Original Meaning
Adam, Sin, and Universal Death (5:12)
IN A VERSE where every word—indeed, every punctuation mark!—is the object of intense controversy, we must put aside some issues and just try to get a good sense of what Paul is teaching. A first step toward this end is to note what seems to be a chiastic relationship among the four clauses in the verse:
A Sin came into the world through Adam
B With sin came death
B′ Death spread to all people
A′ Because all people sinned
The first two clauses set the stage by making a general point: Adam’s fall introduced sin into the world, and death came as a result of sin. The Genesis narrative, of course, makes this point crystal clear, as God warns the first human couple, “When you eat of it [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17).
What is this death? Theologians have debated the issue for centuries. But Paul seems to think of death as both physical and spiritual: separation from the body and estrangement from God. Both are the result of sin.4 That a physical element is present in death is evident from verses 13–14. But verses 18–19, where Paul replaces the death of verse 12 with “condemnation” and being “made sinners,” shows that his focus is on spiritual death. The sin Adam introduced into the world spelled spiritual disaster for the human race.
The second two clauses of verse 12 emphasize the universal extent of this nexus of sin and death. Death, Paul affirms, affects all people because all people have “sinned.” That all human beings stand under God’s sentence of wrath because of sin is a point the apostle has already made in Romans (see esp. 1:18–19; 3:9, 23). He may be saying here again no more than that every person is estranged from God because every person has, at some time or another in his or her life, sinned.5 But in verses 18–19, where, as we have seen, Paul repeats and completes the comparison we have in this verse, he suggests a close relationship between Adam’s sin and the condemnation that all people stand under: “The result of one [man’s] trespass was condemnation for all men” (v. 18a).
Because of this, and also because of the need to explain why every single person sins, many scholars think there is more to Paul’s “because all sinned” than meets the eye. Some argue that the phrase means “because every human being, personally, sinned as a result of inheriting a sinful nature from Adam.”6 Others go further: Since Paul claims that we die both because we sin (v. 12) and because Adam sinned (v. 18), we must blend these two together: We all sinned when Adam sinned. As the representative of the human race, Adam’s sin is at the same time the sin of every other human being who ever lives.7
This is not the place to argue all these points (see Bridging Contexts and Contemporary Significance sections). Here I want to make two quick points. (1) Exegetical evidence is not clear-cut in favor of one of these views or the other; we must, therefore, be cautious about drawing conclusions. (2) I think the context and the background (see Bridging Contexts section) favor a third option: “All sinned” means “all people sinned in and with Adam.” But whatever our decision on this contested point, we should be clear about one matter: Sin and the spiritual death that results from sin are universal.
Bridging Contexts
ADAM IN PAUL’S DAY. The idea that something Adam did thousands of years ago can determine our eternal destiny is one that most modern people find difficult or even abhorrent. Yet, as we have seen, Paul appears to assume his readers are acquainted with the significance of Adam’s sin. But what would they have understood about it? If we can give a definite answer to this question, we will be in a much better position to decide what Paul is teaching about the relationship between Adam’s sin and the sin and death of all other people. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure what Paul or his readers may have assumed about these matters, because our sources do not agree.
The account of the Fall in Genesis 3 is not clear about the effects of Adam’s sin on his posterity. But the modern reader probably misses one overwhelmingly important fact about the account: The name “Adam” means “man” or “human being.” Indeed, translators of the Bible have a difficult time deciding what occurrences of the relevant Hebrew word (’adam) in Genesis 2–5 to translate “man” or “human being” and which to translate with the personal name “Adam.” The modern English reader can get a better sense of how the Hebrew must have sounded to readers in Paul day by substituting “man” for every place “Adam” appears in these chapters.
The point, then, is this: Woven into the very fabric of the Genesis narrative is the idea that Adam is more than just an isolated individual; in some, sense, he is “man.” When, therefore, the Lord warns the “man” that if he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17), a warning of universal death may also be intended.
What is somewhat surprising is that the Old Testament says almost nothing about Adam after these first chapters of Genesis.13 But Jewish writers indulged in much speculation about him. Some of this speculation was fanciful, eventually leading to esoteric Gnostic-type ideas. But some of the Jewish teaching focused on the question of the origin of sin and death and is directly relevant for our purposes.
We find some evidence of at least four different traditions.
(1) Eve brought sin into the world and caused all people to die. See Sirach 25:24: “From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die.”
(2) Satan brought death into the world. See Wisdom 2:24: “Through the devil’s envy death entered into the world.”
(3) Adam’s sin brought death to all people. See especially Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 23:4: “When Adam sinned a death was decreed against those who were to be born”; also from the same book, 48:2: “What did you [Adam] do to all who were born after you?”
(4) Every person dies because of his or her own sin. It is interesting that this point is explicit in the same book that also attributes universal death to Adam. Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 54:19: “Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam”; see also 54:15: “Although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torments.”
In Romans 5, Paul makes no mention of the role of Eve (though see 2 Cor. 11:3; 1 Tim. 2:14) or Satan. But, as we have seen, he appears to attribute responsibility for universal death both to Adam (Rom. 5:18–19) and to every individual (5:12). The Jewish tradition, as Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch so clearly reveals, was ambivalent on just this point. Jews acknowledged the determinative role of Adam in bringing sin and death to all the world, but wanted also to insist that every person was responsible for his or her own death.
Paul reflects this same ambivalence.14 Whether he resolves it by suggesting a particular relationship between Adam’s sin and the sin of all other people is debated (see Original Meaning and Contemporary Significance sections). But at least we can say this much: Paul’s first readers probably assumed without argument that Adam had some kind of representative significance and that his sin therefore brought death to all people.
A corporate way of thinking. One of the reasons we sometimes have difficulty understanding what the Bible teaches is that many of us live in cultures with assumptions about “the way the world works” that are very different from those of the Bible writers. The teaching of Scripture is sometimes like an iceberg: What is taught at the surface of the text rests on huge assumptions that lie beneath that level. Paul’s teaching about the corporate significance of Adam and Christ is a classic instance of this culture clash. Those of us who have been raised in the Western world are heirs of an individualistic tradition. As one who has grown up in the United States, I have had drilled into me since birth the “rugged individualism” of my culture. My choices, I have been taught both explicitly and implicitly, determine who I will be, what I will do, and how successful I will be.
The Bible certainly does not deny individual responsibility. But it also has a much stronger sense of how people are related to one another in ways that mean the decision of one can affect many others. The classic example in the Old Testament is the sin of Achan (Josh. 7). Contrary to God’s command, Achan kept for himself some of the spoils from the battle of Jericho. When the Israelites then tried to take the city of Ai, they were defeated. Why? Because Achan had sinned (7:20)! Note Joshua 7:11: Not only did all Israel suffer because of his sin, but the Lord even said, “Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant” (italics added).
This notion of corporate solidarity is an important part of the way both Old and New Testament authors looked at the world. Even in the West, we are beginning to understand this better than we used to. Modern psychology has revealed ways in which our apparently “free” choices are, in fact, directed by our background and environment. But we still have difficulty with the idea that someone else’s decision or act might decisively affect us. Yet Paul’s argument here and in several other places in Romans assumes this truth. To appreciate and apply his argument, we must sympathetically identify with the corporate perspective his teaching assumes.
Contemporary Significance
DEATH. WE SOMETIMES do not realize the implications of decisions we make about certain texts or issues. I myself was blissfully unaware of the minefield I was straying into when I began to study the meaning of “death” in Romans 5:12. I knew, of course, that a decision on whether death here is physical or spiritual would have significance for this text, and I could sense some of the theological issues involved (e.g., does Adam’s sin bring to me only physical death or condemnation as well?). But I had no idea that my interpretation would have a bearing on some of the intense debates about the time and length of creation until my son pointed it out to me.
As a biologist and a committed Christian, my son has struggled to make sense out of both Scripture and science on this matter. As a result of his study of biology, he was strongly inclined to think that God created the world over a long period of time and that Genesis 1 allows for such an interpretation. But he had a problem reconciling this interpretation with the apparent teaching of Scripture that death entered the world only with Adam and Eve. For basic to the existence and development of plants and animals as we know them is death. The whole grand process of life cannot exist without death. How, then, can plants and animals have existed for thousands of years if death only entered the picture with Adam?
A brief, “seven-literal-day” creation might solve this problem. But does the connection between death and human sin rule out a longer creative process? Only if Adam introduced into the world for the first time physical death. But this is not clear. Old Testament scholars debate the meaning of “death” in Genesis 2; New Testament scholars debate its meaning in Romans 5:12 and elsewhere; and theologians try to decide if God’s “good creation” is compatible with the existence of physical death.
My own inclination, as I have suggested in the Original Meaning section above, is to interpret the death that Adam introduced as spiritual but as including also physical death as a penalty. In other words, I think it possible that physical death did indeed exist in the world before Adam, but that Adam’s sin turned a natural process into a fearful penalty for all his posterity. But I am not so much concerned here with deciding this issue, but with pointing out the sometimes unexpected consequences of the interpretive decisions we make.
Original sin. While Romans 5:12–21 does not have “original sin” as its focus, it still remains the most important text in the Bible on this vexing theological doctrine. In the following paragraphs, I want briefly to sketch some of the main explanations and then to draw out some consequences of our belief on this matter.
We generally use the expression original sin to refer to the biblical teaching about the relationship between the first or original sin of Adam and the sin and death of all other people. At the risk of a gross simplification, I think we can summarize the views that Christians hold on this matter into three general categories.
(1) Imitation. The early church father Pelagius is the most famous exponent of this view. He did not think there was any real connection between our sin and Adam’s. What Adam did was to set a bad example for us that the rest of us have all followed. This view is generally considered to be suborthodox, if not heretical. Why? (a) Pelagius’s view cannot explain the data of Romans 5. Paul clearly teaches some kind of real relationship between Adam’s sin and ours. (b) Nor can it explain the universality of sin. I have five children; they do not all imitate me in the same way. How could it be that every single person who has ever lived—the vast majority of whom have never even heard of Adam—would imitate his turn away from God? Clearly some other factor must be involved if we are to explain Paul’s insistence that “all sinned” (v. 12).
(2) Infection. Almost all Christians agree, then, that Adam’s sin introduced a stain into the human race itself, a stain on human nature that inevitably leads people to turn away from God rather than toward him. This fatal “bent” is the result of Adam’s sin, and all people descended from Adam possess it. Many passages in the Old and New Testaments teach this basic truth about humanity, but it is not explicitly taught in Romans 5:12–21.
Nevertheless, as we noted above, many interpreters think it is implicit in the logic of 5:18–19. Paul affirms, for instance, that “the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men” (v. 18). What we find here, many argue in light of biblical teaching elsewhere, is a compressed statement giving only the original cause and the ultimate end. Missing is the process that connects them. “One trespass” contaminated human nature; this “infection” has been passed down to all Adam’s posterity. Everyone therefore sins, and as a result everyone is condemned.
(3) Inclusion. Many other interpreters, however, are not convinced that we can assume so much in verse 18. The relationship between the sin of Adam and the sin of all people is closer. How can Paul say in the same passage that all die because all sin (v. 12) and all die because Adam sinned (v. 18)? Because Adam’s sin is, at the same time, the sin of everyone else as well. I think Paul does infer this idea of inclusion here in Romans 5:12–21. I lean this way for three basic reasons: (a) the repeated emphasis on the determinative significance of the “one” act of the “one” man Adam (vv. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19); (b) the corporate background of Paul’s thinking as sketched above; and (c) the more natural parallel it creates between Christ and Adam.
But I do not want to spend a lot of space here defending a particular view of original sin. I would rather draw three implications from our discussion, two pertaining to the inclusive idea I hold and one pertaining more generally to the issue of sin and death as a whole.
(1) The inclusive interpretation suffers from a credibility problem, well stated by theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg: “It is impossible for me to be held jointly responsible as though I were a joint cause for an act that another did many generations ago and in a situation radically different from mine.”15 C. W. Carter makes the same point in a different way: “Guilt stems from a culpable act traceable to the unethical conduct of a morally responsible person.”16 To put it bluntly: It is not fair for God to condemn me to eternal death for a sin Adam committed thousands of years ago.
We must not minimize this objection. But two things can be said. (a) Any orthodox view of sin creates a similar problem. To explain the universality of sin, we must assume at least that Adam’s sin has predisposed every person to sin. So, either way, people end up condemned because of something that Adam did. (b) While theologians who hold the inclusive view argue about just what our relationship to Adam might be, they all insist that it is a genuine relationship and that, in a way we cannot understand, we really did sin when Adam did. We do not die for a sin someone else commits; we die for a sin we committed.17
(2) The inclusive interpretation has potentially great importance for one of the most difficult of all theological and pastoral issues: the fate of infants and other people without the mental capacity ever to commit a sin or to respond to the gospel. While there is a lot of debate over the details, theologians who think that Adam has infected us all with sin but that we each ultimately die only when we sin personally usually teach that deceased infants go to heaven. After all, they have never committed a personal act of sin.
But if one holds the inclusive view, the situation is quite different. Since all people have sinned in Adam, all people, including children of any age, have already been condemned. Does this mean that any child who is not old enough to understand and respond to the gospel is automatically lost? No. Theologians who hold the inclusive view take three different positions. Some think that God, in an act of grace, accepts into heaven all those who never had a chance to commit a sin in their own persons. Others think that the children of believing parents will be saved. Still others think that God’s election will determine the matter: Infants chosen by God for salvation from eternity past will be saved, while those not been chosen will not be.
I have personally wrestled with this emotive question especially since my niece was born with such severe handicaps that she is not expected to live long. What am I to say to her parents when she dies? What do I respond when they ask me, the “family theologian,” where their daughter will spend eternity? All that is within me wants to be able to assure them that their daughter is in heaven. But I am not yet convinced Scripture gives me the right to do so. And I don’t want to be a purveyor of “cheap comfort,” giving hope based on my emotions rather than on Scripture.
I do not yet have an answer I am comfortable with. But two things I can say. (a) God is just and loving; we can leave such questions in his hands. (b) Whatever position we take will be decisively influenced by our theology of sin and salvation. This, after all, is the ultimate purpose of theology. We put together what God says on issues to come to a conclusion about truths we can use to comfort, rebuke, and exhort ourselves and others. All theology is finally pastoral theology.
(3) Our final remark about the teaching on sin in this chapter is this: After all the dust of debate settles, we need to have a deep appreciation of the reality of sin and death. Basic to the Christian worldview is a view of humanity as inherently bent away from God, with all the tragedy that comes from this sinful condition. Indeed, Christianity offers at this point a succinct and convincing explanation for the human misery and hatred we see in the world around us. Original sin may not make sense to many people; they may find it irrational or even unjust. But what better explanation for the extent and persistence of “crimes against humanity”? When will we come to realize that genocide in Africa or in Yugoslavia is not abnormal but, in reality, just another manifestation of the kind of hatred that has marked human beings throughout the centuries? Pascal put the point well:
Original sin is foolishness to men, but it is admitted to be such. You must not then reproach me for the want of reason in this doctrine, since I admit it to be without reason. But this foolishness is wiser than all the wisdom of men. For without this, what can we say that man is? His whole state depends on this imperceptible point. And how should it be perceived by his reason, since it is a thing against reason, and since reason, far from finding it out by her own ways, is averse to it when it is presented to her?18
Universalism. As we have noted repeatedly in this commentary, one of the strongest winds blowing in the present theological climate consists of the twin currents of tolerance and pluralism. As our world grows smaller, we become better acquainted with people of other religions. Human charity, fanned by the emphasis on tolerance in our multicultural environment, makes it more and more difficult to assert that Christ is the only way to salvation. In such a climate, it is not surprising that a belief in universalism is growing among Christians.
Universalism is the belief that all people will eventually be saved. It comes in a variety of forms, some of its adherents asserting that all religions can offer a way to God, others that God will bring to himself any people who have not come to know Christ during this life after their death. Romans 5:18–19 is a text often cited by adherents of universalism. For does not Paul here assert that just as “all people” were condemned as a result of Adam’s trespass, so “all people” will be made alive in Christ? If we want to pound the pulpit and denounce all people as sinners, don’t we need also to admit that all people will also find life in Christ?
The problem with this view, of course, is that flies in the face of plain biblical teaching that some people will not, in fact, be saved; that hell will never be unpopulated (see, e.g., Rom. 2:12; 2 Thess. 1:8–9; cf. also the whole argument of Rom. 1:18–3:20). Even in the present passage, Paul signals an important distinction just at this point between the work of Adam and the work of Christ. Throughout 5:12–21, Paul strains to make Adam and Christ as parallel as possible. All the more striking, then, is his breaking of that parallelism by adding the word “receive” in verse 17: It is, Paul says, only those “who receive God’s abundant provision of grace” who will “reign in life.” What must a person do to experience the death that Adam brought? Simply be born. What must a person do to experience the life that Christ brings? Receive God’s gift—that is, respond to the gospel through faith in Christ (see 3:21–26).
What, then, do we do with the apparent universalism in verses 18–19? Two alternatives are popular. (1) Paul may be claiming only that Christ makes life possible for every person. In his work on the cross, Christ sets people free from sin and lays the foundation for their new life. But to become real, a person must accept the offer of freedom from sin’s penalty. (2) Paul may be saying that as “all who are in Adam” die, so “all who are in Christ” will live (cf. 1 Cor. 15:22). All people are in Adam, and so all people die. But only those who “receive the gift” are in Christ, and so only they will live. Either explanation makes sense of the passage and fits Paul’s teaching elsewhere. But we think the second fits the context a bit better.
Universalism certainly has both a strong emotional and a theological attraction. Most of us would like to think that neighbors, friends, and work associates are going to heaven. A belief that all people will one day be reconciled to God seems to honor his lordship over all creation. But the doctrine simply does not have biblical support.
Many of you reading this commentary undoubtedly agree with these sentiments. But many of us tend to be “unconscious” universalists anyway, not really believing in our hearts that the nice people we know might be headed for hell. Thus, our zeal to share the gospel with them is sapped. Evangelistic zeal should be rooted in a love for people and a desire to glorify God by bringing people into relationship with him. But a deep sense of the fact that people without the Lord are, indeed, lost is also a potent motivation.
Original Meaning
Sin and Death Even Apart from the Law (5:13–14)
ALREADY IN VERSE 12, Paul has begun to lose control of his syntax as he lapses into a series of run-on clauses. At the end of the verse he abandons it altogether. Apparently, he is convinced that something he has said in this verse requires elaboration before he can move on to finish the comparison that is at the heart of this paragraph. As a result, as he has done throughout chapters 1–4, he brings the Mosaic law into the picture.
But why does he do so here? There are two possibilities. (1) Paul may be explaining the universal reign of death. If, indeed, “sin is not taken into account” when there is no law (v. 13b), and if, nevertheless, people still died during the time between Adam and Moses when there was not law (v. 14), then the only possible explanation for the death of these people is the sin of Adam himself. They died because they had sinned “in” Adam, and Adam did, indeed, break a “law”: the commandment not to eat of fruit of the tree of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.8
(2) However, while this interpretation explains the logic of these two verses and fits in well with our understanding of verse 12d, it faces an insuperable objection: Paul affirms that people before Moses died for their own sins (see, e.g., 1:32; note also Gen. 6). For this reason, we think the second interpretation of these verses is preferable: Paul is reinforcing his teaching about the universality of death. Many Jews believed that there could be no sin or death apart from the law. They may have thought that Paul’s claim in verse 12 that all people had sinned and died does not make sense. Thus, Paul affirms that, indeed, sin existed before the Mosaic law was given, and that people were condemned for their sin. The presence of positive law turns sin into “transgression” (parabasis, the word Paul uses in v. 14 and which NIV translates “by breaking a command”; see notes on 4:15). Sin may not be charged to one’s individual account (v. 13b) apart from law. But sin is still sin and brings God’s condemnation and wrath.
Bridging Contexts
ADAM IN PAUL’S DAY. The idea that something Adam did thousands of years ago can determine our eternal destiny is one that most modern people find difficult or even abhorrent. Yet, as we have seen, Paul appears to assume his readers are acquainted with the significance of Adam’s sin. But what would they have understood about it? If we can give a definite answer to this question, we will be in a much better position to decide what Paul is teaching about the relationship between Adam’s sin and the sin and death of all other people. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure what Paul or his readers may have assumed about these matters, because our sources do not agree.
The account of the Fall in Genesis 3 is not clear about the effects of Adam’s sin on his posterity. But the modern reader probably misses one overwhelmingly important fact about the account: The name “Adam” means “man” or “human being.” Indeed, translators of the Bible have a difficult time deciding what occurrences of the relevant Hebrew word (’adam) in Genesis 2–5 to translate “man” or “human being” and which to translate with the personal name “Adam.” The modern English reader can get a better sense of how the Hebrew must have sounded to readers in Paul day by substituting “man” for every place “Adam” appears in these chapters.
The point, then, is this: Woven into the very fabric of the Genesis narrative is the idea that Adam is more than just an isolated individual; in some, sense, he is “man.” When, therefore, the Lord warns the “man” that if he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17), a warning of universal death may also be intended.
What is somewhat surprising is that the Old Testament says almost nothing about Adam after these first chapters of Genesis.13 But Jewish writers indulged in much speculation about him. Some of this speculation was fanciful, eventually leading to esoteric Gnostic-type ideas. But some of the Jewish teaching focused on the question of the origin of sin and death and is directly relevant for our purposes.
We find some evidence of at least four different traditions.
(1) Eve brought sin into the world and caused all people to die. See Sirach 25:24: “From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die.”
(2) Satan brought death into the world. See Wisdom 2:24: “Through the devil’s envy death entered into the world.”
(3) Adam’s sin brought death to all people. See especially Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 23:4: “When Adam sinned a death was decreed against those who were to be born”; also from the same book, 48:2: “What did you [Adam] do to all who were born after you?”
(4) Every person dies because of his or her own sin. It is interesting that this point is explicit in the same book that also attributes universal death to Adam. Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 54:19: “Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam”; see also 54:15: “Although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torments.”
In Romans 5, Paul makes no mention of the role of Eve (though see 2 Cor. 11:3; 1 Tim. 2:14) or Satan. But, as we have seen, he appears to attribute responsibility for universal death both to Adam (Rom. 5:18–19) and to every individual (5:12). The Jewish tradition, as Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch so clearly reveals, was ambivalent on just this point. Jews acknowledged the determinative role of Adam in bringing sin and death to all the world, but wanted also to insist that every person was responsible for his or her own death.
Paul reflects this same ambivalence.14 Whether he resolves it by suggesting a particular relationship between Adam’s sin and the sin of all other people is debated (see Original Meaning and Contemporary Significance sections). But at least we can say this much: Paul’s first readers probably assumed without argument that Adam had some kind of representative significance and that his sin therefore brought death to all people.
A corporate way of thinking. One of the reasons we sometimes have difficulty understanding what the Bible teaches is that many of us live in cultures with assumptions about “the way the world works” that are very different from those of the Bible writers. The teaching of Scripture is sometimes like an iceberg: What is taught at the surface of the text rests on huge assumptions that lie beneath that level. Paul’s teaching about the corporate significance of Adam and Christ is a classic instance of this culture clash. Those of us who have been raised in the Western world are heirs of an individualistic tradition. As one who has grown up in the United States, I have had drilled into me since birth the “rugged individualism” of my culture. My choices, I have been taught both explicitly and implicitly, determine who I will be, what I will do, and how successful I will be.
The Bible certainly does not deny individual responsibility. But it also has a much stronger sense of how people are related to one another in ways that mean the decision of one can affect many others. The classic example in the Old Testament is the sin of Achan (Josh. 7). Contrary to God’s command, Achan kept for himself some of the spoils from the battle of Jericho. When the Israelites then tried to take the city of Ai, they were defeated. Why? Because Achan had sinned (7:20)! Note Joshua 7:11: Not only did all Israel suffer because of his sin, but the Lord even said, “Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant” (italics added).
This notion of corporate solidarity is an important part of the way both Old and New Testament authors looked at the world. Even in the West, we are beginning to understand this better than we used to. Modern psychology has revealed ways in which our apparently “free” choices are, in fact, directed by our background and environment. But we still have difficulty with the idea that someone else’s decision or act might decisively affect us. Yet Paul’s argument here and in several other places in Romans assumes this truth. To appreciate and apply his argument, we must sympathetically identify with the corporate perspective his teaching assumes.
Contemporary Significance
DEATH. WE SOMETIMES do not realize the implications of decisions we make about certain texts or issues. I myself was blissfully unaware of the minefield I was straying into when I began to study the meaning of “death” in Romans 5:12. I knew, of course, that a decision on whether death here is physical or spiritual would have significance for this text, and I could sense some of the theological issues involved (e.g., does Adam’s sin bring to me only physical death or condemnation as well?). But I had no idea that my interpretation would have a bearing on some of the intense debates about the time and length of creation until my son pointed it out to me.
As a biologist and a committed Christian, my son has struggled to make sense out of both Scripture and science on this matter. As a result of his study of biology, he was strongly inclined to think that God created the world over a long period of time and that Genesis 1 allows for such an interpretation. But he had a problem reconciling this interpretation with the apparent teaching of Scripture that death entered the world only with Adam and Eve. For basic to the existence and development of plants and animals as we know them is death. The whole grand process of life cannot exist without death. How, then, can plants and animals have existed for thousands of years if death only entered the picture with Adam?
A brief, “seven-literal-day” creation might solve this problem. But does the connection between death and human sin rule out a longer creative process? Only if Adam introduced into the world for the first time physical death. But this is not clear. Old Testament scholars debate the meaning of “death” in Genesis 2; New Testament scholars debate its meaning in Romans 5:12 and elsewhere; and theologians try to decide if God’s “good creation” is compatible with the existence of physical death.
My own inclination, as I have suggested in the Original Meaning section above, is to interpret the death that Adam introduced as spiritual but as including also physical death as a penalty. In other words, I think it possible that physical death did indeed exist in the world before Adam, but that Adam’s sin turned a natural process into a fearful penalty for all his posterity. But I am not so much concerned here with deciding this issue, but with pointing out the sometimes unexpected consequences of the interpretive decisions we make.
Original sin. While Romans 5:12–21 does not have “original sin” as its focus, it still remains the most important text in the Bible on this vexing theological doctrine. In the following paragraphs, I want briefly to sketch some of the main explanations and then to draw out some consequences of our belief on this matter.
We generally use the expression original sin to refer to the biblical teaching about the relationship between the first or original sin of Adam and the sin and death of all other people. At the risk of a gross simplification, I think we can summarize the views that Christians hold on this matter into three general categories.
(1) Imitation. The early church father Pelagius is the most famous exponent of this view. He did not think there was any real connection between our sin and Adam’s. What Adam did was to set a bad example for us that the rest of us have all followed. This view is generally considered to be suborthodox, if not heretical. Why? (a) Pelagius’s view cannot explain the data of Romans 5. Paul clearly teaches some kind of real relationship between Adam’s sin and ours. (b) Nor can it explain the universality of sin. I have five children; they do not all imitate me in the same way. How could it be that every single person who has ever lived—the vast majority of whom have never even heard of Adam—would imitate his turn away from God? Clearly some other factor must be involved if we are to explain Paul’s insistence that “all sinned” (v. 12).
(2) Infection. Almost all Christians agree, then, that Adam’s sin introduced a stain into the human race itself, a stain on human nature that inevitably leads people to turn away from God rather than toward him. This fatal “bent” is the result of Adam’s sin, and all people descended from Adam possess it. Many passages in the Old and New Testaments teach this basic truth about humanity, but it is not explicitly taught in Romans 5:12–21.
Nevertheless, as we noted above, many interpreters think it is implicit in the logic of 5:18–19. Paul affirms, for instance, that “the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men” (v. 18). What we find here, many argue in light of biblical teaching elsewhere, is a compressed statement giving only the original cause and the ultimate end. Missing is the process that connects them. “One trespass” contaminated human nature; this “infection” has been passed down to all Adam’s posterity. Everyone therefore sins, and as a result everyone is condemned.
(3) Inclusion. Many other interpreters, however, are not convinced that we can assume so much in verse 18. The relationship between the sin of Adam and the sin of all people is closer. How can Paul say in the same passage that all die because all sin (v. 12) and all die because Adam sinned (v. 18)? Because Adam’s sin is, at the same time, the sin of everyone else as well. I think Paul does infer this idea of inclusion here in Romans 5:12–21. I lean this way for three basic reasons: (a) the repeated emphasis on the determinative significance of the “one” act of the “one” man Adam (vv. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19); (b) the corporate background of Paul’s thinking as sketched above; and (c) the more natural parallel it creates between Christ and Adam.
But I do not want to spend a lot of space here defending a particular view of original sin. I would rather draw three implications from our discussion, two pertaining to the inclusive idea I hold and one pertaining more generally to the issue of sin and death as a whole.
(1) The inclusive interpretation suffers from a credibility problem, well stated by theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg: “It is impossible for me to be held jointly responsible as though I were a joint cause for an act that another did many generations ago and in a situation radically different from mine.”15 C. W. Carter makes the same point in a different way: “Guilt stems from a culpable act traceable to the unethical conduct of a morally responsible person.”16 To put it bluntly: It is not fair for God to condemn me to eternal death for a sin Adam committed thousands of years ago.
We must not minimize this objection. But two things can be said. (a) Any orthodox view of sin creates a similar problem. To explain the universality of sin, we must assume at least that Adam’s sin has predisposed every person to sin. So, either way, people end up condemned because of something that Adam did. (b) While theologians who hold the inclusive view argue about just what our relationship to Adam might be, they all insist that it is a genuine relationship and that, in a way we cannot understand, we really did sin when Adam did. We do not die for a sin someone else commits; we die for a sin we committed.17
(2) The inclusive interpretation has potentially great importance for one of the most difficult of all theological and pastoral issues: the fate of infants and other people without the mental capacity ever to commit a sin or to respond to the gospel. While there is a lot of debate over the details, theologians who think that Adam has infected us all with sin but that we each ultimately die only when we sin personally usually teach that deceased infants go to heaven. After all, they have never committed a personal act of sin.
But if one holds the inclusive view, the situation is quite different. Since all people have sinned in Adam, all people, including children of any age, have already been condemned. Does this mean that any child who is not old enough to understand and respond to the gospel is automatically lost? No. Theologians who hold the inclusive view take three different positions. Some think that God, in an act of grace, accepts into heaven all those who never had a chance to commit a sin in their own persons. Others think that the children of believing parents will be saved. Still others think that God’s election will determine the matter: Infants chosen by God for salvation from eternity past will be saved, while those not been chosen will not be.
I have personally wrestled with this emotive question especially since my niece was born with such severe handicaps that she is not expected to live long. What am I to say to her parents when she dies? What do I respond when they ask me, the “family theologian,” where their daughter will spend eternity? All that is within me wants to be able to assure them that their daughter is in heaven. But I am not yet convinced Scripture gives me the right to do so. And I don’t want to be a purveyor of “cheap comfort,” giving hope based on my emotions rather than on Scripture.
I do not yet have an answer I am comfortable with. But two things I can say. (a) God is just and loving; we can leave such questions in his hands. (b) Whatever position we take will be decisively influenced by our theology of sin and salvation. This, after all, is the ultimate purpose of theology. We put together what God says on issues to come to a conclusion about truths we can use to comfort, rebuke, and exhort ourselves and others. All theology is finally pastoral theology.
(3) Our final remark about the teaching on sin in this chapter is this: After all the dust of debate settles, we need to have a deep appreciation of the reality of sin and death. Basic to the Christian worldview is a view of humanity as inherently bent away from God, with all the tragedy that comes from this sinful condition. Indeed, Christianity offers at this point a succinct and convincing explanation for the human misery and hatred we see in the world around us. Original sin may not make sense to many people; they may find it irrational or even unjust. But what better explanation for the extent and persistence of “crimes against humanity”? When will we come to realize that genocide in Africa or in Yugoslavia is not abnormal but, in reality, just another manifestation of the kind of hatred that has marked human beings throughout the centuries? Pascal put the point well:
Original sin is foolishness to men, but it is admitted to be such. You must not then reproach me for the want of reason in this doctrine, since I admit it to be without reason. But this foolishness is wiser than all the wisdom of men. For without this, what can we say that man is? His whole state depends on this imperceptible point. And how should it be perceived by his reason, since it is a thing against reason, and since reason, far from finding it out by her own ways, is averse to it when it is presented to her?18
Universalism. As we have noted repeatedly in this commentary, one of the strongest winds blowing in the present theological climate consists of the twin currents of tolerance and pluralism. As our world grows smaller, we become better acquainted with people of other religions. Human charity, fanned by the emphasis on tolerance in our multicultural environment, makes it more and more difficult to assert that Christ is the only way to salvation. In such a climate, it is not surprising that a belief in universalism is growing among Christians.
Universalism is the belief that all people will eventually be saved. It comes in a variety of forms, some of its adherents asserting that all religions can offer a way to God, others that God will bring to himself any people who have not come to know Christ during this life after their death. Romans 5:18–19 is a text often cited by adherents of universalism. For does not Paul here assert that just as “all people” were condemned as a result of Adam’s trespass, so “all people” will be made alive in Christ? If we want to pound the pulpit and denounce all people as sinners, don’t we need also to admit that all people will also find life in Christ?
The problem with this view, of course, is that flies in the face of plain biblical teaching that some people will not, in fact, be saved; that hell will never be unpopulated (see, e.g., Rom. 2:12; 2 Thess. 1:8–9; cf. also the whole argument of Rom. 1:18–3:20). Even in the present passage, Paul signals an important distinction just at this point between the work of Adam and the work of Christ. Throughout 5:12–21, Paul strains to make Adam and Christ as parallel as possible. All the more striking, then, is his breaking of that parallelism by adding the word “receive” in verse 17: It is, Paul says, only those “who receive God’s abundant provision of grace” who will “reign in life.” What must a person do to experience the death that Adam brought? Simply be born. What must a person do to experience the life that Christ brings? Receive God’s gift—that is, respond to the gospel through faith in Christ (see 3:21–26).
What, then, do we do with the apparent universalism in verses 18–19? Two alternatives are popular. (1) Paul may be claiming only that Christ makes life possible for every person. In his work on the cross, Christ sets people free from sin and lays the foundation for their new life. But to become real, a person must accept the offer of freedom from sin’s penalty. (2) Paul may be saying that as “all who are in Adam” die, so “all who are in Christ” will live (cf. 1 Cor. 15:22). All people are in Adam, and so all people die. But only those who “receive the gift” are in Christ, and so only they will live. Either explanation makes sense of the passage and fits Paul’s teaching elsewhere. But we think the second fits the context a bit better.
Universalism certainly has both a strong emotional and a theological attraction. Most of us would like to think that neighbors, friends, and work associates are going to heaven. A belief that all people will one day be reconciled to God seems to honor his lordship over all creation. But the doctrine simply does not have biblical support.
Many of you reading this commentary undoubtedly agree with these sentiments. But many of us tend to be “unconscious” universalists anyway, not really believing in our hearts that the nice people we know might be headed for hell. Thus, our zeal to share the gospel with them is sapped. Evangelistic zeal should be rooted in a love for people and a desire to glorify God by bringing people into relationship with him. But a deep sense of the fact that people without the Lord are, indeed, lost is also a potent motivation.
Original Meaning
The Contrast Between Adam and Christ (5:15–17)
AT THE END of verse 14, almost as an aside, Paul expresses the premise on which the whole argument of verses 12–21 is built: Adam was a “pattern [or type, typos] of the one to come,” that is, of Christ. But before he pursues the similarity between these two as a result of this relationship, the apostle notes some of the differences. These differences boil down to one great fact: In Christ God deals with people on the basis of grace.
The word “grace” and the related word “gift” occur seven times in these three verses. What happened as a result of Adam’s sin is entirely a matter of “just deserts.” “Death” (vv. 15, 17), “judgment,” and “condemnation” (v. 16) inevitably and justly follow sin. But what has happened as a result of Christ is quite different. In place of condemnation, Christ brings “justification” (v. 16). Condemnation came as a result of “one sin,” but justification “followed many trespasses” (v. 16). We see in this circumstance, Paul concludes, evidence of the overwhelming grace of God. As Cranfield puts it, “That one single misdeed should be answered by judgment, this is perfectly understandable: that the accumulated sins and guilt of all the ages should be answered by God’s free gift, this is the miracle of miracles, utterly beyond human comprehension.”9
The power of God’s grace operating through the work of Christ means there is a “how much more” in the quality of what Christ accomplishes in comparison with what Adam has done (v. 17). Christ more than cancels the effects of Adam’s sin—he enables those who have received the “abundant provision of grace” and “the gift of righteousness” not just to experience life but to “reign in life.”
Bridging Contexts
ADAM IN PAUL’S DAY. The idea that something Adam did thousands of years ago can determine our eternal destiny is one that most modern people find difficult or even abhorrent. Yet, as we have seen, Paul appears to assume his readers are acquainted with the significance of Adam’s sin. But what would they have understood about it? If we can give a definite answer to this question, we will be in a much better position to decide what Paul is teaching about the relationship between Adam’s sin and the sin and death of all other people. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure what Paul or his readers may have assumed about these matters, because our sources do not agree.
The account of the Fall in Genesis 3 is not clear about the effects of Adam’s sin on his posterity. But the modern reader probably misses one overwhelmingly important fact about the account: The name “Adam” means “man” or “human being.” Indeed, translators of the Bible have a difficult time deciding what occurrences of the relevant Hebrew word (’adam) in Genesis 2–5 to translate “man” or “human being” and which to translate with the personal name “Adam.” The modern English reader can get a better sense of how the Hebrew must have sounded to readers in Paul day by substituting “man” for every place “Adam” appears in these chapters.
The point, then, is this: Woven into the very fabric of the Genesis narrative is the idea that Adam is more than just an isolated individual; in some, sense, he is “man.” When, therefore, the Lord warns the “man” that if he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17), a warning of universal death may also be intended.
What is somewhat surprising is that the Old Testament says almost nothing about Adam after these first chapters of Genesis.13 But Jewish writers indulged in much speculation about him. Some of this speculation was fanciful, eventually leading to esoteric Gnostic-type ideas. But some of the Jewish teaching focused on the question of the origin of sin and death and is directly relevant for our purposes.
We find some evidence of at least four different traditions.
(1) Eve brought sin into the world and caused all people to die. See Sirach 25:24: “From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die.”
(2) Satan brought death into the world. See Wisdom 2:24: “Through the devil’s envy death entered into the world.”
(3) Adam’s sin brought death to all people. See especially Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 23:4: “When Adam sinned a death was decreed against those who were to be born”; also from the same book, 48:2: “What did you [Adam] do to all who were born after you?”
(4) Every person dies because of his or her own sin. It is interesting that this point is explicit in the same book that also attributes universal death to Adam. Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 54:19: “Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam”; see also 54:15: “Although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torments.”
In Romans 5, Paul makes no mention of the role of Eve (though see 2 Cor. 11:3; 1 Tim. 2:14) or Satan. But, as we have seen, he appears to attribute responsibility for universal death both to Adam (Rom. 5:18–19) and to every individual (5:12). The Jewish tradition, as Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch so clearly reveals, was ambivalent on just this point. Jews acknowledged the determinative role of Adam in bringing sin and death to all the world, but wanted also to insist that every person was responsible for his or her own death.
Paul reflects this same ambivalence.14 Whether he resolves it by suggesting a particular relationship between Adam’s sin and the sin of all other people is debated (see Original Meaning and Contemporary Significance sections). But at least we can say this much: Paul’s first readers probably assumed without argument that Adam had some kind of representative significance and that his sin therefore brought death to all people.
A corporate way of thinking. One of the reasons we sometimes have difficulty understanding what the Bible teaches is that many of us live in cultures with assumptions about “the way the world works” that are very different from those of the Bible writers. The teaching of Scripture is sometimes like an iceberg: What is taught at the surface of the text rests on huge assumptions that lie beneath that level. Paul’s teaching about the corporate significance of Adam and Christ is a classic instance of this culture clash. Those of us who have been raised in the Western world are heirs of an individualistic tradition. As one who has grown up in the United States, I have had drilled into me since birth the “rugged individualism” of my culture. My choices, I have been taught both explicitly and implicitly, determine who I will be, what I will do, and how successful I will be.
The Bible certainly does not deny individual responsibility. But it also has a much stronger sense of how people are related to one another in ways that mean the decision of one can affect many others. The classic example in the Old Testament is the sin of Achan (Josh. 7). Contrary to God’s command, Achan kept for himself some of the spoils from the battle of Jericho. When the Israelites then tried to take the city of Ai, they were defeated. Why? Because Achan had sinned (7:20)! Note Joshua 7:11: Not only did all Israel suffer because of his sin, but the Lord even said, “Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant” (italics added).
This notion of corporate solidarity is an important part of the way both Old and New Testament authors looked at the world. Even in the West, we are beginning to understand this better than we used to. Modern psychology has revealed ways in which our apparently “free” choices are, in fact, directed by our background and environment. But we still have difficulty with the idea that someone else’s decision or act might decisively affect us. Yet Paul’s argument here and in several other places in Romans assumes this truth. To appreciate and apply his argument, we must sympathetically identify with the corporate perspective his teaching assumes.
Contemporary Significance
DEATH. WE SOMETIMES do not realize the implications of decisions we make about certain texts or issues. I myself was blissfully unaware of the minefield I was straying into when I began to study the meaning of “death” in Romans 5:12. I knew, of course, that a decision on whether death here is physical or spiritual would have significance for this text, and I could sense some of the theological issues involved (e.g., does Adam’s sin bring to me only physical death or condemnation as well?). But I had no idea that my interpretation would have a bearing on some of the intense debates about the time and length of creation until my son pointed it out to me.
As a biologist and a committed Christian, my son has struggled to make sense out of both Scripture and science on this matter. As a result of his study of biology, he was strongly inclined to think that God created the world over a long period of time and that Genesis 1 allows for such an interpretation. But he had a problem reconciling this interpretation with the apparent teaching of Scripture that death entered the world only with Adam and Eve. For basic to the existence and development of plants and animals as we know them is death. The whole grand process of life cannot exist without death. How, then, can plants and animals have existed for thousands of years if death only entered the picture with Adam?
A brief, “seven-literal-day” creation might solve this problem. But does the connection between death and human sin rule out a longer creative process? Only if Adam introduced into the world for the first time physical death. But this is not clear. Old Testament scholars debate the meaning of “death” in Genesis 2; New Testament scholars debate its meaning in Romans 5:12 and elsewhere; and theologians try to decide if God’s “good creation” is compatible with the existence of physical death.
My own inclination, as I have suggested in the Original Meaning section above, is to interpret the death that Adam introduced as spiritual but as including also physical death as a penalty. In other words, I think it possible that physical death did indeed exist in the world before Adam, but that Adam’s sin turned a natural process into a fearful penalty for all his posterity. But I am not so much concerned here with deciding this issue, but with pointing out the sometimes unexpected consequences of the interpretive decisions we make.
Original sin. While Romans 5:12–21 does not have “original sin” as its focus, it still remains the most important text in the Bible on this vexing theological doctrine. In the following paragraphs, I want briefly to sketch some of the main explanations and then to draw out some consequences of our belief on this matter.
We generally use the expression original sin to refer to the biblical teaching about the relationship between the first or original sin of Adam and the sin and death of all other people. At the risk of a gross simplification, I think we can summarize the views that Christians hold on this matter into three general categories.
(1) Imitation. The early church father Pelagius is the most famous exponent of this view. He did not think there was any real connection between our sin and Adam’s. What Adam did was to set a bad example for us that the rest of us have all followed. This view is generally considered to be suborthodox, if not heretical. Why? (a) Pelagius’s view cannot explain the data of Romans 5. Paul clearly teaches some kind of real relationship between Adam’s sin and ours. (b) Nor can it explain the universality of sin. I have five children; they do not all imitate me in the same way. How could it be that every single person who has ever lived—the vast majority of whom have never even heard of Adam—would imitate his turn away from God? Clearly some other factor must be involved if we are to explain Paul’s insistence that “all sinned” (v. 12).
(2) Infection. Almost all Christians agree, then, that Adam’s sin introduced a stain into the human race itself, a stain on human nature that inevitably leads people to turn away from God rather than toward him. This fatal “bent” is the result of Adam’s sin, and all people descended from Adam possess it. Many passages in the Old and New Testaments teach this basic truth about humanity, but it is not explicitly taught in Romans 5:12–21.
Nevertheless, as we noted above, many interpreters think it is implicit in the logic of 5:18–19. Paul affirms, for instance, that “the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men” (v. 18). What we find here, many argue in light of biblical teaching elsewhere, is a compressed statement giving only the original cause and the ultimate end. Missing is the process that connects them. “One trespass” contaminated human nature; this “infection” has been passed down to all Adam’s posterity. Everyone therefore sins, and as a result everyone is condemned.
(3) Inclusion. Many other interpreters, however, are not convinced that we can assume so much in verse 18. The relationship between the sin of Adam and the sin of all people is closer. How can Paul say in the same passage that all die because all sin (v. 12) and all die because Adam sinned (v. 18)? Because Adam’s sin is, at the same time, the sin of everyone else as well. I think Paul does infer this idea of inclusion here in Romans 5:12–21. I lean this way for three basic reasons: (a) the repeated emphasis on the determinative significance of the “one” act of the “one” man Adam (vv. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19); (b) the corporate background of Paul’s thinking as sketched above; and (c) the more natural parallel it creates between Christ and Adam.
But I do not want to spend a lot of space here defending a particular view of original sin. I would rather draw three implications from our discussion, two pertaining to the inclusive idea I hold and one pertaining more generally to the issue of sin and death as a whole.
(1) The inclusive interpretation suffers from a credibility problem, well stated by theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg: “It is impossible for me to be held jointly responsible as though I were a joint cause for an act that another did many generations ago and in a situation radically different from mine.”15 C. W. Carter makes the same point in a different way: “Guilt stems from a culpable act traceable to the unethical conduct of a morally responsible person.”16 To put it bluntly: It is not fair for God to condemn me to eternal death for a sin Adam committed thousands of years ago.
We must not minimize this objection. But two things can be said. (a) Any orthodox view of sin creates a similar problem. To explain the universality of sin, we must assume at least that Adam’s sin has predisposed every person to sin. So, either way, people end up condemned because of something that Adam did. (b) While theologians who hold the inclusive view argue about just what our relationship to Adam might be, they all insist that it is a genuine relationship and that, in a way we cannot understand, we really did sin when Adam did. We do not die for a sin someone else commits; we die for a sin we committed.17
(2) The inclusive interpretation has potentially great importance for one of the most difficult of all theological and pastoral issues: the fate of infants and other people without the mental capacity ever to commit a sin or to respond to the gospel. While there is a lot of debate over the details, theologians who think that Adam has infected us all with sin but that we each ultimately die only when we sin personally usually teach that deceased infants go to heaven. After all, they have never committed a personal act of sin.
But if one holds the inclusive view, the situation is quite different. Since all people have sinned in Adam, all people, including children of any age, have already been condemned. Does this mean that any child who is not old enough to understand and respond to the gospel is automatically lost? No. Theologians who hold the inclusive view take three different positions. Some think that God, in an act of grace, accepts into heaven all those who never had a chance to commit a sin in their own persons. Others think that the children of believing parents will be saved. Still others think that God’s election will determine the matter: Infants chosen by God for salvation from eternity past will be saved, while those not been chosen will not be.
I have personally wrestled with this emotive question especially since my niece was born with such severe handicaps that she is not expected to live long. What am I to say to her parents when she dies? What do I respond when they ask me, the “family theologian,” where their daughter will spend eternity? All that is within me wants to be able to assure them that their daughter is in heaven. But I am not yet convinced Scripture gives me the right to do so. And I don’t want to be a purveyor of “cheap comfort,” giving hope based on my emotions rather than on Scripture.
I do not yet have an answer I am comfortable with. But two things I can say. (a) God is just and loving; we can leave such questions in his hands. (b) Whatever position we take will be decisively influenced by our theology of sin and salvation. This, after all, is the ultimate purpose of theology. We put together what God says on issues to come to a conclusion about truths we can use to comfort, rebuke, and exhort ourselves and others. All theology is finally pastoral theology.
(3) Our final remark about the teaching on sin in this chapter is this: After all the dust of debate settles, we need to have a deep appreciation of the reality of sin and death. Basic to the Christian worldview is a view of humanity as inherently bent away from God, with all the tragedy that comes from this sinful condition. Indeed, Christianity offers at this point a succinct and convincing explanation for the human misery and hatred we see in the world around us. Original sin may not make sense to many people; they may find it irrational or even unjust. But what better explanation for the extent and persistence of “crimes against humanity”? When will we come to realize that genocide in Africa or in Yugoslavia is not abnormal but, in reality, just another manifestation of the kind of hatred that has marked human beings throughout the centuries? Pascal put the point well:
Original sin is foolishness to men, but it is admitted to be such. You must not then reproach me for the want of reason in this doctrine, since I admit it to be without reason. But this foolishness is wiser than all the wisdom of men. For without this, what can we say that man is? His whole state depends on this imperceptible point. And how should it be perceived by his reason, since it is a thing against reason, and since reason, far from finding it out by her own ways, is averse to it when it is presented to her?18
Universalism. As we have noted repeatedly in this commentary, one of the strongest winds blowing in the present theological climate consists of the twin currents of tolerance and pluralism. As our world grows smaller, we become better acquainted with people of other religions. Human charity, fanned by the emphasis on tolerance in our multicultural environment, makes it more and more difficult to assert that Christ is the only way to salvation. In such a climate, it is not surprising that a belief in universalism is growing among Christians.
Universalism is the belief that all people will eventually be saved. It comes in a variety of forms, some of its adherents asserting that all religions can offer a way to God, others that God will bring to himself any people who have not come to know Christ during this life after their death. Romans 5:18–19 is a text often cited by adherents of universalism. For does not Paul here assert that just as “all people” were condemned as a result of Adam’s trespass, so “all people” will be made alive in Christ? If we want to pound the pulpit and denounce all people as sinners, don’t we need also to admit that all people will also find life in Christ?
The problem with this view, of course, is that flies in the face of plain biblical teaching that some people will not, in fact, be saved; that hell will never be unpopulated (see, e.g., Rom. 2:12; 2 Thess. 1:8–9; cf. also the whole argument of Rom. 1:18–3:20). Even in the present passage, Paul signals an important distinction just at this point between the work of Adam and the work of Christ. Throughout 5:12–21, Paul strains to make Adam and Christ as parallel as possible. All the more striking, then, is his breaking of that parallelism by adding the word “receive” in verse 17: It is, Paul says, only those “who receive God’s abundant provision of grace” who will “reign in life.” What must a person do to experience the death that Adam brought? Simply be born. What must a person do to experience the life that Christ brings? Receive God’s gift—that is, respond to the gospel through faith in Christ (see 3:21–26).
What, then, do we do with the apparent universalism in verses 18–19? Two alternatives are popular. (1) Paul may be claiming only that Christ makes life possible for every person. In his work on the cross, Christ sets people free from sin and lays the foundation for their new life. But to become real, a person must accept the offer of freedom from sin’s penalty. (2) Paul may be saying that as “all who are in Adam” die, so “all who are in Christ” will live (cf. 1 Cor. 15:22). All people are in Adam, and so all people die. But only those who “receive the gift” are in Christ, and so only they will live. Either explanation makes sense of the passage and fits Paul’s teaching elsewhere. But we think the second fits the context a bit better.
Universalism certainly has both a strong emotional and a theological attraction. Most of us would like to think that neighbors, friends, and work associates are going to heaven. A belief that all people will one day be reconciled to God seems to honor his lordship over all creation. But the doctrine simply does not have biblical support.
Many of you reading this commentary undoubtedly agree with these sentiments. But many of us tend to be “unconscious” universalists anyway, not really believing in our hearts that the nice people we know might be headed for hell. Thus, our zeal to share the gospel with them is sapped. Evangelistic zeal should be rooted in a love for people and a desire to glorify God by bringing people into relationship with him. But a deep sense of the fact that people without the Lord are, indeed, lost is also a potent motivation.
Original Meaning
The Comparison Between Adam and Christ (5:18–19)
LIKE MANY OF us, Paul sometimes gets tangled up in his syntax and does not finish sentences be begins (see introductory comments on this section regarding v. 12). But, unlike some of us, Paul knows when he has left a sentence or an idea hanging. Thus, in verses 18–19 he returns to the idea of verse 12 and completes it.
Verses 18–19 are similar in structure. Each features Adam in the first (“just as”) clause and Christ in the second (“so also”) clause. Each contrasts what Adam did with what Christ did. Adam committed a “trespass” (v. 18); he disobeyed (v. 19). Christ, by contrast, committed an “act of righteousness” (v. 18); he obeyed (v. 19). Where Adam turned away from God and violated his commandment, Christ turned toward God and continually did the will of his Father. The singular “act of righteousness” suggests Paul is thinking of a single manifestation of Christ’s obedience to his Father—probably in submitting to the Father’s will to die on a Roman cross.
Finally, and most important, each verse also contrasts the results of Adam’s sin with the results of Christ’s obedience. Elaborating on the death he mentioned in verse 12, Paul asserts that Adam’s disobedience led to “condemnation for all men” (v. 18) and that “the many were made sinners” as a result of what Adam did (v. 19). The NIV translation “made sinners” and “made righteous” in verse 19 suggests that Paul’s point here is that Adam’s sin led people to become sinners while Christ enabled people to become good and law-abiding. But the Greek verb used in both places (kathistemi) suggests rather a forensic idea: Because of Adam’s sin, “the many” were “appointed to” or “inaugurated into” a state of sinfulness; and because of Christ’s obedience, the many “were appointed to” a status of righteousness (i.e., they were justified).
But why does Paul speak of “the many”? Its identical function to the word “all” in verse 18 suggests that “many” in verse 19 is a Semitism that means “everyone” (see also v. 15).10 But is Paul then asserting that all people will experience justification—that salvation is universal? We don’t think so (see Contemporary Significance section for explanation).
Bridging Contexts
ADAM IN PAUL’S DAY. The idea that something Adam did thousands of years ago can determine our eternal destiny is one that most modern people find difficult or even abhorrent. Yet, as we have seen, Paul appears to assume his readers are acquainted with the significance of Adam’s sin. But what would they have understood about it? If we can give a definite answer to this question, we will be in a much better position to decide what Paul is teaching about the relationship between Adam’s sin and the sin and death of all other people. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure what Paul or his readers may have assumed about these matters, because our sources do not agree.
The account of the Fall in Genesis 3 is not clear about the effects of Adam’s sin on his posterity. But the modern reader probably misses one overwhelmingly important fact about the account: The name “Adam” means “man” or “human being.” Indeed, translators of the Bible have a difficult time deciding what occurrences of the relevant Hebrew word (’adam) in Genesis 2–5 to translate “man” or “human being” and which to translate with the personal name “Adam.” The modern English reader can get a better sense of how the Hebrew must have sounded to readers in Paul day by substituting “man” for every place “Adam” appears in these chapters.
The point, then, is this: Woven into the very fabric of the Genesis narrative is the idea that Adam is more than just an isolated individual; in some, sense, he is “man.” When, therefore, the Lord warns the “man” that if he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17), a warning of universal death may also be intended.
What is somewhat surprising is that the Old Testament says almost nothing about Adam after these first chapters of Genesis.13 But Jewish writers indulged in much speculation about him. Some of this speculation was fanciful, eventually leading to esoteric Gnostic-type ideas. But some of the Jewish teaching focused on the question of the origin of sin and death and is directly relevant for our purposes.
We find some evidence of at least four different traditions.
(1) Eve brought sin into the world and caused all people to die. See Sirach 25:24: “From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die.”
(2) Satan brought death into the world. See Wisdom 2:24: “Through the devil’s envy death entered into the world.”
(3) Adam’s sin brought death to all people. See especially Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 23:4: “When Adam sinned a death was decreed against those who were to be born”; also from the same book, 48:2: “What did you [Adam] do to all who were born after you?”
(4) Every person dies because of his or her own sin. It is interesting that this point is explicit in the same book that also attributes universal death to Adam. Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 54:19: “Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam”; see also 54:15: “Although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torments.”
In Romans 5, Paul makes no mention of the role of Eve (though see 2 Cor. 11:3; 1 Tim. 2:14) or Satan. But, as we have seen, he appears to attribute responsibility for universal death both to Adam (Rom. 5:18–19) and to every individual (5:12). The Jewish tradition, as Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch so clearly reveals, was ambivalent on just this point. Jews acknowledged the determinative role of Adam in bringing sin and death to all the world, but wanted also to insist that every person was responsible for his or her own death.
Paul reflects this same ambivalence.14 Whether he resolves it by suggesting a particular relationship between Adam’s sin and the sin of all other people is debated (see Original Meaning and Contemporary Significance sections). But at least we can say this much: Paul’s first readers probably assumed without argument that Adam had some kind of representative significance and that his sin therefore brought death to all people.
A corporate way of thinking. One of the reasons we sometimes have difficulty understanding what the Bible teaches is that many of us live in cultures with assumptions about “the way the world works” that are very different from those of the Bible writers. The teaching of Scripture is sometimes like an iceberg: What is taught at the surface of the text rests on huge assumptions that lie beneath that level. Paul’s teaching about the corporate significance of Adam and Christ is a classic instance of this culture clash. Those of us who have been raised in the Western world are heirs of an individualistic tradition. As one who has grown up in the United States, I have had drilled into me since birth the “rugged individualism” of my culture. My choices, I have been taught both explicitly and implicitly, determine who I will be, what I will do, and how successful I will be.
The Bible certainly does not deny individual responsibility. But it also has a much stronger sense of how people are related to one another in ways that mean the decision of one can affect many others. The classic example in the Old Testament is the sin of Achan (Josh. 7). Contrary to God’s command, Achan kept for himself some of the spoils from the battle of Jericho. When the Israelites then tried to take the city of Ai, they were defeated. Why? Because Achan had sinned (7:20)! Note Joshua 7:11: Not only did all Israel suffer because of his sin, but the Lord even said, “Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant” (italics added).
This notion of corporate solidarity is an important part of the way both Old and New Testament authors looked at the world. Even in the West, we are beginning to understand this better than we used to. Modern psychology has revealed ways in which our apparently “free” choices are, in fact, directed by our background and environment. But we still have difficulty with the idea that someone else’s decision or act might decisively affect us. Yet Paul’s argument here and in several other places in Romans assumes this truth. To appreciate and apply his argument, we must sympathetically identify with the corporate perspective his teaching assumes.
Contemporary Significance
DEATH. WE SOMETIMES do not realize the implications of decisions we make about certain texts or issues. I myself was blissfully unaware of the minefield I was straying into when I began to study the meaning of “death” in Romans 5:12. I knew, of course, that a decision on whether death here is physical or spiritual would have significance for this text, and I could sense some of the theological issues involved (e.g., does Adam’s sin bring to me only physical death or condemnation as well?). But I had no idea that my interpretation would have a bearing on some of the intense debates about the time and length of creation until my son pointed it out to me.
As a biologist and a committed Christian, my son has struggled to make sense out of both Scripture and science on this matter. As a result of his study of biology, he was strongly inclined to think that God created the world over a long period of time and that Genesis 1 allows for such an interpretation. But he had a problem reconciling this interpretation with the apparent teaching of Scripture that death entered the world only with Adam and Eve. For basic to the existence and development of plants and animals as we know them is death. The whole grand process of life cannot exist without death. How, then, can plants and animals have existed for thousands of years if death only entered the picture with Adam?
A brief, “seven-literal-day” creation might solve this problem. But does the connection between death and human sin rule out a longer creative process? Only if Adam introduced into the world for the first time physical death. But this is not clear. Old Testament scholars debate the meaning of “death” in Genesis 2; New Testament scholars debate its meaning in Romans 5:12 and elsewhere; and theologians try to decide if God’s “good creation” is compatible with the existence of physical death.
My own inclination, as I have suggested in the Original Meaning section above, is to interpret the death that Adam introduced as spiritual but as including also physical death as a penalty. In other words, I think it possible that physical death did indeed exist in the world before Adam, but that Adam’s sin turned a natural process into a fearful penalty for all his posterity. But I am not so much concerned here with deciding this issue, but with pointing out the sometimes unexpected consequences of the interpretive decisions we make.
Original sin. While Romans 5:12–21 does not have “original sin” as its focus, it still remains the most important text in the Bible on this vexing theological doctrine. In the following paragraphs, I want briefly to sketch some of the main explanations and then to draw out some consequences of our belief on this matter.
We generally use the expression original sin to refer to the biblical teaching about the relationship between the first or original sin of Adam and the sin and death of all other people. At the risk of a gross simplification, I think we can summarize the views that Christians hold on this matter into three general categories.
(1) Imitation. The early church father Pelagius is the most famous exponent of this view. He did not think there was any real connection between our sin and Adam’s. What Adam did was to set a bad example for us that the rest of us have all followed. This view is generally considered to be suborthodox, if not heretical. Why? (a) Pelagius’s view cannot explain the data of Romans 5. Paul clearly teaches some kind of real relationship between Adam’s sin and ours. (b) Nor can it explain the universality of sin. I have five children; they do not all imitate me in the same way. How could it be that every single person who has ever lived—the vast majority of whom have never even heard of Adam—would imitate his turn away from God? Clearly some other factor must be involved if we are to explain Paul’s insistence that “all sinned” (v. 12).
(2) Infection. Almost all Christians agree, then, that Adam’s sin introduced a stain into the human race itself, a stain on human nature that inevitably leads people to turn away from God rather than toward him. This fatal “bent” is the result of Adam’s sin, and all people descended from Adam possess it. Many passages in the Old and New Testaments teach this basic truth about humanity, but it is not explicitly taught in Romans 5:12–21.
Nevertheless, as we noted above, many interpreters think it is implicit in the logic of 5:18–19. Paul affirms, for instance, that “the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men” (v. 18). What we find here, many argue in light of biblical teaching elsewhere, is a compressed statement giving only the original cause and the ultimate end. Missing is the process that connects them. “One trespass” contaminated human nature; this “infection” has been passed down to all Adam’s posterity. Everyone therefore sins, and as a result everyone is condemned.
(3) Inclusion. Many other interpreters, however, are not convinced that we can assume so much in verse 18. The relationship between the sin of Adam and the sin of all people is closer. How can Paul say in the same passage that all die because all sin (v. 12) and all die because Adam sinned (v. 18)? Because Adam’s sin is, at the same time, the sin of everyone else as well. I think Paul does infer this idea of inclusion here in Romans 5:12–21. I lean this way for three basic reasons: (a) the repeated emphasis on the determinative significance of the “one” act of the “one” man Adam (vv. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19); (b) the corporate background of Paul’s thinking as sketched above; and (c) the more natural parallel it creates between Christ and Adam.
But I do not want to spend a lot of space here defending a particular view of original sin. I would rather draw three implications from our discussion, two pertaining to the inclusive idea I hold and one pertaining more generally to the issue of sin and death as a whole.
(1) The inclusive interpretation suffers from a credibility problem, well stated by theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg: “It is impossible for me to be held jointly responsible as though I were a joint cause for an act that another did many generations ago and in a situation radically different from mine.”15 C. W. Carter makes the same point in a different way: “Guilt stems from a culpable act traceable to the unethical conduct of a morally responsible person.”16 To put it bluntly: It is not fair for God to condemn me to eternal death for a sin Adam committed thousands of years ago.
We must not minimize this objection. But two things can be said. (a) Any orthodox view of sin creates a similar problem. To explain the universality of sin, we must assume at least that Adam’s sin has predisposed every person to sin. So, either way, people end up condemned because of something that Adam did. (b) While theologians who hold the inclusive view argue about just what our relationship to Adam might be, they all insist that it is a genuine relationship and that, in a way we cannot understand, we really did sin when Adam did. We do not die for a sin someone else commits; we die for a sin we committed.17
(2) The inclusive interpretation has potentially great importance for one of the most difficult of all theological and pastoral issues: the fate of infants and other people without the mental capacity ever to commit a sin or to respond to the gospel. While there is a lot of debate over the details, theologians who think that Adam has infected us all with sin but that we each ultimately die only when we sin personally usually teach that deceased infants go to heaven. After all, they have never committed a personal act of sin.
But if one holds the inclusive view, the situation is quite different. Since all people have sinned in Adam, all people, including children of any age, have already been condemned. Does this mean that any child who is not old enough to understand and respond to the gospel is automatically lost? No. Theologians who hold the inclusive view take three different positions. Some think that God, in an act of grace, accepts into heaven all those who never had a chance to commit a sin in their own persons. Others think that the children of believing parents will be saved. Still others think that God’s election will determine the matter: Infants chosen by God for salvation from eternity past will be saved, while those not been chosen will not be.
I have personally wrestled with this emotive question especially since my niece was born with such severe handicaps that she is not expected to live long. What am I to say to her parents when she dies? What do I respond when they ask me, the “family theologian,” where their daughter will spend eternity? All that is within me wants to be able to assure them that their daughter is in heaven. But I am not yet convinced Scripture gives me the right to do so. And I don’t want to be a purveyor of “cheap comfort,” giving hope based on my emotions rather than on Scripture.
I do not yet have an answer I am comfortable with. But two things I can say. (a) God is just and loving; we can leave such questions in his hands. (b) Whatever position we take will be decisively influenced by our theology of sin and salvation. This, after all, is the ultimate purpose of theology. We put together what God says on issues to come to a conclusion about truths we can use to comfort, rebuke, and exhort ourselves and others. All theology is finally pastoral theology.
(3) Our final remark about the teaching on sin in this chapter is this: After all the dust of debate settles, we need to have a deep appreciation of the reality of sin and death. Basic to the Christian worldview is a view of humanity as inherently bent away from God, with all the tragedy that comes from this sinful condition. Indeed, Christianity offers at this point a succinct and convincing explanation for the human misery and hatred we see in the world around us. Original sin may not make sense to many people; they may find it irrational or even unjust. But what better explanation for the extent and persistence of “crimes against humanity”? When will we come to realize that genocide in Africa or in Yugoslavia is not abnormal but, in reality, just another manifestation of the kind of hatred that has marked human beings throughout the centuries? Pascal put the point well:
Original sin is foolishness to men, but it is admitted to be such. You must not then reproach me for the want of reason in this doctrine, since I admit it to be without reason. But this foolishness is wiser than all the wisdom of men. For without this, what can we say that man is? His whole state depends on this imperceptible point. And how should it be perceived by his reason, since it is a thing against reason, and since reason, far from finding it out by her own ways, is averse to it when it is presented to her?18
Universalism. As we have noted repeatedly in this commentary, one of the strongest winds blowing in the present theological climate consists of the twin currents of tolerance and pluralism. As our world grows smaller, we become better acquainted with people of other religions. Human charity, fanned by the emphasis on tolerance in our multicultural environment, makes it more and more difficult to assert that Christ is the only way to salvation. In such a climate, it is not surprising that a belief in universalism is growing among Christians.
Universalism is the belief that all people will eventually be saved. It comes in a variety of forms, some of its adherents asserting that all religions can offer a way to God, others that God will bring to himself any people who have not come to know Christ during this life after their death. Romans 5:18–19 is a text often cited by adherents of universalism. For does not Paul here assert that just as “all people” were condemned as a result of Adam’s trespass, so “all people” will be made alive in Christ? If we want to pound the pulpit and denounce all people as sinners, don’t we need also to admit that all people will also find life in Christ?
The problem with this view, of course, is that flies in the face of plain biblical teaching that some people will not, in fact, be saved; that hell will never be unpopulated (see, e.g., Rom. 2:12; 2 Thess. 1:8–9; cf. also the whole argument of Rom. 1:18–3:20). Even in the present passage, Paul signals an important distinction just at this point between the work of Adam and the work of Christ. Throughout 5:12–21, Paul strains to make Adam and Christ as parallel as possible. All the more striking, then, is his breaking of that parallelism by adding the word “receive” in verse 17: It is, Paul says, only those “who receive God’s abundant provision of grace” who will “reign in life.” What must a person do to experience the death that Adam brought? Simply be born. What must a person do to experience the life that Christ brings? Receive God’s gift—that is, respond to the gospel through faith in Christ (see 3:21–26).
What, then, do we do with the apparent universalism in verses 18–19? Two alternatives are popular. (1) Paul may be claiming only that Christ makes life possible for every person. In his work on the cross, Christ sets people free from sin and lays the foundation for their new life. But to become real, a person must accept the offer of freedom from sin’s penalty. (2) Paul may be saying that as “all who are in Adam” die, so “all who are in Christ” will live (cf. 1 Cor. 15:22). All people are in Adam, and so all people die. But only those who “receive the gift” are in Christ, and so only they will live. Either explanation makes sense of the passage and fits Paul’s teaching elsewhere. But we think the second fits the context a bit better.
Universalism certainly has both a strong emotional and a theological attraction. Most of us would like to think that neighbors, friends, and work associates are going to heaven. A belief that all people will one day be reconciled to God seems to honor his lordship over all creation. But the doctrine simply does not have biblical support.
Many of you reading this commentary undoubtedly agree with these sentiments. But many of us tend to be “unconscious” universalists anyway, not really believing in our hearts that the nice people we know might be headed for hell. Thus, our zeal to share the gospel with them is sapped. Evangelistic zeal should be rooted in a love for people and a desire to glorify God by bringing people into relationship with him. But a deep sense of the fact that people without the Lord are, indeed, lost is also a potent motivation.
Original Meaning
The Conclusion: Grace Reigns! (5:20–21)
PAUL REVEALS THE degree to which he is concerned with the place of the Mosaic law in the plan of God by bringing it up again at the end of this paragraph. We can understand why he does so. He has sketched the religious history of the world in the broadest of strokes. Adam sealed the fate of all people; Christ, the second Adam, enables people to escape that fate and to come nearer to God than was ever possible before.
But Jews or any student of the Old Testament might object: How about all the things God did for Israel? How can all that revelatory history be left out of account? Paul, of course, believes firmly in the enduring value of the Old Testament. But he is equally convinced that its law does not fundamentally alter the situation described in these verses. In an “offensive” move typical of his argument in Romans, he claims that God intended the Mosaic law to have a negative role in salvation history: It was added “so that the trespass might increase.” The law did not bring relief from the Adamic condition of sin and death; instead, it made it worse.
But how did that happen? Paul may be thinking of the way a command can stimulate rebellion in people. There is something in all of us that rebels against an order, making what is prohibited more attractive than ever before. This idea of “forbidden fruits” is found in other ancient literature.11 But the singular “trespass” (paraptoma) is against this understanding (a word Paul uses in vv. 15, 16, and 18 to refer to Adam’s sin). What he probably means in verse 20, then, is that the law has made the situation of sin that Adam introduced even worse. As we commented on 4:15, Paul believes that the Mosaic law, by making people accountable to a specific and detailed series of commandments, brings greater judgment on those sins.12
But no matter how much sin may have “increased” or become worse, God’s grace has more than compensated. Under the law, sins were “taken into account,” that is, charged against us (v. 13), and so “sin reigned in death.” In the dominion of death introduced by Adam, sin holds sway over us. But “through righteousness,” that is, as a result of being justified, “grace … reigns.” Its benevolent rule leads each of us who has experienced the righteousness made available in Christ to “eternal life.” If we are confident that sin has brought death and untold devastation into the world, we can be even more confident that the grace of God that justifies us will also save us from his wrath in the judgment (see 5:9–10).
Bridging Contexts
ADAM IN PAUL’S DAY. The idea that something Adam did thousands of years ago can determine our eternal destiny is one that most modern people find difficult or even abhorrent. Yet, as we have seen, Paul appears to assume his readers are acquainted with the significance of Adam’s sin. But what would they have understood about it? If we can give a definite answer to this question, we will be in a much better position to decide what Paul is teaching about the relationship between Adam’s sin and the sin and death of all other people. Unfortunately, we cannot be sure what Paul or his readers may have assumed about these matters, because our sources do not agree.
The account of the Fall in Genesis 3 is not clear about the effects of Adam’s sin on his posterity. But the modern reader probably misses one overwhelmingly important fact about the account: The name “Adam” means “man” or “human being.” Indeed, translators of the Bible have a difficult time deciding what occurrences of the relevant Hebrew word (’adam) in Genesis 2–5 to translate “man” or “human being” and which to translate with the personal name “Adam.” The modern English reader can get a better sense of how the Hebrew must have sounded to readers in Paul day by substituting “man” for every place “Adam” appears in these chapters.
The point, then, is this: Woven into the very fabric of the Genesis narrative is the idea that Adam is more than just an isolated individual; in some, sense, he is “man.” When, therefore, the Lord warns the “man” that if he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17), a warning of universal death may also be intended.
What is somewhat surprising is that the Old Testament says almost nothing about Adam after these first chapters of Genesis.13 But Jewish writers indulged in much speculation about him. Some of this speculation was fanciful, eventually leading to esoteric Gnostic-type ideas. But some of the Jewish teaching focused on the question of the origin of sin and death and is directly relevant for our purposes.
We find some evidence of at least four different traditions.
(1) Eve brought sin into the world and caused all people to die. See Sirach 25:24: “From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die.”
(2) Satan brought death into the world. See Wisdom 2:24: “Through the devil’s envy death entered into the world.”
(3) Adam’s sin brought death to all people. See especially Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 23:4: “When Adam sinned a death was decreed against those who were to be born”; also from the same book, 48:2: “What did you [Adam] do to all who were born after you?”
(4) Every person dies because of his or her own sin. It is interesting that this point is explicit in the same book that also attributes universal death to Adam. Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch 54:19: “Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam”; see also 54:15: “Although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torments.”
In Romans 5, Paul makes no mention of the role of Eve (though see 2 Cor. 11:3; 1 Tim. 2:14) or Satan. But, as we have seen, he appears to attribute responsibility for universal death both to Adam (Rom. 5:18–19) and to every individual (5:12). The Jewish tradition, as Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch so clearly reveals, was ambivalent on just this point. Jews acknowledged the determinative role of Adam in bringing sin and death to all the world, but wanted also to insist that every person was responsible for his or her own death.
Paul reflects this same ambivalence.14 Whether he resolves it by suggesting a particular relationship between Adam’s sin and the sin of all other people is debated (see Original Meaning and Contemporary Significance sections). But at least we can say this much: Paul’s first readers probably assumed without argument that Adam had some kind of representative significance and that his sin therefore brought death to all people.
A corporate way of thinking. One of the reasons we sometimes have difficulty understanding what the Bible teaches is that many of us live in cultures with assumptions about “the way the world works” that are very different from those of the Bible writers. The teaching of Scripture is sometimes like an iceberg: What is taught at the surface of the text rests on huge assumptions that lie beneath that level. Paul’s teaching about the corporate significance of Adam and Christ is a classic instance of this culture clash. Those of us who have been raised in the Western world are heirs of an individualistic tradition. As one who has grown up in the United States, I have had drilled into me since birth the “rugged individualism” of my culture. My choices, I have been taught both explicitly and implicitly, determine who I will be, what I will do, and how successful I will be.
The Bible certainly does not deny individual responsibility. But it also has a much stronger sense of how people are related to one another in ways that mean the decision of one can affect many others. The classic example in the Old Testament is the sin of Achan (Josh. 7). Contrary to God’s command, Achan kept for himself some of the spoils from the battle of Jericho. When the Israelites then tried to take the city of Ai, they were defeated. Why? Because Achan had sinned (7:20)! Note Joshua 7:11: Not only did all Israel suffer because of his sin, but the Lord even said, “Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant” (italics added).
This notion of corporate solidarity is an important part of the way both Old and New Testament authors looked at the world. Even in the West, we are beginning to understand this better than we used to. Modern psychology has revealed ways in which our apparently “free” choices are, in fact, directed by our background and environment. But we still have difficulty with the idea that someone else’s decision or act might decisively affect us. Yet Paul’s argument here and in several other places in Romans assumes this truth. To appreciate and apply his argument, we must sympathetically identify with the corporate perspective his teaching assumes.
Contemporary Significance
DEATH. WE SOMETIMES do not realize the implications of decisions we make about certain texts or issues. I myself was blissfully unaware of the minefield I was straying into when I began to study the meaning of “death” in Romans 5:12. I knew, of course, that a decision on whether death here is physical or spiritual would have significance for this text, and I could sense some of the theological issues involved (e.g., does Adam’s sin bring to me only physical death or condemnation as well?). But I had no idea that my interpretation would have a bearing on some of the intense debates about the time and length of creation until my son pointed it out to me.
As a biologist and a committed Christian, my son has struggled to make sense out of both Scripture and science on this matter. As a result of his study of biology, he was strongly inclined to think that God created the world over a long period of time and that Genesis 1 allows for such an interpretation. But he had a problem reconciling this interpretation with the apparent teaching of Scripture that death entered the world only with Adam and Eve. For basic to the existence and development of plants and animals as we know them is death. The whole grand process of life cannot exist without death. How, then, can plants and animals have existed for thousands of years if death only entered the picture with Adam?
A brief, “seven-literal-day” creation might solve this problem. But does the connection between death and human sin rule out a longer creative process? Only if Adam introduced into the world for the first time physical death. But this is not clear. Old Testament scholars debate the meaning of “death” in Genesis 2; New Testament scholars debate its meaning in Romans 5:12 and elsewhere; and theologians try to decide if God’s “good creation” is compatible with the existence of physical death.
My own inclination, as I have suggested in the Original Meaning section above, is to interpret the death that Adam introduced as spiritual but as including also physical death as a penalty. In other words, I think it possible that physical death did indeed exist in the world before Adam, but that Adam’s sin turned a natural process into a fearful penalty for all his posterity. But I am not so much concerned here with deciding this issue, but with pointing out the sometimes unexpected consequences of the interpretive decisions we make.
Original sin. While Romans 5:12–21 does not have “original sin” as its focus, it still remains the most important text in the Bible on this vexing theological doctrine. In the following paragraphs, I want briefly to sketch some of the main explanations and then to draw out some consequences of our belief on this matter.
We generally use the expression original sin to refer to the biblical teaching about the relationship between the first or original sin of Adam and the sin and death of all other people. At the risk of a gross simplification, I think we can summarize the views that Christians hold on this matter into three general categories.
(1) Imitation. The early church father Pelagius is the most famous exponent of this view. He did not think there was any real connection between our sin and Adam’s. What Adam did was to set a bad example for us that the rest of us have all followed. This view is generally considered to be suborthodox, if not heretical. Why? (a) Pelagius’s view cannot explain the data of Romans 5. Paul clearly teaches some kind of real relationship between Adam’s sin and ours. (b) Nor can it explain the universality of sin. I have five children; they do not all imitate me in the same way. How could it be that every single person who has ever lived—the vast majority of whom have never even heard of Adam—would imitate his turn away from God? Clearly some other factor must be involved if we are to explain Paul’s insistence that “all sinned” (v. 12).
(2) Infection. Almost all Christians agree, then, that Adam’s sin introduced a stain into the human race itself, a stain on human nature that inevitably leads people to turn away from God rather than toward him. This fatal “bent” is the result of Adam’s sin, and all people descended from Adam possess it. Many passages in the Old and New Testaments teach this basic truth about humanity, but it is not explicitly taught in Romans 5:12–21.
Nevertheless, as we noted above, many interpreters think it is implicit in the logic of 5:18–19. Paul affirms, for instance, that “the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men” (v. 18). What we find here, many argue in light of biblical teaching elsewhere, is a compressed statement giving only the original cause and the ultimate end. Missing is the process that connects them. “One trespass” contaminated human nature; this “infection” has been passed down to all Adam’s posterity. Everyone therefore sins, and as a result everyone is condemned.
(3) Inclusion. Many other interpreters, however, are not convinced that we can assume so much in verse 18. The relationship between the sin of Adam and the sin of all people is closer. How can Paul say in the same passage that all die because all sin (v. 12) and all die because Adam sinned (v. 18)? Because Adam’s sin is, at the same time, the sin of everyone else as well. I think Paul does infer this idea of inclusion here in Romans 5:12–21. I lean this way for three basic reasons: (a) the repeated emphasis on the determinative significance of the “one” act of the “one” man Adam (vv. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19); (b) the corporate background of Paul’s thinking as sketched above; and (c) the more natural parallel it creates between Christ and Adam.
But I do not want to spend a lot of space here defending a particular view of original sin. I would rather draw three implications from our discussion, two pertaining to the inclusive idea I hold and one pertaining more generally to the issue of sin and death as a whole.
(1) The inclusive interpretation suffers from a credibility problem, well stated by theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg: “It is impossible for me to be held jointly responsible as though I were a joint cause for an act that another did many generations ago and in a situation radically different from mine.”15 C. W. Carter makes the same point in a different way: “Guilt stems from a culpable act traceable to the unethical conduct of a morally responsible person.”16 To put it bluntly: It is not fair for God to condemn me to eternal death for a sin Adam committed thousands of years ago.
We must not minimize this objection. But two things can be said. (a) Any orthodox view of sin creates a similar problem. To explain the universality of sin, we must assume at least that Adam’s sin has predisposed every person to sin. So, either way, people end up condemned because of something that Adam did. (b) While theologians who hold the inclusive view argue about just what our relationship to Adam might be, they all insist that it is a genuine relationship and that, in a way we cannot understand, we really did sin when Adam did. We do not die for a sin someone else commits; we die for a sin we committed.17
(2) The inclusive interpretation has potentially great importance for one of the most difficult of all theological and pastoral issues: the fate of infants and other people without the mental capacity ever to commit a sin or to respond to the gospel. While there is a lot of debate over the details, theologians who think that Adam has infected us all with sin but that we each ultimately die only when we sin personally usually teach that deceased infants go to heaven. After all, they have never committed a personal act of sin.
But if one holds the inclusive view, the situation is quite different. Since all people have sinned in Adam, all people, including children of any age, have already been condemned. Does this mean that any child who is not old enough to understand and respond to the gospel is automatically lost? No. Theologians who hold the inclusive view take three different positions. Some think that God, in an act of grace, accepts into heaven all those who never had a chance to commit a sin in their own persons. Others think that the children of believing parents will be saved. Still others think that God’s election will determine the matter: Infants chosen by God for salvation from eternity past will be saved, while those not been chosen will not be.
I have personally wrestled with this emotive question especially since my niece was born with such severe handicaps that she is not expected to live long. What am I to say to her parents when she dies? What do I respond when they ask me, the “family theologian,” where their daughter will spend eternity? All that is within me wants to be able to assure them that their daughter is in heaven. But I am not yet convinced Scripture gives me the right to do so. And I don’t want to be a purveyor of “cheap comfort,” giving hope based on my emotions rather than on Scripture.
I do not yet have an answer I am comfortable with. But two things I can say. (a) God is just and loving; we can leave such questions in his hands. (b) Whatever position we take will be decisively influenced by our theology of sin and salvation. This, after all, is the ultimate purpose of theology. We put together what God says on issues to come to a conclusion about truths we can use to comfort, rebuke, and exhort ourselves and others. All theology is finally pastoral theology.
(3) Our final remark about the teaching on sin in this chapter is this: After all the dust of debate settles, we need to have a deep appreciation of the reality of sin and death. Basic to the Christian worldview is a view of humanity as inherently bent away from God, with all the tragedy that comes from this sinful condition. Indeed, Christianity offers at this point a succinct and convincing explanation for the human misery and hatred we see in the world around us. Original sin may not make sense to many people; they may find it irrational or even unjust. But what better explanation for the extent and persistence of “crimes against humanity”? When will we come to realize that genocide in Africa or in Yugoslavia is not abnormal but, in reality, just another manifestation of the kind of hatred that has marked human beings throughout the centuries? Pascal put the point well:
Original sin is foolishness to men, but it is admitted to be such. You must not then reproach me for the want of reason in this doctrine, since I admit it to be without reason. But this foolishness is wiser than all the wisdom of men. For without this, what can we say that man is? His whole state depends on this imperceptible point. And how should it be perceived by his reason, since it is a thing against reason, and since reason, far from finding it out by her own ways, is averse to it when it is presented to her?18
Universalism. As we have noted repeatedly in this commentary, one of the strongest winds blowing in the present theological climate consists of the twin currents of tolerance and pluralism. As our world grows smaller, we become better acquainted with people of other religions. Human charity, fanned by the emphasis on tolerance in our multicultural environment, makes it more and more difficult to assert that Christ is the only way to salvation. In such a climate, it is not surprising that a belief in universalism is growing among Christians.
Universalism is the belief that all people will eventually be saved. It comes in a variety of forms, some of its adherents asserting that all religions can offer a way to God, others that God will bring to himself any people who have not come to know Christ during this life after their death. Romans 5:18–19 is a text often cited by adherents of universalism. For does not Paul here assert that just as “all people” were condemned as a result of Adam’s trespass, so “all people” will be made alive in Christ? If we want to pound the pulpit and denounce all people as sinners, don’t we need also to admit that all people will also find life in Christ?
The problem with this view, of course, is that flies in the face of plain biblical teaching that some people will not, in fact, be saved; that hell will never be unpopulated (see, e.g., Rom. 2:12; 2 Thess. 1:8–9; cf. also the whole argument of Rom. 1:18–3:20). Even in the present passage, Paul signals an important distinction just at this point between the work of Adam and the work of Christ. Throughout 5:12–21, Paul strains to make Adam and Christ as parallel as possible. All the more striking, then, is his breaking of that parallelism by adding the word “receive” in verse 17: It is, Paul says, only those “who receive God’s abundant provision of grace” who will “reign in life.” What must a person do to experience the death that Adam brought? Simply be born. What must a person do to experience the life that Christ brings? Receive God’s gift—that is, respond to the gospel through faith in Christ (see 3:21–26).
What, then, do we do with the apparent universalism in verses 18–19? Two alternatives are popular. (1) Paul may be claiming only that Christ makes life possible for every person. In his work on the cross, Christ sets people free from sin and lays the foundation for their new life. But to become real, a person must accept the offer of freedom from sin’s penalty. (2) Paul may be saying that as “all who are in Adam” die, so “all who are in Christ” will live (cf. 1 Cor. 15:22). All people are in Adam, and so all people die. But only those who “receive the gift” are in Christ, and so only they will live. Either explanation makes sense of the passage and fits Paul’s teaching elsewhere. But we think the second fits the context a bit better.
Universalism certainly has both a strong emotional and a theological attraction. Most of us would like to think that neighbors, friends, and work associates are going to heaven. A belief that all people will one day be reconciled to God seems to honor his lordship over all creation. But the doctrine simply does not have biblical support.
Many of you reading this commentary undoubtedly agree with these sentiments. But many of us tend to be “unconscious” universalists anyway, not really believing in our hearts that the nice people we know might be headed for hell. Thus, our zeal to share the gospel with them is sapped. Evangelistic zeal should be rooted in a love for people and a desire to glorify God by bringing people into relationship with him. But a deep sense of the fact that people without the Lord are, indeed, lost is also a potent motivation.