Romans 5:12

12. Wherefore As the result of all that has gone before, describing man’s natural fall and gracious delivery, but more specially now suggested by that ruin and redemption in Romans 5:10-11.

One man Adam, (and not Eve.) as the representative of the race.

Sin entered The first actual human sin was committed. Satan had sinned before, and both he and his sin were in the physical world, that is, on earth. Indeed, Satan’s sin in tempting preceded Adam’s sin in the world; so that it is not the physical earth that is meant, but the human world, the race of man.

By the sin that entered many understand the state of sin (sometimes called corruption) into which man is fallen as a nature. And no doubt there is a state of evil, as well as evil action, which in the Scriptures is called sin. Sin is not in action alone: there may be a permanently wrong and wicked state of mind, of purpose, of temper, of character. A man may for years entertain a purpose of murder, waiting the opportunity for the deed. He is thus in heart, state, and character a permanent murderer. Whether awake, asleep, or in a swoon, there is the same unsuspended state of character. A man’s sensual nature may have the entire predominance over his moral nature, so that, awake or asleep, he may be a sensual, drunken being. So pride, ambition, scepticism, and a thousand other vices, may be triumphant in a man’s permanent mental state and fixed moral character. He is, therefore, in a state of sin. And whatever good there is in him is so subordinated to, harmonized with, and tainted by, these predominant evils as to be only qualifiedly good. Yet it was Adam’s flagrant act of disobedience to God’s law which at once thus subordinated the good to evil in his moral constitution God; law, conscience, were no longer supreme; self submission to temptation, animal indulgence, took the ascendant. That changed condition of soul becoming hereditary, has been called “Original Sin.” Whatever may be the suitableness of the term, Scripture, consciousness, and experience amply attest the mournful fact.

Death by sin Geologists declare, and science seems universally to accept the declaration, that animal death existed for ages before the human race existed. Indeed death, disintegration, dissolution, appears to belong to the very nature of all material organisms. This fact seems to be recognised in the Genesis history. Adam’s first organism seems to have been naturally dissoluble, and its dissolution to have been prevented by the tree of life.

His bodily immortality seems thus to have been properly supernatural. Just so his holiness was supernatural, being superinduced by the blessed indwelling and communion of the Divine Spirit. Sin removed the Holy Spirit; the sentence upon sin removed him from the tree of life, (Genesis 3:22,) and so when sin entered then also entered death by sin. It was, as above said, into the human world that both sin and death now entered. It is said explicitly that “death passed upon all men,” not upon the lower animal races. On Adam’s sin, moral subversion and mortality obtained full sway over him, and so of all his descendants by the law of propagation; the law by which throughout the entire generative kingdoms, whether vegetable, animal, or human, like nature begets like nature, bodily, mental, and moral.

“When the apostle here teaches that all evil has its origin in sin, and all sin in that of the ancestor of the human race, he by no means propounds an entirely new doctrine. It is substantially contained in the third chapter of Genesis, and is frequently declared in the Apocrypha: Wisdom of Solomon, Romans 11:23-24; Sir 25:24 . It has likewise been handed down in the exegetical traditions of the rabbins, among whom, for example, are to be found such sentiments as the following: The Targum, on the text, Ecclesiastes 7:29, ‘God hath made man upright,’ observes: ‘But the serpent and the woman seduced him, and caused death to be brought upon him and all the inhabitants of the earth;’ and on Ruth 4:22, ‘Jesse lived many days, until the counsel which the serpent gave to Eve was called to mind before God. In consequence of this counsel all men upon earth are obnoxious to death.’ To the same purpose are the words of R. Shemtob (died anno 1293) in the book Sepher Haemunoth: ‘In their mystical commentaries our doctors say that if Adam and Eve had not sinned their descendants would not have been infected with the propensity to evil; their form would have remained perfect like that of the angels, and they would have continued forever in the world, subject neither to death nor change.’

‘Bereschith Rabba,’ a mystical commentary upon Genesis from an early period of the Middle Ages, par. 12, 14: ‘Although created perfect, yet when the first man sinned all was perverted, and shall not return to order until the Messiah come.’” Tholuck. Yet some of these authorities are probably the borrowers from the apostle rather than originals. Other Jewish doctors maintain an implanted tendency to evil born in every man.

All have sinned How does the apostle mean that all have sinned? Theologians have replied, All have sinned in Adam. But no such phrase as sinned in Adam occurs in Scripture. The phrase In Adam all die does occur. This does not mean, however, that any man’s body or person was physically, materially, or morally present, or so incorporated in the body of Adam as to expire with him when he expired. No more was any person present in Adam to eat the forbidden fruit when he ate. Every man dies conceptually in the first mortal man, just as every lion dies in the first mortal lion; that is, by being subjected to death by the law of likeness to the primal progenitor. The first lion was the representative lion, in whose likeness every descended lion would roar, devour, and die; and so in him all the lion race die. Adam, separated by sin from the Holy Spirit, was a naturally disposed sinner, and, shut from the tree of life, a natural mortal; and so by the law of descent his posterity are naturally disposed sinners, and both naturally and penally mortal.

But when the apostle declares that all have sinned, he declares not merely the natural disposition, but the actual sinning of all. Our view is this: The aorist or past tense, here used of the word sinned, does in this epistle often imply a general certain fact or state of facts. So it is used in Romans 3:23; Romans 9:22-23; Romans 8:29-30, (where see notes,) where justified and glorified express a uniform general fact in the same tense. And it is so regularly used throughout this very passage, 12-21. Romans 5:15, Hath abounded, essentially means always abounds and always will abound; 17, Death reigned; 21, Sin hath reigned, express permanent, universal facts. The clause all have sinned, therefore, means just the same as all sin thus stating a fact which (allowing for volitional freedom) is as uniform as a law of nature. Now such a uniform law of nature, however generally stated, takes effect only in those circumstances or conditions which allow it possible. Thus “water runs,” that is, such is the nature of water if gravitation permit. “Lead melts,” that is, when the temperature allows. “All men sin” such is their nature when their probation presents itself. Such being their normal action, such must be their permanent nature. And infants are of the same nature, they needing only the possible conditions for actual sinning. The sentence of universal death must stand, therefore, because in the divine view men are by nature universal sinners. Not because they literally sinned in Adam; not because Adam’s personal sin is imputed to them, but because such is their nature that in this scene of probation, hemmed in with temptations on all sides, sooner or later they will sin; and of whatever act a being is the normal, if not absolutely universal, performer, of that he is normally called the doer; if of sin, then a sinner.

The aoristic character of the verbs we have quoted is preserved by the writer’s being considered as assuming his standpoint at the close of the whole series of transactions they express. Standing at the finale of all probationary history, he recognises that all sinned when the lengthened trial came. (For the reconciliation of volitional freedom with this universality of sin see WILL, pp. 338-343.)

In Romans 5:12 the apostle states one side of the comparison, but he does not state the other side until Romans 5:18. What intervenes may be considered logically parenthetic. To obtain the gist of the parallel, Romans 5:12; Romans 5:18 may be read together.

The Adamic side of the comparison the apostle assumes on the admitted authority of Genesis. The purpose of the parallel is, (1.) To show the illustrious place of Christ in the history of our world. (2.) To show that justification by Christ extends beyond mere Judaism, and embraces the race. (3.) To show that the redemption more than repairs the fall.