Romans Chapter 5 Vs. 14

Death in Adam, Life in Christ

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. Rom 5:14

similitude of Adam’s... Death did not come by personal sin, as it did in the case of Adam. Death passed upon all people because of Adam’s sin (Gen. 2:17; Rom. 5:12-21).

is the figure... Greek: tupos, an outline, sketch; to describe in outline. The idea is that of making a contrasting outline of Christ. See, Phlp. 3:17.

Instead of each person possessing life, they are facing death. Adam brought death into the picture. And God could not allow them to live forever in sickness, pain, and deterioration of body and mind. God provides a way out of this terrible mess that man has gotten himself into, by sending the second Adam (Jesus Christ).

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, so God sent us a Savior.

Even without the law, death was universal. All men from Adam to Moses were subject to death, not because of their sinful acts against the Mosaic law, which they did not yet have, but because of their own inherited sinful nature.

In the rest of this chapter Paul explores the contrasts between the condemning act of Adam and the redemptive act of Christ. They were different in their effectiveness, their extent, their efficacy, their essence and their energy.

The fact that sin did exist during the period from Adam to the Law is proved by the fact that death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses (lit., “from Adam until Moses”). And death also reigned over people who had not broken a command as did Adam (cf. “death reigned,” Rom. 5:17, and “sin reigned in death,” Rom. 5:21). Adam had disobeyed a specific command of God (Gen. 2:17) and committed a transgression, something that his descendants did not do when they sinned till other specific commands from God were received. But yet all Adam’s descendants had sinned with Adam (Rom. 5:12), and therefore death did reign (cf. Gen. 5:5, 5:8, 5:11, 5:14, 5:17, 5:20, 5:27, Gen. 5:31). Since death was present, that proved all had sinned in Adam (cf. See, Rom. 5:12).

The mention of Adam by name (cf. “one man,” Rom. 5:12) brought Paul back to the point of referring to him, who was a pattern of the One to come. A parallelism exists between Adam and Jesus Christ as heads of groups of human beings (cf. 1Cor. 15:45-49), but the parallelism is more contrastive than comparative.