Paul's readers already knew how one person's act could shape the fate of many. Achan took plunder God had forbidden at Jericho, and the text says Israel broke faith and suffered for it (Joshua 7:1). In this passage Paul traces that pattern back to its origin. 12"Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Adam was the doorway through which sin reached the whole race.
Paul calls Adam 14"a type of the one who was to come." A type is a mold that stamps its shape on what is cast from it. Adam and Christ work the same way: one man whose single act determines what happens to everyone joined to him. But the moment Paul sets up the parallel, he interrupts himself so no one mistakes it for an even trade. 15"But the free gift is not like the trespass." He makes versions of this point three times in a few verses. Adam's one trespass brought condemnation. Christ's free gift answers many trespasses with justification.
Then comes the comparison in its cleanest form: 19"For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous." Disobedience for obedience, one for one, except that the second man's obedience reaches further than the first man's disobedience ever dragged.
Then the line the law's arrival was heading toward: 20"Now the law came in to increase the trespass." The commandment turned ordinary wrongdoing into conscious defiance of a known word, and it sharpened sin's edge. Paul says so without softening. Then, in the same breath, "but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." The word Paul uses for grace's answer is stronger than the one he used for sin's increase, something like overflowing beyond overflowing. Sin increased, and grace outran it.
Nowhere is that clearer than at the cross, the single spot where sin reached its highest pitch, an innocent man condemned by the very people he came to save. In the same hour grace reached higher: "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34). Sin's worst moment and grace's greatest moment happened on the same hill.
Paul closes with two kingdoms: 21"so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Sin's reign runs through death, and death is where every one of its subjects arrives. Grace's reign runs through righteousness into eternal life. Adam opened one door for the whole human race, and Christ opened another, wider still.
Where you are most aware of sin in yourself this morning, Paul's sentence is meant to reach you there. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, and the overflowing is the point. Grace comes with more than the situation required, because the giver measures the gift by his own resources.
Prayer
Father, thank you that our story does not end where Adam's did. Thank you that wherever sin has increased in us, your grace has abounded further still. Let us receive that abundance with wonder, and let it make us hate sin more. Let the grace that reigned at the cross reign now in us, through righteousness, leading to the eternal life you promised through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.