Romans 5:6

The reading εἴ γε is well supported, and yields a good sense (“so surely as”: Evans), though the suggestion is made in W. and H. that it may be a primitive error for εἴ περ (see note on Romans 3:30). The assurance we have of the love of God is no doubt conditioned, but the condition may be expressed with the utmost force, as it is with εἴ γε, for there is no doubt that what it puts as a hypothesis has actually taken place, viz., Christ's death for the ungodly. Although he says εἴ γε, the objective fact which follows is in no sense open to question: it is to the Apostle the first of certainties. Cf. the use of εἴ γε in Ephesians 3:2; Ephesians 4:21, and Ellicott's note on the former. ἀσθενῶν : the weakness of men who had not yet received the Spirit is conceived as appealing to the love of God. ἔτι goes with ὄντων ἡμ. ἀσθενῶν : the persons concerned were no longer weak, when Paul wrote, but strong in their new relation to God. κατὰ καιρὸν has been taken with ὄντῶν ἡ. ἀ. ἔτι : “while we were yet without strength, as the pre-Christian era implied or required”: but this meaning is remote, and must have been more clearly suggested. The analogy of Galatians 4:4; Ephesians 1:10, supports the ordinary rendering, “in due time,” i.e., at the time determined by the Providence of God and the history of man as the proper time, Christ died. ὑπέρ : in the interest of, not equivalent to ἀντί, instead of: whether the interest of the ungodly is secured by the fact that Christ's death has a substitutionary character, or in some other way, is a question which ὑπέρ does not touch.