Romans 5


Romans 5 is the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is authored by Paul the Apostle, while he was in Corinth in the mid 50s CE, with the help of an amanuensis, Tertius, who adds his own greeting in.

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 21 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:
opens a new section in Paul's letter. Scottish Free Church minister William Robertson Nicoll imagines "that a pause comes... in his work; that he is silent, and Tertius puts down the pen, and they spend their hearts awhile on worshipping, recollection and realisation. The Lord delivered up; His people justified; the Lord risen again, alive for evermore – here was matter for love, joy, and wonder".
Paul resumes with "a description of the serene and blissful state which the sense of justification brings":
The Textus Receptus reads εἰρήνην ἔχομεν, but some manuscripts read εἰρήνην ἔχωμεν, and similarly the Vulgate reads pacem habeamus, let us have peace. Theologian Heinrich Meyer argues that this variant "is here utterly unsuitable; because the writer now enters on a new and important doctrinal topic, and an exhortation at the very outset, especially regarding a subject not yet expressly spoken of, would at this stage be out of place". The New Living Translation speaks of "peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us".

Verse 8

Cross references: ; ; ; ;

Adam and Christ (5:12–21)

In chapter 4 the story of Abraham provides the prototype for the doctrine of justification by faith, and in the first part of chapter 5, the justification won by Christ's death is characterized as reconciliation with God. This section deals with the reason that Christ's work alone can save others, because originally it was the action of one individual that affected the standing of all other person, and that individual was Adam. Thus, Paul points out Adam as" precedent" for "the universality of Christ's atonement".

Verse 12

On the basis of Paul argues that 'sin came into the world through one man', who is Adam, and the ubiquity of sin is proved by 'the universality of its consequence, which is "death".

Verse 14

The law given through Moses actually increases human's culpability, as all humans could transgress the way Adam had transgresssed, which is the 'disobedience of an explicit commandment'.