Romans 5:20
Romans 5:2020The law came in so that the trespass would increase; but where sin increased, grace increased all the more,
Watchtower commentary takes as confirming the abundance of Jehovah's undeserved kindness. The Law highlighted sin's seriousness; Christ's ransom provides the superabundant remedy. On the JW reading, the abundance is available to those who avail themselves of the ransom through faith and faithful obedience to Jehovah's organisation.
This is the verse that breaks the corresponding-ransom doctrine completely. Paul says — using the NWT's own rendering — "where sin abounded, undeserved kindness abounded still more." The Greek is hyperperisseuō: it super-abounded. If the ransom were a calibrated equivalent to Adam's trespass, kindness would match sin precisely. It does not match — it overflows. The ransom is not a balanced-ledger swap; it is a sacrifice of infinite worth paid by an infinite Person, producing abundance beyond what the debt required. This destroys the Watchtower's "exact-equivalent perfect-man" theology of the cross. Even in the NWT's own translation, Paul's language is surplus language, not equivalence language.
The NWT renders charis as "undeserved kindness" — consistent with Rom 1:5, 1:7. Mild expansion that captures the unmerited dimension but flattens grace's gift-and-status- creating power into "kindness you did not earn." Notable that even this rendering preserves Paul's superabundance language ("abounded still more"), which the Watchtower's ransom theology cannot accommodate.