Romans Chapter 5:12-21
Romans 5:12 “Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned”: “Therefore”: The section which now follows, summarizes the situation facing all people. Paul is setting us up for a comparison. Adam becomes one way for the race and Jesus another. In Adam there is only condemnation and spiritual death, and in Christ there is acquittal and life eternal. Notice how the argument in this section depends upon Adam being a real historical person. “There cannot be a proper parallel between a mythical Adam and an historical Christ. Any theory which tends, as the common form of evolution does, to eliminate Adam as a real historical person, is destructive to Christianity” (Reese p. 198). If Jesus is called the second Adam or the last Adam and He came to undo the harm done by the first Adam, then obviously the first Adam was the real person and the fall in Genesis 3 was a real event. “As through one man sin entered”: Paul will later state that the woman (Eve) was deceived, and fell into transgression (1 Tim. 2:14). Some speculate that Adam may have indeed sinned first, by standing idly by and allowing his wife to be deceived (Genesis 3:6 “she gave also to her husband with her” 3:16-17). Other writers add that the term “Adam” was indeed applied to both Adam and Eve (Genesis 5:1-2), and that the sin of the woman was not complete in its effects without the concurrence of the man. Here is one place where we see that Paul was not prejudiced against women (as some claim), for in this section he places the entrance of sin on the shoulders of the man. “Sin entered”: Which infers that sin already existed somewhere else before it entered this earth. The Bible notes that prior to sin entering this world, rebellion or sin had already taken place in the heavenly realm (Jude 6). “Death through sin”: It appears that the death under consideration in these verses is spiritual death, even though many commentators argue that the death under consideration is physical death (5:15,17,21). Besides, this death passed on to all men because all sinned. I believe that one mistake that most denominational commentators make in this section is that they assume that the consequences of Adam’s choice and the sacrifice of Jesus in this section are both unconditional. The truth of the matter is that the spiritual consequences of both actions are very conditional. We do not automatically become sinners; rather we become sinners like Adam became a sinner—when we sin. Neither do we automatically receive the benefits of Jesus’ death (John 8:24). In addition, the thrust of the book of Romans up to this point has been centered upon our need for
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