Romans 5:17
Romans 5:1717For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive an abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
Jehovah's Witnesses read through the lens of the organisation's ransom theology, emphasising that Jesus' sacrifice was an exact equivalent for Adam's lost perfect human life. The Watchtower treats the verse's reference to "those who receive the abundance of the undeserved kindness" as describing a category of faithful ones who qualify through knowledge, obedience, organisation membership, and active loyalty — not as describing a free gift that is simply received. The verse's explicit language about "the gift of righteousness" is reframed as something believers must work toward rather than accept as an accomplished reality. Under the Watchtower system, salvation requires meeting attendance, field service quotas, and compliance with the Governing Body's direction, effectively converting the gift language into a law-based framework where more compliance equals more spiritual standing.
is a key text for the Protestant doctrine of imputed righteousness. Paul explicitly calls righteousness a "gift" — those who "receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness" will reign in life through Jesus Christ. A gift is received, not earned. This verse directly counters the Watchtower's law-based framework: says all human righteous acts are like filthy rags, and defines sin as lawlessness — if righteousness came through law-keeping, no one would qualify because all have sinned (). The solution Paul presents is not more effort but receiving what Christ already accomplished. The "much more" language of verse 17 reinforces the Romans 5 theme that the gift exceeds the debt: those who receive the abundance of grace do not merely recover what Adam lost but "reign in life" — language of superabundance, not bare equivalence. Even in the NWT, the verse speaks of "the abundance of the undeserved kindness" and "the free gift of righteousness," making grace and works mutually exclusive in the same way does.
NWT renders tēn perisseian tēs charitos as "the abundance of the undeserved kindness" — the systemic NWT charis → "undeserved kindness" pattern (compare , , ). Effect here parallels : Paul's perisseia / abundance language around charis is preserved in the NWT's "abundance," so the "much more" argument against the Watchtower's exact-equivalence ransom theology still stands in the JW's own Bible. The category-loss of "grace" to "undeserved kindness" is stylistic here rather than structurally blocking the Protestant point.