Isaiah 53 reminded us of the fact that Jesus died because we messed up, and this passage in Romans carries on the theme. It's all so clear; each of us are sinners in desperate need of Jesus’s heart of mercy that longs to atone for us. It was only His blood that could pay the price, bringing us back out of exile and home to God.
The only way that Jesus could die was for Him to take on flesh and bone in the first place. Paul explains that it is through not only Jesus' death (6-8) but his resurrection (9-11) that we can now stand before God, secure that the debt has been paid, that the guilt and sin has been dealt with.
But does Paul mean when he writes about us being God's enemies? Surely that can't be right? Well, it is. Unbelief is hostility, choosing to reject God places us opposite Him.
But Jesus's actions were so loving, His arms so strong that He made the first move. While we wayward children, living against Him, His death put things right.
And only He could have done it. Only heaven’s Lion could have become the perfect Lamb.
Look back at Leviticus 4:1-3 and 27-35 and we see that sin - whether intentional or not - needs to be paid for. Why? God has always longed for the hearts of His people, and this complex set of rituals was designed with one purpose in mind: to remind them of all that He had done for them. Back in Romans 5, verse 11 here makes perfectly clear what happened when Jesus set aside His crown: he bought us back. He has made the ultimate exchange and prepared the way for us to approach God.