But God commendeth his own love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The emphatic "his own" is lost sight of in the Authorized Version. It is not in contrast to our love to God, but expressive of the thought that the love of God himself towards men was displayed in the death of Christ. This is important for our true conception of the light in which the mysterious doctrine of the atonement is regarded in Holy Scripture. It is not (as represented by some schools of theologians) that the Son, considered apart from the Father, offered himself to appease his wrath—as seems to be expressed in the lines, "Actus in crucem factus es Irato Deo victima"—but rather that the Divine love itself purposed from eternity and provided the atonement, all the Persons of the holy and undivided Trinity concurring to effect it (cf. Romans 3:24; Romans 8:32; Ephesians 2:4; 2 Thessalonians 2:16 : John 3:16; 1 John 4:10, et al.). If it be asked how this Divine love, displayed in the atonement, and therefore previous to it, is consistent with what is elsewhere so continually said of the Divine wrath, we answer that the ideas are not irreconcilable. The wrath expresses God's necessary antagonism to sin, and the retribution due to it, inseparable from a true conception of the Divine righteousness; and as long as men arc under the dominion of sin they are of necessity involved in it: But this is not inconsistent with ever-abiding Divine love towards the persons of sinners, or with an eternal purpose to redeem them. It may be added here that the passage Before us intimates our Lord's essential Deity; for his sacrifice of himself is spoken of as the display of God's own love.
Much more then, being now justified by (literally, in) his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by (literally, in) his life. In these verses, the second being an amplification of the first, our relations to God are set forth, as before, by the analogy of such as may subsist between man and man. Men do not usually die for their enemies, but they do seek the good of their friends. If, then, God's superhuman love reconciled us to himself through the death of his Son when we were still his enemies, what assurance may we not now feel, being no longer at enmity, of being saved from the wrath ( τῆς ὀργῆς, Romans 5:9) to which, as sinners and enemies, we were exposed! There is also a significance (Romans 5:10)in the words "death" and "life." Christ's death was for atonement, and in it we are conceived as having died with him to our former state of alienation from God. His resurrection was the inauguration of a new life to God, in which with him we live (cf. Romans 6:3, et seqq.). The words "enemies" ( ἀχθροὶ) and "reconciled" ( καταλλάγημεν, καταλλαγέντες) invite attention. Does the former word imply mutual enmity, or only that we were God's enemies? We may answer that, though we cannot attribute enmity in its proper human sense to God, or properly speak of him as under any circumstances the enemy of man, yet the expression might perhaps be used with regard to him in the way of accommodation to human ideas, as are anger, jealousy, and the like. There seems, however, to be no necessity for this conception here, the idea being rather that of man's alienation from God, and from peace with him, through sin; as in Colossians 1:21, "And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works." So Theoderet interprets: οἱ ἐχθροὶ δὴ τῶν ἐντολῶν αἷς μηδὲ ὑποκηκόασι γενόμενοι ὥσπερ φίλοι οἱ ὑπακηκοότες. So too, Clem. Alex., 'Strom.,' 1. 3.: καὶ μή τε καθὰπεο ἐπὶ τοῦ θεοῦ οὐδενὶ μὲν ἀντικεισθαι, λέγομεν τὸν θεὸν οὐδε ἐχθρὸν εἷναι τινός πάντων γὰρ κτίστης καὶ οὐδεν ἐστι τῶν ὑποστάντων ὃ μὴ θέλει. φαμὲν δὲ αὐτῷ ἐχθροὺς εἶναι τοὺς ἀπειθεῖς καὶ μὴ κατὰ τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ πορευομένους. With regard to reconciled," it may be first observed that, however orthodox and capable of a true sense it may be to speak of God being reconciled to man through Christ (as in Art. 2, "to reconcile his Father to us"), the expression is not scriptural. It is always man who is said to be reconciled to God; and it is God who, in Christ, reconciles the world unto himself (2 Corinthians 5:19; cf. also Ephesians 2:16; Colossians 1:20, Colossians 1:21). Still, mere is evidently implied than that God reconciles men to himself by changing their hearts and converting them from sin by the manifestation of his love in Christ. The reconciliation is spoken of as effected once for all for all mankind in the atonement, independently of, and previously to, the conversion of believers. Faith only appropriates, and obedience testifies, the appropriation of an accomplished reconciliation available for all mankind. That such is the view in the passage before us is distinctly evident from all that follows after Colossians 1:12.