“Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Romans 5:9-10).
The God who created humanity as thinking, rational beings is clearly the God who revealed the inspired Scriptures. One of the many infallible proofs of this is found it its repeated use of a fortiori argumentation.
A fortiori is Latin for “with even stronger reason”. It is used in logic for any situation in which if one thing is true, then it can be confidently inferred that a second thing is even more certainly true.
Jesus employed this argumentation in His teaching: “Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?…If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!…If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his household!…Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds?” (Matthew 6:30, 7:11, 10:25; Luke 10:24).
Twice in Romans 5:9-10 (and two more times later in chapter 5) the apostle Paul uses the words polloi mallon (“much more”) to demonstrate the absolute, logical certainty of these glorious truths:
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Justification by Christ’s blood makes salvation from God’s wrath certain (v. 9).
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Reconciliation to God through the death of His Son makes salvation by His life certain (v. 10).
When used properly, rational thinking fortifies a Christian’s faith with certainty, “much more” certainty.
