Romans 5:12-19 Commentary

This first Sunday in Lent offers those who preach on the Revised Common Lectionary’s Epistolary Lesson a chance to proclaim the gospel through some theology about what Jesus came to do. By the power of the Holy Spirit it may even offer a chance to humbly present a corrective to several narrow emphases about the incarnate Son of God’s work. Romans 5, after all, emphasizes his saving obedience. It reminds us Jesus didn’t just die to make us acceptable to God. His perfect obedience also makes his friends right with God.

At least some of Jesus’ friends expect Lent to be full of bad news. On that count, this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson doesn’t disappoint. Paul fills it with bad news. Yet since the apostle also fills Romans 5 with gospel, its proclamation might offer preachers the opportunity to present and reflect on an old bromide: the gospel is always bad news before it is good news. Or, to put it another way, the gospel’s grace gleams most brightly against sin’s darkness’s background.

That darkness saturates this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. “Sin [hamartia*] entered [eiselthen] the world through one man [anthropou],” Paul grieves in verse 12. “And death [thanatos] through sin, and in this way death came [dielthen] to all people, because all sinned.” The apostle makes a similar lament in verse 15: “The many died by the trespass of the one man.”

This summary of the world’s mess raises a number of difficult questions preachers may choose to let the Spirit help them address through the lenses of their own faith tradition. Genesis 3 suggests Eve was our first parent to succumb to the serpent’s temptation. Yet our text’s Paul asserts sin entered the world through the one man. Preachers might speak to this by saying at least this: it’s not just that the Greek word anthropou that we often translate as “man” sometimes more broadly refers to a member of the human race. What’s more, Paul is making a set of comparisons between the “one” man who is Adam and the other “one” man who is Jesus. Eve’s feminine gender doesn’t fit that parallel very well.

What’s more, Paul insists thanatos (“death”) wormed its way into our world through our first parents’ disobedience. But some of Jesus’ followers believe death was already present in God’s good creation even before Adam and Eve welcomed it in. Preachers will, again, want to let the Spirit shape their proclamation of this in the light of their theological understanding of what kind of death the apostle is referring to.

But perhaps all of Jesus’ friends can unite to say at least this: sin disrupted the close relationship not only between people, but also between people and God. Sin’s invasion of our world was at least spiritually fatal to our first parents, as well as all of their descendants.

Paul, of course, goes on to describe some of the other havoc sin wreaked. “Death [thanatos],” grieves Paul in verse 14, “reigned [ebasileusen] from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command.” Verse 17 echoes this lament: “By the trespass [paraptomati] of the one man, death reigned [ebasileusen] through that one man.”

When sin crashed God’s world, death put a stranglehold on its creatures as well as the creation. While people didn’t technically break commands they didn’t yet have, we unanimously “elected” sin to be the ruler over every part of God’s world and us. God has always been sovereign over everything God creates. But Romans 5’s Paul mourns how Adam, Eve and their offspring naturally act as if sin is in charge of everything and everyone.

In verses 18-19 Paul’s lament continues: “One trespass [paraptomatos] resulted in condemnation [katakrima] for all people … Through the disobedience [parakoes] of the one man the many were made [katestathesan] sinners [hamartaloi].” These two verses refer to what scholars sometimes call a “federal” theology by which God holds all people accountable for one person’s actions. Preachers will want to choose just how deeply to dive into these theologically murky waters.

But perhaps the Spirit is prompting us to say little more than this: while God holds people accountable for Adam’s sin, it’s not as if we were any less sinful than he. God’s dearly naturally sinful people deserve God’s condemnation no less than our first parents did.

Against that dark background, God’s grace gleams so brightly that Jesus’ friends almost need sunglasses to read this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. Essentially Paul insists just as sin entered the world through one person, God’s people’s salvation also entered the world through one person. While Adam (and Eve) brought death into the world, Jesus brought life.

But preachers might help our hearers to recognize the pattern Paul uses throughout this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s gospel proclamation. He repeatedly uses a refrain that sounds something like “If [ei] … how much more [pollo mallon].” The apostle basically professes if one person’s sin wreaked havoc, another’s obedience gave even more life. Our first parents’ disobedience caused and still causes much awful misery. But our big brother Jesus’ obedience produces far more joy and peace.

While many died as a result of one person’s disobedience, Paul writes in verse 15, “How much more did God’s grace and the gift of life that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!” Here the apostle seems to assert a fairly simple fact: the death that sin brings is no match for the life that Jesus brings. The life that is by God’s amazing grace mediated to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is far stronger than death. God’s grace is so abundant that it overflows and spills onto tous pollous (“the many”).

In fact, insists the apostle in verse 17, God’s grace is so abundant that its recipients will somehow replace sin as rulers with Christ over God’s world. If sin reined because of human disobedience, “How much more will those who receive God’s abundant [perisseian] provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness [dikaiosynes] reign [basileusousin] in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”

The gospel shines brightly through verse 17a’s profession that God’s gifts of grace and righteousness are nothing less than perisseian (“abundant”). However, idea of Jesus’ friends reigning with him in life is less clear. It’s a profession that even scholars struggle to explain.

But as they listen for the Spirit’s leading preachers may humbly choose to emphasize the risen and ascended Christ’s rule over all creation. That reign is so all-encompassing that not sin and death, but Jesus’ friends somehow exercise God’s rule over what God makes by loving God above all and our neighbors as ourselves.

Given that somewhat mysterious profession, then, it’s a grace that Paul sums up in verses 18 and 19 what are verses’ 12-17’s sometimes complex arguments. There he writes, “Just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act [dikaiomatos] resulted in justification and life [eis dikaiosin] for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience [hypakoes] of the one man the many will be made [katastathesontai] righteous [dikaioi].”

Quite simply, Paul is professing, Jesus’ friends are naturally condemned because of our unrighteousness. Yet Jesus’ perfect obedience, his righteousness, resulted in God’s viewing and accepting God’s adopted children as righteous. Jesus’ righteousness earned for his followers God’s gracious acceptance as righteous.

While The Message is a paraphrase rather than a translation, its treatment of verses 18-19 is, as is so often the case, both lyrical and helpful. As a result, preachers might consider including this in our message on Romans 5:12-19: “Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.”

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his fascinating book, One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation, Daniel Silliman recalls the former president’s relentless search for righteousness. He recounts how when the former president was accused as a congressman of misusing campaign funds, he gave a speech that appealed to public sentiment by referring to the family dog, Checkers.

Silliman writes of how Nixon “realized that doing the right thing wasn’t enough. Being affiliated with the right people wasn’t enough. So he turned to this alternative approach, went down an aisle of his own making, and appealed to the public his justification.

“He did not grasp the substance of the doctrine of unmerited grace, but like no one before him he seized the evangelical form of public purification, justification in the religious sense, and he used it politically. He gathered a crowd. He gave a full account of his life and his sins. He prayed his prayer — not the sinners’ prayer, exactly, but the Checkers prayer — and he was declared righteous.”

[Note: For the Year A Season of Lent and leading up to Easter, CEP has, in addition to these weekly sermon commentaries, a special Lent and Easter Resource Page with links to whole sermons, commentary on Lenten texts, and more.]