Romans 4:25 – Death and resurrection as unity

“Who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

Romans 4:25 (ESV, adapted)

Context

Romans 4:25 is the closing verse of a self-contained line of argument (Rom 3:21 — 4:25) in which Paul shows that justification comes “by faith” and not “by works of the Law.” Abraham is the paradigm of this faith: he believed God, “and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom 4:3; cf. Gen 15:6). Verse 25 carries this line on christologically: we too receive the reckoning of righteousness, namely through faith in the One “who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead” (v. 24).

Verses 24–25 form a doubly parallel sentence whose symmetry stands out clearly in the Greek: hos paredothe dia ta paraptômata hêmôn kai êgerthê dia tên dikaiôsin hêmôn. Both verbal forms are theological passives (passivum divinum: God is the unspoken subject). Both prepositional phrases are syntactically identical (diá + accusative). This spatial parallelism must not be broken open hermeneutically.

The immediate context binds Rom 4:25 explicitly to the resurrection: v. 24 does not say “to those who believe in him who let Christ die for them,” but “to those who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.” The object of faith is therefore God as the one who raises — not God as a creditor receiving payment. Whoever ignores this reads against the text.

In the wider context of the letter the line is resumed in Rom 5:10: “we were reconciled by the death of his Son — much more shall we be saved by his life” (en têi zôêi autou). Death and life are stepped here: reconciliation in the death, salvation in the life. Rom 4:25 anticipates this stepping, and Rom 5:10 unfolds it. Both passages force the resurrection into the centre of salvation.

Finally 1 Cor 15:17 provides the strict logical test: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” That makes it clear: the death of Christ alone, without the raising, leaves sins still in place — a finding that is hard to reconcile with a purely penal-satisfactory reading of Rom 4:25.

Socinian core thesis

For the Socinian reading Romans 4:25 is perhaps the clearest scriptural witness against the Anselmic and Reformational narrowing that locates justification in the death on the cross alone. Paul himself does not separate death and resurrection — but he distinguishes between their functions: Christ's being given up takes place with regard to our offences (it was necessary because we had offended); his being raised takes place with regard to our justification (this is the constitutive place at which God declares us righteous).

The parallel construction paredothe dia — êgerthê dia forbids treating either half as an already complete saving act. Were justification finished in the death on the cross, the second half of the verse (êgerthê dia tên dikaiôsin hêmôn) would be rhetorically empty — a mere appendix. But Paul gives the raising its own finis: dia tên dikaiôsin hêmôn. This independence is the key.

Fausto Sozzini saw this with the greatest acuity. In “De Iesu Christo Servatore” (II,10) he unfolds the thesis: the absolution from sins takes place in virtue of the raising — not in virtue of the death. The death is the precondition (it seals Christ's self-giving and first makes the resurrection possible at all); but the dikaiôsis itself, the declaration of righteousness, is the work of the resurrection.

This has dogmatic consequences. Whoever understands justification as a juridical exchange on the cross cannot explain why Paul places the raising syntactically on the same level. But whoever takes the Socinian reading seriously sees: justification is a sharing in the life of the risen Christ, not the reckoning of a penal merit. Salvation is a relationship — and a relationship is possible only with the Living One, not with the dead.

In this way the Socinian reading also resolves the problem the Reformational tradition has had with the resurrection: it often shrank to a mere assurance of what was already done on the cross. In Rom 4:25, however, the raising is itself a saving act — not a piece of evidence for some other saving act.

Exegesis: key terms and word-field

Five key terms decide the interpretation of Rom 4:25 on philological grounds:

paradídômi / paredothe — “to be delivered up”

The Greek aorist passive paredothe means literally “he was handed over.” The subject of the handing-over is not expressed (theological passive): in Pauline usage it is God who gives. Cf. Rom 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all” (hypér hêmôn pántôn parédôken autón). There too God stands as the giver, not as a recipient of payment.

In Isa 53:6 and 53:12 LXX the same verb paradídômi is used: “and the Lord delivered him up for our sins” (kýrios parédôken autón tais hamartíais hêmôn). Paul is here plainly taking up the material of the Servant Songs. But Isa 53 itself knows no payee for the price — the Servant is handed over in order to rescue, not in order to settle a penal sum.

The semantic field of paradídômi in the NT is wide: it describes Judas's betrayal of Jesus (Mark 14:10), the handing over to Roman hands (Mark 15:1), Christ's self-giving (Gal 2:20: parádontôs heauton hyper emou). Nowhere in the Pauline corpus does the word carry the juridical shading “to pay as a penal performance.” It denotes self-surrender as an act of love or as an event of delivering up.

diá + accusative — the ambiguous preposition

The Greek preposition diá with the accusative has a broad range of meaning in Koine. The most important readings are: causal (“because of,” Lat. propter), final (“for the sake of,” “with a view to”), dispositional (“occasioned by”), and retributive-juridical (“for the paying off of”). Which meaning applies is always decided by the context.

In Rom 4:25 diá stands identically twice: diá ta paraptômata hêmôn and diá tên dikaiôsin hêmôn. Because of this strict parallelism the same basic meaning must apply in both cases. The second half (“for our justification”) is unambiguously final/dispositional. The first half therefore cannot be retributive-juridical: Christ was delivered up with a view to our trespasses, not as a payment for our trespasses.

Sozzini himself draws this linguistic observation explicitly (cf. De Iesu Christo Servatore, II,3): “Christ died for our sins” means “for our sake” or “because of our sins,” not “in our place for our sins.” Whoever confuses the two confuses grammar with dogmatics.

An instructive parallel is Rom 4:25 itself in the Latin tradition: the Vulgate translates propter delicta nostra and propter iustificationem nostram — consistently causal-final, not juridical. Only medieval scholasticism made the propter into a substitutionary pro.

paráptôma — “trespass,” not “penal offence”

Paráptôma literally: “false step,” “a falling beside.” In Pauline usage it denotes the individual concrete offence, often in contrast to the fundamental power of sin (hamartía). In the context of Rom 4 it stands for the culpable acts on account of which we need justification — not for an objective penal sum.

The plural ta paraptômata hêmôn marks the multiplicity of human trespasses which stand in need of divine forgiveness. It is not a question of a single, transferable quantity of punishment to be juridically settled. It is a question of our concrete acts, which motivated Christ's self-giving.

Compare Rom 5:15–17, where Adam's paráptôma (the fall) and Christ's chárisma (gift of grace) are contrasted: not punishment against payment, but fall against raising up. The semantic horizon is thus not juridical but existential-saving.

egeirô / êgerthê — “to be raised”

Êgerthê is once more an aorist passive: “he was raised.” God is the subject of the raising. The resurrection of Christ is thus expressly marked as a divine saving act — not as a mere wonder of nature, nor as a confirmation of what Christ would already have accomplished by himself.

In Paul egeirô is the central resurrection term (Rom 6:4.9; 8:11; 10:9; 1 Cor 15 passim; 2 Cor 4:14; Gal 1:1; Eph 1:20; Phil 2:9 implied; Col 2:12). In none of these passages is the raising merely proof of an already accomplished satisfaction. It is always an independent saving act: it creates the new life in which believers are justified.

In particular Rom 6:4 sets out the ecclesiological-existential effect: “so that, just as Christ was raised through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life.” The resurrection is not a closed act, related to Christ and reaching us only indirectly by juridical reckoning; it is the saving power in which we live.

dikaíôsis — “justification” as an act, not as a substance

Dikaíôsis is a verbal noun and denotes the act of declaring righteous, not a substance. Paul uses the word in the NT only twice: Rom 4:25 and Rom 5:18 (dikaiôsis zôês, “justification of life”). Both places bind justification and life together.

In the Socinian understanding the dikaiôsis is God's free absolution — not the imputation of a merit or the entering of a penal performance into the books. Sozzini says explicitly in his tract “On Justification”: “Our justification before God is… nothing other than being held righteous by God.” It comes about wholly freely, because God of his free will forgives — not because a penal sum has been paid to him.

That Paul links the dikaiôsis explicitly with the raising has a deeper theological layer: if justification takes place in the living Christ, then it is not a closed juridical act but an enduring relationship — the “intercession” of the Risen One at God's right hand (Rom 8:34) is its ecclesiological execution.

Comparison of interpretations

Reference to Fausto Sozzini

Fausto Sozzini takes up Romans 4:25 in several places in his main work “On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore).” The most important passage stands in the context of his discussion with the Reformational doctrine of penal satisfaction. There he shows: if Paul gives the raising its own finis, then justification cannot already be complete on the cross.

“Paul could say nothing stronger for the truth than: ‘Yea rather, who was raised again.’ For from these words it is recognised how much mightier is the power of the resurrection for our absolution than that of the death, which is also entirely true. For Christ indeed died for our sins, that is, for the sake of our expiation; but he rose again for the sake of our justification, Romans 4:25, that is, that we might be absolved from the sins themselves.”

Fausto Sozzini, “On Jesus Christ the Saviour (De Iesu Christo Servatore),” Part II, chapter 10 · section on the continuing expiation in heaven

Sozzini here offers a linguistically exact reading of the verse, diametrically opposed to the Reformational narrowing. For him the parallel construction is an argumentum a fortiori: if the raising is syntactically set alongside the death, then it also carries saving weight — indeed more so, for it is through the raising that we are “absolved.”

No less remarkable is the conceptual distinction Sozzini introduces: Christ “died for the sake of our expiation” (Lat. expiatio, Gr. hilasmós) — that is the preparation, the cleansing movement. “He rose for the sake of our justification” — that is the execution, the absolution itself. The two belong inseparably together, but they are not identical. Whoever identifies them blurs Pauline precision.

In what follows Sozzini unfolds that the continuing expiation takes place in heaven (Rom 8:34: “Christ Jesus, who died — yea, rather, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us”). The death was the “how” (the manner in which the self-giving was accomplished); the raising and the sitting at God's right hand are the “who” and the “where” of the enduring justification. Justification is therefore never a closed juridical operation but a lasting living reality in the Risen One.

It is striking, finally, that Sozzini formulates without polemics but with uncompromising precision: if justification were already complete on the cross, then Paul's “yea rather, who was raised again” (Rom 8:34) would be a rhetorical heightening without substantive content. But because Paul writes precisely, the matter must stand as Paul says — and that means: justification takes place in the Risen One.

Overview of Sozzini's writings

Logical arguments

Romans 4:25 yields the following logical and linguistic-philological arguments against the penal-substitutionary narrowing of the doctrine of justification:

1. Argument from the parallel construction. The strict symmetry paredothe dia — êgerthê dia is the strongest linguistic fact of the verse. Death and resurrection are grammatically weighted equally. Any interpretation that ascribes all the saving weight to one of the two halves violates Pauline syntax.
2. Argument from the theological passive. Both verbs (paredothe and êgerthê) are passivum divinum: God is the subject. If God is the one who gives up, he is not at the same time the recipient of a penal payment — otherwise he pays himself, a logical circle that Sozzini already pressed against Anselm.
3. Argument from 1 Cor 15:17. “If Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins.” If the death alone were the justification, sins could also be wiped out without the resurrection. But Paul says clearly: without resurrection no forgiveness. That fits only with Rom 4:25 in the Socinian reading.
4. Argument from Rom 5:10. “Reconciled by the death, saved by his life”: Paul himself differentiates between reconciliation (death) and salvation (life of the Risen One). Rom 4:25 anticipates this stepping. The Reformational identification of reconciliation and justification misses this Pauline precision.
5. Argument from Rom 8:34. “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus, who died — yea, rather, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us”: the heightening “yea, rather” shifts the saving weight from death to raising and sitting at God's right hand. Precisely this is, on the Socinian reading, the enduring work of justification in heaven.
6. Argument from Heb 7:25. “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” Salvation follows from Christ's life, not from a completed penal act. Precisely this line is carried forward by Rom 4:25b.
7. Argument from the Latin tradition. The Vulgate translates diá both times with propter (“because of” / “for the sake of”), not with pro (“in place of”). Only medieval scholasticism reads the propter retributively. Sozzini returns to the original sense of the preposition.
8. Argument from the subjectivity of salvation. If justification had already happened juridically on the cross, the subjective appropriation through faith would be merely the subsequent acknowledgement of an already finished thing. But Rom 4:24 binds faith precisely to God as the One who raises. The object of faith is the living Christ — without the Living One no justification.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages deepen the interpretation in the light of the overall Pauline and New Testament witness:

1 Corinthians 15:17 — without resurrection no forgiveness

“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.” This is the strict logical test of Rom 4:25. Paul does not say that without the resurrection our faith would be futile because we would lack proof; he says we would be still in our sins. With that it is clear: the wiping out of sins hangs constitutively on the raising, not on the death alone.

Romans 5:10 — reconciled by the death, saved by his life

“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” Paul here differentiates explicitly between reconciliation (death) and salvation (life of the Risen One). Rom 4:25 is the syntactic compression of this stepping.

Romans 8:34 — raised, at God's right hand, interceding

“Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus, who died — yea, rather, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.” The mállon (“yea, rather”) is the rhetorical heightening: the raising weighs more than the death — in the context of absolution from condemnation.

Romans 4:24 — faith in the One who raises

“To those who believe in him who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead.” Paul defines the object of faith explicitly as God in his quality as the One who raises. Faith thus does not depend on a closed penal satisfaction but on God's living saving action at the Risen One.

Hebrews 7:25 — salvation from Christ's life

“Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” Salvation comes from Christ's life, not from a completed penal process. Hebrews thereby shares the basic theological structure of Rom 4:25b.

Acts 2:23–24 — death and raising as one plan of God

“This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed… God raised him up.” The earliest apostolic preaching sets death and raising as two sides of the same divine plan. Rom 4:25 is the Pauline condensation of this one comprehensive movement.

Galatians 1:1 — God the One who raises

“Paul, an apostle — not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” Even the prescript of the letter identifies God as the One who raises. This predication is the theological constant of the Pauline image of God — in a penal-substitutionary model that made God into the recipient of a payment it would have no meaningful place.

Philippians 3:10–11 — power of the resurrection

“That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings… that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” For Paul the power of the resurrection is not a derived proof but an independent saving magnitude, the knowing of which is the goal of the apostle. This also fits exactly with Rom 4:25b.

Objections and Socinian responses

Objection 1: “diá with the accusative is unambiguously causal-retributive: because of our punishment.”

This cannot be sustained linguistically. Diá with the accusative is ambiguous in Koine: causal, final, dispositional. Which reading applies is decided by the context — not by a dogmatic pre-understanding. In Rom 4:25 diá stands identically twice, in v. 25a and in v. 25b. Since the second half is unmistakably final (“for the sake of our justification”), the first half must also be final: “for the sake of our trespasses” or “because of our trespasses” (causal, not retributive).

Moreover Rom 8:32 shows the Pauline idiom: “God did not spare his own Son but delivered him up hyper hêmôn for us all.” Here the self-giving is described as a gift of love by God for us — not as an entry of punishment against us. Whoever reads diá retributively comes into tension with this more fundamental Pauline theology of self-giving.

Sozzini himself made this observation explicitly: “You ought therefore to have recognised that ‘Christ died for our sins’ means nothing else than: for the sake of our sins or because of our sins, as is said in Romans 4:25” (De Iesu Christo Servatore, II,3). The juridical narrowing is a later import, not the Pauline sense.

Finally: the Vulgate translates propter delicta nostra — propter in classical Latin is clearly causal-final, not retributive. Only medieval scholasticism made of the propter a ground of punishment. Sozzini only restores the original reading.

Objection 2: “The resurrection is only the proof of the accepted penal performance.”

This does not fit syntactically with Rom 4:25. If the resurrection were a mere act of proof, the second half of the verse (êgerthê dia tên dikaiôsin hêmôn) would be rhetorically empty: Paul would describe the raising as a saving act with a view to our justification, although it would in fact be only a confirmation. That is exegetically untenable.

Moreover this clashes with Rom 5:10: there we are expressly saved by his life. Salvation follows from the life of the Risen One, not from a finished payment. Whoever turns the resurrection into a mere proof flattens Pauline soteriology into a juridical act.

Sozzini argues precisely at this point: “how much mightier is the power of the resurrection for our absolution than that of the death” (De Iesu Christo Servatore, II,10). If the death had already accomplished everything, then Paul's “yea rather, who was raised” (Rom 8:34) would be a meaningless heightening. But the heightening has substantive force: it points to the ongoing justification taking place in the Risen One.

Finally the proof-model cannot explain why Heb 7:25 derives salvation from Christ's life: “he is able to save… since he always lives to make intercession for them.” Salvation is here a function of the abiding life, not of a completed penal process. This too fits only the Socinian reading of Rom 4:25.

Objection 3: “The Reformational doctrine of simul iustus et peccator requires the imputation on the cross.”

Exactly — and this is a substantive consequence, not a weakness. Pauline doctrine of justification is not a doctrine of imputation but a doctrine of communion of life. Whoever believes in the risen Christ is taken into his saving reality — not juridically covered by an alien penal performance, but truly renewed in the communion of life with the Risen One.

Sozzini has set this out in his tract “On Justification”: “Our justification before God is… nothing other than being held righteous by God.” This absolution comes about wholly freely, because God of his free will forgives — not because an alien penal performance has been put on the books. The figure of imputation dissolves because it is not necessary.

Pauline justification language (Rom 3–5) does not carry the Reformational narrowing. “Righteousness of God” (dikaiosyne theou) in Pauline context is God's saving covenant faithfulness, not a forensic penal accountancy. Cf. on this Rom 3:25–26: hilastêrion as a place of the encounter of grace, not as a place for the payment of penalties.

It is therefore not the verse that has to yield to the model, but the model that has to be tested before the verse. Rom 4:25 is directed against the Reformational narrowing, not vice versa.

Objection 4: “If justification comes from the living Christ, the cross is theologically superfluous.”

This is a caricature. Rom 4:25a is not superfluous — on the contrary: Christ was delivered up with a view to our trespasses. The death has a clear place: it is the self-giving that shows us God's love (Rom 5:8), founds the new covenant (Matt 26:28), breaks the power of death (Heb 2:14–15), consecrates Christ as high priest (Heb 9:11–14), calls us into discipleship (1 Pet 2:21).

For the Socinian view the death on the cross is therefore anything but superfluous. It is the presupposition of the raising, without which the raising would not be possible at all. Sozzini himself says in “Our justification through Christ”: “For since the death of Christ in itself sealed and confirmed the forgiveness of sins offered to us by God through Christ himself, and since it was necessary in order that the resurrection of Christ might be set before our eyes as the surest pledge of our own resurrection…”

What the Socinian reading abandons is not the significance of the cross but a particular juridical theory of the significance of the cross — the penal-substitutionary theory. In its place comes a richer, multi-dimensional theology of salvation in which death and raising each retain their own saving sense.

Finally this objection reverses the logical relation: whoever maintains that without penal substitution the death on the cross is superfluous has already presupposed the penal-substitutionary model. The verse itself does not presuppose it — and without the presupposition the objection disappears.

Objection 5: “The patristic and later ecclesial tradition reads Rom 4:25 mostly in penal-substitutionary fashion.”

This is factually imprecise. The early church tradition (Justin, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine in many places) read Rom 4:25 mostly not in penal-substitutionary fashion. The penal-substitutionary reading is a late development, essentially Anselmic and Reformational (11th–16th c.). Whoever speaks of 1500 years of tradition blanks out the first 1000 years.

Even within the Reformational tradition Rom 4:25 has from the beginning been a point of dispute. Calvin himself saw the difficulty of the parallel construction and could only contain it by means of complex auxiliary hypotheses. Sozzini only carries forward what was already simmering under the surface in Calvin: the Pauline precision of the dual statement.

Furthermore tradition is no ultimate hermeneutical criterion for biblical exegesis. The sola scriptura principle, upheld by the Reformational tradition itself, demands that the text take precedence over tradition. If the text corrects tradition, tradition must yield.

Finally modern Pauline scholarship (E. Käsemann, U. Wilckens, J. D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright) is increasingly converging on a reading that takes the raising seriously as constitutive of salvation and not merely as a subsequent act of proof. The Socinian position is thus not an isolated heresy but a forerunner of an exegetical insight that has become widespread.

Theological consequences

Related verses

The following passages support, deepen or contrast the interpretation presented here:

• Romans 5:8–10 — Reconciliation in the death, salvation through the life of the Risen One — the Pauline stepping that Rom 4:25 anticipates.
• Hebrews 9:11–14 — Eternally living high priest — justification as enduring reality in the Risen One.
• Acts 2:23 — Death and raising as one plan of God, the earliest apostolic witness of the unity.
• Romans 3:25–26 — Hilastêrion as the place of the encounter of grace, not as a place for the payment of penalties — a related precision of Pauline justification language.
• 1 Corinthians 15:24 — Kingdom of God and resurrection-reality — the eschatological horizon of justification.
• Mark 10:45 — The ransom-logion as a picture of liberation — related critique of retributive readings.

Summary

Romans 4:25 is syntactically, semantically and theologically a key verse against the penal-substitutionary narrowing of the doctrine of justification. The parallel construction paredothe dia — êgerthê dia binds death and raising together as one saving event, but gives each half its own finis: Christ was delivered up with a view to our trespasses, raised with a view to our justification.

Read in a Socinian way it follows: justification is not juridically closed on the cross but is constituted in the living Christ. Fausto Sozzini formulated this clearly in “De Iesu Christo Servatore” (II,10): “Christ indeed died for our sins, that is, for the sake of our expiation; but he rose again for the sake of our justification, Romans 4:25, that is, that we might be absolved from the sins themselves.” The parallel construction demands a parallel validity — and the raising is constitutive of salvation, not merely evidential.

The theological consequences are far-reaching: God is the One who raises, not the recipient of a penal payment. Christ is the Living One with whom we enter into saving communion. Justification is a living relationship, not juridical imputation. In this way Socinian soteriology relieves Pauline speech of its forensic narrowing and restores its relational, christological-pneumatic depth. Salvation is communion of life with the Risen One — and Rom 4:25 is the verse that says this most densely.