Romans 5:12-17

Death Through Adam, Life Through Christ
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone's account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!


Dig Deeper
When I was a high school teacher I taught history classes and coached basketball, but I was also the yearbook advisor for most of the time that I was there. The school that I was at was an inner city school and we never had much money for anything but there certainly wasn’t any extra money for much in the way of yearbook equipment. For the first several years we had one small digital camera that had to be used for everything. It had no special features of any kind and wouldn’t do very well if you tried to take a picture more than about twenty feet away. Then one day the camera was left in my classroom by one of the students during lunch period and it wasn’t locked up. They went out of my room thinking that they would go get some lunch and come back in a few minutes so they didn’t lock the classroom either. In just a few minutes, someone entered into the room and stole the camera. It’s pretty difficult to complete a yearbook, by the way, when you have no camera. As word got out that the camera was gone, someone in the community stepped up and made funds available to replace the camera. We were excited because we would get another camera and only lost a few days of work without a camera. What amazed us, though, was that the camera that we were given was far beyond the one we had originally. It had so many features that I just couldn’t believe it, including an incredible zoom capability and the ability to take video clips and then snap still pictures from the video (something that comes in handy when it comes to sports pictures). The camera had not only replaced the old one, It had far and away surpassed anything that we had had in the first camera.

This analogy falls far short of what Paul is describing in this passage but it does, in a very simple way, capture the idea of what he is saying. Mankind had been created by God in his own image, represented of course by the first human, Adam. But that image had become marred and defaced by the dehumanizing effects of sin, exalting human will above God’s. As Adam was, in a sense, the representative for the whole human race, it would take a new humanity to replace that state and reconcile God and man. That was of course Jesus, but in this case, the gift was far beyond the trespass. It wasn’t that Jesus just offered an even exchange for fallen humanity but he stood as a far superior option to anything that had ever existed before.

Beginning here in 5:12 and continuing all the way through the end of chapter 8, Paul is going to continue to make the points of his larger themes that he is working with in this letter, but he is going to do so by telling a new narrative of sorts. He is going to take the great controlling narrative (meta-narrative) of God’s people to this point in history and rewrite it with a new cast of characters. Paul is going to write about a new exodus of God’s people. It will, if we watch closely, have many of the same elements as the original Exodus story but Paul will show that this is the true exodus that God had in mind, the one that the Exodus out of Egypt could only point to.

Verse 12 introduces us to the antagonists in this new exodus. Playing the parallel role to Egypt and the Pharaoh are the personified forces of sin and death. They were allowed access to the world, Paul asserts, through the rebellion of the first human, Adam. Paul says that Adam sinned and opened up the door so that sin could enter into the world and infect all humans. All humans born in Adam’s image, then, are born with the proclivity to sin although we are only found guilty of our own sin. Paul says that death also entered through the power of this sin but he does not explain what he means by all of that. We don’t necessarily have to bind Paul to a belief that there was no sort of death before the moment that sin entered into the world. It is quite possible that a type of death was always part of the created order (as would seem to be indicated by the fact that seasons were present from the very beginning). At the very least, it seems that Paul believed that because of sin, there was a new, darker death that caused people to be permanently separated from God. As man turned away from their creator and source of life, sin separated them further and death sealed that plight. The overall point that should not be lost is that Paul is declaring that Adam’s sin unleashed a destructive force that reigns over and enslaves all humankind.

Paul, to this point in the letter, has demonstrated that God has been faithful to his promises to Abraham in creating a renewed people who would be his descendants and would have their sins dealt with. In 5:1-11, he peaked ahead a bit to the end to keep us grounded that everything he is explaining is tied to the future hope of the age to come. He has now beautifully positioned himself to describe the details of God’s renewed humanity.

He has begun his tale of the new exodus, but quickly breaks in at verse 13 to clear up a possible stumbling point. Adam sinned by breaking a specific command, something that those who had the law also did. His guilt, and their, guilt were obvious in a sense. But he also wants to explain that sin wasn’t just limited to those who had specific instruction from God that they transgressed against. From the viewpoint of those under the law, it might be possible to claim that those without the law could not sin. This is something that Paul has already dealt with in the first two chapters but he returns to that thought here just to make his point clear that those under the law and those without it are equally guilty and enslaved to sin. They do not transgress in the same way that those with the law do, but they are still enslaved to sin. If you want evidence, Paul says, look no further than the presences of death itself. It’s dark reign cast a pall over the world during a time when there was no law and where this type of death is present, so is sin.

Adam had a son in his own image rather than God’s (Gen. 5:3) as a result of his sin and so had a family that would bear his likeness and characteristics. God’s plan was to solve that problem by offering his own son to return those who would have faith in him by entering into his to the image of his son (Rom. 8:29), the image of God (Col. 1:15; 2 Cor. 4:4). But this is not some equal exchange. The grace in being restored to the image of Christ far outweighs the trespass. Putting things back to their proper state. The gift is far better than the trespass. God hasn’t just put humans back to their original state before sin, he has done far more than that. He has justified those in Christ, declaring them to be part of his covenant family.

When the Israelites were freed from slavery out of Egypt, God did more than just free them and then leave them on his own. That would have been an equal gift. Their sin had caused their enslavement in Egypt and so God could have balanced things out by simply freeing them but he went beyond that. He offered them the promised land. They would, if they obeyed, go from slaves to rulers in a land of their own. They failed to live up to that gift, however, because God was still teaching the lesson that sin still reigned in the land. They had been freed from Egypt but not from the true evil ruler in the world. Sin and death still reigned. But that Exodus point to this one. God would not just free people from sin and death, he would go far beyond that. Those who enter into Christ are not just freed from our twin tyrants but they will be given the age to come to rule over. We are not just freed in Christ but Christians will get far more than that. We will go from slaves to rulers, says Paul, pointing to the time that was written of by the prophet Daniel, “Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven will be handed over to the holy people of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him.” (Dan. 7:27). Paul only hints at something in verse 17 that he will take the next three chapters to work out. Christians will participate with Christ in this victory, this gift, in the present but the full and final victory will only be enacted and realized at the time of the final judgment and the resurrection. It is then that the victory over sin and death, pointed to now in our spiritual lives will be fully realized once-and-for-all.


Devotional Thought
Although it is not incorrect to call specific acts “sin,” Paul seems much more inclined to describe sin as a force or realm that can reign over the world, in our communities, or in our lives. How does viewing sin that way change your concept of sin in your own life?