Proper 6: Epistle, Romans 5:6-15

Romans is the great exposition of the gospel from a legal mind that even moderns admit to be one of history’s greats. Nowhere else in all of Holy Scripture is the gospel so well explained. And just so the blessing doesn’t stop with bare explanation, the Holy Spirit moves Paul to do a grand job teaching the gospel’s application to Jew and Gentile.

The great mid-20th century American Pastor/Preacher A. W. Tozer would tell his congregations that no man or woman could truly know the glory of the gospel without first encountering the blackness of his or her own heart.  

As great as is Paul’s exposition of the saving gospel in Romans, he does not begin there. Romans begins by Paul making his case, God’s case against all of sinful humanity, again both Jew and Gentile. At the end of chapter three we have the grand declaration of the solution to man’s sin problem, namely, the free grace of God through Christ. Then in chapters four through six, Paul explains the gospel’s place in the OT beginning formally with Father Abraham, the ground of God justifying sinners and His artistry in making His people holy. 

Tucked in the early portion of chapter five we have three labels describing sinful men and women. Here they are. We begin before God as 1) weak, v. 6, 2) ungodly, v. 6, and 3) sinners, v. 8. Paul in other writings adds other descriptive terms to our plight but in the golden halls of the gospel in Romans, this is the malady for which the glorious medicine of the gospel is prescribed. It was while we were in this decrepit state that our Lord Jesus Christ went to the horrible, lovely cross on our behalf. It’s power undeniable and its scope unfathomable in its mission against our sin … our sins. God be praised!

Earlier in his epistle Paul had exclaimed, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). Aren’t you glad for a remedy? Aren’t you glad for that remedy? It’s the only one with that kind of power. It comes from God through Christ Jesus. It’s only for sinners.