Romans 5:20

And the law came in besides, that the trespass might abound; but where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly.

Here is the fifth of the great series of "much more's" which mark this portion of Paul's letter. See under Romans 5:17. Paul used "law" here without the article; but the translators are correct in supplying the article, for it cannot be doubted that the law of Moses was Paul's subject, not merely here, but everywhere this term is mentioned in Romans. The abounding of sin which followed the giving of the law was the subject of this word of Lyth,

The wise physician often gives medicine, to bring the disease from within to the surface, and make it abound, so to speak, with a view of driving away the disorder, and so enabling health to reign in the system of his patient.[39]

Irenaeus was probably the first to use that illustration, thus:

The law is a poultice to bring sin to a head.[40]

Greathouse observed that,

The law's intrusion was not without divine point. It was introduced to increase consciousness of wrongdoing (Galatians 3:19). Men will never see their sin or feel their need of a Saviour until their sin becomes transgression.[41]

The connection here between the giving of the law and the abounding of sin cannot be construed as teaching that God's intention was to increase sin. Whiteside noted that

God did not give laws for the purpose of making people worse sinners, but to restrain people from wrong and guide them in the right way. There is this, however, the more things law prohibits, and the more things it requires, the more points there are where we may violate the law. In that way, law may increase the number of sins.[42]

It would seem that there is also another sense in which law caused sin to abound, and that is in the sense of focusing the attention of the sinner upon a prohibition, and thus prompting him to commit an act that might not have occurred to him in the absence of the prohibition. There is a perversity in people that violates laws merely because they are laws. For example, if there were a law forbidding people to walk backward for one hundred yards, there would be people to violate it; or, if there were a law that no man might run more than one mile in a single day, there would be people to violate it who had never run a mile in all their lives previously.

From the above, it would appear that the entrance of law caused sin to abound: (1) by focusing attention upon things prohibited; (2) by actually multiplying the number of violations; and (3) by making people more conscious of the fact that they were violators. As Thomas noted,

As we review this great passage, we must take care to enter into the fullness of the apostle's meaning. Not only does he teach that what we have derived from the first Adam is met by what we have derived from Christ, but that the transcendence of the work of Christ is almost infinite in extent.[43]

Dr. Mabie, as quoted by Thomas in this same place, said:

The full meaning of Paul is not grasped until we perceive that the benefits received from Christ, the second Adam, are in inverse ratio to the disaster entailed by the first Adam.

[39] Lyth in Biblical Illustrator, op. cit., p. 431.

[40] Irenaeus, quoted by Wm. M. Greathouse, op. cit., p. 123.

[41] William M. Greathouse, op. cit., p. 122.

[42] Robertson L. Whiteside, op. cit., p. 126.

[43] Griffith Thomas, op. cit., p. 159.