“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:”
There is the potential that we may not see clearly what is meant in Romans 5:12 since the verse is not a complete sentence and the conclusion of the thought is interrupted by a parenthetical phrase which begins in Rom 5:13. If we read the whole sentence without the parenthetical phrase we get a better idea of Paul’s point. The incomplete sentence in Rom 5:12 is completed in Rom 5:18 by the following:
“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”
We can now clearly see that Paul’s argument concerns justification in Christ and the existence of the two federal heads, or representatives: (1) Adam [and Eve] who did sin with the result of his [their] being a dying creature and we, his offspring, inheriting this dying nature and all that it brings with it, including a propensity to sin and (2) Jesus in whom we can be justified to life by a “free gift”. After baptism, we continue our lives in both of these systems — we continue in Adam, but we are now in covenant relationship and in Christ. Then we look forward to being changed at the judgment seat. The Apostle Paul summed it up quite succinctly in 1 Cor 15:21, 22: “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
However, we might ask the question, what is the value in that little parenthetical phrase at the end of Rom 5:12: “for that all have sinned”. Being an engineer by academic background and 50 years of practice, cause and effect are fundamental, just an apple falls because of gravity. The first part of Rom 5:12 makes it plain that death “passed upon all men” because Adam sinned. In the RSV, it is stated slightly differently: “death spread to all men”. There is the cause and the effect — Adam sinned and as a consequence the sentence of death was placed upon him. We, being his natural offspring, inherit the dying nature and with it the propensity towards sin — just like Adam.
The little phrase at the end of the sentence still needs an explanation consistent with the facts. The fact is that all of Adam’s offspring don’t die because they sin — they are dying creatures even before their birth; dying is a natural part of our being from the moment of conception in the womb. In that sense then, all men die because of Adam’s sin. So what does the phrase mean, “…for that all have sinned”?
We certainly cannot argue that all have not sinned, for all [with the single exception of our Lord Jesus Christ] have sinned: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” (Rom 3:23).
In many cases in the English language we can interchange “for” with “because”. But that is neither justifiable, nor does it give justice to the Greek in the case of Rom 5:12. The Greek word is defined as “a primary preposition; properly, meaning superimposition (of time, place, order, etc.), as a relation of distribution [with the genitive case], i.e. over, upon, etc.; of rest (with the det.) at, on, etc.; of direction (with the accusative case) towards, upon, etc.:”1We can note that in no case in the Scriptures is the word translated “because”. So what is the meaning?
Bro L. G. Sargent gave this explanation:
“All suffer the consequences of one sin, yet it is no arbitrary sentence imposed by despotism, for all are sinners; heredity and environment combine, their inherent tendency finds opportunity, their impulses are stirred, and they sin. Not one could on his own account stand acceptably before the holiness of God. So ‘through the trespass of the one the many died’. No works of their own could gain life. Yet the gift of God surpassed the judgment of God, for it was by His act of grace that the One Man came as the second Adam, and reversed the effect of the first sin. This he did by ‘obedience even unto death’, so that as ‘through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous’ ”.2
Later, the editor of The Christadelphian summarized it thus: “There is no unfairness here. ‘All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God’ (Rom 3:23) and are therefore deserving of the death that inevitably awaits them”.3
Said another way, while it was our heredity that is the root cause of our dying nature, God is just in causing our dying condition in that we are inevitable sinners and therefore worthy of death.
There is a view prevalent in some quarters of our community that: “we do not die because Adam sinned…” But that simply defies the facts. We are dying creatures, part of a dying race, as a result of the sin of one man, our federal head, our representative, from whom all mankind has come. Like begets like.
Consider also the attendant proposition that is sometimes made, also based on Rom 5:12, which presumes that: “We die in Adam because we all sin.” But that is a reversal of cause and effect as stated in Rom 5:12 and goes against the laws of nature. When an embryo is in the womb it has inherent in it the dying nature, long before it has had the opportunity to sin. Even the Lord Jesus Christ was a dying creature, part of the federal system under Adam (born of a woman) and yet he was without sin.
I wonder also at the phrase, “death passed upon all men”. The passing has the context of death in motion, not dissimilar to the angel of death passing over the camp. It is often used in connection with walking, such as Jesus passing through Jericho in Luke 19:1. So it is like death coming over all men and settling upon them — death in motion.
Paul likens this to a sentence of death in 2 Cor 1:9, 10: “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us;”. Here Paul is stating that he and Timothy were fully aware that they were dying creatures and prone to sin and therefore put their trust not in themselves but on the righteous judge who would raise them up at the last day.
- Biblesoft’s New Exhaustive Strong’s Numbers and Concordance with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright © 1994, 2003, 2006 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible Translators, Inc.
- “Some thoughts on Atonement”, Christadelphian 1964 p 205.
- “Christ Jesus Came Into The World To Save Sinners”, Christadelphian 1987 p 225.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One