The following is a commentary on Rom 5:1-2 provided by Theodoret of
Cyrus (393-460). Note how, contra many Reformed Protestant interpretation of
this text, Theodoret uses it in support of transformative justification,
meritorious good works (done by God’s grace, not with a goal towards strict
legal merit), and even baptismal regeneration, all anathema to Reformed
theology!
Faith then has given us remission of sins,
and made us blameless and just by the regeneration of the baptismal font, and
it is incumbent on you to preserve the peace thus effected. For the
only-begotten by His incarnation has reconciled you, while you were in hostility
with Him, and sin it was that produced this hostility, righteousness therefore
it must be which will maintain the peace commenced; and this then we are in
every way bound to pursue by the consideration of the hopes held out, and the
glory promised by God to be given to us. For the recompense of our labors he
calls not payment, but glory, to show the excess of our reward. And as they had
at that time to endure many troubles, being beaten, tortured, and subjected to
a thousand kinds of death, he most fitly brings forward the sources of consolation
connected with these things. (Commentary of Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, in
Syria, on St. Pau's Epistle to the Romans, in The
Christian Remembrancer: A Quarterly Review, Volume 21 (1839):349)
An Examination and Critique of the Theological Presuppositions Underlying Reformed Theology
