What does it mean that all have sinned?

(V. 12). The passage opens by tracing all the sorrows that have come into this world to one man — Adam. Through Adam's act of disobedience sin came into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all Adam's race. The outcome of "sin" must be sins, but it is of "sin" that the Apostle more especially speaks in this portion of the Epistle. In chapters 1, to 5:11, the word sin occurs but 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. This evil principle entered the world. through Adam's one act of disobedience. Death followed as the penalty of sin. Sins can be forgiven; but "sin", the evil principle which leads to sins, can only be met by death that brings to an end the life governed by sin. Therefore the penalty of sin is death. Thus the death penalty passed upon all Adam's race. That all have come under the evil principle of sin is proved by the fact that all have sinned. The bad fruit shows the character of the tree. So the Apostle says, "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned".

Many souls are greatly perplexed who find, though they believe their sins are forgiven, yet they find the root, sin, in the flesh. Much of this confusion arises from want of carefully noticing the distinction between sins and sin, as in this epistle. As we have seen, verse 11 closes the question of sins. Verse 12 takes up sin. “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Thus there are two proofs of the origin of evil: sin entered into the world by one man. Of the whole race of mankind, all sin, and all die. What absolute consistency in the word of God, and with facts! And this has been found to be the case, whether man was placed under law, or without law. After sin had come in, and man fell, the law was not given for two thousand five hundred years. “For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed [or, put to account] when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.” (Vers. 13, 14) That is, they had not transgressed a given law; yet there was death, the proof that sin was there. Sin and death then came into the world by its head, Adam. Death, then, is not merely the penalty of a broken law; but sin having once come in, death is its result; or, as expressed in the word, “The wages of sin is death.” Now, in contrast with what came in by the creature’s sin, the first head — sin and death — God is pleased to reveal to us what has come in for a new race by the gift of His own Son — righteousness and life. Only the infinite gift must abound over the finite, dreadful as has been the result of that creature’s sin. God could not, in His free favour to us, give a gift that would come short of our need. Hence, the care of the Holy Ghost to show us how that gift of free favour has abounded over the sin; the root of evil, and death, that came in by Adam. “But not as the offence, so also is the free gift [the act of favour]. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one Man — Jesus Christ — has abounded to many.” (Ver. 15.) No doubt the effect of the offence of Adam’s sin on the many, even all his posterity, is great and terrible; and we all belonged to that “many.” Death passed upon all men. Yet if we have passed from death to life in the risen Head of the new creation, we have now to see how the grace of God, and the gift, by grace, by One — Jesus Christ — has abounded to the many in Him.

The case of the sinner is here stated (verse 12), not on the moral evidence of personal evil, but on the decisive testimony of death. Death is God's pervading and irrefragable witness of the presence, in and throughout the world, of that which produced it, even sin. "Sin entered into the world, and death by sin." But the means of this entrance of sin are immediately stated. It was "by one man." Adam died by the direct sentence of God pronounced upon his transgression. Mankind die because born of one who was himself mortal as thus judged. But death is not derived to the posterity of Adam, merely as an effect of his mortal condition, but as a consequence of his sinful nature. Sin, having taken hold on Adam, vitiated utterly the nature in which it lodged. And so it is sail that death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.* Death is never separable from sin. The participation, therefore, of a sinful nature, produces death as its necessary effect. Sin, having found entrance and lodgment in the nature of Adam, did not vacate the world at the death of the first transgressor. It remained in the nature which reproduced itself in Adam's seed. It was in the world (verse 13), antecedently to the Law.

"Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death and thus death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." By one man, the first Adam, sin entered into the world (not sins, but sin). And death followed, which is physical death. "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," and this death has passed upon the race because of sin. The margin of the authorized version contains a statement which is responsible for a very unscriptural teaching. The margin states "in whom all have sinned"; upon this it has been taught that the guilt of Adam has been imputed to all. This is not correct. We are not responsible for the sin of Adam nor are we held responsible by God for a sinful nature; we are responsible for the outworking of that nature, that is for our own sins. The wicked dead, those whose sins were not taken away, because they believed not, will not be judged for having had a sinful nature, but solely according to their works (Revelation 20:12). Death comes upon us on account of our sins, as it is stated in this verse "death passed upon all men for that all have sinned.

Thus the change most solemnly affecting the world came in long before the Jew existed or consequently before their boasted law was given. The Jew must look somewhere more largely, and accurately too, into the scriptures. He must not flatter his national vanity or religious pride with the delusion that all hinges either on Israel or on their law. Adam was before them both and affects all mankind (the Jews not excepted). True, the momentous history that shows us how sin and death entered is humbling indeed; but anything will the heart turn into a vaunt. At any rate, that incalculably grave event was outside the Jew in itself, and in consequences went far beyond them. It was not outside man, but contrariwise "by one man;" yet its effect, death, permeated the world.

But the apostle takes care to add to this one man's sin those of all others — "and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned." Thus the last clause is expressly to guard against the exclusion of the sins of men generally. We must therefore beware of enfeebling either side of the case. In the very scripture which opens the discussion of the universal bearing of Adam's sin on the human race (for it is no question here of Israel in particular) the connection of men's own sins with their death is carefully added. No one doubts that infants and idiots die, and this through Adam's sin; but the Spirit does not exclude the consequence where personal guilt can apply. The position of ruin to which the fall consigned the race is not severed from the evil workings of the nature now fallen in all men. Adam's sin is the cause but not the sole account and whole case of the bitter lot of man.

Death entered by sin [Rom. 5:12]; sin is taken abstractedly, the thing, sin, even personified, which is the highest figurative form of abstraction. The ἐφ᾽ ῳ ᾧ is a common Graecism for a condition, meaning for the existence of something, but which is not the cause, and for the principle on which it exists, though not the cause. Our breathing, or having air, is such a condition. So we are called ἐν ἁγιασμῳ. It is the condition of our existence, not precedent but condition, as that without which the calling would not be what it is. Sin by Adam introduced death, but the sin of each is the state of things in which death works, as we say in French, moyennant. Πάντες ἥμαρτον is not merely sin in the nature; there is culpability of which the conscience can take notice.

As a matter of doctrine, I was led distinctly to notice this in the Epistle to the Romans. There first it is, "all have sinned"; then, "by one man sin entered." Thus it is our condition: what we have done is proof and fruit of it. Adam cannot be with God at all. Such is his condition; and then God asks, What have you done?

When man fell, he abandoned God as Master; he gained by sin another master, even Satan, the great rebel against the true God. The race followed the fallen parents. "Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned" (Rom. 5:12). Such is the moral history of man, recorded in Genesis, there summarised, here reasoned on by the apostle. So vain, so blind, is every man, that he is apt to go no higher than himself in accounting for sin. But it is not so: neither Jew nor Gentile originated sin. It began with the head of the race, long before those distinctions. It was an innocent man too, though Adam was not deceived, but the woman being quite deceived was involved in transgression (1 Tim. 2:14). Sin became the state of all, while each added his own sins also. Satan thus became master in fact of the race; and from the first the guilty pair hid away from God's presence, before "He drove out the man."

“By one man sin entered into the world.” Innocence existed in one man — Adam. God made Adam free from evil; without the knowledge of sin. This was the starting point of man's existence upon earth — a life in its moral characteristics totally distinct from our present life. But Adam preferring disobedience to obedience, and exercising his will, his nature became evil, and thereupon the character of the fountain of human life became changed. Innocence disappeared from the earth, and sin entered the world. This is the origin of our sinful nature which we received through our parents, and with which we were born. We trace the river from this present day to the past generation — we follow it back further and further till we reach its source — and we find that every age has produced a nature which is sinful.

"Sin" is that which at the fall of Adam gained an entrance into the world. Just as the poison of a snake, once injected into la man's body, will run through his whole system doing its deadly work, so sin - the virus of that old serpent the devil - has permeated man's moral being to his ruin. The result of this is "all have sinned." "Sins," of thought, word, or act, whether of omission or commission, are chargeable to each of us.