Romans Chapter 5 Vs. 12

Death in Adam, Life in Christ

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: Rom 5:12

Wherefore, as by... In Rom. 5:12-21 Paul shows that the consequences of Christ’s obedience extend as far as Adam’s disobedience. Gentiles are descendants of Adam and partake of his sin and its consequences, so they are free to partake of the redemption of Christ. This again puts the Gentiles on an equal basis with Jews in Adam, Abraham, and Christ. Sin is of universal effect. From Adam all people derive their beings (Acts 17:26). The whole race was in his loins when he sinned. He was its spiritual, moral, and physical fountainhead, and its sole representative. He did not act as a single person but as the whole race. When he fell he sinned for all. When God contracted with him, it was a contract for the whole race. His progeny became a part of the covenant and blessings if he obeyed, and of the curses if he sinned.

Ten Facts about Sin

1. Sin came to the world by one man.

2. It was not in the world at creation.

3. Sin came from outside the world.

4. Sin caused death to enter the race.

5. Sin is universal in effects (Rom. 5:12).

6. It was here 2,500 years before Moses.

7. Is not imputed without a law.

8. Did not come by Moses’ law.

9. Penalty came before Moses’ law.

10. Both sin and death came by Adam’s transgression of Gen. 2:17.

Adam and Eve were created to live (not die). In the Garden of Eden was the tree of life which would make them live forever, if they ate of it. The tree of life is Jesus Christ. Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, and God drove them out of the garden so that they would not eat of the tree of life and live forever in their sinful nature.

Adam and Eve brought sin into the world: thus, by one man sin entered. When Adam sinned, all mankind sinned in his loins (see v.18). The sin nature of man has to do with the flesh man. The flesh man is controlled by the desires of the flesh. Man is a spirit who lives in a body of flesh. Man has a free will to do with his life on earth as he wishes.

Because all humanity existed in the loins of Adam, and have through procreation inherited his fallenness and depravity, it can be said that all sinned in him. Therefore, humans are not sinners because they sin, but rather they sin because they are sinners.

Provided righteousness contrasted

Paul had now finished his description of how God has revealed and applied to humans His provided righteousness on the basis of the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ received by faith. One thing remains to be done — to present the contrastive parallelism between the work of Jesus Christ (and its results in justification and reconciliation) and the work of another man, Adam (and its results in sin and death). Paul began by saying, Therefore (lit., “because of this”; cf. Rom. 4:16), and started his comparison, just as; but he became concerned by other matters and did not return to the comparison until Rom. 5:15. Paul explained that sin (in Gr., “the sin”) entered (eisēlthen, “entered into”) the world through one man; and, in accord with God’s warning (cf. Gen. 2:16-17), death (in Gr., “the death”) through sin. God’s penalty for sin was both spiritual and physical death (cf. Rom. 6:23; 7:13), and Adam and Eve and their descendants experienced both. But physical death, being an outward, visible experience, is in view in Rom. 5:12-21. Paul concluded, And in this way death (“the death”) came to all men. “Came” is diēlthen, literally “passed or went through” or “spread through.” Eisēlthen, “entered into” (the first clause in the verse) means that sin went in the world’s front door (by means of Adam’s sin); and diēlthen, “went through,” means that death penetrated the entire human race, like a vapor permeating all of a house’s rooms. The reason death spread to all, Paul explained, is that all sinned.

The Greek past (aorist) tense occurs in all three verbs in this verse. So the entire human race is viewed as having sinned in the one act of Adam’s sin (cf. “all have sinned,” also the Gr. past tense, in Rom. 3:23). Two ways of explaining this participation of the human race in the sin of Adam have been presented by theologians — the “federal headship” of Adam over the race and the “natural or seminal headship” of Adam. (Others say that people merely imitated Adam, that he gave the human race a bad example. But that does not do justice to Rom. 5:12.)

The federal headship view considers Adam, the first man, as the representative of the human race that generated from him. As the representative of all humans, Adam’s act of sin was considered by God to be the act of all people and his penalty of death was judicially made the penalty of everybody.

The natural headship view, on the other hand, recognizes that the entire human race was seminal and physically in Adam, the first man. As a result God considered all people as participating in the act of sin which Adam committed and as receiving the penalty he received. Even adherents of the federal headship view must admit that Adam is the natural head of the human race physically; the issue is the relationship spiritually. Biblical evidence supports the natural headship of Adam. When presenting the superiority of Melchizedek’s priesthood to Aaron’s, the author of Hebrews argued that Levi, the head of the priestly tribe, “who collects the 10th, paid the 10th through Abraham, because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor” (Heb. 7:9-10).