Romans 5:12 - 21 (Part 1)

Romans — Steve Gregg

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Romans 5:12 - 21 (Part 2)

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Romans 5:12 - 21 (Part 1)

RomansSteve Gregg

The passage of Romans 5:12-21 reflects on the impact of Adam and Christ on humanity. While theologians have debated the theological nuances of this passage, the practical takeaway is to emulate Christ and understand Paul's message. Paul's theology distinguishes between old and new humanity, with the corporate identity of Adam leading to death and the corporate identity of Christ leading to life. While Augustine's doctrine of infant guilt and original sin is not a tenet of Paul's theology, personal responsibility and accountability for sin is emphasized, and access to eternal life is conditional on accepting Jesus Christ as the second Adam.

Transcript

We're turning to the second half of Romans 5. I mentioned in our introduction to Romans, and I'll mention it again, that Romans 5, this portion of Romans 5, is particularly difficult. Paul says certain things that are somewhat ambiguous, and they've been taken different ways throughout history. Theologians had very different opinions about what it is Paul is saying.

In this case, having different opinions is justified by the ambiguity of some of his statements in the passage. This is the place, this is one of the two places actually, that Paul compares Christ with Adam. The effect that Adam had on the human race is compared and mostly contrasted with the effect that Christ has had on the human race.

Christ is viewed as something of another Adam, the last Adam, or the second man. We need to understand as we go through that Paul is taking it for granted that the name Adam means man or humanity. That is in fact the meaning of the word.

Its etymology goes back to the word red. In Hebrew language, Adam means man or mankind. Although Adam is a man, an individual, he was at the same time all of mankind since there were no other humans but himself.

He was the whole human race. All the subsequent human race, ourselves included, were in him at the time that he lived. Until he and Eve had their first child, the entire human race was physically, literally in him.

It's an amazing thing to contemplate how the human race is connected like branches and twigs of a single tree. None of us is an individual that sprang up independently. Each of us is a twig or a branch on an extensive tree.

The stuff that makes you who you are, your DNA, your physical existence, is simply a composite of elements of your parents' DNA. There are elements of their parents. In a sense, everything that you are, not including your personality and your personal thoughts, but your physicality, everything you are was in your parents at one time.

Previously, you were in your great-grandparents. Going back to Adam, we were all in Adam. Every human being born since the Garden of Eden simply came out of Adam, but we're all compacted in Adam and Eve at the time.

When Adam did something, humanity was doing something, because there wasn't any humanity except him. All humanity since then has arisen from him. This is a concept that we maybe don't contemplate often enough, because we have a radically individualistic mentality.

I don't know exactly when this arose. Probably during the Enlightenment age, when human individuality and rights and so forth were an emphasis in much philosophy. Certainly in America, since then, we are strongly inclined toward emphasis on independence and individuality.

There's some strength in that, obviously, but it also disinclines us to see solidarity of ourselves with family and with the whole human family, the whole human race. The Eastern mind didn't have this same orientation that we do. We're very Western, and Paul was writing to probably predominantly Jewish mind.

We know the Romans were not predominantly Jewish, but there was a strong element of Jews in the church. Up to this point, Paul has primarily been addressing himself to those Jews and their prejudice and their elitism and so forth. Now, since the book of Romans is written to a mixed ethnic church, we might argue that these chapters, since he's not directly talking about the Jews here, that he's not addressing the Jewish mind, but the Gentile mind.

It's not entirely clear. Nonetheless, the ancients were not as adverse as we are to thinking in terms of solidarity, racial solidarity, in Adam. The Jews, in fact, I have read, already had the idea that Paul is taking for granted here, that the whole human race is Adam.

And Paul is simply adding to that, well, there's a new Adam now. Christ functions in the purposes of God and in redemption as another Adam. And just as in Adam, we, who were in Adam, incurred certain circumstantial consequences, so also in Christ we incur certain consequences of the opposite sort and of a desirable sort.

Adam brought undesirable consequences. Christ brought desirable ones. Now, how far Paul wants to press this comparison is what is open to questions.

He invites us to make this comparison, but he spends much of the verbiage in the passage before us backing away from it, saying, well, it's not exactly the same. There is a comparison, but we need to not push it too far because he says, well, it's, you know, what Adam did isn't like what Christ did in this respect, and it isn't like it in this respect. Paul wants to get some advantage from the comparison without, he wants to avoid the disadvantage of finding too many comparisons.

And so this is why it becomes very difficult because theologians know they're supposed to see some parallel between Adam's role and Christ's role in terms of impact on the human race. But how much is to be pressed and how much is to be avoided of parallel is what is what leads to different theological assumptions. Now, you might not be a person who cares a great deal about theological niceties.

You might just say, just tell me the practical stuff. How do I live for Jesus, which is a good thing. But there are, in our theological understanding, there are ways of looking at God's character, God's justice, God's dealings with people that aren't us.

Children who die, for example, would be very much impacted by some of the theological questions this passage raises. And I just want you to know that there are some things in it that I find difficult. Still, I have always found difficult.

In fact, to this day, as recently as this morning, reading the passage again, I think I don't understand why Paul said it like that. And I wonder if Paul himself found some of this difficult and wasn't quite sure how to clarify it because he didn't clarify it very well. If he had, there wouldn't be so much confusion about the passage.

Obviously, Paul knew what he was thinking. But it's possible that he hadn't teased out everything about it and he was trying to wrestle with it himself. And his choice of words hasn't really come down to us in a crystal clear expression of some obvious belief on all these points.

Let me read it so you know what I'm talking about. And I just want to say that when I was young, reading Romans, I always found this difficult and I thought it was some defect in me. And then, as I recall, sometime late in the 70s, I was listening to a tape of one of my favorite Bible teachers at the time.

He was not a man that I knew, but I had liked his recorded lectures. And from listening to him, I'd always come to think he's a really sharp guy. And when he came to Romans 5, this section, he just said, this is the most difficult passage, possibly, in the Bible to understand.

So as a teacher coming to it, it's always intimidating because even teachers that I look up to have said it's difficult. And I have to say it is difficult to me too. However, it's interesting.

And as long as we're not too addicted to certainty and too much under the assumption that we have to understand everything here or we just can't move on, as long as we're free from such attitudes as that, we can enjoy trying to get under the skin of Paul's thought and see what it is he's actually thinking here. It is obviously integral to his argument. He's not just throwing in an appendix in the wrong spot.

He apparently feels that this material should be treated immediately after the material in the first part of Romans 5 because he starts by saying, therefore. So whatever he's saying is connected logically with the previous material. Whether that previous material is that which is found in verses 1 through 11 of the same chapter or all the material, all the argument previous, is the premise from which he's drawing the conclusions which follow the therefore.

I'll read it through. And if you don't find any problem with it, more power to you. If you try to follow Paul's thought clearly, I think you may find some parts obscure.

Therefore, justice through one man, sin entered the world and death through sin. And thus death spread to all men because all sinned for until the law. Notice he didn't finish the sentence.

He goes off another direction for until the law. Sin was in the world. But sin is not imputed when there's no law.

Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned, according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who is to come. That is, Adam is a type of Christ. Verse 15.

But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense, many died, much more the grace of God and the gift of the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned.

For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation. But the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man's offense, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation. Even so, through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous.

Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. So, that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, obviously there's a lot of sayings there that evoke good feelings in us.

I mean, there's some inspiring lines in there. But when you're trying to analytically follow, okay, when Paul is trying to express this, so why did he use that phrase, that sentence, this juxtaposition of ideas, what is it he's really saying in some of these things? Now, what makes it slightly different, or I should say one thing that makes a slight contribution to its difficulty, is a lot of these words, if you're reading a translation that italicizes certain words in the Bible, a number of these words are in italics. And what that means is they're not even in the Greek.

Translators themselves have found Paul's writing choppy and sometimes have to insert whole phrases just to make a sentence work. And whether they're choosing the right phrases or not is yet another consideration to wonder about. For example, look at verse 18.

If we omit the words that are in italics because the Greek text omits them, it would read, Therefore, as through one man's offense came to all men resulting in condemnation, even so through one man's righteous act to all men resulting in justification of life. The words that are supplied are, in the first part, judgment, which may very well be the right word that Paul had in mind, but he didn't say it, didn't write it. And then you've got the entire phrase, the free gift came.

That's actually a clause, that's an independent clause near the end of that verse, which isn't even in the Greek. It probably reflects what Paul is intending to say, the translators at least think so, and they may be right. I'm not going to dispute it.

What I'm saying is the passage is more difficult because Paul didn't say all those words, and it's not entirely clear precisely what he did mean to say. So this passage is made the more difficult that way. But it's also made difficult because its structure is so bizarre.

In verse 12, he gives sort of a conditional clause, and you see there's kind of a dash at the end of that verse. Not in the Greek, because of course the punctuation is supplied. But the reason there's a dash there is he doesn't finish the sentence.

He leaves it unfinished. He says, therefore, justice through one man's sin entered the world and death through sin and thus death spread to all men because all sinned. We expect him to say, therefore, or similarly, or something like that, but he doesn't.

Instead, there's a parenthesis. He actually gets back to finishing verse 12 by verse 18. Everything in verses 13 through 17 is parenthetical.

And by the time he comes back to his original statement in verse 18, he realizes he's lost the thread entirely by his long parenthesis. So he restates the first part again in verse 18. Therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men resulting in condemnation.

Well, that's essentially the same thing he said in verse 12. Now he finishes it. Okay, so also.

And that's what we expected to find around the end of verse 12. The so also, but there was no so also because he got off on a tangent. And that tangent, the translators, at least in the New King James, have placed in parenthesis, which they should because it's a whole parenthesis that does not finish his thought in verse 12.

It goes off onto side explanations of things. And then he comes back to finish his thought in verse 18 and move along. So in a sense, the entirety of verses 13 through 17, if they had never been inserted at all, would not have interfered with what he's saying.

You could just read verse 12 and 18 through 21 and that would get his essential thought. But parenthesis are there for a reason. Although they interrupt the thought, they interrupted in order to clarify things that might well, that the speaker certainly thinks.

Wait a minute here. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm starting to say something that they may not even have the background for understanding what I'm talking about.

So I need to give some back story here and versus 13 through 17 provide that parenthesis. But further, there's a parenthesis within the parenthesis because in within the parenthesis, 13 and 14 are a thought. And then versus 15 through 17 are like another aside.

Clarifying something else from that earlier thought. So you've got a parenthesis within a parenthesis, a lengthy parenthesis that interrupts his thought. And I have to say that even without the parenthesis, the thought is ambiguous.

Because, well, we'll see why because, but what makes it particularly difficult is he says that Adam's sin is somehow related to our sin. But in what way is it related? Did he inspire us to sin? Did he set a bad example for us? Did we sin in him as is the common orthodox way to look at this passage? Or what? In any case, Paul's thought has been teased out by lots of scholars trying to figure out what is he exactly saying. We know what he's saying in general.

In general, he's saying there's two humanities. One of the humanities is in Adam. Adam is a corporate being.

He was a single human being when he was alive, but he had children. And now who he is has now extended out into a whole family, but all are in Adam still in some respects. And the other human being is Christ.

And now there are people who are in Christ. As some are in Adam, so some are in Christ. And the virtues of Christ extend to those who are in him just as the demerits in some respects, or at least the consequences of Adam's sin, extend to those who are in Adam.

So this is at the very base what Paul's talking about. There's two humanities in the world. There's an old man, Adam, and there's a new man, Christ.

Everybody's either in the old man or in the new man. Now, why did I use the terms old man and new man? Well, Paul, of course, uses those terms, but rarely. When we come to chapter 6, verse 6, we're going to find, he says, Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him.

And here, modern translations do a tremendous disservice. In that many modern translations translate Romans 6, 6, our old self was crucified. Paul is not talking about our old self.

He's talking about an old man. The old man is Adam. We were in Adam.

He was our old man. Well, why is he our old man? Well, because we were in him. We could say this is my house, because it's my house.

It's where I live. This is my town. I live in this town.

Adam was my old man. He's the old man I used to live in, but I'm in a new man now, in Christ. Unfortunately, many translations change old man and new man in Scripture to old self and new self.

And that's only because, apparently, the translators don't know Paul's theology about this. They think they do, but Paul's not talking about an old self, who I used to be, but rather, who I used to be in. And so, when Paul, later in Ephesians and Colossians, speaks very similarly in those two passages of the contrast between the old and the new man, if you look in Ephesians 4 and verse 22 and following, Ephesians 4.22, Paul is exhorting that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man.

Now, again, if you have a translation that says the old self, you might go looking for another translation where the translators would rather translate than interpret. The word anthropos, which Paul uses, means man or humanity. Just like Adam in the Hebrew means man or humanity, so anthropos in the Greek means man or humanity.

The old Adam, the old man, the old anthropos. You put off concerning your former conduct the old man, which grows corrupt according to deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, which was created according to God in righteousness and true holiness. Notice the old man and the new man are something you put on or put off, like clothing.

That's the imagery. It's like taking off old clothing and putting on new clothing. And lots of people talk about the old man and the new man as if there's something in you, the old nature and the new nature in you.

Well, there may be an old nature and a new nature in you, but that's not what Paul's talking about. Paul's talking about not what's in you, but what you're in. You are in your clothing.

Your clothing is not in you. You are contained in it, and you put it off. You put off the old man like you've stepped out of the old humanity, and you've put on, like putting on a new garment, you've stepped into a new humanity.

And that's how Paul talks. He doesn't talk the other way about it. There's no new self or old self mentioned here.

But if you wonder, is the old man Adam and is the new man Christ? In fact, we can prove that it's so. If you turn in Ephesians, two chapters backward to Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2, verses 14 and 15, Paul says, For he himself is our peace, Christ, who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of division between us, that is, between Jew and Gentile, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in himself, that is, in Christ, one new man from the two, that is, from the Jew and the Gentile element. In Christ he has made one new man.

There's the new man. It's the body of Christ. Christ corporate is the new man.

Well, then who's the old man? It's Adam corporate. If you look over at Colossians then very quickly, and we don't want to detain ourselves too far away from Romans 5, except that Romans 5 is the first place that this is introduced, and these passages that Paul wrote later on the same subject, in some respects, elucidate what his thoughts were on this matter. In Colossians chapter 3, in verse 9, Paul said, Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, who, the new man, is renewed in knowledge, according to the image of him who created him, that is, the body of Christ is a created entity in Christ, renewed in knowledge, where, and verse 11, where is in the new man? There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all.

In the new man there's no distinction between Jew and Gentile. Well, where is that? In the church, certainly, in the body of Christ. You see, we might think of the church as a club of people who worship a particular hero named Jesus, who did a great deal of good for us, but that's not how Paul sees it.

We're not the Jesus fan club. We're not even just the Jesus disciples following a teacher. We are Christ.

We are his body. We're of his flesh and of his bones. He says that in Ephesians 5. He says we are of his flesh and of his bones.

And in Ephesians 1, oh, by the way, if you wanted that reference, that's Ephesians 5.30, for we are the members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. And actually, some manuscripts omit of his flesh and his bones, but all manuscripts contain we are members of his body. And that means something.

What does it mean? Well, in Ephesians 1, the last verse of Ephesians 1, the last two verses, verses 22 and 23, Paul says that God put all things under Christ's feet and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. The church is the extension of Christ himself, the fullness of him. It is his body, just as your body is the fullness or the extension of your head and the servant of your head, but it's organically connected.

We don't have eternal life because we admire Jesus. We have eternal life because we are in Jesus. Like the organs of your body are in you.

And your head is, of course, the organ most important that identifies you because your head is your thoughts and your personality and who you are. If they cut your head off and were able to put on another person's head, you'd be that person. Same old body, but new head, new person.

Because the person is defined by the stuff that's in the head, the brain and the personality, the thoughts, the opinions, the values. I mean, that's where your personality is centered. All that stuff below the neck is merely the machine that carries out the will of the head.

But it's not really a machine. It has the life of the head in it too. It shares in the same organism.

And the fate of the head becomes the fate of the body as well. Because if you are recognized, let's say you get a Pulitzer Prize for some kind of writing you did or the Nobel Peace Prize for some project that you did. Well, where did that project originate? In your head, of course.

It's your creativity, your brain and so forth. But your whole body is elevated. You're not just your head.

Your head and your body are one organism. Who you are. Your lungs are now the lungs of a famous person instead of an obscure person.

Your liver is the liver and the body of an honored person. If you were a prisoner on death row, your liver and your lungs and your kidneys would be on death row with you. Interestingly, if one of your kidneys was taken out of you and you're on death row and the rest of your body went to the electric chair, but one of your kidneys was transplanted out of you and put into the president of the United States, then that same kidney that had been on death row is now ruling a country, as it were.

It's in a different body. That's why. Because whatever body you're in determines your identity and your destiny.

Now, if you are in the body of Adam and he is a sinner and his body is doomed to death, well, that's true of you too. You're a body. Adam is the head.

You're part of his body. You're slated for death. You have the status of a criminal, of a lawbreaker.

But if you are transplanted from Adam's body into Christ's body, now you're a son of God. Now you're going to reign in the universe. Now you have another life in you and another destiny and another identity.

And so this concept of being in Adam or being in Christ, these two men, is central to what Paul understood in the nature of salvation. And whenever Paul talked about the body of Christ, which we might tend to think of another concept, it's not. It's the same concept.

We are the body of Christ. We are in Him. We are the fullness of Him who fills all in all, Paul said.

He linked that with being the body in Ephesians 1, 22 and 23. Now getting back to Romans 5 and realizing that Paul has in mind this corporate identity of Adam and this corporate identity of Christ. And being in that corporate identity of Adam is damning.

Or at least, I shouldn't say damning, it at least leads to death. Paul doesn't talk about hell in this passage. He does talk about death.

And that being in Christ places you in the position of opposite status and opposite destiny because you have a different identity. You're part of Christ. You're a member of Christ.

Well then, this has ramifications. Because what Paul has said earlier in Romans is that God has allowed Christ to stand in for us and be the propitiation for our sins. He's made it very clear that we're all sinners and therefore all justly condemned.

But God has set forth Christ as a propitiation. So that whoever believes into Him, or believes in Him, but whoever believes into Christ and that's a term Paul sometimes uses. It's not always translated that way.

Ace is into as opposed to in in Greek which is in. Many times Paul speaks about believing into Christ. Well, my believing, my faith puts me into Christ.

And if someone says, well how can a good man die and I get the credit for it? That doesn't make sense when we're thinking strictly in terms of a courtroom situation where a criminal is found guilty and another man who's not guilty is executed instead of him. Where's the justice in that? This is something about much Christian teaching about the atonement that has stumbled a lot of people. How can you say that there's any justice in God killing an innocent person and letting a wicked man go free? Well, Paul has said in chapter 3 that's exactly what God has done.

But why does that work? It works because I am not a different person in a sense than Christ. If I am in Christ, then He is not only my representative, He is who I am. He's who my identity is.

I'm in Christ. I'm included in Him. It's not as if He's a righteous man and I'm a guilty man and He stands in for me and I remain a guilty man and I'm just absolved from my guilt.

It's that I've been transplanted into Him. He is not just representing me as a substitute. He is now who I am in Him.

And therefore, His righteousness, His death even, has been my death. I was on death row and I had to die. Well, lo and behold, I did.

If I'm in Christ, I died when He died. So the penalty for my sin has been paid by Him, but by me too, by extension. I didn't go through it like He did, but being in Him means that it's on my record.

You can look on my criminal record. I did the crime and I also did the time. Not personally.

Christ Himself did the time. He was crucified for the crime. But that's counted to be true of me because I'm part of Him now.

And so being in Christ, in the solidarity of Christ, is what makes all the previous arguments of Romans possible. If I were not in Christ, if I'm simply in Adam, then it doesn't make sense that Jesus or anyone else can take my place and die instead of me. How is that justice? But it is justice if God says, Christ, you have died and you've risen and anyone who's in you has also died and risen.

That's why Paul said in Galatians 2.20, I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and of course I am in Him. The Bible speaks of us being in Christ and also of Christ being in us because we have been united with Him and share His identity.

And if His identity, then His merits and His destiny too. So this is a concept that is far deeper and more extensive in ramification than just that we are the Jesus fan club and He's done a good thing for us. He somehow rescued us in ways that are too mysterious to understand, but we believe that and so we're going to worship Him.

Well, that's good. We should worship Him. And we do.

But to understand more why that works, we get into this Adam and Christ dichotomy that Paul is talking about. Now in Romans 5, there's a very ambiguous statement where it says, Now that last line, because all sin, is where a great deal of theological controversy in here is. In the Latin Vulgate, it actually says, And that makes a world of difference.

That is, did I sin in Adam? Or did death spread to all the children of Adam because they all sinned themselves? It's noticeable. We all die. Everyone dies in Adam.

Anyone who's been born of Adam is going to die, except for those unusual ones who may be living at the last time when Jesus comes in the dead in Christ's rise, and then those who are living in Christ's rise. There's going to be a few who don't die, but it's generally the universal. Certainly everyone who's not in Christ is going to die.

Some who are in Christ will not die because they'll be caught up in the rapture, but all who are not in Christ, all who are just in Adam, they die. And even those in Christ, many of them do because our bodies still have Adam's mortality, but we have another life in the resurrection, of course, that is not dependent on Adam's mortality because our head, Christ, has risen from the dead. Therefore, there's a resurrection life that we experience as he does.

But the question here is, what is the relationship of Adam's sin and death to ours? The common way to explain this since the time of Augustine has been that because we are in Adam, when Adam sinned, we actually sinned. Now, there is some logic to this suggestion that would seem to fit what Paul's talking about because he's talking about because we are in Christ, his righteous act is counted to us. Would it not be an exact parallel to say because we are in Adam, his evil act was accounted to us? This being so, if I'm considered innocent because I'm in Christ, then previously I would have been considered guilty because I'm in Adam, and this would have been so just because I'm a descendant from Adam.

Even a baby born would be guilty. And this is a view that Augustine promoted, the doctrine of infant guilt. It is still held by most Orthodox Christians, especially Calvinists have a vested interest in this, but even Arminians do.

In fact, if there's any group that is known for not teaching infant guilt, it would be primarily the Pelagians, and Pelagius was declared to be a heretic by the Western Church, though he was exonerated by the Eastern Church. In any case, it was Augustine who condemned Pelagius. I mean, it was Augustine whose writings led to his condemnation.

So there was a conflict between Augustine and Pelagius in the late 4th century and early 5th century. And Augustine taught babies are born guilty of sin. That would mean, of course, when a baby dies, they're condemned.

And if sinners go to hell, that's where babies go when they die because they have not yet come to be in Christ. A related doctrine grew out of this, that, well, but if you baptize your baby, that changes it. This original sin is somehow absolved through baptism, and that's why the rationale for infant baptism came along, that your baby, if he dies before he reaches maturity, is going to go to hell unless you baptize him.

Then this Adam's guilt is somehow removed through baptism. Now, the Bible doesn't teach this, but it was just a development of Augustinian thinking about the ramifications of what they call original sin. And you might think of original sin as a doctrine taught throughout the whole Bible because it is so universally taught among Christians, it would seem.

However, when Augustine came up with this doctrine of original sin, he had two scriptures. One was Romans 5.12, and Augustine did not read Greek. He said so himself.

He said he was not proficient in Greek. He used the Latin Bible. He depended on Jerome's translation of the Greek into Latin.

And in the Latin Bible, the last words in verse 12 here are, in whom all sin. In other words, Jerome had it in Latin that we all sinned in Adam. But the Greek actually says, because all sin.

Now, what's being explained here by the in whom or because? We have to make a choice between those two. It's why does everyone die? Why does everyone die? Because all have sinned. Or they all died because in Adam they sinned.

Now, to say because all sinned could still mean they all sinned when Adam did. What is Paul's thought here? Is it that people died because Adam sinned and we all became guilty? If so, then every baby conceived is guilty. Now, it would be possible to accept this, but I believe if this is true and if this is what Paul is saying, we have another doctrine to be considered, and that would be a doctrine of accountability, an age of accountability.

It could well be that Paul sees the whole human race is guilty from its very inception, from birth, but the guilt is not imputed to an infant. And Paul does say in verse 13, sin is not imputed where there is no law. And there's certainly no place more devoid of moral law than the conscience of an infant.

An infant is not aware of any laws. They do reach a stage where they are, and that would be an age of accountability. And Paul later in chapter 7 talks about how he was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and he says, I died.

So, Paul knew a time in his early life where the law was unknown to him, and he was alive before God, he said. Was he sinless? No. Apparently, people all sin.

Even infants are born with that tendency, it would appear. And if they are born with this guilt, it would appear that that guilt is not imputed. And yet, does that really make sense? Because it sounds like the guilt itself is something imputed.

The child is not guilty for anything it did itself, it's imputed from Adam. And so there's some real confusion about what is Paul really thinking here. And I'm sure that Paul, from the way he goes on into his parenthesis to try to clarify things, I think he wasn't 100% sure how all this washed out either.

Because, I mean, it's not necessary to believe that an inspired writer understood everything. I mean, think of how many things the prophets said that they didn't understand. Peter said that the prophets inquired diligently, Lord, what is this all about, these prophecies I'm giving? And Peter says, well, the Lord told them, it's not for you to know.

A man can be an inspired writer and even have inspired theology, but not have teased it all out to all of its ramifications, and maybe if you ask them, say, I'm not really sure how this all works out, but I just know this part, you know. Some of the other parts are tricky. And certainly, if we're going to say that man, every man, every baby sinned in Adam, and that there was an imputation of Adam's guilt here, which many people think is what is being said in verse 12, and might be, but it's not clear.

Because he could just be saying everyone died because everyone sinned. Well, I sinned, I died. You sinned, you died.

Adam sinned, he died. Everyone dies because of their own sin. That would seem to confirm other things the Bible teaches about personal responsibility, like in Ezekiel 18, when God said a man will not die for his father's sins, and a son won't die for his father's sins, and a father won't die for his son's sins.

The soul that sins will die. It seems to me like there is teaching in Scripture in a number of places that there's personal responsibility. You may have a rotten father who deserves hell and ends up going there, and yet you stand as your own moral agent, responsible for your own actions and choices.

So, how could it be that my father's father's father's father's father's father's father's, Adam, he sinned, and then I'm somehow held responsible for what he did. This is the bugaboo here. And so Paul branches off, even without finishing his sentence, into this explanatory parenthesis.

And in it, in verses 13 and 14, it says, For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there's no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who is to come. That last line is simply telling us he's going to liken Christ in some respect to Adam.

There's a type and anti-type connection between Adam and Christ. He has not told us what that is yet, but he's working on Old Testament history and the history of sin and death. And he says, until the law, that's before Moses' time, sin was in the world, but it wasn't exactly defined.

Until God says, don't do such and such, you don't know that doing such and such is wrong. It may be a wrong thing to do, but you can hardly be held accountable for it. You didn't know.

Until the law comes, sin is not imputed. Ignorance of the law apparently is an excuse in some measure. However, we need to be careful about this, because even before God gave the law through Moses, there was still a divine standard that was somewhat obvious to most cultures.

Even the Gentile world that never had the law of Moses intuitively knew that there's some things you really shouldn't do. Murdering is not a good thing. Sleeping with your neighbor's wife is not a good thing.

Stealing your neighbor's property, that's not good. And it didn't require any law of Moses to tell the Hammurabi those things, or other pagan lawmakers. There is a sense of knowledge of right and wrong.

There is the law of God, but somehow not entirely obscure from the conscience of human beings. That doesn't mean that everything about right and wrong is known by them, but they're not devoid of some knowledge. People still violate the standards they know.

Even if they don't know all of God's standards, they know enough. It's like when you talk to somebody and say, well, I just think if I do good enough, God will let me into heaven. Or if I just do my best.

Okay, so you're saying the standard for getting saved is doing your best. Have you done that? Have you done your best? Or could you have done better sometimes? Okay, well, even by your own law that you're making up out of your own head, just do your best and you'll be saved. Well, you violated that too.

Everyone is guilty of violating the moral code that they themselves know, even if they've never known God's moral code. Now, God doesn't impute sin where no one knows what's right and wrong. But there are many things that people do know are right or wrong, even without the law of Moses.

And they violate even those things. Now, he said, therefore, nevertheless, in verse 14, death reigned from Adam to Moses. That is, even before Moses gave the law, even before there was a law to impute sin to certain actions that were not previously known to be sin, there was still death.

Even before God gave the law through Moses, death was still universal. Now, what is that saying? It apparently, and he also emphasizes there, even with those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam. In other words, Adam's transgression was a violation of an actual command.

God said, don't eat that tree. Adam knew the command. He broke it.

He transgressed a law. The only law God ever made, actually, for Adam. There was another law.

You're supposed to have kids. Be fruitful and multiply. Those are the only two commands God gave.

Have a lot of kids and don't eat from that tree. Well, he knew the command. He broke the command.

That's a transgression of a known law. Now, what Paul is saying is, between Adam and Moses, there weren't too many known laws. Many people were sinning, but they weren't sinning like Adam.

They were breaking laws they didn't even know existed. They were not sinning after the likeness of Adam's transgression, who knew what he was doing because he'd been told not to do it. Before the law was given from Adam to Moses, there's a lot of things people did wrong they didn't know were wrong.

And they died anyway. Now, here is where a theological difficulty sometimes arises because Calvinist authors that I have read have pointed out this proves, the fact of infant death proves infant guilt, they say. And it proves that infants sinned in Adam because an infant who has committed no sin of his own still experiences the penalty for sin, which is death.

And so the child who's never done a sin still suffers for Adam's sin. Because if a baby dies, clearly the baby has not yet done anything sinful, whose sin is it dying for? They say it's dying for Adam's. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones in his masterful commentaries on Romans made the argument that, he says, death is not a natural result of living, death is the penalty for sin.

Death is judicial. It's a judgment from God. Therefore, if a baby dies, it is evident that a baby is guilty.

God is judging that baby. And therefore, that proves the baby is guilty on some other basis than its own sinning, because it hasn't done any sin yet. It must be Adam's sin that's being punished for.

Thus proving we're all guilty of Adam's sin. Now, the problem we have, I think, here is a misunderstanding of the nature of death. To say death is judicial is true in a sense, the wages of sin is death, and the soul that sins shall die.

And the day you eat of that fruit, you'll surely die, God said. Death is judicial. But, in what sense is it? Is it that God said, okay, you sinned, I'm angry, so I'm killing you.

Or is it something else? Paul is assuming, of course, a knowledge of the Garden of Eden story. It's his starting point here. Adam sinned, that's the story of the Garden of Eden.

Death came. Well, what does the Garden of Eden story actually tell us, and what does it not tell us? Lots of people assume that people were created immortal, and therefore, the death that could be incurred is not physical death per se, but some kind of a spiritual death that does not involve cessation of existence, sort of just eternal torment in hell, kind of an idea that is called death. And that when God said, in the day you eat of it, you'll die, He really means, in the day you eat of it, although you won't really die, you'll wish you had, because you'll be in hell forever and ever and ever.

And whenever the Bible connects death as a consequence for sin, as in a passage like this, the tendency is to think, okay, people would naturally have lived forever, they have to live forever somewhere, so death is some kind of a quality of life, rather than the presence or absence of life, it's a quality of life. There's some kind of living forever that's a living death, and that's the death that is the wages of sin and is hell. What I would just point out to you is death in the Bible almost always means death, physical death.

What happens after that is a separate subject that many of these passages do not take up. People died between Adam and Moses, okay? Was God judging them for their sin? Individually? Maybe or maybe not. Maybe death has simply become universal for some other reason, as we will talk about in a moment here.

But they died, but Paul specifically says, though they died, sin was not imputed. So they died, but not necessarily under the anger of God. Is it possible that people may now die without God being specifically personally angry at them? Good people die, good people toward whom God is not particularly angry, they die too.

Is death then a judicial punishment that God's putting upon them, or what? I think we need to look back at the Garden of Eden and see what God said. God made Adam and Eve. Did He make them mortal or immortal? Well, He made them potentially immortal.

He said, after they sinned, we don't want Adam to reach out and eat of the tree of life lest he eat it and live forever. Apparently, eating the tree of life was what would cause them to live forever. However, He said, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die.

Now, does that mean I'll be so angry that you eat that fruit that I'm going to inflict something unique upon you that was not a possibility before? Or is it that you eat of that fruit and I won't let you eat the other fruit? In other words, you're going to die naturally unless you eat of the tree of life. And you can eat of the tree of life all you want. Unless you eat of this fruit, then I'm going to cut you off from that.

Your mortality, which is your natural state, will take its course. Now, I don't want to confuse, though I'm sure this is confusing. What I'm saying is this.

Adam and Eve, if they had not sinned, would have eaten regularly, I think, of the tree of life. And their continual access to the tree of life would have sustained their lives forever. Just like our continual eating of Christ.

Our tree of life, we might say. If you eat of me, He says, you'll live forever. That is, if you are eating of me.

It's an ongoing thing. If you're continually partaking of Christ, you're going to live forever. You stop eating of Christ, well, that's another story.

You stop eating of the tree of life, and there's nothing then to prolong your life forever. You're a mortal person, and you're going to age and die, and someday, you know, death is the natural end of mortal beings. But people were made potentially immortal, not innately.

When God said, if you eat of the tree of knowledge, you're going to die, I don't think He's saying, death is a totally unknown phenomenon until you eat of that, then I'm going to introduce into reality something called death, which is a new judgment I'm bringing on you. It's rather death would be the natural state of Adam and Eve if they don't eat of the tree of life. But they can.

So they don't have to die. They can live forever if they eat of the tree of life. But if you sin in this way, I'm going to put an angel with a flaming sword guarding the way to keep you from the tree of life, and then what is it? You're going to just fizzle out and die.

Because you don't have innate immortality. You derive your immortality from the tree of life and from continuous nourishment from it, just as in natural food. I ate a meal today.

I'm not starving. I'm vigorous. I have life.

My cells are being nourished. My life is prolonged. I'll eat later today probably and the same thing will happen.

What if I stop eating altogether? Well, it's just a matter of time. My cells won't be nourished. My muscles will wither up.

You know, I'll die. Because eating regularly sustains my life. Now, of course, eating doesn't sustain it forever.

There is food that perishes, but there's food that endures to eternal life, Jesus said. That food is Jesus. Adam and Eve had lots of food they could eat, but one of the fruits would have kept them alive forever if they kept eating it.

And that's the one thing they were deprived of. When they sinned, they cut off all access for them and their offspring to the tree of life. They were banished from the garden.

There's never been a person born on earth from Adam and Eve who ever had access to the tree of life. Which means what? They were born mortal and they die. Does this mean God's mad at each one and He strikes each one dead because of their own sins? No, they're just living in a world where things die.

Dogs die too, but God's not mad at them. Animals are mortal. Only humans had the opportunity to be immortal and they lost that.

The physical nature of a human is not that much different than the physical nature of an animal. Physical beings don't live forever naturally, but human beings, conditionally, could be immortal. This is the doctrine of conditional immortality.

And the idea is that if they had continued eating of the tree of life, they would have lived forever. That was a condition. That condition was no longer made available to them when they sinned.

So what? Nature takes its course. They die gradually and so does everything else that comes from them. We die even when we didn't sin.

Death reigned, even from Adam to Moses, even over those who didn't sin after the nature of Adam. Not because God was equally angry with them, even though they didn't commit a sin, because Adam's sin was something that was so offensive that He imputed it to them, necessarily. But rather, Adam's sin did something to the whole race.

It banished them from the Garden of Eden. No one has gone there since. The tree of life was there.

No human being has had access to the tree of life since. And therefore, Adam's sin has brought death on us all. But this death is not an individualized expression of God's wrath toward our individual guilt, which, in the case of babies, would have to be assumed to be Adam's guilt.

That's not necessary. We would all die, even if we're friendly with God. All of God's friends died.

Abraham believed God. It was accounted for righteousness. God had no sin on Abraham's record at that point, but he died.

God's friends die and His enemies die just because they're human. It's a human thing. Resurrection to immortal life is a conditional option for those who are in Christ.

He's the tree of life now, and if you partake of Christ, your life will be eternalized. Again, immortality becomes ours. That's why Paul said in 1 Timothy 6, 16, that only God possesses immortality.

Man does not innately have immortality. Only God does. But we can share in His, in Christ, because Christ is immortal, and we are in Him.

We have, and if we abide in Him, we have His immortality. Notice what John said in 1 John 5. 1 John 5, verse 11 and 12. This is the testimony that God has given us eternal life.

That's immortality. And this life is in His Son. If we are in Christ, He's the one who has eternal life.

We have it if we are in Him. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

What? Eternal life. Immortality is in Christ. God alone and Christ have immortality.

We don't, but we have it in Him. If I am a kidney transplanted out of Adam into Christ, I'm in a body that has eternal life, and I have it in Him. So it is abiding in Christ, being part of Christ, part of Christ's solidarity, part of His body, under His headship, and having His life coursing through me as part of His organism.

That's what is eternal life. But Paul in Romans 2 has already suggested that immortality is not innate in human beings, but must be pursued. If you want it, you're going to have to seek it.

In Romans 2, he says in verse 7 that God will give eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality. Notice, immortality is not the default state of human beings. They're not naturally immortal.

Those who seek for immortality, God will give eternal life if they seek it through well-doing and others being Christians. Immortality is not a human trait unless those humans are in Christ. Adam was not immortal, but he could have lived forever if he ate forever of the tree of life.

That was something he forfeited by his sin. And because he forfeited for himself, it was forfeit for all of his offspring as well. And this is why I believe death spread to the whole human race through Adam's sin.

Not so much because of the guilt of Adam being imputed to every human being, but the consequence of sin is that we've all been banished from the Garden of Eden. But Revelation describes the new heavens, the new earth, the new Jerusalem as sort of like a second Garden of Eden. And Christ, the second Adam, in him we do have restoration to eternal life, to the paradise of God.

The message of the Bible is that Jesus has restored what Adam lost. But to experience that restoration, you have to be in Christ. Our natural state is to be in Adam, but we need to be in Christ and abide in him.

Unfortunately, we didn't cover everything I want to cover in chapter 5 of Romans, so we're going to have to finish that in our next session because we've run out of time. But I do need to say something with that parenthesis. Perhaps I've been avoiding it subconsciously because it's the most intimidating part to make sense out of.

But there are some things that are sensible near the end of the chapter, and which lead to the discussion of chapter 6, which we'll also need to be covering forthwith. So we'll take a break here and leave you probably partially, if not entirely, confused, but with some thoughts to chew on for the next break, and we'll come back and look at the passage again.