), which draws out the consequences of the justification argued in chapters 1-4.
- Romans 6Chapter 6 opens with Paul's most pointed rhetorical question: Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? The question follows logically from the last verse of chapter 5, where he said grace abounds where sin increases, and it is the objection he expects.
- Romans 7Chapter 7 addresses the role of the law in the new life.
- Romans 8Chapter 8 is the climax Paul has been building toward since chapter 1.
- Romans 9Chapter 9 opens the three-chapter meditation on Israel — the hardest sustained argument in the letter.
- Romans 10Chapter 10 continues the argument of chapter 9 but shifts from divine sovereignty to human responsibility.
- Romans 11Chapter 11 brings the three-chapter meditation on Israel to its resolution.
- Romans 12Chapter 12 opens the practical movement of the letter with the word therefore, gathering everything from chapters 1-11 into a single imperative.
- Romans 13Chapter 13 contains the verses that have generated more controversy in the history of Romans' reception than any other passage in the letter.
- Romans 14Chapter 14 addresses a concrete dispute in the Roman church.
- Romans 15Chapter 15 continues directly from chapter 14.
- Romans 16Chapter 16 is the longest closing greeting in any of Paul's letters.