The Timing Word in Romans 5 Is the Whole Argument

There is a person who has been meaning to come back for about four years.

Not to the building. He goes to the building. He has never stopped going to the building, and that is part of the problem, because from the outside there is nothing to come back from.

What he means is that at some point, without any event marking it, he stopped bringing anything real to God, and he has been intending to fix that ever since, and every attempt has been postponed by the same thought.

The thought is: not like this.

Not while this thing is still going on. Not while he still feels the way he feels about a certain person. Not while the same failure is happening every Thursday. He is going to sort that out, properly, and then he is going to come back, and the coming back will be clean and it will mean something.

Four years. And the thing has not sorted itself out, because it turns out that a man cannot fix himself in order to be able to go and get fixed.

Paul makes one point four times in five verses about exactly this, and the point is not about what it cost. It is about when it happened.

He says it four times and the repetition is the point

Here are the verses, and it is worth reading them as a block so the pattern shows.

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly... But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us... For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5:6,8,10, King James Version)

When we were yet without strength. While we were yet sinners. When we were enemies.

Three timing clauses in five verses, all making the same point, all placed before the main verb. Paul is not being repetitive by accident. He is doing what a person does when they expect to be disbelieved.

And notice how the descriptions escalate rather than soften. Without strength is a state. Sinners is a character. Enemies is a relationship, and it is the worst of the three and it comes last.

You were loved at the worst description of yourself, and Scripture chose the worst one on purpose. Romans 5:10 uses the word enemies rather than any gentler term, and it is the Holy Ghost, named two verses earlier in Romans 5:5, by whom the love of God is shed abroad in a heart.

In due time means it was not waiting on anything

There is a phrase in verse 6 that most people read past.

In due time Christ died for the ungodly.

Due time. The right time. The appointed time. Which means the timing was set by something other than the readiness of the people it was for, and the people it was for are described in the same sentence as ungodly.

That closes a door that a person has been leaving open for four years. The waiting was never happening on God's side. There is no queue and there is no assessment pending and there is no threshold that a man is approaching from below.

And the word commendeth in verse 8 is present tense in the middle of past tense events. God is described as continuously demonstrating this, now, by pointing at something already done.

You are not being waited on, and the timing was never yours to set. Romans 5:6 says in due time and attaches it to the ungodly, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that a person is assured of belonging today rather than at the end of a repair.

The father in the story runs before anything is said

Jesus tells the same thing as a scene rather than an argument, and the detail that matters is a distance.

But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. (Luke 15:20)

Yet a great way off. There is that word yet again, and it is doing the same job as it does in Romans 5.

The son has a speech prepared. He has been working on it, and it is a good speech, and it is honest, and he never gets to finish it. The father interrupts a confession with an embrace, which is a very strange thing for a story to do if the point of the story is that a person should get themselves right first.

And notice where the compassion is placed in the sentence. Before the running, before the embrace, and crucially before a single word of the speech has been heard. The father moved on the basis of a sighting rather than on the basis of a statement.

You are seen and moved toward while still a great way off. Luke 15:20 puts the compassion before the confession, and it is by the Spirit of adoption, Romans 8:15, that a person cries out as a child rather than approaching as an applicant.

Ephesians says which state He acted in

Paul does the same move again in another letter, and this time the timing clause is about deadness.

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved). (Ephesians 2:4-5)

Even when we were dead. Not weakened. Dead, which is the one condition in which a person is definitionally incapable of contributing to their own improvement.

That is the state named as the starting point, and it is chosen because it removes the last version of the objection. A weak man might argue that he should get stronger first. A dead one has nothing to bring, and God is described as acting in exactly that condition.

I would say to somebody four years into the postponement: the condition you are waiting to get out of before you come is a milder version of the condition Ephesians says He already acted in.

You were acted on at your least able, and the passage names that as the moment. Ephesians 2:5 says even when we were dead in sins hath quickened us, and it is the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1:13, by whom a believer is sealed rather than approved after review.

The much more argument at the end

Romans 5 finishes with a piece of reasoning that is aimed straight at the ongoing version of this worry.

For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10)

The structure is: if the hard part was done in the worst conditions, the easier part is not in doubt now that the conditions are better.

Which answers a fear that a person usually cannot articulate: that God took him on at the beginning out of generosity, and that the arrangement is now on ordinary terms and he is failing to keep them.

Paul says the opposite. The generosity was at the point of maximum cost and maximum hostility, and everything after that is described as much more rather than as a tightening.

You are inside a much more rather than a probation. Romans 5:10 reasons from the hardest case to the easier one, and it is by His Spirit, Romans 8:11, that the life doing the saving is described as dwelling in a person.