New Testament

Romans 5

Adam, Christ, and the Reign of Grace

7 passages

Overview

Having established justification by faith, Paul unfolds its fruits — peace with God, access to grace, and hope sealed by the Holy Spirit — before tracing how one man's disobedience brought death upon all humanity, while Christ's one act of obedient self-offering not only reverses that ruin but surpasses it, as grace reigns over sin and death and elevates the redeemed to share in Christ's own life.

Passages

1–2Justified, at Peace, and Standing in Grace 3–5The Spiritual Logic of Suffering and Hope 6–11Love Poured Out for Enemies: Justification, Reconciliation, and Joy 12–14Adam's Sin and the Universal Reign of Death 15–17The Surpassing Power of Grace Over the Trespass 18–19The Parallel Acts of the Two Adams 20–21The Superabundance of Grace: Where Sin Increased, Grace Overflowed

Study Resources

Romans 5

¹Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; ²through whom we also have our access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ³Not only this, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; ⁵and hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

⁶For while we were yet weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷For one will hardly die for a righteous man. Yet perhaps for a good person someone would even dare to die. ⁸But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

⁹Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. ¹⁰For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his life.

¹¹Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. ¹²Therefore, as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death passed to all men because all sinned. ¹³For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not charged when there is no law. ¹⁴Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those whose sins weren’t like Adam’s disobedience, who is a foreshadowing of him who was to come.

¹⁵But the free gift isn’t like the trespass. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. ¹⁶The gift is not as through one who sinned; for the judgment came by one to condemnation, but the free gift followed many trespasses to justification. ¹⁷For if by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; so much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.

¹⁸So then as through one trespass, all men were condemned; even so through one act of righteousness, all men were justified to life. ¹⁹For as through the one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one, many will be made righteous. ²⁰The law came in that the trespass might abound; but where sin abounded, grace abounded more exceedingly, ²¹that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 4 Romans 6