In this section we have God's love demonstrated toward the believer while we were still unregenerate. The concept of reconciliation toward God and what that entails is considered.

We continue now with our study of Paul’s epistle to the Romans. We have been working in chapter 5 in recent weeks, and so we return to that chapter once again, beginning at Romans 5:6–11. I ask the congregation to stand for the hearing of the Word of God:

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

The Word of God for the people of God. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Again, our Father, as we give our attention to this portion of Paul’s magnum opus, the deepest exposition of salvation we find in Your Word, we pray that as we contemplate these things that relate to the perfect sacrifice offered up for us by Your dear Son, our souls may be lifted up, and in the contemplation of so great a salvation we might have a taste of glory. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Original Sin

We have seen in recent weeks that after Paul set forth for us the doctrine of justification by faith alone, he proceeded in chapter 5 to set forth the benefits that flow from our justification. Once a person is justified, there are immediate benefits that accrue to that person, such as we have seen: peace with God, access to His presence, and as we saw last time, the shedding abroad the love of God in our hearts that provokes the kind of hope within our souls that makes us able to endure tribulation, and through that, endurance and character.

Paul now turns his attention to the atonement of Christ and what it has provoked in our salvation. So, let us look at it, beginning in verse 6: “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Paul here discusses the “when” of our atonement, or at what point in history the redemption of the people of God was accomplished. He speaks of the “when” of this accomplishment in two ways.

The first point is the “when” with respect to us. At what point in our personal history did Christ offer Himself on the cross? The first thing the Apostle tells us is, “When we were still without strength.” Let us comment on that before we look at the temporal aspect of the atonement.

In the first instance, Paul stresses that Christ dies for the ungodly while they are still in a state of being without strength. One of the cardinal doctrines of biblical Christianity has to do with original sin and its impact on our spiritual strength. This issue has been battled over in every generation throughout church history because virtually every church confesses some doctrine of original sin.

I remind you, as we have already seen in Romans, that original sin does not refer to the first sin committed by Adam and Eve, but rather to the consequences of that sin by which God visited corruption to the entire race of humanity. All the progeny of Adam and Eve are born in a state of spiritual death and moral corruption. We are born in sin, and every Christian church has some doctrine of original sin.

The debate rages, historically, over the degree of that corruption. To what extent have we fallen from our original righteousness? Augustine waged this battle in antiquity against the heretic Pelagius, who denied the fall altogether.

The cardinal point that Augustine taught was that the ravages of sin are so great, they penetrate so deeply within our souls, that we are left in a state of spiritual death. That spiritual death means that even though we are still alive biologically, even though we have faculties that remain intact—we still have a brain, a mind, affections, a will, a capacity for making choices, and so on—nevertheless, our humanity has been so damaged by the fall that our moral state by nature is one that Augustine described as a state of moral inability.

Moral Inability

The idea of moral inability is that we have been plunged so deeply into sin that we do not have the moral capacity in and of ourselves to incline ourselves in any way to the things of God. If God in His mercy and grace offers to us complete forgiveness, salvation, and Jesus Christ, but God does nothing to work in our hearts, if He leaves us to ourselves to exercise our wills to take advantage of the offer of the gospel, no one would exercise that option. We simply do not have the moral capacity. We have the volitional power to choose what we want in any circumstances, but sin is so deep that we no longer have any desire for God, the gospel, or for Christ.

The overwhelming majority report in America today among professing evangelicals is that God offers the gospel to everyone and that those who exercise their will to receive Jesus and make a decision for Christ are the ones who are saved. But though God does 99 percent, the 1 percent that decides our fate for eternity rests in our cooperating, receiving, embracing, and choosing Jesus freely.

The minute I am persuaded of that would be the minute you see me climb down from this pulpit and sleep in instead of preaching because I would have no hope whatsoever that the work of evangelism would ever be successful or that preaching would ever bring any fruit. It would be like a preacher who preaches the resurrection with great eloquence, great power, and great rhetorical skills in the middle of the cemetery and calls the corpses to come to life. They are not going to come alive.

Unless God the Holy Spirit empowers the word of preaching, unless God the Holy Spirit empowers the outreach of evangelism, no one will ever come to Christ. That is the point Jesus made in John 6:44 when He said, “No man can come to Me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Paul is teaching the same principle. He is saying, “Christ died for the ungodly while we were still without strength.” The strength he has in view is clearly spiritual strength. We have no strength in and of ourselves to affect our own salvation.

God did not wait for us to exercise our wills, to incline ourselves to Him, to repent of our sins, or to make ourselves in such a state that it would be appropriate for Him to provide a sacrifice or an atonement for us. No, while we were still in this state, as Paul later describes in his letter to the Ephesians as spiritual death, while we were dead in sin and trespasses, Christ died. That is the “when” with respect to our human condition. The “when” with respect to history comes in the next clause.

In Due Time

“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” We read in the Bible every Christmas that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. That is an integral part of the Christmas narrative of Luke 2. What we see in that announcement is that Christ came into this world in real time, in real history.

Salvation is an activity that God performs in history. It is not something that happens outside of space and time. It is not some existential thing that takes place away from real history. The Scriptures tell us that when Christ came, He did not come by accident, but He came in the fullness of time. He was born on the precise date and in the exact place the Father had decreed from the foundation of the world.

Throughout the Old Testament, we read about the activity of God in ministering to His people, creating a nation for Himself out of Israel, giving them the Law, giving them the Prophets, and ministering to them through their entire sojourn through the pages of the Old Testament. All that time, God was preparing history for the moment that would be so ripe that it was exactly the time for Christ to come. He came “in due time.”

Think about the joy that goes to the household when a mother reveals to the rest of the family that she is pregnant. Whenever we hear that from somebody, we immediately say to them, “When is the baby due?” The doctor gives a due date, and we circle it on the calendar. We know that just because the doctor gives a due date does not mean the baby will necessarily come on the date it is due, just like when you get bills in the mail and they tell you that they are due by such and such a date, that is no guarantee that you will send the money in time.

I will never forget the birth of our first child, Sherrie. The due date came, and I was waiting and ready. Vesta was ready. We were going to have our first baby. But she did not deliver. The day after the due date, I took her for a walk, thinking, “Let’s get this thing going.” The baby did not come. A week after the due date, she still had not given birth, and at that point I was thinking the whole thing was a hoax; she was never going to have this child. That was the hardest seven days of my life, and it went on for three more days before Sherrie was born. Once the birth takes place, you mark that day as the birthday. That is the day you celebrate. You forget for the rest of the time—except when you are looking for sermon illustrations—about the due date. Who cares about the due date after the real date occurs?

When it comes to God, He is never late. When He appoints a day for something that has to happen, it happens that very day. So, Paul tells us “When we were still without strength, in due time”—that is, in the time that God sovereignly appointed—“Christ died for the ungodly.”

When we read the narratives of the gospels of the death of Christ, the gospel writers tell us about the political machinations that were going on behind the scenes. Caiaphas gave his advice, Pilate had his advice, Herod had his advice, the soldiers conspired, the Sanhedrin got involved, and they paid money to Judas to make sure that all of this took place.

God knew from the foundation of the world that this was the day. No matter what Judas did, no matter what Caiaphas did, no matter what any of these people did, none of these things had anything to do with the timing, except insofar as these incidental aspects were also sovereignly decreed by God from all eternity.

Do you see? Not only was Jesus due on Good Friday, but Pilate was due, Judas was due, Caiaphas was due, and so on. All these things came together in the concurrence of divine providence that on that specific date, Christ would die.

Did Christ Die for All the Ungodly?

When Paul mentions the death of Christ, he always speaks of its purpose. Paul does not see the death of Christ as a tragedy in the history of the annals of human affairs. He does not see this as the great destruction of an innocent man via a corrupt clergy and corrupt political body in Jerusalem. No, He says there was a reason Christ died in due time. There was a purpose for His death. It was not simply to demonstrate the love of God or to display some kind of moral influence on the universe. Rather, He “died for the ungodly.”

At this point, you may include yourself in that category, or you may not. It is easy to conclude that if you are in the category of the ungodly, Christ therefore died for you. But not so fast. It is true that Christ died for the ungodly. There is no question about that, because all of us for whom Christ died are numbered among the ungodly. But one of the most volatile controversies that abides in every generation among Christians is the question, Did Christ die for all the ungodly?

Let me just stop for a moment and ask you: What do you think? Do not answer out loud, or we might have an uproar in here. I always preach on this when I think that the crowds are getting too big, and we need more space in the church. Anyway, I would not hesitate to answer that question. I do not believe for one moment that Christ died for all the ungodly. I do not believe that because I am not a universalist. The Bible does not teach that everyone goes to heaven. Only believers, those who belong to Christ, go to heaven.

Every believer who has been saved was at one time completely ungodly. Christ certainly died for the ungodly in the sense that He died for those who came to faith in Him. But again, the controversy is whether Christ died for everyone. We know that everyone is ungodly and that Christ died for the ungodly, so the conclusion many make is that He died for everyone.

We have to ask, Did Christ’s atonement satisfy the righteousness of God for all the sins of every person? The majority report is that Christ died on the cross for everyone, paying the price of sin for everyone. But if everyone’s sins are paid for, who is in hell? Can Christ die for a person’s sin and that person still go to hell? Or is His death not sufficient to satisfy the demands of God’s law?

Do we have this idea that in order to satisfy the righteousness of God, Christ has to die and we have to repent and come to Him? In that case, His death would not cover every sin, because the sin of unbelief would be excluded. But if you really believe that Christ died for all the sins of all the people and His atonement was effective, then you would have to conclude that He died for everyone equally and that everyone is in heaven. But the Bible gives precious little reason for anyone to believe that.

The Bible does not teach that Christ died to make salvation possible. Christ died for His sheep. He laid down His life for His sheep, and when He did that, there was never a doubt in heaven that all for whom He died had their sins covered, and all for whom He died would spend eternity in heaven. Remember how Jesus talked about this to His disciples? He said, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me” (John 6:37). He died for those whom the Father had given to Him.

Limited Atonement

Let me just say one more thing about this and ask you to think about it before you leave this topic. When I am on the floor of presbytery and young men are being examined for ordination, going through what are called the trials of ordination, they are examined on their theology. Every time this question of so-called limited atonement is brought up in an examination, I will ask the young man, “Do you believe in limited atonement—that is, that Christ did not die for everyone?”

The standard answer—I can predict it before they give it—is to say that Christ’s death is sufficient for all but efficient only for some. In other words, it is valuable enough to cover the sins of all of the world, in that sense it is universally sufficient, but it is efficient—that is, it effects salvation—only for those who believe. That is true. I have no quarrel with that. It is just not limited atonement. Every Arminian in the world, except those who are universalists, believes that Christ’s atonement is sufficient for all and efficient only for believers.

The question—and here is where I want you to put your thinking caps on—about the scope of the atonement is this: What was God’s eternal purpose in designing the death of His Son? From all eternity, God had a plan of salvation. Did He plan to save everyone? If He did plan to save everyone—if God is God and God is sovereign and that was His eternal plan—then nothing on heaven and earth would defeat that plan, and every human being would be saved. But manifestly, the Scriptures teach that not everyone is saved.

Is there anyone who doubts that God has the power and the right to save everybody? If God in His eternal plan planned to save everyone in the world, then everyone would be saved. That is contrary to some theologians. One, who is a friend of mine, keeps saying—I cannot believe he says it more than once—“God saves as many people as He possibly can.” Let me ask you to think about that: “God saves as many people as He possibly can.”

I say to my friend: “Shame on you. God saves as many as He can? You mean that God can’t save the unbeliever?” He really believes that God cannot righteously intervene in the life of one of His creatures and work faith in his heart. According to him, that would somehow violate the sinner’s freedom. But the truth is that every sinner in hell would give everything he had and do anything he could to have God intervene in his life and work for him saving faith in his heart. God can do it, certainly, and He certainly has the right to do with the clay what He wills. But God has not decreed from all eternity to save everybody. He has decreed from all eternity to do more than make salvation possible.

There is in Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, a doctrine of election. You may not like the doctrine of election, and I suspect that if you do not like it, it is because you do not understand it. I do not know how a person could have affection for Christ in his heart and not rejoice for all eternity at the unspeakable grace of God to include us in this work of salvation and to make certain that we would be saved.

The idea of limited atonement deals with the question of God’s design, or what God intended. Did God intend to save a remnant of the world and send His Son to die for His sheep, to die for those people to ensure their salvation? That is what limited atonement means. It means definite atonement—that is, the atonement of Christ was not just to make salvation possible, because then it would be theoretically possible that Christ could have died and never seen the travail of His soul and been satisfied. If the efficacy of Christ’s death depends on you or me, Christ would have no fruit from His death.

For Godless People

“For while we were without strength”—while we were impotent, while we were powerless in our souls to incline ourselves to the things of God—“in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” If that is the ungodly in general, then let us look just a little further in the text: “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.”

Paul uses two different words in this text. One is translated “righteous” and the other is translated “good.” Let us read it again. Paul says, “Scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.” Calvin believed there was no distinction here between the righteous person and a good person, basically arguing that it is a hendiadys, where two different words refer to the same thing. Luther, on the other hand, was convinced that Paul was making a distinction.

For theologians who believe that Paul was distinguishing between a righteous man and a good man—though a good man would necessarily also have to be a righteous man—the idea is that “righteous” is somewhat formal, and a righteous person can be somebody who obeys the law, does what is right, and whose behavior provokes a certain measure of respect. Paul says that we can respect people who we think are morally upright, but it is rare that anyone will die and lay down his life just because he respects someone’s moral character.

But when we talk about a good person, now we are speaking about more than their moral activity, more than their conformity to principles of righteousness. There is an effective idea involved here that a good person is the kind of person who produces a certain love and concern from us. We say, “He’s a good fellow.” That means he is a kind person. He is the kind of person for whom we would be willing to go the extra mile to reciprocate his affection and kindness to us.

Paul is saying it is rare that anyone will die for a righteous man. You might die for somebody you really love or appreciate, who has rendered certain personal kindnesses to you. You may be inclined, even in your paganism, to jump on a hand grenade for that person. But Paul says that in the case of the atonement, it was not that Jesus was dying for righteous people, and He was not dying for good people. He was dying for godless people.

We should not have to spend any time on this, should we? Yes, we should, because in the heart of every corrupt human being, even in a person who is partially sanctified, where the work of God is not yet complete, there remains a little thought that persuades us, “I wasn’t that bad, and Jesus died for me because I’m kind of a nice fellow, and heaven wouldn’t be quite the same without my presence there.”

It is rare that we ever come to a full conviction of our helplessness and wickedness. All the power of our psychology is at work every minute to suppress the full admission of our guilt and hopelessness. When people say to me, “The reason I’m a Christian and my friend isn’t is because I . . . because I . . . because I . . . ,” if they say that long enough, I begin to wonder if they’re in the kingdom at all. They certainly have not yet been convinced of their helplessness due to their sin.

God’s Love Toward Us

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Notice the shift in language here from the generic “ungodly” to the specific “for us.” For us, while we were in this state of sin, God set forth for us that Christ died for us.

What does Paul mean? Does he mean for us men? For us sinners? This goes back to the idea that Christ died for everyone. Again and again in Paul’s epistles, he speaks of the specific work of grace that Christ does for the believer. When he talks about “us,” he talks about those of us who are in Christ Jesus. He is talking about Christians.

What about the love of God? “God demonstrates His own love toward us.” There are two things I want to say about this clause. I have mentioned the first idea before, but it comes up again in this context. We talk about the love of God in more than one way; theology distinguishes among three distinct types of the love of God.

God’s Love of Benevolence

The first aspect or type of divine love is the love of benevolence. Let us take the word bene. It means “good” or “well.” We have a benediction—that is, a good saying. We talk about being volitional creatures, and the word volens has to do with the will. The Bible tells us that God’s basic attitude toward the world, toward fallen humanity, is one of good will.

God is not unkind. God is not mean-spirited. The basic posture of the Creator toward the world is one of good will, and every person in the world experiences the good will of God in one way or another. How do we know that? Because they are still alive. Every moment the sinner continues to exist in this world, he can only continue to exist by virtue of the good will of God, by God’s forbearance, by God’s patience with him. We can say that God loves everyone in the sense that His good will flows towards everyone.

God’s Love of Beneficence

The second sense of divine love that we have talked about is His love of beneficence. Just as His benevolence refers to His good will, His love of beneficence refers to His good acts. The Bible tells us that God’s rain falls on the just and the unjust. All people, repentant or not, believers or not, receive certain kind acts from the hand of God. In that sense, they all experience God’s love of beneficence.

God’s Love of Complacency

I have often talked about how distressed I get when I hear ministers preach, “God loves you unconditionally.” That message is everywhere in our culture today. Here is what the pagan takes from that message: “Unconditional love means that God loves me no matter what I do or what I do not do. I can depend on the love of God even if I reject Jesus Christ. I can depend on God’s love even if I never repent of my sins.” That is not the biblical message at all.

When we talk about the unconditional love of God, that love of God that never fails, we are talking about His love of complacency. Even that language is a little bit difficult to grasp because the love of complacency that God has does not mean complacency in the sense in which we use the word complacent in our vocabulary today. When we say, “So and so is complacent,” what do we mean? They are smug. They are at ease in Zion. They are resting on their laurels. They are satisfied with what they have achieved. They have no desire to go beyond where they are. That is what we understand by the term complacency.

But when we talk theologically about God’s love of complacency, we are talking about God’s love that He has and the delight that He takes, first of all, supremely, in His Son. God’s love for His Son is without measure and without qualification. He loves His Son fully and perfectly. But the love that the Father has for His Son extends beyond His Son to those who belong to His Son. Only the believer receives God’s love of complacency, and that is because of Christ, not because of anything in us.

We receive God’s love of complacency because God gives gifts to His Son. From all eternity God loves His Son, and from all eternity He plans to give a portion of humanity to His Son, that His Son might be the firstborn of many brethren. He loves His Son with a love of complacency, and He demonstrates that love of complacency for us in that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

The Father’s Wrath Satisfied

The second aspect of related to Paul’s statement that “God demonstrates His own love for us” is too technical to get into at length, so I will only mention it in passing. A debate emerged in twentieth-century German theology about the atonement. Some theologians opposed the classic doctrine of the atonement as the Son’s satisfying the wrath of the Father.

The old creeds speak of the ira Dei, the anger of God. They present God as having an anger that needs to be assuaged or satisfied. God’s justice has to be satisfied so that sin is repaid through the satisfaction offered by His Son. These theologians scoffed at any idea of an atonement that provides satisfaction for our sins. They said God does not need satisfying; His love is enough to redeem the world. According to them, God’s love is so great that He cancels His own wrath, sets aside His own righteousness, and accepts sinners as they are. This is more like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood than it is the kingdom of God.

The attack on the classical and biblical doctrine of the atonement was called the Umstimmung Controversy among the German theologians. In this view of satisfaction, you have God at odds with God. You have God the Father angry at sinners. You have God the Father pouring out wrath upon the ungodly. But God the Son arrives on the scene and rescues poor humanity from the wrath of the Father, and God the Son persuades God the Father to set aside His wrath. This whole idea posits an internal conflict in the Godhead among the Trinity.

The biblical view is that though the Son comes and satisfies the righteousness of God, taking the wrath of God upon Himself, He comes because the Father sends Him. It is the Father’s idea from all eternity to which the Son gives His total agreement, as well as the Spirit. This is called the covenant of redemption. From all eternity, there is one purpose and one mind in the Godhead, and it is out of the love of God that He sends His Son to take His wrath for us.

Saved from God

Some years ago, at a Christian booksellers’ convention with six thousand people in the audience, I was asked to give the keynote address. As I was thinking about what I would speak on, I thought, “I want to speak on the urgency of the gospel to people who are absolutely convinced that they are every day being faithful to the gospel.” I had to steer my ship between two issues. I did not want to speak above the intelligence of those gathered, nor did I want to dumb it down to such a degree that I would be insulting their intelligence. I titled the address “Saved from What?” I went back to the rudimentary concept of salvation, and said to this gathering, “What does it mean to be saved biblically?”

If we look at that concept of salvation in the Bible, we see that the most rudimentary meaning of salvation is to be rescued from some calamity. If you are restored from sickness, you are saved from the effects of that illness. If you experience victory in battle, you are saved from the ignominy of defeat, and that is the way the word is used in the New Testament; for example, any time a person experiences rescue from catastrophe, the Bible speaks of him experiencing salvation. Yet with all these lesser applications of the word salvation, there is also a grand doctrine of salvation in the Bible that speaks of salvation in the ultimate sense, in which we are rescued from the supreme danger and peril, from the worst of all possible catastrophes. That salvation is what the New Testament calls being saved from wrath.

That is what many in the church do not believe anymore. Rather, they believe in a God who has no wrath. But remember back to Romans 1 when we started this study. Paul introduced the gospel, and we thought that he would just go ahead and unpack the gospel. Instead, the first thing he did after he announced the revelation of that righteousness of God that is by faith was to plunge into the revelation of the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men. He then spent a whole chapter giving us the background for salvation.

If there is no wrath in God, there is no need for the gospel. If there is no wrath in God, there is no need for Christ. I hear people all the time who are not Christians say to me, “That’s fine for you, but I don’t need Jesus.” I say that there is nothing in heaven or on earth that you need more than Jesus. As long as people are not concerned about the wrath of God, they feel no need to come to Jesus. But if God is real, so is His wrath. The biblical view of salvation is rescue from wrath.

I said to those gathered at the booksellers’ convention: “Do you want to know what you’re saved from? In a word, you’re saved from God.” They just gasped. To this day, when I am at that convention, people come up to me and say, “I had never thought of that in my whole life until that message.” Some of us talk about being fundamentalists, but there is nothing more fundamental than the reality that it is God who saves people from God. His wrath is stored up against the day of wrath, as Paul has said. He most certainly will demonstrate that wrath.

But God has also demonstrated “His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” I could rush ahead and finish the next couple of verses, but I am going to wait until next week, God willing. Let us pray.

Father, we do not even want to think for a minute about Your wrath. Thoughts of nuclear war are too horrible for us to put our mind to, and yet we know that the manifestation of Your wrath is far more dreadful than any weapon creatures can invent or use. What are we to say to the love You have for us, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us to save us from Your wrath? How can we understand that He took on Himself the full measure of Your wrath that we deserve? Father, how can we ever think of His death without thinking of that wrath He bore innocently that we may not bear it in our guilt and in our sin? We cannot begin to plumb the depths and the riches of the love of complacency that You have demonstrated to us who are neither righteous nor good, yet You sent Your Son while we were without strength to die for us. Thank you for that. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.