Romans 5

Romans 5
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Fragment c to h containing parts of the Epistle to the Romans in Papyrus 40, written about AD 250.
Book	Epistle to the Romans
Bible part	New Testament
Order in the Bible part	6
Category	Pauline epistles

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, but written by an amanuensis, Tertius of Iconium, while Paul was in Corinth, in winter of AD 57-58. Paul wrote to the Roman Christians in order to give them a substantial resume of his theology.

The New King James Version organises this chapter as follows:

Romans 5:1 opens a new section in Paul's letter. Scottish Free Church minister William Robertson Nicoll imagines "that a pause comes ... in [Paul's dictation of] 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 Greek: εἰρήνην ἔχομεν, (eirēnēn echomen, we have peace) but some manuscripts read Greek: εἰρήνην ἔχωμεν, (eirēnēn echōmen, let us maintain peace with God) 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".