5:11 {9} And not only [so], but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.
(9) He now passes over to the other part of justification, which consists in the free imputation of the obedience of Christ: so that to the remission of sins, there is added moreover and besides, the gift of Christ's righteousness imputed or put upon us by faith, which swallows up that unrighteousness which flowed from Adam into us, and all the fruits of it: so that in Christ we do not only cease to be unjust, but we begin also to be just.
5:11 We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The ground of rejoicing is the reconciliation with God which has been effected through Jesus Christ.
By whom we have now received the atonement. Atonement, in the Common Version, is rendered, as it should be, in the Revised Version, reconciliation. The same Greek word, katallage, is found also in Ro 5:10. The thought is the same as that when peace with God is spoken of in Ro 5:1. The steps of the divine plan, as shown in these verses, are (1) The death of Christ for us. (2) The satisfaction thus made to the demands of justice. (3) The propitiation, or God's acceptance of Christ's sacrifice for us. (4) Reconciliation. Our acceptance of Christ. We love God because he first loved us (1Jo 4:19). (5) Forgiveness of sin, or justification. Our sins are blotted out. (6) Our redemption from the grave. (7) Our glorification in heaven.
5:11 And not only so, but we also glory - The whole sentence, from the third to the eleventh verse , may be taken together thus: We not only rejoice in hope of the glory of God, but also in the midst of tribulations we glory in God himself through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation.
5:6-11 Christ died for sinners; not only such as were useless, but such as were guilty and hateful; such that their everlasting destruction would be to the glory of God's justice. Christ died to save us, not in our sins, but from our sins; and we were yet sinners when he died for us. Nay, the carnal mind is not only an enemy to God, but enmity itself, chap. 8:7; Col 1:21. But God designed to deliver from sin, and to work a great change. While the sinful state continues, God loathes the sinner, and the sinner loathes God, Zec 11:8. And that for such as these Christ should die, is a mystery; no other such an instance of love is known, so that it may well be the employment of eternity to adore and wonder at it. Again; what idea had the apostle when he supposed the case of some one dying for a righteous man? And yet he only put it as a thing that might be. Was it not the undergoing this suffering, that the person intended to be benefitted might be released therefrom? But from what are believers in Christ released by his death? Not from bodily death; for that they all do and must endure. The evil, from which the deliverance could be effected only in this astonishing manner, must be more dreadful than natural death. There is no evil, to which the argument can be applied, except that which the apostle actually affirms, sin, and wrath, the punishment of sin, determined by the unerring justice of God. And if, by Divine grace, they were thus brought to repent, and to believe in Christ, and thus were justified by the price of his bloodshedding, and by faith in that atonement, much more through Him who died for them and rose again, would they be kept from falling under the power of sin and Satan, or departing finally from him. The living Lord of all, will complete the purpose of his dying love, by saving all true believers to the uttermost. Having such a pledge of salvation in the love of God through Christ, the apostle declared that believers not only rejoiced in the hope of heaven, and even in their tribulations for Christ's sake, but they gloried in God also, as their unchangeable Friend and all-sufficient Portion, through Christ only.
