Romans 5:6 - Christ died for the ungodly

5:6

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly”. This verse makes it absolutely clear that any supposed goodness on our part had absolutely no part to play in our justification. We were weak, and we were ungodly, and Christ died for us. This action was taken on God’s initiative, it was entirely His decision. The only part we played was to provide the sin that needed to be atoned for. This is something we actually find very hard to fully accept, for all sorts of reasons. One is pride, we want to feel that, at least in part, we deserve to be saved. Two other reasons are somewhat more noble. We feel that we have to contribute something, that it would be wrong for us to receive something for which we are completely undeserving, and in fact deserve the exact opposite. We also fear that unmerited favour is a licence to sin. This latter point will be addressed in chapters 6-8.