Today’s Passage: Romans 5
The long descent of chapters 1–3 has ended and the verdict has been handed down, and chapter 4 has shown that this acquittal by faith is nothing new but the ancient way of Abraham. Now Paul turns from the courtroom to the household. If we have been declared righteous, what follows from it? Peace with God, and access into His grace, and a settled standing there, and a hope that holds even in the middle of suffering. Then he plants the proof of that love in the hardest soil of all, telling us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The chapter closes by lifting its eyes from the single believer to the whole human story, setting two men side by side, with their two acts and their two destinies. Do not split this chapter into two separate sermons. The peace of verses 1–11 is real precisely because the second Adam of verses 12–21 is real. One man’s trespass loosed death over all of us, and one Man’s obedience brings justification and life.
As you read, hold this: Through one man death entered; through one Man grace overflowed.
Context The world of Romans 5
Chapters 1–4 have been dominated by the law court, with its charge and evidence, its verdict and acquittal. With the word “Therefore, since we have been justified…” (5:1), Paul steps out of the courtroom and into the house. Justification is the legal verdict; peace and access and reconciliation, love poured out into the heart, are the relational realities that follow from it.
The word translated “access” (5:2) carried the flavor of being ushered into the presence of a king. No one simply walked in upon a sovereign of his own accord; he had to be brought in. Paul says we have been granted exactly that, ushered through Christ into the grace in which we now stand.
The second half of the chapter assumes a way of thinking that was native to Paul’s world, what we might call corporate solidarity. A whole people can be summed up and represented in a single figure, so that what the head does counts for all who belong to him. Adam is the head of the old humanity, and what he did, that one trespass, flowed down to all of us. The Jewish reader knew this logic well, for Achan’s sin troubled all Israel and a king’s choice bound a nation. Paul’s gospel turns upon it. If one man’s act could ruin the many, then one Man’s act can rescue the many, and the parallel is deliberately unequal, weighted always toward grace. How much more.
When Paul calls Adam a “pattern” (5:14) of Christ, he reveals how he reads Scripture: the first things foreshadow the greater things to come. Adam is the negative of the photograph that Christ develops into the positive.
On this the house does not present two even sides. Article 3 is closed. God created Adam and Eve in His image, and they sinned when they were tempted by Satan, so that in union with Adam human beings are now sinners both by nature and by choice. Romans 5:12–21 is not a myth dressed up as history. The first Adam is a historical man, and the Last Adam is a historical Man. If Adam is only a story, the parallel collapses, and the rescue collapses with it.
Romans 5:1–5 (BSB)
¹ Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.
“Therefore” gathers up all of chapters 1–4 and draws out the first great consequence, which is peace. Justification was the verdict; peace is the new relationship that the verdict creates. It is not a nervous truce we must anxiously maintain, but a wholeness we already have. Through Him we also have access into this grace in which we now stand, no longer clinging to the threshold but brought all the way inside. And from that firm footing the believer rejoices in the hope of the glory of God, the very glory we once fell short of (3:23).
Then Paul does the unthinkable and extends that rejoicing into the sufferings themselves. Suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character, and character in turn produces hope. And this hope does not disappoint us, not because the sufferer is strong, but because God has already poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. The whole chain of suffering can be entered without fear, because its far end is held secure by the love of God and not by the strength of the one who suffers.
Romans 5:6–11 (BSB)
⁶ For at just the right time, while we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷ Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸ But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹ Therefore, since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him! ¹⁰ For if, when we were enemies of God, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life! ¹¹ Not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Here Paul proves the love he has just named. The timing was deliberate, at just the right time, and his description of us is unflinchingly honest, for we were powerless and ungodly. Verse 7 sets the ceiling of human love: at the very most, a person might dare to die for someone who is genuinely good. Verse 8 shatters that ceiling. God’s love does not wait for the lovely, for while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Love did not come after we had changed; love came first. He knew us fully, and He died for us still.
Twice over Paul reasons from the harder thing to the easier. How much more. If God has already done the costly thing, justifying us by His blood and reconciling us while we were still His enemies, how much more certainly will He carry us all the way through to the end? The hardest part already lies behind us. We were enemies, and God reconciled us through the death of His Son, the offended party Himself paying the price to restore the relationship that the offenders had broken. And we are saved not only by His death but also through His life, for the risen Christ now lives to keep us.
Romans 5:12–14 (BSB)
¹² Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned. ¹³ For sin was in the world before the law was given; but sin is not taken into account when there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the way that Adam transgressed. He is a pattern of the One to come.
Paul now lifts his eyes from the single believer to the whole sweep of the race, and he traces the catastrophe back to its root in one man. Through Adam sin entered the world, and with sin came death, and death was passed on to all men because all sinned. The proof that this is more than a matter of individual choice lies in verse 14, where death reigned even over those who lived between Adam and Moses and had no explicit law to break. Death’s universal reign betrays a universal solidarity in Adam’s fall. And then comes the pivot, for Adam is a pattern of the One who was to come. Adam is the dark photographic negative, and Christ is the bright positive it was always waiting to become. The rest of the chapter is a comparison built entirely to be uneven, tilted at every turn toward grace.
Do not soften this into a tale with two even sides. A mythical Adam cannot bear such weight. If death entered through one man, then that man truly lived; and if all of us die in him, then he is the true head of the race. Article 3 stands here in Paul’s own words.
Romans 5:15–19 (BSB)
¹⁵ But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many! ¹⁶ Again, the gift is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment that followed one sin brought condemnation, but the gift that followed many trespasses brought justification. ¹⁷ For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! ¹⁸ So then, just as one trespass brought condemnation for all men, so also one act of righteousness brought justification and life for all men. ¹⁹ For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
Three times over Paul insists that the parallel is not a symmetrical one. The gift is not like the trespass. The likeness is real enough, for in each case a single man performs an act of cosmic reach; but the weight on the two sides is wildly unequal, and always in grace’s favor. How much more. If one trespass could spread death to the many, grace abounds all the more to the many. Adam’s one sin brought katakrima, pronounced kah-TAK-ree-mah. Strong's G2631, condemnation, judicial sentence. This is not a feeling of guilt. It is a judicial sentence, the verdict and its penalty handed down together against the condemned. Paul will open chapter 8 with this same word, declaring that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Here he traces where the sentence first came from. One trespass brought it upon all, while the gift that followed many trespasses brought justification instead. The word makes the parallel exact and the rescue concrete, for what Adam’s act imposed, Christ’s act reverses. The sentence is real because the first man was real, and the acquittal is real because the second Man is real. , while the gift comes only after many trespasses and still brings justification. Under Adam, death reigned. Under Christ, the redeemed are not merely ruled over by life; they themselves reign in life. And all of it is received, given freely to those who receive the abundance of grace, and never achieved.
Then comes the clean summary. One trespass brought condemnation, while one act of righteousness brought justification and life. Verse 19 names the two acts plainly: Adam’s disobedience, by which the many were made sinners, and Christ’s obedience, by which the many will be made righteous. The mechanism is the very same in both, a solidarity with one representative head, and yet the outcomes could not be more opposite. Standing in Adam by birth, we inherited his ruin; standing in Christ by faith, we inherit His righteousness. The question upon which every human life turns is simply this: in which man do I stand?
Romans 5:20–21 (BSB)
²⁰ The law came in so that the trespass would increase; but where sin increased, grace increased all the more, ²¹ so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Where does the law fit into all of this? The law came in so that the trespass would increase, not to cure sin but to expose it, to make the smudge show up dark against the light. Far from defeating grace, this only sets the stage for grace’s triumph, for where sin increased, grace increased all the more. The Greek heaps a prefix onto the word, so that grace does not merely match the flood of sin but overflows and super-abounds above it. Then comes the chapter’s last word: just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life. The tyrant now dethroned is sin and death together, and the King now enthroned is grace. And grace does not reign loosely or lawlessly. It reigns through righteousness, upon the firm legal ground that chapters 3–4 secured, and it reigns through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Study notes Going deeper
Peace with God is not a feeling that we generate in ourselves. It is a fact secured outside of us, purchased at a price, and true long before it is ever felt.
"and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through the blood of His cross." Colossians 1:20 (BSB)
That is why Paul can speak of peace as an accomplished fact already in 5:1. We do not make our peace with God by the calm of our own hearts; we receive a peace that He Himself made by His blood. And that peace holds firm because the second Adam is as historical as the first.
The Adam–Christ parallel has its great companion in Paul’s resurrection chapter, where the two heads of humanity are named side by side.
"For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 (BSB)
This is the very architecture of the gospel. The whole of humanity stands in one of two men. In Adam there is death, both by inheritance and by our own joining in his rebellion; in Christ there is life, given as a gift and received through faith. The first man is as historical as the second. And so the whole question of a human life comes down at last to this: in which man do you stand?
The center of the first half of the chapter, and the proof of the love that holds up the second, is the timing of the cross.
"For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit." 1 Peter 3:18 (BSB)
The righteous for the unrighteous, the innocent dying in the place of the guilty. Through one man death entered the world; through one Man, while we were still sinners, grace overflowed.