“Death through Adam and Life through Christ”, that’s the heading in my bible for the latter part of Romans 5. The contrasting impacts between the first man’s disobedience and the God-Man’s obedience. The first providing sin the opportunity to infect the world, the other providing a gift able to save the world. The first bringing just condemnation, the other bringing imputed righteousness. Adam swinging wide open the door to death, Jesus offering widely the gift of eternal life. The finished work of Golgotha enveloping all the fallout from the first rebellion in the garden.

But where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Romans 5:20b-21 CSB)

Grace will reign. Those are the words I am chewing on this morning.

First, I need to resist the temptation to take this “what” and turn it immediately into a “to do.” While I could be quick to make it an application, process it as a command to obey reminding myself that I need to let grace reign, instead I am basking in the glory and wonder of its declaration, that it is the reality which exists, that grace will reign.

I don’t need to look hard or far to see the continuing collateral damage of the first man’s failure. I don’t need to look beyond the chair I’m sitting in.

For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. . . For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

(Romans 7:15, 22-24 ESV)

But grace will reign!

Because it is independent of my righteousness. Because it is founded on the righteousness of Another. Firmly grounded in the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness once for all credited to my account through the finished work of the cross. The righteousness of Christ which, day by day, is becoming more my lived-out reality through the ongoing, sanctifying work of the Spirit.

And grace will reign because, as a one hymn-writer put it, it is grace that is greater than all my sin.

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by the one man’s trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift which comes through the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed to the man.

(Romans 5:15 CSB)

The gift of sins forgiven not only comes to us through the one man Jesus Christ, it overflows to us. Overflows, unencumbered by any boundaries, beyond being depleted through “over use.” The reservoir of God’s grace isn’t just “topped up” each day to make sure there’s enough forgiveness to go around for the day, no, it always, eternally, foreverly (not a word), overflows. It abounds. It is always more than sufficient and beyond what we can think, imagine, and sometimes even believe.

But where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more!

Thank God for His amazing, all sufficient, overflowing grace!

Grace will reign!

And that, for God’s glory.

Amen?