The apostle also knows what kind of God he has ascribed to us, when he writes: "If God spared not His own Son, but gave Him up for us, how did He not with Him also give us all things? " You see how divine Wisdom has murdered even her own proper, first-born and only Son, who is certainly about to live, nay, to bring back the others also into life. I can say with the Wisdom of God; It is Christ who gave Himself up for our offences. Already has Wisdom butchered herself also.
Paul says this in order to show that we ought to hate and reject the things for which Christ died. For if we believe that he was sacrificed for our sins, how can we not consider every sin to be alien and hostile to us, considering that our Lord was handed over to death because of it?…If we have risen together with Christ, who is our justification, and we now walk in newness of life and live according to righteousness, then Christ has risen for the purpose of our justification. But if we have not yet cast off the old man with all his works but instead live in unrighteousness, I dare to suggest that Christ has not yet risen for our justification, nor has he been sacrificed for our sins.
Those who were baptized before Christ’s passion received only the remission of their sins.… But after the resurrection both those who were baptized before and those who were baptized after were all justified by the set form of faith in the Trinity, and they received the Holy Spirit, who is the sign of believers that they are children of God.… For by the Savior’s passion death is vanquished. Once it was dominant because of sin, but it does not dare to hang on to those who have been justified by God.
After saying many great things of Abraham, and his faith, and righteousness, and honor before God, lest the hearer should say, What is this to us, for it is he that was justified? he places us close to the Patriarch again. So great is the power of spiritual words. For of one of the Gentiles, one who was recently come near, one who had done no work, he not only says that he is in nothing inferior to the Jew who believes (i.e. as a Jew), but not even to the Patriarch, but rather, if one must give utterance to the wondrous truth, even much greater. For so noble is our birth, that his faith is but the type of ours. And he does not say, If it was reckoned unto him, it is probable it will be also to us, that he might not make it matter of syllogism. But he speaks in authentic words of the divine law, and makes the whole a declaration of the Scripture. For why was it written, he says, save to make us see that we also were justified in this way? For it is the same God Whom we have believed, and upon the same matters, if it be not in the case of the same persons. And after speaking of our faith, he also mentions God's unspeakable love towards man, which he ever presents on all sides, bringing the Cross before us.
See how after mentioning the cause of His death, he makes the same cause likewise a demonstration of the resurrection. For why, he means, was He crucified? Not for any sin of His own. And this is plain from the Resurrection. For if He were a sinner, how should He have risen? But if He rose, it is quite plain that He was not a sinner. But if He was not a sinner, how came He to be crucified?-For others,-and if for others, then surely he rose again. Now to prevent your saying, How, when liable for so great sins, came we to be justified? he points out One that blotteth out all sins, that both from Abraham's faith, whereby he was justified, and from the Saviour's Passion, whereby we were freed from our sins, he might confirm what he had said. And after mentioning His Death, he speaks also of His Resurrection. For the purpose of His dying was not that He might hold us liable to punishment and in condemnation, but that He might do good unto us. For for this cause He both died and rose again, that He might make us righteous.
Christ wiped away our sins by his death, and, rising again in the same state as the one in which he died, he appeared to believers in order to confirm their righteousness.
[AD 220] Tertullian on Romans 4:25