Grace Abounding

 

PAUL'S LETTER TO THE ROMANS

CHAPTER FIVE

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Therefore, since we are justified and given right standing with God through faith,
let us grasp the fact that we have the peace of reconciliation to hold and to enjoy
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ the Messiah.

Through Him also we have our access by faith into this grace, state of God's favor,
in which we firmly and safely stand. And let us rejoice and exult in our hope of
experiencing and enjoying the glory of God.

Moreover, let us also be full of joy now!  let us exult and triumph in our troubles
and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship
produce patient and unswerving endurance.

And endurance develops maturity of character, approved faith, and tried integrity.
And character of this sort produces the habit of joyful and confident hope
of eternal salvation.

Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God's love has
been poured in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.

While we were yet in weakness, powerless to help ourselves, at the
fitting time Christ died for the ungodly.

Now it is an extraordinary thing for one to give his life even for an
upright man, though perhaps for a noble and lovable and generous benefactor
someone might even dare to die.

But God shows and clearly proves His own love for us by the fact that
while we were still sinners, Christ the Messiah died for us.

Therefore, since we are now justified and brought into a right relationship
with God by Christ's blood, how much more certain is it that we shall be
saved by Him from the indignation and wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death
of His Son, it is much more certain now that we are reconciled, that we shall
be saved, daily delivered from sin's dominion through His resurrection life.

Not only so, but we also rejoice and exultingly glory in God in His love
and perfection through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom we have now
received and enjoy our reconciliation.

Therefore, as sin came into the world through one man, and death as a
result of sin, so death spread to all men, no one being able to stop it or
to escape its power because all men sinned.

To be sure, sin was in the world ever before the Law was given, but
sin is not charged to men's account where there is no law to transgress.

Yet death held sway from Adam to Moses, the Lawgiver, even over
those who did not themselves transgress a positive command as Adam did.
Adam was a type (prefigure) of the One Who was to come, the former destructive,
the Latter, Jesus Christ the Messiah.

But God's free gift is not at all to be compared to the trespass, His grace is
out of all proportion to the fall of man. For if many died through one man's
falling away, his lapse, his offense, much more profusely did God's grace
and the free gift that comes through the undeserved favor of one
Man, Jesus Christ, abound and overflow to and for the benefit of many.

Nor is the free gift at all to be compared to the effect of that one man's sin.
For the sentence following the trespass of one man brought condemnation,
whereas the free gift following many transgressions brings justification.

For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one,
much more surely will those who receive God's overflowing grace
and the free gift of righteousness, reign as kings in life
through one Man, Jesus Christ the Messiah.

Well then, as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men,
so one Man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal and right
standing with God and life for all men.

For just as by one man's disobedience the many were constituted as sinners,
by one Man's obedience the many will be constituted righteous, made acceptable
to God, brought into right standing with Him.

But then Law came in, only to expand and increase the trespass, making it
more apparent and exciting opposition. But where sin increased and abounded,
grace, God's unmerited favor, has surpassed it and increased the more,

So that, just as sin has reigned in death, so grace might reign also
through righteousness which issues in eternal life through
Jesus Christ the Messiah, our Lord.