The Explosion of Grace through Jesus Christ

Today's first reading, Romans 5: 12, 15b, 17-19, 20b-21, explodes with the awesomeness of God's grace and the gift of salvation. Paul states that "death came to all...inasmuch as all sinned,"  when Adam, the first human being, sinned.  That may appear incomprehensible to us. However, let us think of the body of Christ--one body, the Body of Christ. We know that if any part of our personal bodies is diseased, the whole body is diseased. So, too, with the Body of Christ. If one body of the Body of Christ is diseased by sin, that is, by disobedience to God, each member of that body is, in fact, diseased by sin, as we are one body in Christ.  Paul goes on, however, to remind us that just as, through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death,..." so,too, through one man did grace and righteousness enter the world:  "If by that one person's transgression [that of Adam] how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many....For just as through the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners, so, through the obedience of the one the many will be made righteous. Where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through justification for eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Think of what Jesus gave us by His obedience to the Father unto His death on the cross and subsequent resurrection, His triumph over death and His nailing of sin to the cross!  On that cross, where Jesus poured out the last drop of His blood for our salvation, Jesus tricked Satan and all of us. Satan may have believed that he had won the war in his seeking our demise and his efforts to block us from ever knowing eternal life with Jesus. He is the one who failed, not Jesus! And for us who may look upon Calvary as a failure, we, too, have been fooled. What looks like failure to the naked, human eye, is, in fact, our salvation. It is from the cross that "grace overflowed all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace, also might reign through justification for eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."