9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
In this verse, Paul delineates another blessing of our justification. The phrase, “much more then”, at the beginning of the verse introduces an argument from the greater to the lesser: if Christ has already achieved the great work of justifying sinners by shedding His blood, He will certainly perform the comparatively simple task of keeping them safe. If, when we were enemies, He overcame all that was in the way of our salvation, then now that we are His own people, we all the more have reason to expect that He will afford us protection!
As he had said before in verse 1, Paul here presents our justification as an accomplished fact, when he declared us as “being now justified by his blood”. Our justification is now ratified and guaranteed by the blood Christ shed for us on the cross. An emphasis is placed on “his blood”. It is not the blood of bulls and goats, but the blood of Christ the Son of God, that was shed for our justification. The blood of Christ was efficacious to all the purposes for which it was shed, namely our propitiation (Romans 3:25), our redemption (Ephesians 1:7: Colossians 1:14; 1 Peter 1:18-19), our cleansing (1 John 1:7; Revelation 1:5; 7:14), and our justification in particular.
Oh, how concerned our Lord Jesus was regarding our justification! In order to seal our justification, He shed His blood for us in His death on the cross. There is nothing more to be done for our justification. The shedding of His blood has fully and thoroughly accomplished and secured our justification. As Paul said in Colossians 2:14, “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross”.
Because we are justified by His blood, Paul declares in this verse that “we shall be saved from wrath through him.” Admittedly, because of our sins, we were “children of wrath” and “children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2, 3), upon whom “the wrath of God cometh” (Colossians 3:6). However, Paul here declares that because of Christ’s shed blood, we shall be entirely delivered from God’s wrath even though we deserve it. The justification by the blood of Christ frees us from the wrath of God that was upon us.
Our present justification guarantees our future deliverance from God’s wrath and righteous judgment against the unrepentant and the unsaved.