Romans 5:1 - we have or let us have - by Ken Clezy

Romans 5:1

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Rom 5:1   Is it ‘we have’ or ‘let us have’?

Most English Bibles have Paul using the indicative tense ‘we have’ in this famous verse, but many of the earliest Greek manuscripts – those that are usually regarded as the most reliable – have the subjunctive ‘let us have’ peace with God.  The difference is in one letter in the middle of a word: is it a long O or a short O? 

Presumably Paul dictated this verse to Tertius, and as the indicative word sounds much the same as the subjunctive, many commentators say Paul said ‘we have’ but Tertius heard ‘let us have’.

Does it matter? Surely, if we have been justified through faith we ought have peace with God.  But do we, always?  We know God measures our love for him by our obedience, not by how loudly we sing about it.  So, are we always obedient?  If we can truthfully say we are never deliberately disobedient – if we never do anything we know is contrary to Christ’s law – that’s one thing, but disobedience in the sense of putting off doing what we feel pretty sure is his will for us is quite another.  We may like to think such disobedience isn’t as bad, and it may not be, but sometimes it is.

I once knew a Sydney businessman who admitted at the end of his life that he had one great regret: when he was young he’d felt called to go to China as a missionary, but the girl he wanted to marry wasn’t going anywhere, certainly not to China.  They married, he made pots of money and was able to give large sums towards God’s work, their children all became Christians and a couple of them served overseas.  But for all his life that man carried the guilty feeling that he hadn’t done what he felt God had required of him.

The fact that God still blessed him suggests that God forgave him, which may comfort us if we’ve been in the same situation, but if we’ve been disobedient like this, we may not have peace with God.   Paul was strong on obedience, so I think he intended Tertius to write ‘Let us have peace with God.  Think about it.