Romans 5:21Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

In these words the Apostle presents sin in the position of a king, and death in the position of a soldier who is under his authority and armed by him.

Therefore, if sin has armed death, it is entirely clear that righteousness, communicated by grace and destroying sin, not only disarms death, but destroys it and overthrows the whole kingdom of sin.

This is because righteousness is stronger than sin. It came not from man or from the devil, but from God and grace. It leads our life to a more perfect and endless good. This life will not even have an end, and from this you can learn the excellence of grace.

Having said that grace appeared in superabundance, the Apostle shows, lest we be unbelieving, that such an appearance accords with its purpose. He says: sin was a king, and death was a soldier armed by it. If sin reigned over us, having death as a kind of soldier, then much more will grace reign in us. It bestows righteousness, which destroys sin, and with the destruction of sin also destroys death, over which justification stands. Thus justification slew the king, sin, and together with it death. Finally, eternal life was introduced.

"That, as sin reigned unto death," that is, it brought into sin and put to death, "so grace also might reign through righteousness," which makes us alive and justifies us.

Sin reigned when it saw that it was casting sinners into death, in which it gloried. But grace also will reign through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

With this the Apostle concluded the chapter. He teaches that, as sin, having begotten death, reigned in mortal bodies by stirring up the passions beyond measure, so grace gives believers the righteousness acquired by faith. Its kingdom is not temporary like that of sin, but eternal and without end. For sin possessed bodies and ceased to reign with their death. As the divine Apostle says, "He who has died is freed from sin" (Rom 6:7). But after the resurrection, when our bodies become incorruptible and immortal, grace will be in them. Sin will no longer have any place, because when the passions cease, sin has no place. Then the Apostle presents another objection that arises, and readily resolves it.

The Apostle says this because the one to whom more is forgiven loves more (cf. Lk 7:47).

At the end of the chapter, the holy Apostle Paul makes a remark concerning what he had said above about sin, that it was as if it did not exist when there was no law. Would it not have been better not to give the law at all, so that less guilt would lie upon men?

In answer to this, the Apostle says: “Moreover the law entered,” that is, it was only a temporary pedagogical measure, “that the offense might abound” (Rom 5:20).

For what purpose was this increase? Certainly not to increase God’s wrath against sinners, but to awaken in them consciousness of their sinfulness and thirst for a new means of justification, which they saw neither within nor around themselves. Thus their receptivity to New Testament grace would fully mature.

Having passed from thoughts about the state of men under the law to the teaching about sin, which spread through Adam to all men, and to the teaching about grace, given through Jesus Christ also to all men, the Apostle does not leave unnoticed the special position of those under the law.

Having said briefly in verse 13 that sin before the law was not so clearly imputed as guilt, the Apostle now teaches that, with the appearance of the law, transgressions became more visible. When they increased, the necessity of the manifestation of the highest grace also became more evident. Otherwise, the sentence of death would have had to take effect.

Here the essence of the ordering of our salvation is expressed. Sin reigned, and through sin, death. Now grace reigns, and from now on will begin to reign. By destroying sin and making men righteous, it crushes death at its root and opens the gates to eternal life.

All this was ordered for us by the Lord Jesus Christ, and is accomplished in us. The one who cleaves to the Lord by faith becomes one spirit with the Lord, pure, undefiled, and holy. Through this he receives the seed of eternal life, which he will be counted worthy of at the appointed time by the power of Christ’s resurrection.