Great peace Walls, just one thing. The Sin mentioned is not the eating of the tree and this is why. Rom. 5:12 — 6:8 deals with the mystery mentioned Rom. 16:25 — 27. Rom. 5:12 — 21 is not about sins but about sin, not about disobedience to the law of conscience by the Gentiles, nor about the law of Sinai by the Jew, but about the crime of Adam that the failure of Jew and Gentile explains. We are set here before the depth of the corruption of human nature, which shows why there is no good living in the flesh, and that all have deviated. The cause is the law of sin and of death. But, and this is the Divine, opposite is Christ's work set and the dominion of grace.
The decline to Adam means that we do not find the terms Jew and Gentile, Israel and the nations, circumcision and foreskin. The whole generation is traded in its base unit. It is not about rescued and lost, believers and unbelievers, there is only talk about two persons and they control and radically influence the entire generation. A comparison is made between the first and the last Adam, the first who brought death to all, the last who not only lifts this death but brings on all a mercy that justifies their lives and an abundance of grace for many to make them rule, giving more than what the first one has lost. In one word, the sovereignty of sin, caused by Adam, is replaced by the much more intense and sublime reign of grace made by Christ.
Adam and Christ are compared, so there are similarities and differences. Just look:
Similarity: |
12 — 14 |
Wherfore |
Opposite: |
15
16 — 17 |
But not as
And not as |
Similarity: |
18
19 |
Therefore
For as |
Opposite: |
20 |
Offence abound — grace overabound |
Adam killed everyone. Christ can not surpass him in this. His salvation, however, is of equal scope. When, however, the effects of Christ's work are contrasted to Adam's crime, there is always an outpouring on Christ's side. Christ was destined to do much more for every child of Adam than Adam did. The reign of death and sin, v. 14, 21 is replaced by the reign of grace that has become much more abundant.
V 12. Wherefore. Apparently this conjunction compiles the first part of the chapter with the second and gives the impression of drawing a conclusion from the foregoing. Yet it does not do this but it goes on a completely different line and introduces something entirely new. In chapter 2:1 we find something similar. It is therefore a transitional word and opens a new part, namely that in which a whole new light is cast upon the work of Christ. It does not return to the foregoing but leads to the following: the hidden mystery.
Sin has come in by
one person. According to Gen. 3 not
one man but
two people have brought sin into the world. Eve saw that the tree was good for food, she took of its fruit, ate, gave also her husband, and he ate, Gen. 3:6. It was she who was deceived and in transgression, 1 Tim. 2:14. Nevertheless, in Rom. 5 is not the contrast Eve — Christ but Adam — Christ. Now there are explanations for this, in which it is said that the authority and the headship were not in her but in Adam, that he could only permit sin in the world, but all of this is not able to decisively declare the
one.
This « one » is no less than nine times in this section used:
— sin came in by
one man, v. 12, 16,
— there was the crime of
one, vs. 12, 17, 18,
—
one was disobedient, vs. 19,
— Grace comes by
One, v. 15,
— by
One comes the abundance of grace, v. 17,
— by
One the many are made righteous, v. 19.
Just as now the One, Christ, are not two, neither is the one, Adam, two.
Sin has entered the world through
one person. Not by two. Sin is not a transgression but an error, a goal-missing. Gen. 3, however, shows a transgression which is not the same. Thus in Rom. 5 something revealed that is concealed in Gen. 3.
Adam's sin. Sin has a source from which it rises. James indicates that it is the desire. « But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. » Jam. 1:14, 15. Here we are assigned the fivefold process:
— being deducted,
— to be enticed,
— the receiving of the desire,
— the giving birth of sin,
— leading to death.
Adam also went through this path as the first man, he was deducted or alienated from God, lured to something else, then the desire rooted, it gave birth to sin (the error) and it led to death.
In what way did Adam's sin now exist? Adam was created to the image of God. This Image is He who later appeared as Christ, 2 Cor. 4:4. It had the human form and as such Adam has been created by it. Inwardly he got a gift that raised him above the animal and he had understanding and will. He was completely a living-soul, Gen. 2:7 but in order to be perfect, that is to say, finished, still had to go a way. Where the Image of God is neither man nor woman, Adam was not either, he had a higher unity within him.
He was created outside the Garden, 2:8, later he was placed there. There he gave the animals names. Then there came a moment when he was deducted from the Lord. He no longer regarded His visits as the highest good, the earthly lured him, and a different desire arose in him. This was to another, a female being. He saw the animals, but he did not find a companion for himself, Gen. 2:19, 20. The enticement became desire now, his « I-ness » placed itself there and then the spiritual conception took place. The result was sin: he went to search. This follows from Gen. 2:20: « ... but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him ».
The word « to find » has in Scripture, as in our language, essentially two meanings: it may mean that one wishes to recover something that one misses, Mk. 1:37 or lost, Lk. 15:4, 9 etc. or that one desires to get, meet or see something that one has not yet, Mt. 2:11; 7:8: 8:10; 11:29: 21:2 etc. Now Adam did not lose the help like the father the son in Lk. 15 and we can not take it in the sense that something was lost, so it must be taken in the second sense, namely of covet. Now coveting can be a good inclination: one can, for example, find peace (seek and), Mt. 11:29, or a treasure, 13:44 etc. but also express a sinful inclination: the great debtor found the small, Mt. 18:28. We must accept an impure desire from Adam. He was a perfect man, had masculine and feminine in a higher unity: the powerful and gentle, the true spirit and the pure feeling, but he derailed, in his being, something inexplicable but something that, in fact, in the elaboration, came out in the search. It was this desire that gave birth to sin, the goal-missing.
From this background we find nothing in Gen. 3. It is concealed. Israel could not understand this. They were taught the monogamous marriage, that of husband and wife. But this is not from Adam's creation, it is, as everyone can read, from later time. In Mt. 19:18 The Lord therefore does not say that it was from the beginning, as the KJV says but from a beginning: there is no definite article here.
Marriage is there by a second creation. That is clear from Gen. 1:26: First God created man, ha adam, then He created again. Wherever creation is to produce something that is not there as such, there was first no man (and no woman) but only a man, an undivided man. Then God created a man and a woman from that undivided man. The twofold « created » is proof of this insight.
Apart from sin, there would have been another way of multiplication then by marriage, one in which man had not produced a male or female child, but an undivided human child. Furthermore, we will have to assume that once God is all in all, the natural multiplication ceases as it ceases for those who have obtained a glorified body.
That the first people had already fallen before eating of the tree of knowledge is evident from more than one thing. Eve was under the influence of the senses, she saw what is before her eyes that the tree was good for food,
the lust of the flesh, that it was a delight to the eyes,
the lust of the eyes, even a tree to make wise, and to be as God,
the pride of life. All this was not from God but from the world, as John calls it later, 1 John 2:16. Moreover, she was deceived by Satan, who most likely appeared to her as an angel of light in a shining form, 2 Cor. 11:3, and whom she did not recognize, what she would surely have done if she had been in the right state, Adam followed her without any resistance and thus proved being in that sphere. They proved that they were no longer in the true inner communion with God. From this it follows that something has already happened before Adam's temptation and Eve's transgression, and to this points Rom. 5:12: sin has entered the world through
one person.
There is something else. In 1 Cor. 15:22 states that all die in Adam. « In Adam » means: in his person and nature. If Eve sinned after her creation she would not have died in Adam, therefore did not sin in him. But where sin entered the world through one man, Eve also contained the already sinful human nature, as well as all who were born of him and her in the lineage of the generations. Letting Eve sin outside of Adam makes 1 Cor. 15 powerless. Just as the « in Christ » doesn't mean that outside of Him someone else could make alive, nor does mean « in Adam » that Eve died outside him. Out of one all have come forth and in one all have died (or die all) because this one has sinned and transfers his nature to all. Here too it was true: Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.
Aristarkos
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