The Logic of the Love of God (Rom. 5:9-11)
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We have seen that the theme of this part of Romans is the assurance of our salvation, that those who have received Christ by faith are fully justified by grace before God, and being justified can rejoice in hope of the glory of God. In these verses before us, the apostle continues this theme, and, in a sense, concludes the first part of his mighty argument for this hope and this assurance. In verse 12 and through the end of the chapter, Paul will continue to argue for the saint’s security in Christ, but from a different angle.
In these verses (9-11), we see the logic of the believer’s security, especially in those words “much more then.” But before we look at the logic itself, I want you to appreciate again how the apostle expects us to reason about our faith. He expects us to think about these doctrines of the faith and make connections between them. He expects us to think carefully about them and to meditate on them. We are not to be, to borrow a term that Lloyd-Jones used in his sermon on these verses, we are not to be “butterfly Christians” who just flit from this thing to the next and never stay long enough to really enjoy and rejoice in the realities that are ours in Christ.
Neither are we to be imbalanced in our thinking and meditating. We tend to think carefully and long about ourselves and our problems and sins and faults and failures, and of course it can be right to do this, if we do it in a balanced way. We need to know the plague of our own hearts or else we will never really repent of our sins or appreciate what Christ has done. But knowing that, we are meant to take equally firm hold of the salvation that is in Chris and to think carefully about that. And that should lead to rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, joying in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
This makes me think of something Dr. Mohler discussed on this week’s The Briefing (on Wednesday, March 19, 2025). In it, he talked about the Nobel laureate psychologist-economist Daniel Kahneman who was famous for the thesis of his book Thinking Fast and Slow. In that book, Kahneman argued that people don’t necessarily make the most important economic decisions from thinking slow, but from thinking fast. That is, their decisions are products of the way they feel at the time, letting their intuition guide them, rather than being the product of a long and careful process of thought.
Well, I think we Christians also often tend to think fast rather than slow when it comes to the realities of our faith, to the great doctrines of our faith. What that does is that it causes us to be superficial in the way we think about the gospel. Often we are only approaching it in an intellectual way, in the sense of wanting to know what we are supposed to believe or not, and then leaving it at that, and moving on to other things. But the apostle is not content with that. Neither should we be. We need to soak in these doctrines. We need to be those who “with open face [are] beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,” and therefore “are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). Or, as the apostle James put it, “For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed” (Jam. 1:23-25). We ought to be doers of the word, to be changed by its truths, and the only way we can do that is not by a glancing look at it, but by continuing in the word.
The apostle helps us to do this by showing us how to linger with Biblical truth. Last time, we noticed the parallel between verses 6 and 8. There is a similar parallel between verses 9 and 10. Do you see it? The last part of verse 8 actually corresponds to the first part of verse 10, and what follows the “much more then” of verses 9 and 10 are also parallel. Paul is really saying the same thing in both verses, but in a bit of a different way. Why would he do that? Why not just say it once and move on? Because we need to let the truth really soak into our hearts. We need to dwell on it. And Paul is helping us to do that by restating truth, coming back around to the same doctrinal reality and approaching it from a different direction so that we can see and appreciate it in all its depth and perspectives.
So this morning, let’s do that together. May God in his grace help us to hear this well and to take it and apply it and meditate on it in the coming days and weeks. To help us unpack the implications of the text, I first want to consider the timeline of salvation that we see here in the text. Then I want us to look at the logic of the text, and to consider the power of this “much more then” that we see in verses 9 and 10. And finally, I want us to consider the effect this ought to have on us, which is when we will consider more carefully the statement of verse 11.
The Timeline of Salvation
So the first thing I want to look at is the timeline of salvation that we see here in these verses. Do you notice that there is a past, present, and future aspect to it? In the last part of verse 8, “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” along with its parallel in verse 10, “when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,” both describe our salvation from the perspective of the past. The apostle is describing something that has happened in the past, and it is the death of Christ for us. Then there is that word “now” which you see in verses 9 and 11. “Being now justified by his blood” (9) which corresponds to “by whom we have now received the atonement” in verse 11. This is salvation in the present, in the “now.” And finally we see the future aspect of our salvation, which we are looking forward to: “we shall be saved from wrath through him” (9), and “we shall be saved by his life” (10).
Now let’s begin by looking at the past aspect of salvation, which in the text is the death of Christ for us. In verse 9, we are told that we are justified by his blood, which means that the death of Christ is the ground of our justification. It is important to understand that, though the gift of God’s righteousness is received by faith, yet faith has no merit of its own. The merit belongs to Christ, and to Christ alone. His once-for-all redemptive work in the past is the alone basis of our salvation and our justification. The whole point of saying that we are justified by faith is not to attach any merit or worthiness to our faith, because by faith we are not looking at ourselves but away from ourselves, not to our works in the past or the present but to the past work of Christ on the cross.
In the same way, in verse 10, we are told that it was “when we were enemies” that “we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” Again, this refers to what Christ has done on the cross. Paul is not primarily talking about our hostility to God and our laying it aside, when he talks about us being reconciled to God. In fact, that doesn’t even make sense, does it? For the apostle says that it was when we were enemies that we were reconciled. If reconciliation referred to us laying aside our enmity toward God, then Paul would literally be saying that while we were in a state of enmity toward God we laid aside our enmity toward God. But that’s clearly an impossible situation. You can’t be in a state of enmity and not in a state of enmity at the same time and in the same way.
What then is Paul saying? By saying that we have been reconciled to God, Paul is saying that although by our sin we were alienated and separated from God, yet by the death of Christ God has taken away the sin and its guilt that stood in the way of him being able to receive us back into his fellowship and favor. It is true that we do turn from our hostility toward God when we repent of our sins and turn to Christ, but before that can even happen, our sin that separated us from God had to be dealt with, and that is what the apostle is talking about when he says that by the death of Christ we were reconciled to God.
That this is what the apostle is teaching is clearly seen by a comparison of verse 10 with verse 11. Now in the KJV, in verse 11 it says, “by whom we have now received the atonement,” but the Greek word which is translated by “atonement” means “reconciliation.” In verse 10 you have the verb “to reconcile” that is used and in verse 11 you have the related noun “reconciliation.” This is important to see because in verse 11 reconciliation is not something we do; it’s something we receive. Therefore reconciliation can’t mean laying aside our enmity. It means receiving the reconciliation that Christ accomplished on the cross, and this is the meaning in verse 10 as well. So “we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” means that by his atoning death, God removed the cause that separated us from God, namely, sin.
In saying that by the death of Christ, by the shedding of his blood, we are justified and reconciled to God, Paul is saying that the death of Christ really did something to bring us back to God. It really did accomplish and effect redemption. It really does save those for whom it was offered. This is important when we consider the implications this has for assurance. Our Lord’s death really does what it claims to do: it really saves those for whom it was intended. It is something on which you can really trust!
That brings us to the present phase or aspect of salvation, the now of verses 9 and 11. This happens when we come to trust in Christ. We are justified by faith. We are made right with God by faith. We receive the gift of righteousness, not by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. This is why the apostle talks of this in terms of receiving the atonement in verse 11.
Then there is the future phase of our salvation: “we shall be saved,” as the apostle puts it in verse 9. In verse 10 he specifies it to be salvation from the future outpouring of the wrath of God in the final judgment (cf. 1 Thess. 1:10). Now you may wonder why Paul says it like that. Isn’t the saint already saved from the wrath of God? And in a sense that is true. But what the apostle is referring to here is the fact that in the judgment of last day, the people of God will not be cast into the lake of fire along with the devil and the beast and the false prophet and non-elect. In that moment, they will be rescued from that. They will be saved from that. That is what Paul means here. We have been saved, we are being saved, and we shall be saved. It’s why Paul will be able to say later in this letter “now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Rom. 13:11). Nearer than when we believed! There is a future salvation that we are still waiting for, the resurrection from the dead, the glorification of the church, and the rescue from the final judgment.
One of the lessons we can learn from this is that all three aspects of salvation are actually inseparable parts of salvation from sin. You cannot separate them. You cannot be saved from sin apart from the death of Christ in the past, and you cannot be saved from sin apart from faith in Christ in the present, as you obviously cannot be saved from sin if you are not saved from the wrath to come in the future.
I must emphasize this because there are theologians out there who would like you to believe in universal salvation, who want to put people on this timeline of salvation that aren’t there, by saying that Christ died for everyone and that everyone will be saved, regardless of whether they are Chrisitan or not, regardless of whether they come to faith in Christ or not. They will say that you can be Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or even an atheist, but it doesn’t matter. They say Christ died for all, and all will be saved.
What are they doing? They are separating what God has joined together. The Bible tells us that there is no salvation apart from faith in Christ. The Bible tells us that those who continue in unbelief will not be saved; the Bible makes it very clear they will not be saved. Our Lord said to the Pharisees who refused to believe in him, “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins” (Jn. 8:23-24). This is not just my interpretation. This is the word of Christ! Will we reject his words? Or, as he put it in that passage in Mark 16: “he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mk. 16:16). We could go on, couldn’t we? We are saved by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8); we are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Pet. 1:5).
Unfortunately, there are many Primitive Baptists who believe something very similar. I’m truly sorry to say it, but it’s true. These PB’s may not like to be called universalists, but there is very little daylight between their position and what many of these theological liberals I’ve just described who are universalists believe. And they justify their position by doing exactly the opposite of what the apostle does here. They put a wedge between what they call eternal salvation and time salvation. What they do is that they argue that if you’re elect, then of course you have got eternal salvation, but then they will go on to say that you don’t have to have faith and repentance, because that’s just a temporal aspect of salvation which is good but not necessary. They will say that gospel faith in Christ is icing on the cake, so to speak, and brings with it many temporal blessings, but they would still argue that faith in Christ has nothing whatsoever to do with eternal salvation. But this is a real problem, from a Biblical point of view.
Why is this a problem? Well, it’s a problem for the same reasons theological universalism is a problem. But in additional to that, think about what the apostle says here. In verse 9, the apostle says that “being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him,” that is, through Jesus Christ. This is interesting. We are told in 3:24 that we are justified by grace; in 5:1 and many other places that we are justified by faith; and now here, in 5:9 that we are justified by the blood of Christ. Which is it? It is all three! We are justified by the grace of God, not by works, and on the basis of the blood of Christ who died for us and purged our sins by his atoning death. But this justification must then be received by faith in him. No where does the apostle even begin to hint that a person can be justified by grace apart from the blood of Christ. Nor that we can be justified by the blood of Christ apart from faith. The three go together. Paul doesn’t imagine a group of people who are saved by grace and another group of people saved by the blood and another group saved by faith. They are all the same group!
And even though Paul doesn’t expressly mention faith in verse 9, it’s there in that word “now.” We are “now justified by his blood.” But the death of Christ happened years ago, how is it that we are now justified by his blood? It is because the now takes place when a person receives the gift of God’s righteousness when they put their faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. It is by faith that we receive the atonement (11). As the apostle John put it in the prologue to his gospel, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn. 1:11-13). Or, to point again to the words of our Savior: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (Jn. 5:24).
You see, election in itself doesn’t save anyone. Election is not salvation; election is unto salvation (cf. 2 Thess. 2:13-14). But why is that? Isn’t God’s choice enough? Well, in a certain sense, no, it isn’t. Yes, it is true that election guarantees salvation, and that all the elect will be saved, but it is also true that for the elect to be saved, Christ must die for them. There has to be an atonement, or there is no salvation. But then it is also equally true that in order for anyone to personally benefit in this salvation determined and purchased by God, it must be applied to them. And the Holy Spirit applies this salvation to the elect when he works faith and repentance in them. He regenerates them so that they receive the gospel by faith and be saved. It is by faith that we receive Christ Jesus the Lord, are united to him, and are therefore given all the blessings of salvation: justification, the forgiveness of sins, and good hope through grace. But the doctrine of time salvation as it is preached among many, if not most, PB’s denies the role the Bible gives to faith in the timeline of salvation.
I don’t like being controversial, but sometimes it cannot be avoided. Error has to be pointed out. And since this is an error that has been widely believed among PBs, and since our church is still connected to this denomination, it’s my duty to address it. I have to say it because some of you through our connections to others in this denomination may be exposed to this doctrine, and I don’t want any of you to be duped by it. The doctrine of conditional time salvation is a serious doctrinal error. It is not Biblical. It does not honor the grace of God it purports to defend because it undermines the efficacy of the grace of God in bringing the elect to faith and repentance. The logic of this doctrine encourages a lackadaisical attitude towards holiness. One adherent to it as much as admitted this to me. It undermines the urgency of sanctification and perseverance in the faith. In fact, most of those who embrace the doctrine of time salvation don’t even believe in the final perseverance of the saints.
Now some in our denomination would accuse me of making salvation dependent upon man by making faith essential and necessary to salvation. But this does not follow. Nothing I have said is a denial of the truth that faith is a gift of God (Eph. 2:8). Yes, I’m saying that it is our business to repent of our sins and to believe the gospel, and apart from faith and repentance no one can expect to be saved, but it is equally true that no one comes to the Son by faith unless drawn by the Father (Jn. 6:44). We are not undermining the monergistic nature of salvation; we are just being Biblical about it.
The point is, and the reason why I am saying all this, is that those who are saved are saved in the past through the death of Christ, are saved in the present through faith and repentance, and they will be saved in the future from the wrath of God poured out in the final judgment. The timeline of salvation is not something you can cut into pieces. The salvation of God’s people travels inevitably and inexorably along this timeline. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder, be they theological liberals or hyper-Calvinists among the PB’s. And this brings us to our next point, which is the logic of salvation.
The Logic of Salvation
What does all this have to do with assurance? Everything; it means that all for whom Christ died will be saved, and it means that all who are united to Christ will be saved. The point is that if you are at one point on the timeline of salvation, you are going to be there at the end, too. I’ve been talking about those who try to put people on the timeline of salvation who don’t belong there. That’s an error that we need to reject. But it’s equally true that there are those who try to take people off the timeline of salvation who belong there by saying you can lose your salvation. But salvation is not something that can be lost and found, over and over again. I know people who have been baptized five or more times, and they think that each time they were saved again! That is directly contradicted by the argument of the apostle Paul here.
It is all there in those words, “how much more” (9, 10). What we have here is an argument from the greater to the lesser. It’s a kind of argument the apostle loves to make, and we shall see other instances of it in other parts of this letter. The argument is that since God has already done the harder thing, which is to send his Son to die for sinners and enemies so that they will be reconciled to him, then, now that we are reconciled to him through faith in his Son, “how much more” will God do the easier thing, the lesser thing, and keep us to the end and bring us to the enjoyment of our final salvation in glory.
So, in verses 8 and 9, the argument is, since Christ died already for us while we were sinners, “much more then,” now that we are justified by his blood, Christ will surely save us from the wrath to come. And in then in verse 10 he repeats the argument: since Christ reconciled us to God by his death when we were his enemies, “much more then” now that we are actually reconciled to him and no longer his enemies, will he save us by his ongoing life at the right hand of the Father. The logic is that the hardest thing has already been done for us, and so God will surely do the less difficult thing for us. The more difficult thing was the death of Christ for the ungodly so that they might be saved; the less difficult thing is to keep those who are saved unto eternal life.
Do you use this logic for yourself, believer? You should! Here we are on the timeline of salvation. The death of Christ has happened, and we have been brought to faith in him. But we nevertheless wonder if we will make it to the end, don’t we? We wonder if we will be finally saved. There are so many twists and turns in this life, and we wonder if it will show us to be fake at the last day. We doubt our salvation. We sometimes even sinfully doubt the faithfulness of God to his promises. We say, with the father of the paralytic, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief!” We waver and our faith is weak.
How do we deal with that? We deal with it, at least partly, with the logic of salvation. If you are in Christ, believer, then you can be sure that you will stay in Christ. If Christ died for you, then the hardest and most difficult thing has already been done, and you can be sure that God will bring you to heaven and glory. The people of God will not be lost; our Lord Jesus is too good a shepherd for that! He will not lose one; no one can pry us out of his hands, or out of the Father’s hands. His blood has been shed for you, and you can be sure that he will not let his blood be shed in vain. He will have the reward for his suffering.
Here we must also consider that phrase, “by his life” in verse 10. “We shall be saved by his life.” What is Paul talking about there? It is a contrast between the death of Christ, “the death of his Son,” and the life of Christ to which he was raised. It is a reference to the resurrection life of Christ, to his exaltation as the right hand of the Father. This is significant because Jesus didn’t go into heaven to forget about us. He has sent the Holy Spirit who ministers to us the presence of the risen Christ. He is with us always, even to the end of the age. But in heaven he is working for us, preparing for us a home, and interceding for us in the presence of the Father. If we skip ahead a bit, we see the apostle coming back to this in the eighth chapter, where he says, “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:33-34). And here again I remind you of that great and wonderful saying of M’Cheyne: “If you knew Christ were in the next room praying for you, you would not fear ten thousand devils; but distance makes no difference – he prays for you!”
In fact, our Lord’s prayer for us in John 17 was recorded, I believe, so that we would know at least in part how he is praying for us now (13). How does he pray for us? Not to be taken out of the world, but to be kept from the evil one (15). He prays that we would be sanctified by the word of truth (17). He prays that we would be sent into the world as his witnesses (18). He prays for you, believer (20), that we may be one, as the Son and the Father are one (21). And then he prays this: “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (24). How can we think that we will be lost when the Savior is praying over us in this way?
He will save us by his life! Consider this, O fearful saint! You are not alone, and you have never been alone. Christ knows your weakness; he knows your frame; he remembers that we are dust. He is praying for you, and by his resurrection power he will strengthen you and bring you to himself so that you will see and rejoice in his glory forever. What can you pit against the power of Christ? What can you propose to defeat his faithfulness and his grace? Nothing! I love the way Toplady put it:
That’s it! The great difference between you, believer, and the glorified spirits in heaven, is your happiness, but not your security. Those who are in heaven are not more secure than you are. As he puts it in the previous verse of this hymn:
Brother and sister, let’s learn to live in the logic of salvation. Apply this great and mighty “much more then” to yourself. And that brings us to our final point.
The Effect of Salvation
What effect should this have on us? Here is where we come to the eleventh verse: “And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” Joy ought to be the response and effect this has on us. But not just any kind of joy, but joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This, I remind you, is the same word used in verses 2 and 3. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. We glory in tribulations also. Rejoice – glory – joy, all the same word. It refers to a confident exultation in God and his grace through Jesus Christ. This is not a tenuous thing; this is boasting in our salvation.
If we really believe these things, how can we not joy in God? God is the source of all these blessings. It is in Christ that every spiritual blessing in heavenly places is bestowed upon us. Every good and perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness or shadow of change (Jm. 1:17). Oh my friend, God is far more willing to bless us than we are to be blessed!
And the great storehouse of all his blessings is opened to us through the atonement of our Lord and Savior. God’s blessings are not something we have to qualify for. They are not something we have to merit. They are received freely and by faith alone apart from works because of what Jesus has done on the cross for us. He brought about reconciliation with God, and he gives it to us, and we just get to enjoy it.
I think that we would all be much happier if we really believed these things as we ought. And we ought to! Note the words, “And not only so.” What is Paul getting at there? What is he comparing joy in God with? Well, we need to note the word “now.” That indicates that the joy in God here is present joy in God. And the comparison is with the joy that we have from our future hope. We do rejoice in the hope of glory. But in addition to that, we not only rejoice in the hope that we will enjoy God in the age to come; we rejoice because we can enjoy fellowship with God now. We have the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession (Eph. 1:13-14). We can have a foretaste of heaven in fellowship with God. God is with us and for us; how can we be lost?
My friend, all this is available to us. We are meant to walk in the light of the Lord. We are meant to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, glory which cannot be taken from us. We are meant to rejoice in daily union and communion with Christ. Do we? Are we taking advantage of these things, or are we living like paupers even though we are rich beyond our wildest imagination? Brother and sister, don’t think you are being presumptuous by taking God at his word. Believe his word and trust his grace.
And friend, if you do not consider yourself a Christian this morning, remember that there is a wrath to flee from, and we can only be saved from wrath through Jesus Christ. The Bible says that all who put their faith in him will be saved from wrath through him. And, on the other hand, those who do not put their trust in him will not be saved. You say, “But I am not worthy!” Yes, but Jesus says, “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls” (Mt. 11:28-29). He justifies the ungodly. He receives repentant sinners. He doesn’t take those who wash away their own sins first, but he washes away our sins when we come to him. Come to him and find peace!
And coming to him you must also come to his church. Follow him in baptism, and publicly identify with him. The doors of the church are open for all who come with “true belief and true repentance, every grace that brings you nigh.”
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