Romans 5:14

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.

The apostle here introduces an extended comparison between the salvation which we owe to Christ, and the calamity of Adam's transgression with its results. Very emphatically he opens this section: Wherefore, or, because. From the facts which he has adduced regarding the method of justification, it follows that as by one man all became sinners, so by one all are constituted righteous. By one man, through Adam, who followed Eve in eating the forbidden fruit, sin came into the world. Sin is every transgression of the divine Law, when the works, thoughts, and desires of men miss their object, do not conform to the will of God. By the disobedience of Adam sin came into the world, it made its appearance in the world, it began to exist. And through sin death came. The disobedience of Adam bore bitter fruits: first, he was the cause of sin, he brought it to mankind, he was instrumental in having it invade the race; and therefore, by means of sin, men became subject to death. Adam sinned, and the consequence, the punishment of his sin, was death; the death of Adam was the beginning of human mortality. On the day that Adam ate of the forbidden fruit began the performance of the threatened disaster, the execution of the sentence of death; from that hour the germ of death was in his nature, his body was a mortal body, and it was only a question of time when it would return to dust. And thus, in this manner, death passed through to all men, reached all, because all sinned. Death is universal because sin is universal; all men, even by their conception and birth, are subject to death; their entire life is a course which has death as its object. So absolutely is man subject to death, from the very first moment of conception, that St. Paul makes the statement only of death that it has passed through to all men. And this is true because all sinned, sinned in Adam, sinned through or by that one man. Not as though they all had actually, in the person of their progenitor, performed that first transgression of the command of God, but that through his disobedience all men are regarded and treated as sinners by God. On account of the disobedience of Adam, God looks upon them all as sinners; God has imputed to all men the sin of Adam. It is a principle which runs through all the great dispensations of Providence: posterity, natural and federal, bears the blame(Canaan, Gehazi, Moabites and Amalekites, etc.). As a proof for the statement just made, Paul introduces a historical fact. He refers to the time before the Law, before the Law was formally given, written, and codified. At that time sin was nevertheless in the world, people did transgress the holy will of God. But sin is not charged to the transgressor's account in the absence of a definite law, it is not entered on the debit side by God as a transgression of a divine commandment. See chap. 4:15. And yet death ruled in the human race, had absolute kingly authority from Adam to Moses, during the entire interval, even over those that had not sinned after the similitude of the transgression of Adam. There was unrestrained sovereignty and tyranny of death with regard to all men, not only those that had never broken any positive, codified law, but also those that had never in their own persons violated any individual command, by which their sentence of death could be accounted for. Paul thus plainly teaches that the sinners of the first period of the world, before Moses, became subject to death on account of the one transgression of Adam. Death came upon them before they had committed positive sins of their own; but as the punishment of death implies a violation of law, it follows that God regarded and treated them as sinners on the ground of Adam's disobedience. This is true at all times. The one transgression of Adam was the cause that brought about the death of all men. It is true indeed that every sin merits death, even if it has not become a conscious transgression of the divine Law, even if it exists only in the innermost desire of the heart which is contrary to the holiness of God. But it is true also that the disobedience of Adam, which drew down upon him the curse of death, is so thoroughly imputed to all men that they are actually born into death. But this same death God now uses to punish individual sins and sinfulness. Of Adam the apostle finally says: Who is the impression, the figure, the type of Him that was to come. The first Adam is a prophetical type, 1 Corinthians 10:6, of the Adam that was to come, of Christ. The resemblance between the two is not casual, but predetermined. The sin of the first Adam was the ground of our condemnation; the righteousness of the second Adam is the ground of our justification.