Romans 5:12-21

The treatment of the righteousness of God, as a Divine gift to sinners in Jesus Christ, is now complete, and the Apostle might have passed on to his treatment of the new life (chaps. 6 8). But he introduces at this point a digression in which a comparison which in most points is rather a contrast is made between Adam and Christ. Up to this point he has spoken of Christ alone, and the truth of what he has said rests upon its own evidence; it is not affected in the least by any difficulty we may have in adapting what he says of Adam to our knowledge or ignorance of human origins. The general truth he teaches here is that there is a real unity of the human race, on the one hand in sin and death, on the other in righteousness and life; in the former aspect the race is summed up in Adam; in the latter, in Christ. It is a distinction, apparently, between the two, that the unity in Adam is natural, having a physical basis in the organic connection of all men through all generations; whereas the unity in Christ is spiritual, being dependent upon faith. Yet this distinction is not specially in view in the passage, which rather treats Adam and Christ in an objective way, the transition (morally) from Adam's doom to that of man being only mediated by the words πάντες ἥμαρτον in Romans 5:12, and the connection between Christ and the new humanity by οἱ τὴν περισσείαν τῆς χάριτος λαμβάνοντες in vet. 17.