Romans 5:20-6:4
THE REIGN OF GRACE
To enjoy the benefits of God’s gospel (forgiveness of sin, eternal life in God’s presence), Paul has told us we must fully trust in Christ Jesus, who has provided us an imputed righteousness as a free gift. He lived, died, arose, and ascended as our Representative, succeeding on our behalf where Adam failed. His saving work cancels out for believers the curse brought upon us by Adam’s disobedience, and that work continues to save us until we reach our future glory!
Paul has already told his readers that no one can be justified by keeping the written law. In view of HOW a person is justified (faith alone), what made it necessary for the law to be given? The answer given in verse 20 may be puzzling: “that the offense might abound.” The law entered the picture so that sin would abound!
There are several ways that statement might be taken: One sense of this statement is that our sinful thoughts, words and deeds would be magnified and seen for the wicked things they truly are, just as a microscope can show us the germs that are abundant in a drop of water. Without the power of the microscope, we’d be totally unaware that those germs are there and are making us sick. Without the written law of God, we might still feel that something is wrong in our souls, but Lord’s commandments reveal more clearly the nature of that wrong by spelling God’s requirements out to us.
Another sense of the law increasing sin, is that the more rules our corrupted hearts become aware of, the more we are determined to break them, due to our sinful natures. As Paul has explained already, death was already reigning from Adam to Moses, as a curse upon all whom Adam had represented when he disobeyed and ate the forbidden fruit. The laws of right and wrong were operating during that time within the human community, but the written law made them much more specific, and our sins far more numerous as we were already rebellious toward God in our hearts.
The great Saint Augustine wrote about a boyhood exploit where he and some of his friends stole pears from a neighbor’s orchard. He enjoyed this act of thievery… despite the fact that he didn’t even care for pears! It’s sadly true that by nature, sins aren’t always committed to get something we desire, but merely because we like to break the rules. We naturally rebel against restraint because we want to be a law unto ourselves.
But it wasn’t God’s intention to allow sin to go on unchecked forever. Back in Eden, God promised that a Seed of the woman would one day crush the head of the serpent who’d tempted our first parents to sin. The rest of the Bible from that time on told the story of the coming of that Redeemer. Even while Adam’s curse was upon us over all those centuries, even while God was revealing the scope and sinfulness of sin, the Lord was causing His GRACE to increase and abound even more than the sin was.
Verse 20 goes on to say that grace “super-abounded” in answer to the abounding of man’s sin. God’s grace doesn’t just keep pace with sin’s increase; it far surpasses it! First, He withheld physical death from Adam and Eve for hundreds of years. This was grace! He permitted the sacrifice of a substitute to cover their sins by accepting their offerings on the altar. This was grace! He chose Abraham and his offspring to bring a holy people into the world as a witness to all the sinful nations. This too was grace! Think of the symbols and figures in the system of sacrifices given to Israel. All of these pointed again and again to the coming of the Savior.
The super-abounding nature of God’s grace is the only real answer to the increase of sin and sin’s authority and power to bring death to mankind. Verse 21 emphasizes this divine answer by reminding us that grace actually reigns supreme! By using death as its tool, sin might be reigning in a physical sense...But because God’s grace provides forgiveness for sinners through the Lord Jesus, sin’s reign is only temporary. Grace reigns through Christ’s righteousness, unto eternal life!
In Paul’s epistle to the Romans, he makes a transition here at the start of chapter 6. He has fully explained the way that God’s grace triumphs over sin and death. Now Paul asks, “What shall we say then?” In other words, “so what?” He is about to teach us about the process called sanctification. This is a necessary result of being justified by faith. As many have said, we are saved by faith alone, but saving faith doesn’t REMAIN alone. It results in good works.
Remember that Roman Catholicism teaches justification is granted on the basis of faith PLUS good works. These teachers feel that if Protestants teach justification is by faith ALONE, then the door is thrown open to a kind of lawlessness. They think: “If my works don’t count toward my right standing with God, then they don’t matter at all, and I can keep on sinning because grace will abound!” Paul gives a strong denial: “Certainly not!” Or even stronger: “God forbid!” People often forget that salvation is not just a human decision. It is a supernatural act of God the Holy Spirit, one that regenerates the soul!
Verse 2 tells us that there is a death a person dies when he comes to Christ. He dies a death to sin. At the point a person places his faith in Jesus and is justified, a brand new life begins. For a Born-again Christian, living in sin is now out of the question. “It is by grace you are saved, through faith, and this is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.” Saving faith is a gift from God given at the time we are born again by the Spirit. This results in an immediate change of a person’s heart and desires. The life-long process of sanctification has begun: becoming more and more like Christ.
Is this a reality in YOUR life? Do you find in your heart the deep, passionate desire to please the Lord Jesus, not to BECOME saved, but because He already HAS saved you? Are you living a life of gratitude toward God because He found you in your sin and rebellion, and gave you the free gift of eternal life through faith in His Son? Or are you still satisfied with a self-centered life where you’re content to simply please yourself, and only pray to God when it’s convenient? Search your heart. Do you see the Spirit helping you to become more like the Master?
Verses 3 and 4 speak of baptism, which is the symbolic ritual a believer is commanded to submit to. In the New Testament, baptism came to be so closely connected with a person’s salvation, many have taught that water baptism itself is a requirement for a person to be saved. While this is untrue, it IS true that baptism is a matter of personal obedience to Jesus Christ, who commanded that all His followers be baptized into His name.
Baptism is a visible way a Christian identifies personally with his new Lord and Savior, and with his or her fellow believers. When a believer is lowered into the waters of baptism, it’s a picture of putting his old life to death on the cross along with Jesus, who died in the sinner’s place. Then, rising out of the water symbolizes the person’s new life as a righteous child of God, with the expectation of seeking to please the Lord in all of his future thoughts, words and deeds...to be like Jesus in every way!
MNA
4-9-2026
