Paul has just described the Christian’s “helpless” state in ungodliness prior to Christ’s atonement – that God loved us and Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, so reconciling us to God through His Son’s death, justifying us through His blood, saving us from due wrath as sinners and enemies of God. Paul has heretofore shown from chapter 3 onward that for the Jew, as with all men, there is no possibility of justification through works of the law, but sinners are only justified through faith.
Here, in verse 12, Paul again acknowledges that “all have sinned”, showing how sin and death entered the world through one man, as Paul begins to draw a parallel between the first Adam and the second Adam, Christ, in the distinctions of their influence. Adam brings the reign of sin and death, Christ brings the reign of righteousness and life. In this comparison, Paul takes the opportunity to both show that none are innocent apart from Christ, and that the law confirms our miserable state in the presence of God’s holiness – it is only Christ, the second Adam, who establishes righteous obedience, and we are dependant upon such for life. “From Adam to Moses” is particularized to show that “all have sinned” even prior to the Mosaic covenant. One man, Adam, brought death upon mankind; one man, Christ, brings life to mankind. The Mosaic Law simply confirms man’s depravity and inability to be holy on our own. In Adam people became sinners; in Christ people found new life. Paul is explaining the effects of what he has established as the necessary righteousness of faith, that righteousness is through faith and not by works – that our peace with God is not bought by continual fretting and striving with a law of self works, but that Christ alone is our peace, as established through faith and not a false confidence in one’s own abilities and works.
5:13 indeed seems obscure, but it is in no way self-contradictory, it is parenthetical – that is, it interrupts Paul’s general presentation to explain verse 12. It can be read at least two ways, that “all have sinned” by repeating Adam’s mistake, and/or “all have sinned” by being included in Adam’s mistake. Pelagians find only the former, the Reformed (and most Christian interpretations) include the latter (cf. v.
3:23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”). There was and is sin apart from the Mosaic law, as also apart from the specific command given to Adam and Eve, and yet if Paul had meant in v. 12 that “death passed upon all men” because of each enacting of individual transgression, that all men die because all men sin and everyone is his own Adam, he could have written as much. Verses 13 and 14, and perhaps especially the point of “sin is not imputed” (not counted or reckoned against) “where there is no law”, argue that, nevertheless, even for those for whom no guilt was associated in breaking a specific stricture of the Mosaic Law, they yet still died, as did Adam, for death is the penalty of sin (cf.
6:23). This is nowhere better illustrated than in Paul’s earlier chapters, where he details how people violated God’s moral law written even upon their own hearts (cf.
2: 12-16 ff.). I find the best reading to be that all died because all sinned in and through Adam, the representative head of all humans that follow. The further comparison with Christ, the second Adam, imputing the required perfect obedience and righteousness of life through faith, and not of our own works, not in ourselves, but by the merit of Christ, supports this. We are justified on account of Christ, just as we are condemned on account of Adam. We are imputed either way, to death or to life, God’s own moral law written in every human heart declaring our need of righteousness through faith. No one is saved without Christ, and no way dies without Adam.
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Originally Posted by anthony57
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