Letters

Dear Editor,

In the December, 2011 issue, Bro. Morgan comments on Paul’s words in Romans 5:12: “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.” Bro. Richard writes that all men die not because Adam sinned, but because each person is a sinner individu­ally worthy of death (excepting, the Lord Jesus). Unfortunately, this completely reverses the overall point of Rom. 5:12-21.

Paul’s exposition is that God has been consistent in His principles. As by one man — death; so by one man — life. Furthermore, elaborating: that as by one man — judgment, condemnation, sin reigning to death; so by one man — justification, righteousness, grace reigning to life.

The key word in these verses is “one” making the point of God working on the basis of, as Bro. John Carter terms it, “federal heads”. God gives opportunity of “life” to “many” because of the obedience of the one man, Jesus Christ.

Every one of us has earned death “for that all have sinned”. So in Romans 5:12 Paul both states the federal head principle and refutes (actually as a parenthetical statement) any idea that God has dealt unjustly with us as individuals.

A major reason Paul wrote Romans was to help the brethren answer Jewish challenges that he knew, from his own past experience, would be thrown at the ecclesia. We’d suggest one of these issues was the Jewish objection to the heart of the gospel: one man’s perfect obedience opened the way to life for many others. The Jews would argue each person must establish themselves personally righteous before God. Paul’s response to this was that if one accepts that one man’s sin lead to death for all! So it is perfectly consistent that one man’s righteousness can lead to life for all.’

Your brother in Christ
Don Styles (Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Reply:

We do inherit from Adam our mortal state and the sentence of death that has come upon all mankind and so I do agree that Paul presents the federal head principle. But we do not die because Adam sinned otherwise we could charge God with being unrighteous for condemning everyone to death because someone else sinned — “the soul that sins it shall die’. The way I read Romans 5:12 is that we die in Adam because we all sin, that is Adam represents us because he explains what we’re all like. Even though babies die: if they had reached an age of maturity they would sin just like anyone else and so the sentence passed upon them would have been shown to be right. The weight of evidence is overwhelming that flesh causes sin and so all flesh dies as per the divine edict. So yes, we do inherit the sentence from Adam but it’s because we are all sinners, not because we pay the price for Adam’s sin. The extreme ideas that come from a misapplication of Romans 5 are things like “Original Sin’ and “Substitution’ needs to be put aside.

We also have to be aware that our Lord shared in our predicament. Being born of a woman under the law he came in the same flesh and blood nature as the rest of mankind and he showed on the cross that it was right that even a sinless man had to put the flesh to death. Eventually the flesh sins: it is the nature of the flesh to do such. Jesus was no different and he had to deal with sin at its source: the flesh. As a son of Adam he came under the same curse we are all born with, but with the important difference that he conquered sin, and subsequently death, by his complete repudiation of the flesh.