📜WEB · Romans 5:15
What does Romans 5:15 mean?
"But the free gift isn’t like the trespass. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many."
— Romans 5:15 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Therefore as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; and so death passed to all men, because all sinned.
For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not charged when there is no law.
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those whose sins weren’t like Adam’s disobedience, who is a foreshadowing of him who was to come.
But the free gift isn’t like the trespass. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.
The gift is not as through one who sinned: for the judgment came by one to condemnation, but the free gift came of many trespasses to justification.
For if by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; so much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.
So then as through one trespass, all men were condemned; even so through one act of righteousness, all men were justified to life.
Explanation
Romans 5:15 stands in the middle of Paul's extended comparison between Adam and Christ, and the verse itself is built around a contrast the apostle wants his readers to feel deeply: the "free gift" — meaning what God offers in Christ — is not equivalent in scale or character to "the trespass," meaning Adam's sin. In plain language, Paul is saying: one man's sin (Adam's) brought death to many, but God's grace, given through one man (Jesus Christ), accomplishes something even greater, overflowing to many. The comparison isn't a simple one-for-one trade; it's a contrast between a devastating cause-and-effect and a far more powerful, generous cause-and-effect.
To understand this properly, it helps to know the context. Paul wrote Romans to the church in Rome, a congregation he had not founded but hoped to visit, made up of both Jewish and Gentile believers wrestling with how the law, sin, and grace fit together. By chapter 5, Paul has already laid out humanity's universal sinfulness (chapters 1–3) and justification by faith (chapter 4). Now, in verses 12–21, he draws a sweeping picture of redemptive history using two representative figures: Adam, whose one act of disobedience introduced sin and death into the human race, and Christ, whose one act of obedience introduces grace and life. Paul isn't just talking about two individuals; he's talking about two "headships" — two men whose actions have consequences for everyone connected to them.
Theologically, this verse teaches the doct
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