For now the Apostle takes up that word, "_the Love of God_," and holds it to our sight, and we see in its pure glory no vague abstraction, but the face, and the work, of Jesus Christ. Such is the context into which we now advance. He is reasoning on; "_For_ Christ, when we still were weak." He has set justification before us in its majestic lawfulness. But he has now to expand its mighty love, of which the Holy Ghost has made us conscious in our hearts. We are to see in the Atonement not only a guarantee that we have a valid title to a just acceptance. We are to see in it the love of the Father and the Son, so that not our security only but our bliss may be full. [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =For Christ, we still being weak,= (gentle euphemism for our utter impotence, our guilty inability to meet the sinless claim of the Law of God,) =in season,= in the fulness of time, when the ages of precept and of failure had done their work, and man had learnt something to purpose of the lesson of self-despair, =for the ungodly--died.= "_For the ungodly_," ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν, "_concerning them_," "with reference to them," that is to say, in this context of saving mercy, "in their interests, for their rescue,[71] as their propitiation." "_The ungodly_," or, more literally still, without the article, "_ungodly ones_"; a designation general and inclusive for those for whom He died. Above (iv. 5) we saw the word used with a certain limitation, as of the worst among the sinful. But here, surely, with a solemn paradox, it covers the whole field of the Fall. The ungodly here are not the flagrant and disreputable only; they are all who are not in harmony with God; the potential as well as the actual doers of grievous sin. For them "_Christ died_"; not "lived," let us remember, but "died." It was a question not of example, nor of suasion, nor even of utterances of divine compassion. It was a question of law and guilt; and it was to be met only by the death-sentence and the death-fact; such death as HE died of whom, a little while before, this same Correspondent had written to the converts of Galatia (iii. 13); "Christ bought us out from the curse of the Law, when He became a curse for us." All the untold emphasis of the sentence, and of the thought, lies here upon those last words, upon each and all of them, "_for ungodly ones--He died_," ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν--ἀπέθανε. The sequel shews this to us; he proceeds: [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =For scarcely,= with difficulty, and in rare instances, =for a just man will one die;= "_scarcely_," he will not say "_never_," =for for the good man,= the man answering in some measure the ideal of gracious and not only of legal goodness,[72] =perhaps someone actually ventures to die.= [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =But God commends,= as by a glorious contrast (συνίστησι), =His love,= "_His_" as above all current human love, "_His own love_," τὴν Ἑαυτοῦ, =towards us, because while we were still sinners,= and as such repulsive to the Holy One, =Christ for us did die.=