Romans 5:12

At Romans 5:12 the apostle begins his teaching about sin. The difference is clear. If it is a question of sins, you, my reader, have yours, and I have mine. If it is a question of our nature, of our flesh, we are only one, one single nature, one single mass. So the apostle turns to the heads or sources of our nature, whether for good or for evil: Adam and Christ.

Many souls are greatly perplexed. Though they believe their sins are forgiven, they still find the root, sin, in the flesh. Much of this confusion comes from failing to notice carefully the distinction between sins and sin, as in this letter. As we have seen, verse 11 closes the question of sins. Verse 12 takes up sin.

The outcome of "sin" must be sins, but it is "sin" that the Apostle especially speaks of in this portion of the Letter. In chapters 1 to 5:11 the word sin occurs only twice; in this division, 5:12 to 8, it occurs thirty-four times. "Sin" is the evil principle of "lawlessness", or the creature doing his own will... Sins can be forgiven. But "sin", the evil principle that leads to sins, can only be met by death — a death that ends the life governed by sin.

God made Adam free from evil, without the knowledge of sin. This was the starting point of man's existence on earth — a life whose moral character was nothing like our life now. But Adam preferred disobedience to obedience. By exercising his will, his nature became evil. With that, the character of the source of human life changed. Innocence disappeared from the earth, and sin entered the world. This is where our sinful nature comes from. We received it through our parents, and we were born with it.

So the most solemn change ever to affect the world came in long before the Jewish people existed, and therefore before God gave their boasted law... Adam was before them both and affects all mankind, the Jews not excepted... It was not outside man, but on the contrary "by one man"; yet its effect, death, spread through the world.

Here (verse 12) the sinner's case rests not on the moral evidence of personal evil, but on the decisive testimony of death. Death is God's widespread and undeniable witness that sin, which produced it, is present throughout the world... Death is never separable from sin. So sharing in a sinful nature produces death as its necessary effect.

We are not responsible for the sin of Adam. God does not hold us responsible for a sinful nature either. We are responsible for how that nature works out, that is, for our own sins... Death comes upon us because of our sins, as this verse states.

No one doubts that infants and those without understanding die, and this through Adam's sin. But the Spirit does not exclude the consequence where personal guilt can apply. The fall left the race in ruin, and that ruin goes together with the evil workings of the fallen nature now in all men. Adam's sin is the cause, but it is not the sole account and whole case of man's bitter lot.

Death took its throne, and sin its rule over the world, by Adam's one act. His disobedience was the key that opened the door for them to enter the world. Sin still reigns, its kingdom is as wide as the world, and its end is death. But God has an answer even to this. He does not reform the old ruler or alter the kingdom. God brings in something altogether new — something so noble that the believer's heart rejoices.