All of us who believe in Christ know the answer to this question, right? We know he died for our sins, but why did he have to do so? Why couldn’t God simply forgive us the way we can forgive each other?

Was it necessary?

Think of the last sin you committed. Why should a holy God be so gracious to such a sinner as you?

For this reason: “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6).

“At the right time” points to the specific moment in history when Jesus came. Everything was ready for his appearance (Galatians 4:4): there was a universal hunger for truth, a universal language (koine or “common” Greek) to communicate God’s answer to that hunger, a universal peace to make possible the global expansion of Christianity, and universal roads to carry the first missionaries across the known world.

But it was “the right time” in another sense as well. Just before we died, Christ died for us. Just before it was too late, when we had no hope of forgiveness and salvation, “Christ died for the ungodly.”

You have been “died for.”

All the ungodly, with no specifications or conditions. All sinners and all sins are included. You have been “died for.” Jesus went to your cross, taking your punishment, bearing your pain, paying your debt, earning your salvation.

Only rarely will someone die for a good man (Romans 5:7), as when a Secret Service agent dies to protect the president or a soldier dies to save the soldier at his side. But we deserved no such consideration: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

“Shows” means “to bring together, to marshal the evidence.” As lawyers used their evidence to prove their case, so God uses the death of his Son to prove his love for us. “While we were still sinners,” this happened. All of us have sinned and come short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). All of us deserved death (Romans 6:23). All of us have instead been granted peace with God through Christ.

Our Sin Record Is Wiped Clean

We are now “justified” by his blood (Romans 5:9a), declared righteous in his sight as a criminal whose record is wiped clean. If God has done this for us in the past, “how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (v. 9b). The rabbis were fond of the “lesser to greater” argument: if A is true, how much more is B the case. Jesus used this teaching technique often, as with the parable of the persistent widow: if an unjust judge would grant her request, how much more will God answer our prayers (Luke 18:1–8).

In the same way, Paul reasons that if Jesus has already saved us from the sins of our past, how much more will he save us from God’s wrath in the future. Before Jesus’ atonement, we were “God’s enemies”; now that we have been reconciled with him, “much more . . .shall we be saved by his life” (Romans 5:10). And so “we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (v. 11).

Paul’s thesis is simple: We are at peace with God and can be at peace with each other and with ourselves. Why? Because we have been given access to the Father by the Son.

Since Jesus’ death has paid for our past sins, he guarantees our future reward. Now the Spirit redeems our present sufferings by using them to produce persevering character, which gives us hope that we will continue to be victorious in the days to come. We can be at peace with our past, our present, and our future.