Romans 5:14

reigned See below, on Romans 5:21. The idea is of unquestioned dominion.

after the similitude, &c. i.e. by conscious transgression of express precepts. The phrase thus exactly meets the case of infant-death, and also includes all other cases, supposed possible, in which no distinct violation of then-known law was traceable.

the figure Lit. a figure. The word "type," (derived from the Gr. word used here,) expresses the meaning exactly. Adam so sinned that his sons, even irrespective of personal sins, dieda penal death. Christ, the last Adam, so lived and suffered that his "brethren," irrespective of personal merit, live, with the life of the justified.

him that was to come Christ; mysteriously foretold from the first as "to come." A sentence is quoted from the Rabbis: "The last Adam is Messiah." Observe that the doctrine of the imputed guilt of the First Sin is distinctly found in Judaic literature. As Meyer says on Romans 5:12, (Germ. ed., p. 241,) it probably was a part of the Apostle's belief before his conversion, but one "which he found, in his Christian enlightenment, no reason to reject;" on the contrary, he incorporated it as an integral part of his Gospel-teaching. (And this he did, let us add, as the commissionedmessenger of the Truth.)