ROMANS 5:7

After stating that Jesus died for us when we were still sinners, he puts that remarkable fact into context by comparing His sacrificial love with that of human beings: “A man will hardly die for a just / righteous man (dikaiou) – but it may be that a man would die for a good man (agathou).” At least, that is the basic rendering of Romans 5:7 in RSV, NRSV, NIV, NEB, NASB, and TEV.

While the overall gist of the comparison between Christ's love and human love is abundantly clear here, it is not so easy to explain why there is a seeming difference between human love toward a just man and a good man. Several approaches have been tried in order to sort out this problem.

    1. The most obvious way out is to state that the last half of v. 7 was added by Paul or someone else to correct or modify the first half of the verse. Thus, Kasemann hypothesizes that “death even for the righteous is described as rare...But then the apostle remembers that sacrificial deaths are common enough. He thus concedes quite tortuously this possibility as regards the good.”

However, Fitzmyer points out, “This verse is much disputed, whether all of it or only its second part is a later gloss, a qualification, or a correction added by Paul himself to the text written by Tertius, the scribe. None of the suggestions about its shape as a gloss has carried conviction and clearly one has to wrestle with the Pauline text as it is.”

    2. Cranfield and Boylan translate tou agathou as “his benefactor” to explain why a person might die for him. As Morris says, this understanding is “too definite.”

    3. On the other hand, if agathos is taken as a neuter adjective, it can be translated as “for a good cause.” In fact, this is just the approach that William Barclay took in his rendering “It may be that a man would even dare to die for the good cause.” He is pretty much alone in that translation, and Morris concludes that “it is better to understand both adjectives as masculine.”

    4. The next approach is to try and explain the difference between a good man and a righteous (or just) one. One classic version of this type of explanation was given by earlier commentators such as Hodge and Sanday. They stated that a righteous man is one who commands our admiration for his respect for justice while a good man, on the other hand, is additionally kind and commands our affection. It is the latter whom we would be most likely to die for.

In the same vein, Leon Morris says, “It remains a question whether Paul makes a distinction between the righteous man and the good one. But he does not seem to regard them here as synonymous. The righteous or “just” man is the one who keeps the letter of the law; he does what is right. But the good person goes beyond that. There is a warmth of good feeling and generosity about his actions.” For confirmation of this view, he cites Irenaeus, who called the God of the OT dikaios and the God of the NT agathos. However, a closer reading of both Testaments will show that such a distinction is not really valid.

Kasemann also sees a distinction between the two types but “to be sure not the kindly person but the particularly worthy person. A neutral interpretation as the good does not fit in view of the parallelism and intensifying in relation to dikaios, which as the sense of 'upright.'”

Several modern translations take this approach:

    “Rare, indeed, is it that one should lay down one's life for an upright person – though, for a really good person one might conceivable have courage to die.” (Anchor Bible) Fitzmyer justifies this translation by stating that Paul allows “that possibly for a really good person, a close relative or a gracious benefactor, one might give up one's natural life.”

    “We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice.” (The Message)

5. Jerusalem Bible takes another way out and reverses the two adjectives of the Greek text to reflect what seems to be a more logical progression.

“It is not easy to die even for a good man – though of course for someone really worthy, a man might be prepared to die.”

I have noted that their translators have taken the same sort of undue liberties with the biblical text elsewhere when they run into passages which are a little difficult to comprehend.

    6. Last, but not at all least, in the possibilities is to minimize the differences between a just man and a good man. Murray, for one, states that “it is scarcely defensible plead this distinction between the righteous man and the good man” and quotes Calvin in saying “that these two epithets are used to designate the same individual as both righteous and good.”

Davidson and Martin similarly explain: “The apostle makes a verbal contrast between the righteous and the good man. But no hard-and-fast distinction should be drawn.”

Thus, two paraphrases collapse v. 7 as follows:

    J.B. Phillips: “In human experience, it is a rare thing for one man to give his life for another, even if the latter be a good man.”

    Living Bible: “Even if we were good, we really wouldn't expect anyone to die for us.”

My own personal preference is to go with fourth explanation as being the most likely, but I certainly would not go out on a limb to defend it.