Romans 5:15-19 - Adam vs Yeshua

Name: Romans 5:15-19 - Adam vs Yeshua
Uploaded: 2026-09-08T00:07:05+00:00
Duration: 20 min 24 s
Channel: American Torah

00:02Hey, Jay Carper here from American Torah, and I'm continuing my study of Romans 5,

00:08recreating some of the studies that I lost the recordings of, so don't have the whole group here,

00:13it's just me. So we are looking at Romans chapter 5, verses 15 to 19. Let me go ahead and

00:20read these

00:21verses. But the free gift is not like the trespass, for if many died through one man's trespass,

00:27much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ

00:32abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin, for the judgment

00:38following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought

00:43justification. For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man,

00:50much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness

00:54reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation

01:00for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

01:07For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience

01:12the many will be made righteous. It really sounds like Paul is doing a lot of repeating himself in

01:19this passage, and it sounds that way because he is. There are two parallelisms here. The first one is

01:27in verses 15 and 16. This is a two-unit parallelism, with each parallel unit having three elements.

01:37I've numbered these A1, B1, C1, A2, B2, and C2. The usual convention with mapping out a parallelism or a

01:46chiasm is that one

01:49unit would be A, B, and C. The next one would be A prime, B prime, C prime,

01:54but honestly this way is so much easier to type, and I think it's easier to understand

01:58too. So this is the convention I think I'm going to follow for now.

02:02Each line in the parallelism is an element, and each section is a unit. So A1 through C1 is a

02:10unit,

02:11A1 is an element, B1 is an element, C1 is an element, and so on.

02:16And we've talked about parallelisms before, so I don't want to go into a whole lot of detail there.

02:21One thing I want to point out here is that Paul uses two different words, three if you count a

02:27whole

02:27phrase, so three different terms for the idea of a gift, and I've rendered those as slightly

02:36different words in this parallelism so that you can see the difference. All of these words in Greek

02:41are near synonyms, but they can have slightly different connotations. So Paul isn't describing

02:47three different kinds of gifts here. Instead, I think he's using variations for style mostly,

02:53but he might also mean to emphasize slightly different attributes of the same gift.

02:59So this gift is the forgiveness of the infinite debt that we owe for our sins,

03:04and the forgiveness is made possible by the death of Yeshua.

03:10You can see here in this diagram where these three different

03:14Greek words are. In verse 15, the word for a gift is charisma, and I think that a lot of

03:21English

03:21translations really obscure the fact that Paul is using different words here. They'll translate

03:26all of them as the same word gift. They might add free in front of it or something, but really

03:33it sounds

03:33in the English like Paul is using the same word for each time, but in reality, in Greek, he's mixing

03:41it up

03:41a little bit. So the first one, charisma, it refers to an endowment granted by a wealthy or powerful patron.

03:50So this is something that a superior gives to his subordinate. We could never obtain this gift,

03:58this forgiveness through our own merit, and there's nothing we could ever do to deserve it. Yet it is

04:03fully within God's power and desire for those who love and obey him. So this is an endowment that God

04:10gives

04:10to us. He's not obligated to give it. We can't earn it. He chooses to give it based on criteria

04:17of his own

04:18faith in his son. The next word or the next term, durea en kariti. I'm butchering the Greek, I always

04:28do.

04:29Please forgive me. So this is a gift in grace or a gift by grace, gift of grace. Any of

04:37those are probably

04:38valid translations. Essentially, this is an identical meaning to charisma. God did not owe us anything,

04:45yet he's given us a gift as if he was giving a gift to a friend with no expectation that

04:51he could

04:51ever repay him. Now this isn't to say that he doesn't expect faithfulness in return, only that

04:56no amount of faithfulness could ever repay him or put him in debt to us. So the third word here,

05:02durema translated I think in the ESV as the free gift and that's what I put here in verse 16.

05:11This is a what the the lexicons call a completed gift. So something that is completely given over to

05:20the other person. So unlike Adam's sin that continues and multiplies in us, Adam's gift being

05:28sinful nature and the corruption of our flesh, God's gift is completed. Once given over,

05:34it's totally yours. It's a binary state. You either have it or you don't have it.

05:40Yeshua cannot be crucified again. He was crucified once that made the payment for all those who put their

05:45faith in him. His sacrifice is finished once and for all for all people in all eras throughout time.

05:52It transcends time in the sense that it is effective for all those who live both before and after the

05:58event. It's neither ongoing nor outside of time. It just applies to everybody all at once. It is a

06:05completed gift. Be easier if I had verses 15 and 16 on one page, but just keep it in mind

06:13that I'm

06:13talking about both verses 15 and 16 right now. So Paul writes here that the gracious gift of Yeshua

06:19is different than the trespass of Adam, who also being a superior authority to all mankind by virtue

06:25of being the first created and what people call the federal head of mankind. He is the ultimate earthly

06:34mortal authority over humankind. He is our ultimate patriarch. So Yeshua's gift is different in that

06:44Adam gave an endowment of trespass and therefore death to all mankind while Yeshua's endowment reverses

06:50Adam's gift by removing our trespasses, bringing spiritual and often physical life where Adam brought death.

06:58However, the gracious gift of Yeshua is similar to Adam's in one important way. Adam brought sin into

07:04the world, but God has made us able to reject that endowment. We have a choice. God says to us,

07:10choose

07:10life. We all fail at some level. We've all sinned. We've all coveted, committed some kind of sin in some

07:21way.

07:22You know, as soon as you're old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, you're pretty much

07:26going to be sinning. The only person who has ever escaped that trap is Yeshua himself. So this is why

07:34we need a savior. But God has said that his law is not too difficult for us and he commanded

07:40us to choose

07:41life through obedience. That's from Deuteronomy 30 verse 19. So even in this commandment, I mean once you've

07:48sinned, as we've discussed before, you are infinitely short of God's righteous standard. You can't obey

07:55enough to ever make up for one's sin, hence the need for Yeshua. His infinite righteousness is applied

08:03back to us and this bridges that gap so that we can be reunited with God or restored to a

08:09right

08:09relationship with him. So Yeshua brought righteousness back into the world, but God has made us able to reject

08:16that endowment. The righteousness that he brings is a free gift to all who are willing to turn their

08:22backs on sin and accept him as master. But our sinful inclination reinforced by a lifetime of social and

08:30religious programming drives most people to reject it. You know, in either the administration of this gift or

08:37or life or death, we have a meaningful choice in whether to accept this gift. He's not forcing it on

08:45us.

08:45He has made it available to us. It's important to keep in mind that our choosing is not sufficient

08:50to gain forgiveness or eternal life. We don't have the power to grant ourselves salvation simply by

08:57choosing it. God requires us to make that choice before we can receive the gift, but we're not earning

09:05it or purchasing it. He is not obligated to forgive our sins or to allow us to pass judgment simply

09:12because

09:12we choose to repent of our sins and submit our will to his. His choice is the only one that

09:18really

09:18matters in this respect and his gift is free because no amount of repentance and faithfulness could ever

09:24buy it. All right, I want to go on to verses 17 to 19 because there's another parallelism I want

09:31to talk

09:31about. This one is a much longer parallelism, but it's not as deep. This is a series of six units.

09:40Each

09:40unit has two elements, a1, b1, a2, b2, etc., all the way through. Several things I want to talk about

09:46here.

09:46First, the nature of a parallelism requires that the first element of each unit corresponds to the first

09:53element of all of the others in meaning, the second element to each of the second elements of all the

09:58others, etc., and that correspondence can be synonymous, also called a synthetic parallelism. It can be

10:06analogous, so something like it, and it's called a sympathetic parallelism, or it can be opposing,

10:12making a contrast between them, and this is called an antithetic parallelism. In this case, the first

10:18element of every unit is either a righteous or sinful action, while the second element is the

10:23consequence of that action. So it kind of combines elements of the synthetic, sympathetic, and antithetic

10:30parallelisms because there are some things that are exactly the same, some things that are analogous,

10:36and some things that are the opposite. And it's really, Paul is doing this to compare and contrast

10:43Adam's action and gift to mankind versus Yeshua's act and gift to mankind. Adam's act of sin

10:48Yeshua's act of obedience, and that act especially is his obedience and going to the cross voluntarily.

10:56Let me show you how these elements connect to each other. In the first line, in A1, we have one

11:02man's

11:02trespass. This is the action of a person. In A2, we have the action of somebody else, those who receive

11:11grace and righteousness. In A3, one trespass, that's Adam's action. In A4, one act of righteousness, back to

11:19Yeshua's action. A5, one man's disobedience, back to Adam again. And in A6, back to Yeshua again.

11:28And then going through the other elements, the B elements, in B1, we have the consequence of

11:35Adam's sin, death reigning. Then the consequences of Yeshua's or of the reception of grace by those

11:43who believe in Yeshua. That's reigning in life. Then in B3, we've got, again, the consequences of

11:50Adam's sin. And then in B4, the consequence of Yeshua's obedience. In B5, the consequence,

11:58again, of Adam's sin. In B6, the consequence of Yeshua's obedience.

12:03So each one of these is in the A element, it's talking about one person's action.

12:09And the B element is talking about the consequence of that action. But not one person's action,

12:14because obviously in A2, it's talking about the actions of all who receive the grace and

12:21righteousness the Yeshua has to give. In A1, that's really, it's really kind of the same thing.

12:27Although it's because of one man's trespass, it's dependent on all of those who receive it.

12:32Everyone who sins gets that death that is reigning through that one man.

12:38Inevitably, we all do, except for Yeshua, as I mentioned.

12:42Okay, now in following this pattern, Paul is emphatically underscoring the relative

12:47impacts of Adam's disobedience in listening to his wife instead of God, and Yeshua's obedience

12:51in listening to his father instead of his disciples who urged him to resist those who would kill him.

12:56You remember the incident of Peter with the sword in the garden. His disciples wanted to fight the

13:02Romans. They wanted to set up his kingdom right then and there. That wasn't Yeshua's plan.

13:08He wanted to lay the foundation of justification first to build the people of his kingdom, and then

13:15much later, he would return to establish the political kingdom on earth.

13:19You'll notice another pattern here. The first and second elements have something in common about

13:26something reigning, death reigning, and life reigning. The third and fourth elements have something

13:31leading to another. A trespass leads to condemnation. A righteous act leads to justification. And then the

13:39fifth and sixth elements have the result of the result in the people of that person's actions.

13:47Adam's disobedience made many into sinners. Yeshua's obedience made many to be righteous.

13:54I want to talk about that in a little bit more detail. It's kind of like there's a

14:00three-unit parallelism within the six-unit parallelism, and you might even be able to arrange this in a

14:06chiasm. I don't know. I don't think that's really deliberate in Paul's part. I think the parallelism is

14:10really the point. There are three major differences between the consequences of Adam's and Yeshua's

14:16actions, each illustrated by two units within this parallelism. The first unit in verse 17

14:23talks about Adam's sin causing him to be expelled from the garden, preventing any of his descendants

14:28from eating from the tree of life, thereby bringing physical death to all. Yeshua's obedience, to the

14:34contrary, enables physical resurrection of all humanity at the end of the world. So Adam brings

14:41death at the beginning. Yeshua brings life at the end. Those who receive his grace and mercy by repenting

14:46from their sins and begging God's forgiveness will go on to live in the new creation with uncorrupted

14:52and incorruptible bodies. The second unit in verse 18, this is A3 through B4, it's Adam's sin brought

15:01moral and physical corruption into the world, and this predisposes all people to rebellion against

15:06God's law. This is the introduction of the sinful nature, and it leads to condemnation. Accepting only

15:11Yeshua, every person who ever lived long enough to attain an understanding of moral right and wrong,

15:17has followed in Adam's footsteps, and sinned, meriting eternal condemnation by his own actions and

15:23desires, not by Adam's. Each person earns his own condemnation. And as explained in my notes on Romans 3,

15:32you can go, that video's online, you can go back and check it. Yeshua's obedience enables his

15:36infinite righteousness to be applied to the spiritual accounting books for all of those who accept

15:41him as Lord. Having been declared righteous in God's sight, we're given new spiritual life. Our names

15:48are written in the book of life, and we will pass judgment after the resurrection and be allowed to

15:54pass on to eternal life. So you can see how all of these are connected. They're all kind of saying

15:58the same

15:59thing, just in a slightly different way, and that's really what parallelisms often do.

16:03So the third unit is verse 19 of elements A5 through B6. This is talking about our predisposition

16:13to rebellion and the corruption introduced to the world by Adam's fall. This means that our

16:18spirits are easily dragged down by our flesh into spiritual death. Even though we've been

16:23spiritually reborn through Yeshua, we are still shackled to our corrupted flesh while this corrupted

16:28world persists. Paul talks about this struggle in Romans also, how he wants to do the right thing,

16:35but he's constantly battling the corrupted flesh until we are reborn, remade at the end of time when

16:42our bodies are resurrected. And everybody struggles with this, and this is why it is so difficult for

16:48people to accept Yeshua. Ultimately, it's much simpler and easier for us to accept Adam's gift than

16:55Yeshua's. As Yeshua himself said back in Matthew 7 verses 13 to 14, the gate is wide and the way

17:02is easy

17:02that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. The gate is narrow and the way is

17:08hard

17:08that leads to life, and those who find it are few. I want to zoom in here on verse 19

17:14for a bit.

17:15It says, for as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's

17:21obedience the many will be made righteous. We've talked about this before in back in Romans 3, but

17:26this bears repeating. This text doesn't say that all or even many people inherited either guilt

17:33or a sinful nature from Adam, only that they were made sinners by his disobedience. That doesn't mean

17:39that they got his guilt and they were made sinners before they were conceived or they were sinners in

17:44the womb. It's that his actions set the stage and made them sinners. It doesn't say when or how.

17:52I think in a previous video on Romans 5 we talked about the doctrine of original sin and inherited

17:59guilt as opposed to a corrupted world and sinful inclination. I recommend you go back and watch

18:04that if you haven't. So this same language, many will be made righteous, is used in the second half

18:11of this verse and it cannot mean that all people are made righteous through Yeshua's obedience because

18:17we know that that's not true. So that means that many were made sinners in the first half doesn't

18:23necessarily mean that all men were made sinners through Adam's disobedience. We know for certain

18:28that there is one man who was not and if we inherited Adam's guilt and Yeshua didn't, then Hebrews 2

18:36.17

18:36that says that he was made like us in every respect so that he could be tempted and experience

18:42the struggles that we have, well that's incorrect because he didn't become like us in every respect.

18:50He would have been born with a proverbial easy button making his sinless life much less remarkable.

18:56But he was like us. He did live in this corrupted world. He had corrupted flesh just like we do

19:02that grew old and would have died of old age if he had not been crucified early.

19:08This flesh pulls us all into sin. Yeshua is the only one who ever resisted it. It's not that Adam

19:17made us guilty. He passed on a corrupted world and corrupted flesh, giving us a sinful inclination. This,

19:27coupled with our own will, our own desire to rebel against God, causes us to sin. We cause ourselves to

19:35sin.

19:35We earn our own condemnation. We earn our own condemnation. We can't earn our justification.

19:40Yeshua does that for us because he did not earn condemnation. He came to earth with perfect

19:45righteousness, being the Son of God and God himself. And this is the only way that he could have an

19:53infinite righteous accounting balance to apply to everybody who has ever lived who accepts him

19:59as their Lord. This is Jake Harper from American Torah and we will continue with Romans chapter 5 verse 20

20:07in the next video. When that will be, I don't know, hopefully not too long.

20:12I'll see you next time.

20:23You

Romans 5:15-19 - Adam vs Yeshua

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