A Sinful Act Versus an Act of Grace
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, overflow to the many! Romans 5:15
In the verse preceding our passage Paul has called Adam a type of Christ. But before he pursues the similarity between these two (5:18-21), he notes some of the differences. So the structure of each of verses 15-17 embody a statement that Christ’s gift is either ‘not like’ Adam’s trespass (5:15,16) or ‘much more’ effective than it (5:17).
The verse begins with ‘But’ because Paul is now qualifying the typological relationship between Adam and Christ. He begins with the difference: ‘the gift is not like the trespass.’ Although Paul often uses ‘gift’ to describe the righteous status God gives His people, if ‘gift’ here is a parallel to ‘trespass,’ then it is more likely an act of Christ than the effects of the act (just as a ‘trespass’ is an act and not the effects of an act). This fits verse 16 (‘the gift … brought justification’) where the gift leads to righteousness. So the ‘gift’ is the act of Christ.
But the ‘gift’ is not just an act leading to righteousness; it is also an act of grace (‘God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of … Jesus Christ’). Christ’s act, being a work of God’s and Christ’s grace, is far more potent than Adam’s act.
Paul now explains the difference between Adam’s trespass and Christ’s act of grace: ‘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, overflow to the many!’ Paul uses ‘the many’ as an equivalent to ‘all’ in the first phrase, ‘the many died.’ He has already said that ‘all died’ in reference to Adam’s sin in 5:12.
The second time it is used, (‘how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! ’), it is qualified by Paul’s insistence in 5:17 that only those who ‘receive’ the gift benefit from Christ’s act. In this second use it means ‘all who respond to the gift of grace. For them, the enjoyment of the gift and grace of God will be even more certain than the death that came to all in Adam.
Condemnation through Adam is inescapable but alongside condemnation is the grace of God. And because it is God’s grace there is an ‘abounding-plus,’ a super-abundance connected with God’s gift in Christ that has power not only to cancel the effects of Adam’s work, but to create positively life and peace. Adam’s trespass is an act for which a strict accounting is due (4:1-6) but Christ’s act is a ‘gift,’ a matter of God’s initiative, of His ‘unmerited favour’ which can never be earned but only ‘received’ (5:17).
And finally, the nature of the actions was different. ‘But the gift is not like the trespass’ (5:15). Adam’s ‘trespass’ was a fall, a complete deviation from the path God had clearly shown him. He insisted on going his own way. This stands in contrast to Christ’s ‘gift’ which was an act of self-sacrifice and in perfect conformity to God’s will.