Romans 5:12-21

12–21. This state depends upon a living relation of mankind to Christ, analogous to the natural relation to Adam, and as universal as that is. So it comes to pass that there is a parallel between the natural state of man and his new condition: by one who was man the sin which has been shown to be universal entered into man’s world, and this sin was the cause of man’s death, extending to all men because all actually sinned; (13) for that sin was in the world just in the degree that law was (sin not being reckoned without law) (14) is proved by the fact that death held supreme sway from Adam to Moses, even though the men of that time sinned not, as Adam did, against a positive external command (but only by falling away from the inner standard of well-doing which they had from GOD). [So far Adam is connected with men merely as the first sinner; their state was due to their own sins, and those not quite like Adam’s sin.] Now Adam is a type of Him that was to come. (15) There is a parallel between the transgression of Adam, and the gift of GOD in Christ; but only a qualified parallel: (α) it was the fall of the single man that led to the death of all, a human origin; the gift is the free favour of GOD in giving what He does give to all in the single man, and that man Jesus Christ, the Ascended Son. (16) Again (β) the effect of GOD’s gift is out of all proportion to the result which followed upon one man’s having sinned; for while the judgment of GOD followed upon one sin and involved condemnation, the gift of GOD follows upon many sins and involves acquittal of all. (17) For it is obvious that the sway of death established by one man’s sin, and through his action, is far more than overthrown by the kingship realised in life by the help of the one (man) Jesus Christ, which they will gain who accept the superabundance of the favour of GOD and His generous gift of righteousness (there is far more than a restoration of what was lost). (18) With these qualifications then the parallel may be stated: As one man’s transgression so affected all men as to bring them under GOD’s condemnation, so also one man’s enacted righteousness affects all men so as to bring them into a state of justification which involves life; for just as the disobedience of the one man was the means whereby all were put into the condition of sinners, so also the obedience of one man will bring all into the condition of righteous men (if, as has been shown, they exercise faith). (20) Now law, whether pre-Mosaic or Mosaic, was imported into man’s experience to multiply the fall; but where the acts and state of sin were thus multiplied, the favour of GOD was shown in still greater abundance in order that, in antithesis to the reign gained by sin in the state of death, the favour of GOD might gain sovereignty in a state of righteousness leading to life eternal by the aid and working of Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is perhaps the most condensed passage in all S. Paul’s writings. It is consequently almost impossible to give an interpretation with confidence. The fundamental thought appears to be to establish the universal range of the power of the Gospel, as answering to the universal range of sin and man’s need. The universality is then based in each case on the relation of the whole race to one man. As regards sin, its universality is related, in a way which must be called obscure, to the connexion of the race with Adam; their humanity is derived from him; and his fall has its results in them; this seems rather to be concluded from the observed fact that all came under the sentence of death pronounced on him for his fall, than upon any theory that in some sense they sinned in him; they died (15, 17) because of his sin, but also they sinned themselves; it was the death rather than the sin that they inherited, and individually they justified, so to speak, the verdict of death by their own sin. What they inherited was a nature liable to death; they made it, each for himself, a sinful nature. Note that it is not said that men sinned in Adam or because Adam sinned; but that man died because Adam sinned; death established the mastery thus initiated because men also sinned. At last the vicious series was broken: one Man broke the universal practice of sin, enacted righteousness and by so doing brought within the reach of all men justification, as GOD’s free gift, and a power to realise that justification in their own lives, a power which brings life because it is His own life imparted to them. Thus is the sovereignty of the favour of GOD established instead of the sovereignty of sin and death. The relation to the one Man, in this case, is a relation of imparted life, as in the former case it is a relation of entailed death. In each case the entail is realised for each person by his own act: in the first case, by an act of sin; in the second case, by an act of faith. The Second Adam broke the entail by the fact that He did not sin (Romans 5:18); and that condition He imparts by communication of His own life. See Additional Note, p. 210.

The analysis of the structure is this: the anacoluthon in Romans 5:12 is due to the interruption of the intended statement of the universality of χάρις and ζωή, by the expansion of the thought of the sway of death. The completion of the original idea is then undertaken in Romans 5:15-17, but only by noting certain qualifications of the parallel which is to be drawn; then, Romans 5:18 f., the parallel is finally stated.

διὰ τοῦτο. The Christian state being as described in Romans 5:1-11, it follows that GOD’s act in the Gospel has a universal range.

δι' ἑνὸς�.τ.λ. Adam’s sin, by the mere fact, brought sin into the world of created humanity; sin was no longer a possibility but a fact.

καὶ διὰ τῆς ἁμ. ὁ θάνατος, the death we know: death as we know it came into man’s experience by the act of Adam. The question is not raised, still less answered, whether without sin man’s nature would have been liable to death; S. Paul is dealing with our experience of death and its natural associations, alike for Jew and Gentile, as the destruction of life and separation from GOD. It was sin which gave death this character, and this character, reinforced by the sins of men, led to the tyranny of death over the human spirit. It appears therefore that S. Paul is not distinguishing between physical and moral death, but regarding death as a fact in its full significance in relation to the whole nature of man. See p. 218.

καὶ οὕτως. καὶ is the simple conj. and the clause is part of the ὥσπερ sentence, not the apodosis; that would require οὕτως καὶ.

ὁ θάνατος διῆλθεν. The primary stress is on the universality of death, initiated by one sin, reinforced by sin in every man. The universality of sin has already been argued. The order throws stress on εἰς π. ἀ. The aorists are ‘constative,’ they “represent a whole action simply as having occurred without distinguishing any steps in its progress”; Moulton, p. 109.

ἐφ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον. These words must be taken strictly; the range of death included all men because all sinned. The death, which received its character from Adam’s sin, retained its character because each and every man in turn sinned. All principles of interpretation require us to take sin here in the same sense as in ch. Romans 1:18 f. There it is clear that sin involves conscious neglect of knowledge of GOD and His Will, in however elementary a degree. It is an individual act against light. To suppose that ἐν Ἀδάμ is to be supplied, is to suppose that the most critical point of the argument is unexpressed. ἐφ ᾧ = ‘on the ground that’; cf. 2 Corinthians 5:4; Blass, p. 137.