Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

An overview of chapter 5 before we go into the verse by verse study.

What does Romans chapter 5 mean?

Romans 5 begins by exploring the great benefits that come with being declared righteous by God, through faith in Christ’s death for our sin on the cross. By justifying us in this way, in Christ, God made peace with us forever. We also stand in God’s grace by our faith. We continue to receive good from God, instead of the judgment we deserved before our sins were forgiven. More, we can now rejoice in the sure hope that we will one day experience the glories of God.

Because of that redemption, we can even rejoice in our sufferings. This doesn’t mean that suffering will make us feel happy, but it does mean our suffering accomplishes something. For Christians, suffering produces endurance, the ability to trust God more and longer. Endurance produces character, the greater tendency to do the right thing, the thing that honors God. And Christians of proven character become hopeful people, convinced that the bottom-line truth of their reality is that they will spend eternity with God in glory (Romans 5:1–5).

Is this hope risky? Paul say it is absolutely not. Why? Because God has poured his love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. If the God of the universe loves us, we can be confident that He is worth trusting. God has proved that love to us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God did not wait for us to get stronger or better, He acted first to resolve the dispute between us. He sent Christ to die at exactly the right time to save us.

The result is that we are no longer enemies of God because of our sin. We have been saved from His wrath and reconciled to Him through Jesus, when we come to Him in faith. This change God has brought about in our relationship is permanent. We are reconciled forever (Romans 5:6–11).

Paul then shifts to a comparison between the work accomplished by the first man, Adam, and what Christ did for us on the cross. Adam was created specially by God from dust and placed in the garden with one restriction. Adam broke God’s command, introducing sin and death to the world. All who followed Adam, everyone, were born into sin and eventually died. That continues to this day (Romans 5:12–14).

Christ, on the other had made a different choice. Instead of disobeying, as Adam had done, He obeyed. Adam’s choice brought sin and death to many millions of people, while Jesus’ choice brought the opportunity for escape from sin and death by the free gift of God’s grace to everyone who believes. Adam’s choice brought condemnation; Jesus’ act brought justification (Romans 5:15–19).

Paul concludes the chapter with a startling idea: One of God’s purposes for the law was to increase the amount of lawbreaking on the earth. It’s not that Paul means God’s law was intended to make people actually sin more. Rather, the presence of the law meant that God’s will was revealed, so every disobedience was all the more obviously wrong. The result of that increased awareness of sin was an increase in God’s grace to cover more and more sin as people trust in Christ’s death to cover it. In that way, God’s grace always defeats human sin (Romans 5:20–21).

In the next chapter, Paul will address one possible corruption of this idea. This is the false claim that Paul’s teaching on grace implies that sinning is a good thing, since more sin means more grace. As he does elsewhere in his letters, Paul will vehemently reject this teaching, and show why it is false.

Verse by Verse

Verse 1: Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 5 begins a new section of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. He has finished his argument, in chapters 1—4, that nobody can be made right with God by following the works of the law of Moses. This “justification” is impossible by works, because nobody follows the law well, let alone perfectly (Romans 3:10, 23). Human beings can only be declared righteous and escape God’s angry judgment on our sin by faith in what He has done for us through Jesus’ death, meant to pay for our sin, and His resurrection, which secures our justification (Romans 4:24–25).

Now Paul turns a corner, to describe what we have gained in being justified by faith. It’s true that we have escaped the wrath of God, but being righteous before God means so much more than just not being punished for our sin.

Before jumping into these benefits, it’s important to remember that Paul is writing to Christians. That is the context of his comments in this section, which should not be misunderstood. Paul’s use of the term “we” in this passage is not universal—it does not apply to all of the entire human race. He is describing what is true for those who have trusted in Christ’s work for our salvation. This is made explicitly clear by his explanation of faith and belief in the prior passages. Paul is not saying all people everywhere have peace with God, only those who, as he and his readers had done, have believed in the God who raised Jesus from the dead.

It’s also helpful to notice that Paul describes this act of being justified by God, of becoming a believer, as something in the past. For those who are Christians, that transaction is complete. Our status before God will never again be in doubt. Paul does not describe a process, or a future event. Eternal salvation is accomplished once, and forever, when a person comes to faith in Christ.

Paul begins by showing that those who have been justified in God’s eyes have peace with God. Paul does not mean by this that we feel peaceful, that we experience no anxiety. He means that we are right with God. We are at peace with God from now and through eternity. This is possible only “through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In Christ, God has made a permanent peace with us. And since He is the one who made it, it is peace that can never be lost.

Verse 2: Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

In this first part of Romans 5, Paul describes what has happened for those who have, by faith in Christ, been justified before God. In the previous verse, he wrote that we have—right now, currently and forever—peace with God. We are no longer His enemies or objects of His wrath because of our sin (Ephesians 2:3). As shown in prior passages, this only applies to those who have expressed faith in God, as exemplified by Abraham. The “we” used here is a reference to believers.

Now Paul adds that, also through Christ, we have obtained the most important thing in the universe: access to the grace of God by our faith in Christ. Grace means a good thing that is not deserved. What each of us deserved, because of our sin, was God’s angry judgment. What we’ve been given, instead, is God’s grace.

Through faith in Jesus, we stand in that grace. What is our response as we come to understand that? We should rejoice, knowing we have the absolutely certain hope of participating in the glory of God forever. Paul wrote previously that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). God’s glory is Himself and all that is His. Now that we have been justified and our sins forgiven, we will experience God’s glory fully and forever. Rejoicing over that is exactly the appropriate response.

When Paul uses the word “hope” in Romans, it’s important to understand the term. In this context, he’s not talking about something that might happen, something like, “I hope I get a present for my birthday.” Instead, “hope” means looking forward with expectation to something, even though we can’t see it, yet.

Verse 3: Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,

Paul is describing some of the benefits for those who, by faith in Christ, have been justified and made right before God with our sins forgiven. These benefits are only available to believers—the “we” Paul uses here indicates saved Christians, not the entire human race. So far, Paul has shown that we live in a state of being at peace with God forever, no longer in danger of receiving His angry justice for our now-forgiven sin. Also, by faith, we have obtained access to God’s grace and are even now receiving it. Finally, we have joy that comes from having the absolutely sure hope of experiencing the glory of God for eternity.

In this verse, Paul points to a benefit of salvation we experience immediately. For those in Christ, our suffering matters. It counts for something. For those who die without Christ, suffering is merely suffering. It is pain and loss and frustration, resulting in no particular benefit, and coming to no resolution. For those in Christ, however, suffering has a point, since we’re destined for something higher. It accomplishes great good in us, in fact.

Of course, this teaching also implies that Christians still suffer on this side of eternity. Being in Christ does not end our personal, temporary suffering on earth. That suffering does, however, produce something Paul here calls “endurance,” which itself produces other powerful, positive characteristics in us. Endurance is the ability to keep going when we feel like stopping, as long distance runners train themselves to do. In this context, endurance is about our ability to trust God for longer stretches of time and through greater degrees of difficulty. Suffering, in other words, is an opportunity to trust God at a deeper level through harder stuff.

James introduced his letter with this exact idea when he said, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:2–3).

Paul and James both see this reality as reason for rejoicing. They understand “rejoicing” to be a choice we make to declare even our hardest circumstances as God’s good for us, in the sense that He is calling us closer, and to trust in Him more deeply.

Verse 4: and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

Describing the fantastic benefits that come with being justified by God’s grace through our faith in Christ, Paul began the previous verse by saying that we “rejoice in our sufferings.” He does not mean “we” in the sense of all mankind, but in the context of those who express faith in God, as exemplified by Abraham. Paul also did not mean by this that we feel happy when things are hard. Instead he showed that, for those in Christ, suffering is an opportunity to move closer to God and to grow in our faith. Suffering for the believer, Paul wrote, produces endurance, the ability to continue trusting God for longer periods of time and through more difficult circumstances.

Now he adds that this battle-tested faith of endurance produces in Christians the quality of character. Christians of character choose to keep doing the right things on a consistent basis. The pattern is that suffering causes us to trust God on a deeper level, and the more we trust God, the most likely we are to consistently make right choices. We become Christians of proven character.

Character, too, produces a new quality in us: hope. In the context of Romans and the New Testament, “hope” is confidence that God will deliver what He promised. Hope implies some level of certainty that we will receive God’s good forever. Hope defines the baseline or a “bottom line” for a Christian’s thoughts and emotions. No matter what comes along, we are fully convinced that our ultimate end will be sharing in the glories of God forever.

Verse 5: and hope does not put us to shame, because God ‘s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Paul introduced a challenging idea in the previous verses: that Christians can see suffering as a cause for rejoicing. He did not mean by this that anyone should necessarily feel happy or enthusiastic about hard circumstances. Instead, those who are saved—who have expressed faith in Christ—can declare to ourselves that this suffering is worthwhile. It provides an opportunity to grow into the people that God is calling us to be.

He began by showing that suffering produces endurance: a deeper, longer trust in God. This produces character, meaning we more consistently choose to do what honors God. This, in turn, produces hope, where we experience growing certainty that our ultimate destiny is an eternity of good in God’s presence.

Now Paul concludes this chain by saying that our hope will never put us to shame. By that, Paul means our hope will be fully vindicated. We will never, in the end, be disappointed for hoping to receive God’s goodness forever.

Why can believers be so confident about our ultimate destination? Paul’s answer reveals the very emotion of God toward us. His love has been poured in our hearts. In other words, God will always, always keep His promises to us because He loves us. It is not just that God is powerfully able to do what He has promised. It is not just that God is good. It is because He cares about us, loves us, so deeply that each of us actually carries His love inside of us, through the Holy Spirit. That makes God’s promises powerful indeed.

Finally, Paul adds as almost an afterthought that each person who trusts in Christ has been given God’s own Holy Spirit to live in our hearts—in our inner being. That may be the most powerful benefit Paul has mentioned, and he will talk more about it later in Romans.

Verse 6: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Paul, writing in the previous verse, urged his readers to be confident that our hope in God will never be disappointed or put to shame. Why? Because God loves us. More specifically, He has poured His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Paul pictures God’s love for us as something we carry with us all the time, not merely the feelings of a distant deity.

Now, in this and the following verses, Paul provides evidence of God’s love for us. First, Christ died for the ungodly, which Paul clearly defined in earlier passages as all of humanity (Romans 3:10, 23). This sacrifice was made while we were still weak, or “powerless,” or “helpless,” depending on the translation. This comes from the Greek word asthenōn, which implies something feeble or sickly. Nothing about us earned this salvation. It was entirely offered on the basis of God’s grace, and at just the right moment.

This huge idea is key to the good news—the gospel—which Paul preached all over the world. First, it shows that God, the Father, and Christ, the Son, are so closely connected that Christ dying for us is evidence of God’s love for us. Together with the Holy Spirit, mentioned in the previous verse, the three are mysteriously united as one God.

Second, God proved His love for us by acting first. He didn’t make arrangements with us ahead of time, or wait for us to become strong and godly and worthy of being saved. He loved us and took action to save us while we were still helpless to save ourselves because of our sin.

Third, God showed His power by sending Christ to die for us at exactly the right time. Jesus arrived, lived, died, and was resurrected at the moment in history when His action would accomplish the most good for God’s plan. God’s timing, too, was motivated by His love for all of us godless people.

Verse 7: For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die —

The theme of Paul’s letter to the Romans is that God offers salvation to mankind on the basis of grace, not our own good deeds or merits. In fact, if salvation were based on works, all of humanity would be doomed, since nobody can live up to the moral standards of a perfectly holy God (Romans 3:10, 23).

Here, Paul describes a human perspective of sacrificing one’s life for the sake of others. It’s no small thing to suffer pain and death, intentionally and voluntarily, for the sake of someone else. Paul makes a common-sense point that some people, maybe, would be willing to give our lives for the sake of some other good and righteous person, though even that is rare. Paul’s point is that we’d be hesitant to die for the sake of someone we found morally lacking.

And yet Christ—God in human form—died for us, the ungodly, weak people who deserved judgment for our sin (Romans 5:6). Why would God do such a thing? The point Paul is making will be stated explicitly in the following verse: God loves us and He has proved it through Christ’s death in our place on the cross.

Verse 8: but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

This is one of the most loved verses in the Bible, and the high point of a lengthier discussion. In previous verses, Paul clearly showed that salvation is on the basis of faith, not works (Romans 3:21–26). That justification—a declaration of righteousness—brings us peace with God, instead of wrath. This is available only to those who have expressed saving faith, as exemplified by men like Abraham (Romans 4:1–12). Given that hope, suffering in the life of a Christian believer can be meaningful. We are safe to hope in God because He loves us. Paul’s point here is that we don’t have to take God’s word alone that He loves us. We can look at the evidence: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

What does it mean that Christ died for us? It means that He died in our place. Because of our sin, we deserved to suffer God’s angry judgment. We deserved death. Christ took that judgment for our sin on Himself on the cross. He suffered and died in our place. Paul insists that we should take that act as evidence of God’s great love for us, especially since God went first. Jesus died in our place, before we knew we would want Him to do that. He died for us before we’d ever done anything to deserve that love. This is a point Paul made in the prior verse: it takes love to die willingly for someone else, even if they’re a “good” person. But we, those who have been saved, were still sinners, and we weren’t going to improve. In truth, we had no hope of avoiding God’s judgment before Jesus took it for us.

God proved His love for us. That makes Him worth trusting.

Verse 9: Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

This and the following verse say very similar things. Paul often repeats words and ideas in his letters to emphasize how important they are. He begins by saying that we have now been justified by Christ’s blood. To be “justified” in God’s eyes means to be “declared righteous,” or to be made right with God. This is important, since earlier verses have made it clear that we are not, actually “righteous” people. Based on our actions and attitudes, we are not “good.” In order to be reconciled to God, we need to be forgiven, and “declared” as righteous; this is what it means to be justified.

The way that we were justified is by Christ’s blood, by His death for our sin on the cross. In fact, Paul has shown that there is no other way to become right with God than by Christ’s death for us. Since that is true, Paul writes that it is even more true that we will be saved by Christ from the wrath of God.

We need to be careful how we read this. Paul is not implying that there is a question about whether those who are in Christ will experience God’s wrathful, angry judgment on sin. Those who have expressed saving faith—true believers—absolutely will not. Instead, Paul is simply arguing that the second idea is obvious, once the first is accepted. Writing today, Paul might have said, “Since A is true, then B is really, really true.” Both ideas are connected, and both are true.

In other words, those who are justified in God’s eyes, through faith in what Christ has done, will certainly never suffer God’s wrath for our sin. This is the context of Paul’s use of the word “we” in this passage: those who are saved by grace through faith.

Verse 10: For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

This verse very closely follows the pattern of the previous verse, but it also contains key changes. Verse 9 emphasized the legal standing of those who trust in Christ: We have been justified, and we will not experience God’s judgment. Put another way, we have been declared “not guilty,” and we will not be condemned. This is important to understand, since earlier passages made it clear that we are not, in actual fact, righteous people (Romans 3:10, 23). The point of salvation by grace through faith is that we are forgiven, and declared righteous, thanks to Christ, though we don’t deserve it.

This verse shifts to focus on our personal relationship with God. Those who trust in Christ are reconciled to God by Christ’s death, even though we were God’s enemies, because of our sin. In other words, Christ’s death in our place for our sin made it possible for us to enter into a real and personal relationship, something not possible without Christ. Before we came to this point, God considered us enemies due to our rebellious sin. Now He considers us His beloved children.

Since we were reconciled with God by Christ’s death, Paul writes, how much truer is it that we will be saved—rescued from being eternally separated from God, and from His angry judgment—by Christ’s life. This may refer to Christ’s sinless life on earth before the crucifixion or it may refer to Christ’s resurrection from the dead, which showed that God’s justice for our sin had been fully satisfied and concluded.

Verse 11: More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

This verse sums up the passage which began in the first verse of this chapter. Paul adds that, because all he has said leading up to this is true, we can rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. On top of the fact that we have been justified and will not suffer God’s wrath for our sin, we can participate in the celebration of God Himself. After all, we have received reconciliation with God through Christ’s death in our place on the cross and our faith in Him.

Reconciliation describes what happens between two people formerly separated by a dispute, when that dispute is resolved and they are able to come back together. God is the one who had the dispute with us, because of our sin. Christ’s death and resurrection satisfied God’s demands to make things right between us, and, through our faith alone, the dispute is ended. “We,” in this context meaning those who have accepted Christ through saving faith, are reconciled.

Notice that this statement is in the past tense. The transaction is complete. Those who have trusted in Christ have now and forever received reconciliation with God. Period. We have peace with Him (Romans 5:1). We stand now in His grace (Romans 5:2). He has poured His love in our hearts (Romans 5:5). All is decided. Since God is the one who made it happen, nobody can take it away. We are not waiting to see if God will be okay with us after we die. Because we are in Christ, we know that God is okay with us right now, and always will be.

Verse 12: Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned —

Earlier, Paul explained that salvation on the basis of faith brings us peace with God. We can hope in Him, and trust Him, since He has so clearly shown His love for us (Romans 5:8). Paul begins a new section in this verse in which he will compare the work of Adam, as the representative of sinful humanity, with the work of Christ, on behalf of sinful humanity. This further explains the ideas of human sin, Christ’s sacrifice, and our salvation, all of which have already been introduced in this letter.

Paul starts with Adam, though he is not mentioned by name for several verses. Paul states that sin came into the world through one man. This one man is Adam, the first man created from dust by God Himself (Genesis 1:27). God breathed life into Adam and placed him in the garden of Eden with only one restriction: Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:15–17). Adam, along with his wife, Eve did exactly what they were told not to, and sin entered the world.

It’s worth noting here that the term “world,” in this context, is specifically a reference to humanity. Paul’s discussion here is entirely focused on the relationship between human beings and God. Interpreters differ on whether or not this verse supports that all death—including that of animals—is implied in this statement.

What’s clear from Paul’s argument here is that death followed sin, as God said it would. First, God slaughtered an animal to provide clothing for Adam and Eve, suddenly made aware of their nakedness by their sin (Genesis 3:21). More than that, though, Adam and Eve were sent away from God and from the garden and began to die physically. They became mortal beings with a limited lifespan. Even worse, Adam and Eve passed on their sin to their offspring. Every person ever born in the world, other than Christ (Hebrews 4:15) was born sinful and destined to die. Sin always leads to death, as Paul will make clear in the following verses.

This was the tragic and seemingly inescapable result of Adam’s first sin in the garden.

Verse 13: for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

In this section, Paul compares the effects of sin, from Adam, as compared to the effects of grace, from Christ. In the prior verse, he noted that it was the actions of one man which brought death and sin into the lives of all humanity.

Now, Paul seems to immediately take an aside from the main point of this section. He will pick that up again in verse 15. Here, though, he answers a question that may have popped up for some of his readers. How could there be sin before the law of Moses existed?

Paul seemed to suggest in Romans 4:15 that without the law, there is no sin, no “transgression.” In context, Paul did not indicate the there was no actual sin, but only that one cannot literally “break” a law unless they are rightly subject to it. Here, Paul again clarifies that point: It’s not that sin did not exist before the law of Moses. Of course, human beings have always sinned since the garden. Instead, Paul says that specific sin was not counted against specific people before the law. It was not a transgression in the sense of breaking the written words of the law; it was simply sinful humanity expressing its sinful nature: self-serving, hurtful, deceptive, and immoral.

The argument here, as in Romans 4:15, is entirely one of perspective. Humanity does not recognize sin when God does not give us something like the law: in our minds, those sins are not “counted.” They are still sins, since we still ought to know better (Romans 1:18–20). The presence of the law does not turn righteousness into sin—it turns supposed ignorance into certain knowledge of our own wrongdoing.

Paul has shown that sinful nature every human being was born into resulted in separation from God and in inevitable death.

Verse 14: Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

Adam’s sin was different from the sin of all others who lived after him until the time of Moses and the law. As Paul wrote in the previous verse, sin is not counted against those who do not break God’s law (or direct command). From the time of Adam until the time of Moses, God did not give many direct commands to humanity, at large. In that way, those people were not “lawbreakers.” Still, sin existed. Every person was born into it, born with a sinful nature. People lied, stole, murdered, committed adultery, did what was wrong. Though they did not sin in a direct violation of God’s written command, they still suffered the consequence of Adam’s sin, the sin they were born into. They all died. Paul puts it poetically: Death reigned.

Adam’s sin was unique, in that sense, since he did break God’s direct command. Now, strangely, Paul describes Adam as a “type” of the one who was to come, meaning Jesus. He does not mean that Adam and Jesus shared Christ-like qualities. Paul will clarify this comparison in the following verses.

Verse 15: But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man ‘s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.

In the previous verse, Paul described Adam as a “type” of Christ. This doesn’t mean that Adam had Christ-like qualities, but that they were alike in that their choices affected many, many people. One single action by Adam brought death to all who came after him. Adam broke God’s command, bringing both sin and the resulting death into the world.

Now Paul says that the free gift, Jesus’ choice, is not like Adam’s sin. What is the free gift? It is the action Christ took by dying in our place for our sin on the cross. The free gift brings salvation from death, rescue from the wrath of God, in judgment on sin.

Adam’s action brought death to many people. Jesus’ action brought the grace of God to many people. This free gift of God’s grace brings the opportunity for life, for salvation, to everyone. All who trust in Christ will receive this gift, rather than facing death because of Adam’s introduction of sin into the world.

Verse 16: And the free gift is not like the result of that one man ‘s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

Paul continues to compare the impact of pivotal choices made by two men at two points in the history of the world. Adam, on the one hand, introduced sin into a world that knew no sin. He was the first to break God’s command. That choice caused all born after him to be born into sin. In response, all people lived under judgment for their sin and faced God’s condemnation.

Jesus, born as a man thousands of years later after many, many had sinned and broken God’s law, chose to become the source of God’s free gift of grace. He did this by dying on the cross to pay for human sin. His one action brought justification from God for everyone who receives it by faith.

Adam, by sinning, brought death and condemnation to all. Jesus, by not sinning and then dying, brought justification to all who believe. This “justification” is a declaration, as if in a courtroom setting. No person is actually righteous (Romans 3:10, 23), but Christ’s sacrificial death pays our penalty, allowing us to have peace with God (Romans 5:1).

Verse 17: For if, because of one man ‘s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

“Death reigned” (Romans 5:14). That was the result of Adam’s sin. Sin always brings death. Death became king. It ruled the lives of every person born from Adam.

By contrast, Paul now writes, those who receive the abundance of God’s grace and the free gift of righteousness will themselves reign in life through Jesus. In other words, receiving God’s justification by placing our faith in Christ not only frees us from the kingdom of death, it allows us to rule in the kingdom of life alongside Jesus, as the very children of God. Some translations add the word “will” before reign, since the Greek word here—basileusousin—is in the future tense. This verse very likely points to a future time when Christ’s kingdom will be fully established on earth, although our status as His co-heirs is already established (Romans 8:17).

It’s essential to notice, however, that Paul has added a qualifier in this verse: This freedom from death and life in Christ is available only through Jesus and only to those who “receive” the abundance of God’s grace. Not everyone escapes death’s reign, because not everyone receives, by faith, God’s gift of life (John 1:12).

Verse 18: Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

Paul summarizes the ideas he has been discussing since the beginning of this section in verse 12. One trespass, one sin, led to the condemnation of all men. This was Adam’s sin in breaking God’s command not to eat from one specific tree. In doing so, he introduced sin and death to the world, where they took root in every person to follow. Because all sinned, all faced God’s judgment and the same fate: condemnation.

By contrast, though, one “act of righteousness” leads to the opportunity for justification for every person in the world. This act of righteousness was Jesus’ death on the cross to pay for human sin. Those who, by faith, receive this free gift of God’s grace are declared righteous by God. They are justified. This is the case Paul has been making throughout Romans.

Some read the words “for all men” here to mean that all people are justified by Christ’s death on the cross no matter what. In other words, even faith in Christ is not required to be saved from God’s wrath; all people will simply find themselves justified and saved, no matter what they do or believe. This is known as “universalism,” but it cannot be reconciled with what Paul teaches throughout Romans and throughout the New Testament. Even in the previous verse, Paul insists that God’s abundant grace is specifically for those who receive it, by faith.

Verse 19: For as by the one man ‘s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man ‘s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Paul continues to contrast the powerful actions of Adam and Jesus. Adam’s action was one of disobedience. He and Eve disobeyed God’s direct and clear command to them. The result of that disobedience, as Paul has shown repeatedly, was that many were made sinners. Adam introduced sin into the world and every last person born, other than Christ (Hebrews 4:15), was born into that sin.

Jesus’s action, on the other hand, His death on the cross, was an act of obedience. This is true in two senses. One, mysteriously, Jesus’ life and mission on earth were characterized by His obedience to His Father, who is God, as Christ is also. Jesus spoke and acted in obedience to the direction of the Father (John 12:49; 8:28). That obedience included His own death: “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

Jesus’ act of obedience, then, ensured that many would be made righteous through their faith in Him and by God’s abundant grace.

Verse 20: Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,

In describing the impact of Adam’s disobedience in the previous verse, Paul wrote that “many were made sinners.” By that, he means that all who were born after Adam were born into sin. By nature, they sinned. However, Paul has also revealed that those living between Adam and Moses were not under the law. In that way, their sin was not counted against them. They still sinned, and they still died as a result of sin, but their sin was, in a sense, not measured (Romans 5:13–14).

So what happened when God gave the law to Moses? How did that change this relationship between human sin and God? It made everything much, much worse, exactly as God intended. Once God gave actual commands about what to do and what not to do in this life, human beings moved from simply being sinners by nature to becoming actual lawbreakers. The existence of God’s commands criminalized their sin—our sin—at a new level. Now we were all living in blatant, open rebellion.

In that sense, sin increased. It’s not necessarily that people started sinning in greater volume, it’s that our sin began to be counted against us as individual acts of rebellion against the will of God. It became an even more overt disobedience to Him. In fact, as Paul reveals in a startling statement, that’s one reason God gave the law to the Israelites. He wanted to increase the trespass, the lawbreaking! He wanted it to be deadly clear just how sinful human beings were.

Paul follows that with another extraordinary statement, however. As human sin increased, grace “super-increased.” God’s grace abounded even more. This makes logical sense and yet it is still astounding to us. God’s grace—giving good to us when we have earned bad—cannot be overwhelmed by our own sinfulness. The more we sin, the more grace God gives. In the following chapter, Paul will deal with a common abuse of that idea: the claim that sin is actually good, since it provides God more opportunity to show grace.

Verse 21: so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Previously, Paul has written that one result of Adam’s devastating sin was that death came to reign over the lives of humanity (Romans 5:17). Now he writes that death’s reign was, in truth, the reign and rule of sin. Sin brings death. Human beings cannot escape our own sin nature no matter how badly we want to. In ourselves, without God’s intervention, we will always continue to sin. It rules over us, and it leads to death.

However, Paul has just written that as sin increases, God’s grace increases even more. In other words, sin cannot grow past God’s capacity to give good to those who deserve His angry judgment instead. Paul concludes that God’s grace is the greater ruler. It reigns over sin and death. How? He declares righteous all of us sinners who, by faith, receive his grace-gift of Jesus’ death for our sin on the cross.

With death defeated, those who are in Christ will live forever. Grace reigns through righteousness leading to eternal life. But this eternal life is found only through Jesus Christ our Lord. There is no other way to escape the reign of sin and death.

Starting with the next verse, Paul will counter a common and unfortunate response to this idea of abundant grace. Some see God’s grace as a license to sin, which is not what God intended, nor what Paul is teaching. The overflowing mercy of God is not a reason to sin, just so that His grace can increase.