Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more

In a dark place, a woman stretches out her hands to the sparkling, life-giving water flowing from above.

Adapted from The Esther Blessing: Grace to Reign in Life

One icy Saturday in January 1993, I drove onto an empty college campus. One glance at the car clock, and my shoulders sagged. Why had I thought this trip a good idea?

Weeks earlier, I had received a flyer announcing a Christian drama conference to be held at a college 100-plus miles from my home. The conference sounded fun.

But when the morning arrived, I almost didn’t go. I would be driving alone to a place I had never visited. I knew no one else attending. And no matter how enjoyable the conference, it couldn’t change the life situations that so deeply distressed me.

Unrighteousness was getting away with murder, so to speak, and I felt helpless to do anything about it.

Still, I got up, dressed and drove. But on reaching my destination, I almost didn’t stay. The frigid weather and desolate campus only echoed the bleakness I felt. What’s more, I had misjudged the drive time. Somewhere very near, the conference had already begun.

The flyer on the car seat beside me mentioned a certain building. I had assumed the building would be easy to spot. But the small campus was unmarked – no building names, no conference signs, no indication whether a cluster of parked cars signaled a nearby dorm, a Saturday class or the gathering I sought. What’s more, I saw no one at all to ask.

Driving in circles, growing more and more frustrated, I finally found a lone, bundled walker. He stopped when I rolled down my window, but knew little more of the campus than I did. I had just decided to give up and head home when I saw a small poster staked outside a building, signaling the conference spot.

Like an arrow into my heart

Parking and hurrying inside, I found the same eerie emptiness. A registration table sat, unmanned. I signed the check-in sheet and picked up a conference schedule. A long, empty hallway greeted me, pock-marked at intervals with classroom doors. Inside some of those classrooms, the first-hour seminars were well underway.

Partway down the hall, outside the open door to one classroom, a lone chair sat. Just inside that door, a man stood, speaking to people I could not see. Ah, but his was not my seminar of choice.

I wandered farther down the hall and found the room I wanted. The door was shut.

I could not bring myself to barge in on the session so late, especially knowing I had to enter the front of the room. I could hear nothing but a low murmur through the closed door. Tiptoeing back down the hallway, I sat in the lone chair, determined to hear what I could of the class I had not planned to attend.

Of course, I’d come upon a talk about who-knows-what, midstream. As the presenter presented and I struggled to follow, he loosely quoted a phrase from Romans 5:20.

“You know,” he said. “Where sin abounds, grace abounds much more.”

The man kept talking, but I heard nothing else. For God had shot that statement like an arrow into my heart.

God had given me a key

Instantly, I knew: The Lord had orchestrated all that had seemed so frustrating up to that moment – the lack of clear directions, the icy weather, the empty campus, even the chair sitting in an empty hallway beside an open door – to get me to a certain place at a certain time to hear, as if for the first time, a concept I already knew.

Where sin abounds, nothing can overcome it? All are doomed? Hope is lost? No, no and no! Where sin abounds, God has made the way for grace to abound much more.

Sitting alone in that hallway, I wanted to shout, “Yes! Yes! How wonderful, Lord! YES!”

When the conference ended later that day, I left, still dancing on the inside. As I drove into winter’s early darkness, I asked the Lord questions I would continue to ask long after arriving home:

So what is grace?
What does it mean for grace to abound much more?
What does that look like?
Does it always happen where sin abounds?
If not, why not?
How can it happen here?

I knew God had given me a key. He had spoken something deeply, profoundly into my spirit. All the answers I didn’t yet know, he wanted me to seek. He was inviting me to press in to him to discover what the key opened and to unlock and own it all. I had no idea where the pursuit would lead me, or what it would open to me.

An extremity of abounding

First, I looked up the Greek words inspired by the Spirit of God, written by Paul and rendered this way in Romans 5:20 NKJV:

Where sin abounded,
grace abounded much more.

In this and other Bible versions, it’s evident that grace out-did sin, but it’s not evident how very much. The translators’ problem? We have limited options in English for communicating degrees of abounding.

In our vocabulary, “abounding” is a lot. So “abounding much more” is, well, more than a lot. Sort of like icing on the cake. But Paul’s words draw a much sharper and more breathtaking contrast.

→ Where sin abounded. In this phrase, Paul used the verb pleonazo. It means, “proliferated a lot,” like a whole string of firecrackers ignited at once.

→ Grace abounded much more. More firecrackers, right? No. In this phrase, Paul used a word that explodes like dynamite. It’s huperperisseuo, and it creates a double blast:

The verb perisseuo means “to superabound.” That, by itself, shows grace utterly eclipsing sin.
The prefix, huper, means, “over, beyond” – extreme, exceeding. Think hyper, as in hyperactive or hyperinflation.

With that one word, Paul conveyed an extremity of abounding that only the Amplified Bible comes close to capturing (with a lot of words):

But where sin increased and abounded,
grace … has surpassed it and increased the more and superabounded.

Woohoo!

Longing for the blessing

Abounding sin isn’t anything to sneeze at. It’s enormous, intimidating, devastating and seemingly unstoppable.

Abounding sin hurts people – indeed, it hurts “the whole creation” (Rom. 8:22) – in ways that are deeply discouraging, highly distressing and cruelly destructive.

All sin opposes God. And when what opposes God runs rampant in our lives, our families, our culture and our world, we may feel like a person on foot pursued by a giant steamroller. We may feel our only choices are:

to run as fast, as long and as far as we can, shouting to others to run too; or
if we’ve reached exhaustion and the steamroller’s still on our heels, to lie down and let it run over us.

In Romans 5:20, the Spirit of God shows us a different scenario. In a world where sin abounded – brutal, evil, relentless and exceedingly strong – grace rocketed above it and soared past it. Sin abounded, all right, but grace more than superabounded!

Excuse me while I pause for a moment, clap my hands and dance.

With all my heart, I want to experience that blessing. I longed to experience it from the moment God showed me the possibility. I longed to live exceedingly abundantly, by grace through faith. I longed for God’s people collectively to walk in the fullness of his life-giving flow.

But for all my study, my mind could not wrap itself around the concept of grace, much less grasp what this blessing might look like, or how to receive it.

Reigning in life by grace

And then I saw: God had painted a picture.

Of course, God has painted many pictures of grace. He’s scattered some especially beautiful ones all through Scripture. He began to show me a breathtaking picture in a surprising place.

Shortly after I attended the conference where the grace arrow pierced my heart, I read the book of Esther. Nestled in among the history books of the Old Testament, Esther’s 10 chapters never mention God, or prayer or faith – or grace.

But the book does mention reigning. It mentions reigning a lot. The people ruling as the Esther story opens are self-absorbed and cruel. So cruel that, by chapter 3, unrighteousness is set to get away with the murder of millions.

What happens next in Esther points beforehand to things Paul wrote in Romans 5:

For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.

But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (vv. 17, 20-21 NKJV)

Jesus accomplished it. Esther’s story bears witness to it. In her day:

What a beautiful and crucial picture!

Not enabling, not entitlement

Too often, we’ve thought of grace as a get-out-of-jail-free card when we sin – or as a magic lamp to use when we want God to say, “Your wish is my command.” But grace never confers entitlement. Grace never enables a pattern that operates like this:

Do what you want.
Expect a loving God to forgive (because Jesus’ blood already paid for it, right?). Or, expect him, graciously, to do whatever else you want.
Go out to continue in the same selfish attitudes and behaviors.

It’s enabling, not grace, that holds us in cycles similar to that of the teen, whose choices keep getting her into trouble, but whose parent keeps making the consequences go away. It’s entitlement that expects Jesus to keep responding to us like our own personal genie.

Grace never contributes to a spiritual holding pattern, a downward spiral or a self-centered life. Rather:

Abounding grace fills us
with desire and power to seek
what delights and honors our Lord,
what helps and encourages people.

Esther’s story paints a picture of that too!

As Esther and Mordecai
denied themselves to go with God –
and spent themselves on behalf of others –
they reigned in life by grace.

Grace received and acted upon always takes us up and over. The climb may be steep and hard. In places, it may look like we’re making little progress or falling back.

In those hard places, the enemy of our souls wants us to give up on grace – and on God.

Yet even when evil seems invincible and the Lord may seem impotent or uncaring, he gives us grace to cry out for his grace. He makes the way for us to tap into more of the more-than-superabundance that is ever available to us, but we’ve not fully accessed yet.

My grace is all you need

It took a very short time for me to learn these concepts. And yet, decades later, I’m still learning.

Looking back, I can see how very much God has taught me since the January day I sat in that empty hallway. I can see how very far he’s brought me. Now, I have testimonies of great victories that have no explanation other than “Grace!”

Paradoxically, I still face discouraging, distressing and cruel situations. And more and more, I find:

Loving God and loving people includes
sharing the pain the Lord feels
when abounding sin wreaks havoc in others’ lives,
when abounding sin profanes his holy name.

My soul wants to run from that pain, but my spirit-led Spirit knows the way out is through. At times when “up and over” seems impossible, even laughable, the Lord has pointed me back to the picture of grace in Esther and those verses in Romans 5.

Repeatedly, he has affirmed:

My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. (2 Cor. 12:9 NLT)

Repeatedly, he has proven faithful. Challenge by challenge,

He gives a greater grace. (James 4:6 NAS)

Our lives too can bear witness

Grace is what continually flows from the Father in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit, empowering everything of eternal value that anyone ever becomes and does.¹

→ By faith, dear one, be blessed to live in the ever-flowing grace that produces good fruit, abundant life, real royalty.

→ When wrongs done to you, wrongs done to others or wrongs you yourself have done leave you lying in the dust – be blessed to cry to the Lord as David so often did:

Turn to me and be gracious to me!²

Be blessed to wait in hope – or even to wait for hope – in Christ. And as you wait, receive the comfort and courage, wisdom, strength and joy that his grace summons up.

→ Above all, be blessed to walk in love. By grace, take each next step with new confidence that God is love, that he loves you. Spirit-to-spirit, learn to love your Lord and the people created in his image, with the love of the One who gave himself so grace can flow.

❦

As we open ourselves to the God of all grace – as we yield to him, holding nothing back – more grace than we can ask or imagine flows. From him. To us. In us. Through us.

Yes, our lives too can bear witness: Where sin abounded. Grace. Abounded. Exponentially. More.

Photo by Farooq Khan

More about the Esther blessing

More about living exceedingly abundantly

Footnotes

Quoted from The Esther Blessing, p. 58. ↩︎
Psalm 25:16. In New American Standard, David cries to God, “Be gracious to me,” in each of these verses too: Psalm 4:1; 6:2; 9:13; 26:11; 27:7; 30:10; 31:9; 41:4, 10; 51:1; 56:1; 57:1 (2x); 86:3, 16. ↩︎

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