Grace Greater than Our Sin

Today we consider the epistle lesson for this coming Sunday (Lent 1a). It is Romans 5:12-19. Martin Luther referred to the Epistle to the Romans as the “purest gospel” and the “clearest gospel of them all” in his “Preface to the Epistle to the Romans” (1522). Of course, Luther is using the word gospel in the sense of the Good News and the message of salvation.

Grace Greater than Our Sin

Romans 5 can feel a bit heavy. Paul draws a direct line from Adam to the reality of sin and death in the world. He argues that “sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin” (v. 12). This is not meant as a history lesson; it is a diagnosis. Paul is describing the spiritual atmosphere we are born breathing.

In the Wesleyan tradition, we often talk about this as “original sin.” We don’t mean that we are personally guilty of eating a piece of forbidden fruit thousands of years ago. Rather, we mean that we are born into a condition of separation and brokenness. We are born with a propensity toward self-will rather than toward God. We are born into a current of rebellion that started long before we got here.

As a pastor and as a parent, I’ve seen this. I don’t have to teach a child to be selfish; I have to teach a child to share. I don’t have to teach a teenager to hide their mistakes; I have to teach them the freedom of confession. There is a pull toward the grave, toward isolation, toward death, that seems woven into the fabric of our existence. Paul calls this “dominion”—the rule of death (v. 14). It is a power that grips humanity.

But that is not the end of the story.

Paul’s conclusion in verse 18 is sweeping: “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” (Romans 5:18, NRSVue)

In the Wesleyan tradition, we take this universality seriously — not as a guarantee of universal salvation apart from human response, but as a declaration of the universal scope of Christ’s atoning work and the universal reach of prevenient grace. God’s act in Christ is sufficient for all. Grace is genuinely offered to all. No one stands outside its reach.

And yet Paul does not say that all simply receive this grace automatically. He speaks of those “who receive the abundance of grace” (v. 17). There is a receiving. There is a response. The Wesleyan vision holds together what can otherwise be pulled apart: the sovereign, lavish grace of God and the genuine human capacity — itself enabled by grace — to receive or resist that grace. God will not save us without us. We sometimes call this Gracious Ability. Our ability to accept — to receive — is itself a gift of God’s grace.

This is why Lent matters. Lent is the season of receiving. Of opening our hands. Of turning — repentance means turning — from the patterns of Adam (self-assertion, self-protection, grasping) toward the pattern of Christ (self-giving, trust, obedience).

We are still in the season of honest reckoning. But we do not reckon without hope. The story Paul tells in Romans 5 does not end with the fall; it ends with the gift. And the gift, he insists, is much more than the trespass.

Whatever you carry into this Lenten season — grief, regret, the weight of old habits or old wounds — carry it toward the one whose grace abounds. The logic of Adam does not have the final word. The logic of Christ does.

Grace is greater. That is not a platitude. In Romans 5, it is an argument — a careful, deliberate, theological claim. And it is the ground on which we walk all the way to Easter. The refrain from Julia H. Johnston’s hymn captures it well...

Grace, grace, God’s grace,
grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
grace, grace, God’s grace,
grace that is greater than all our sin!

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“But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”
Romans 5:20b (NRSVue)