This passage has been a source of discussion in doctrinal writing about sin. We want to examine features of the text that need to be taken into account when writing about sin.
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 (KJV)
This verse is almost as well-known as John 3:16 in providing a summary statement of a doctrine. There are a number of views about its proper meaning. We are interested in the two clauses: “and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”. The Greek of the last clause has been translated in other versions, “because all have sinned”, or “in whom all have sinned”, and these translations support different views in the doctrine of sin.
The expression death passed upon all men uses a Greek verb die,rcomai, which strictly means pass through, so that the text might just as well be rendered so as to say that death has passed through all men (to other men). The use of this verb has a semantic contract with the earlier verb eivse,rcomai, which is translated “entered into”, so that the contrast is made that whereas death entered into the world by one man, death has passed through all subsequent men. This rendering places the stress on the passage of death from man to man. Death passes through all men because they all sin, (but since Jesus is the first man not to sin, death will not pass through him to those who are born in his line).
The Greek translated for that in the KJV clause “for that all have sinned” is evfV w-|, and it is more strictly rendered upon whom or upon which – a preposition with a relative pronoun. The meaning may be a literal location as in Acts 7:33, where we read, “for the place upon which you stand is holy ground”, or it may be more abstract as in Phil 3:12, “if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended”, and Phil 4:10 “I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again; in which ye were also mindful”. The meaning may also be one of cause and effect, as we find in 2 Cor 5:4, “For we that are in [this] tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not because we would be unclothed, but clothed, that mortality might be swallowed up in life”.
The locative sense is harder to fit into Rom 5:12, because the relative pronoun would have to connect to Adam, who is removed from the clause by two intervening clauses, and the location would be a man rather than a place. Furthermore, the Greek preposition for this sense would not usually be evpi, but rather evn which is the regular preposition used in, for instance, the expression ‘in Christ’. Instead, the relative pronoun should be connected to the mention of death. If we do this, the cause and effect sense conveyed by for which or because would fit the passage, giving the translation, and so death passed through to all men because all have sinned. Of these two causal senses, for which is better because it lacks the ambiguity of because all have sinned. The sin for which all die is their own.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One