The Ledger That Changed Everything

In 2001, when Enron collapsed, 20,000 employees lost their jobs. Thousands more watched retirement accounts — some worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — evaporate overnight. None of them had cooked the books. None of them had hidden the debt in shell companies. But the decisions of a few at the top cascaded downward, and everyone bore the consequences. A secretary in Houston. A pipeline technician in Oregon. A janitor who had faithfully invested his modest salary for twenty years. All of them inherited a catastrophe they didn't choose.

Paul understood this kind of inherited devastation. "Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people" (Romans 5:12). Adam's rebellion didn't stay contained. It seeped into the bloodstream of every generation — a corruption none of us authored but all of us carry.

But here is where the gospel breaks the pattern. If one man's failure could ruin everything, imagine what one Man's faithfulness could restore. Christ didn't simply zero out the debt. His grace, Paul says, overflowed — "how much more" is the phrase he keeps reaching for, as if language itself can't hold the abundance. Where Adam's single trespass brought condemnation, Christ's single act of obedience brought justification and life. The ledger doesn't just balance. It overflows.