Romans 5:12

“ Wherefore, even 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; ”

The logical connection between this piece and the preceding is expressed by διὰ τοῦτο, wherefore. Some, like Meyer, make this expression refer solely to the last words of Romans 5:11: we have received the reconciliation. But we have seen that this incidental proposition, which the context itself did not require, was added there with the view of recapitulating the whole previous section, before and with the view of passing to the following passage. The very term καταλλαγή, reconciliation, which contains an allusion to the name ὀργή, wrath, is chosen so as to remind us not only of the second section (that of justification), but also of the first (that of condemnation); so that in reality to say that the wherefore refers to the last proposition of Romans 5:11 is to admit, with Tholuck, Rückert, Holsten, etc., that it bears on all the preceding context from Romans 1:17: “Since, condemned as we all were, we have found reconciliation in Christ, there is therefore between our relation to Him and our relation to the head of natural humanity the following resemblance.” Hofmann and Schott make the wherefore refer to the piece Romans 5:1-11 only: “On account of this assurance of final salvation which we possess in Christ”...According to Hofmann, the verb which is wanting should contain an exhortation to realize holiness (the contents of Romans 8:1 et seq.), an exhortation judged to correspond with that of the alleged ἐχωμεν, let us have, of Romans 5:1. This is all pure romance. Schott derives the verb more naturally from the preceding: “Wherefore we shall be saved by Him alone (Romans 5:9-10), as we perished by Adam”...(But see below).

The ὥσπερ, even as, has been construed grammatically in a multitude of ways.

1. It has been thought that the principal proposition (the verb of the wherefore) had been forgotten by the apostle, distracted as he was by the host of thoughts which presented themselves successively to his mind (see Rückert and Hofmann for example). I hope our readers are convinced that such an explanation, or rather absence of explanation, is impossible. We have had sufficient proof hitherto that the apostle did not compose without having fully taken account of what he meant to say.

2. The main correlative proposition is supposed to be understood; requiring to be inferred from what precedes. De Wette adduces in this sense Matthew 25:14, where we find an even as, to which there is no corresponding principal clause, and which depends simply on the preceding sentence. Lange almost in the same way derives the understood verb from Romans 5:11: “Wherefore we have reconciliation by Christ, as by one sin and death came upon all;” Umbreit and Schott, from Romans 5:10: “We shall be saved by Christ, as we perished in Adam;” van Hengel simply understands the verb: “Wherefore it is the same in Christ as it was in Adam.” Dietzsch fills up the ellipsis by taking the verb from what follows: “ Wherefore life came by a man, in the same way as by a man sin and death came.” De Wette's explanation breaks down under the wherefore, which distinguishes our passage from the one quoted. In the other views the question arises, How in a didactic piece so severely composed, the apostle, instead of making such an ellipsis and holding the mind of the reader in suspense to the end as he does without satisfying him after all, did not simply write like this: διὰ τοῦτο ἐγένετο ἐν Χριστῷ ὥσπερ....“Wherefore it is the same in Christ as in Adam”...

3. The principal verb on which ὥσπερ depends is sought in the words which follow; Erasmus and Beza, in the clause: “ and death by sin,” giving to καί the meaning of also. Taken rigorously, the construction would be admissible, though it would have been more correct to write οὕτως καί, or to put the καί after the clause (thus also, or by sin also); but this meaning is absolutely excluded by the fact that Paul does not think of comparing the entrance of sin with that of death. It is evident that when he wrote the as, he had in view as the second term of the comparison the entrance of justification and life by Christ. A similar reason is also opposed to the explanation of those who, like Wolf, find the principal point in the more remote words: “and so death passed upon all.” Paul has as little thought of comparing the mode in which death entered with that of its diffusion. Besides, this would have required οὕτως καί, and not καὶ οὕτως.

4. A more generally admitted explanation is that of Calvin (Thol., Philip., Mey., Holst.), who finds the principal point indicated, at least so far as the sense goes, at the close of Romans 5:14, in the words: “who is the type of Him that was to come.” The meaning of these words is to this effect: “ Even as,...so by a new Adam, of whom he was the type, justification came on mankind.” We must hold on this view that the explanation interposed in Romans 5:13-14 led Paul away from finishing the construction begun in Romans 5:12. But it would be a strange style to give the principal proposition, which the reader was expecting after the as of Romans 5:12, in the form of this incidental proposition: who is the type of Him that was to come. Then in what immediately follows, Romans 5:15, Paul does not expound this idea of the equality between Adam and Christ, which had been announced by the as, and which in its substance the last proposition of Romans 5:14 was meant to recall. He explains, on the contrary, the difference between the two terms of comparison, so that he only raises (end of Romans 5:14) the idea of equality to abandon it at the same instant (Romans 5:15-17); what an unnatural proceeding! 5. We pass rapidly over the hypotheses of Mehring and Winer, who seek the chief clause, the former in the first proposition of Romans 5:15 by taking it interrogatively, the latter in the second proposition of the same verse; two equally impossible attempts, since Romans 5:15 a cannot be an interrogation (see below), and since Romans 5:15 b can only correspond to the subordinate proposition which precedes in the same verse: “ for if ” etc.

There is only one explanation admissible, that of Grotius, Bengel, Flatt, best defended by Hodge, who finds the principal clause in Romans 5:18. It is there, indeed, that we have the close of the comparison begun in Romans 5:12 in the form of equality. Vv.13 and 14 have been an explanation required by the last words of Romans 5:12, one of those digressions which, in our modern fashion, we put in a note. Romans 5:15-17 have been brought in by the expression: “type of Him that was to come” (end of Romans 5:14), which demanded an immediate modification or restriction, so that it is not till Romans 5:18 that the apostle is free to finish the comparison he has begun. The proof that in Romans 5:18 Paul at length resumes the idea of Romans 5:12, is found in these two characteristic features: (a) the ἅρα οὖν, so therefore, which indicates the resuming of a previously expressed idea; (b) the reappearance of the contrast between one and all (εἶς and πάντες), which was that of Romans 5:12, but which had been dropped in the interval for the contrast between one and many (εἶς and οἱ πολλοί, Romans 5:15-17). As to the idea, it is evident that Romans 5:18 logically completes Romans 5:12. The words: as by one fall condemnation came upon all men, reproduce the idea, even as, etc., of Romans 5:12; and the following: so also by one righteousness justification of life came upon all, are manifestly the long delayed second term of the comparison. As to the end of Romans 5:14, in which so many commentators have found the principal idea, it was simply a way of announcing to the reader this second part of the comparison, which was to be still further prefaced (Romans 5:15-17) before being enunciated (Romans 5:18).

Vv. 12 describes the entrance of death into the world. The emphasis is on the words: by one man. Adam is here characterized not merely as the first of sinners, but as the one who laid human life open to the power of sin. If Paul does not speak of Eve, as in 2 Corinthians 11:3, et al., it is because the fall of the race was not necessarily bound up with that of the woman. Adam alone was the true representative of mankind still included in him at that time.

The term sin should be taken here in its greatest generality. The apostle is not speaking specially of sin either as a tendency or an act, either as an individual act or as a collective fact; but of the principle of revolt whereby the human will rises against the divine in all its different forms and manifestations. Holsten sees in sin an objective power controlling human existence even in Adam. But from the Bible standpoint sin exists only in the will. It has no place in objective existence and outside the will of the creature. Julius Müller reaches a result almost the same by starting from an opposite point of view; according to him, the will of individual men has been corrupted by a free transgression previously to their earthly existence. On both of these views the apostle should have said: sin appeared with or in the first man; but not: sin entered by him. The word entered indicates the introduction of a principle till then external to the world, and the word by throws back the responsibility of the event on him who, as it were, pierced the dike through which the irruption took place; comp. the term disobedience, Romans 5:19.

The word κόσμος, the world, evidently denotes here, as in John 3:16, et al., only the domain of human existence. Paul certainly holds, with Scripture, the previous existence of evil in a superhuman sphere.

Assuredly no subsequent transgression is comparable to this. It created a state of things here below which subsequent sins only served to confirm. If the question is asked, how a being created good could perpetrate such an act, we answer that a decision like this does not necessarily suppose the existence of evil in its author. There is in moral life not only a conflict between good and evil, but also between good and good, lower good and higher good. The act of eating the fruit of the tree on which the prohibition rested, was not at all illegitimate in itself. It became guilty only through the prohibition. Man therefore found himself placed and such was the necessary condition of the moral development through which he had to pass between the inclination to eat, an inclination innocent in itself, but intended to be sacrificed, and the positively good divine order. At the instigation of an already existing power of revolt, man drew from the depths of his liberty a decision whereby he adhered to the inclination rather than to the divine will, and thus created in his whole race, still identified with his person, the permanent proclivity to prefer inclination to obligation. As all the race would have perished with him if he had perished, it was all seized in him with the spirit of revolt to which in that hour he had adhered. We are nowhere told, however, that his descendants are individually responsible for this diseased tendency. It is in proportion as each individual voluntarily resigns himself to it that he becomes personally responsible for it.

But was it compatible with divine perfection to let this succession of generations, stained with an original vice, come into the world? God certainly might have annihilated the perverted race in its head, and replaced it by a new one; but this would have been to confess Himself vanquished by the adversary. He might, on the contrary, accept it such as sin had made it, and leave it to develop in the natural way, holding it in His power to recover it; and this would be to gain a victory on the field of battle where He seemed to have been conquered. Conscience says to which of these two courses God must give the preference, and Scripture teaches us which He has in in reality preferred.

But the point which Paul has in view in this declaration is not the origin of sin, but that of death. And hence he passes immediately, understanding the same verb as before, to the second fact: and death by sin. It would have been wholly different had he meant to begin here to treat the subject of sanctification; he would in that case have at least stopped for a moment at this grave fact of the introduction of sin. If sin is not mentioned by him except by way of transition to death, this is because he is still on the subject of justification, the corresponding fact to which is condemnation, that is to say, death. Death is the monument of a divine condemnation, which has fallen on mankind.

The term death is used by Scripture in three senses 1. Physical death, or the separation of soul and body; in consequence of this separation from its life principle, the body is given over to dissolution. 2. Spiritual death, or the separation of the soul from God; in consequence of this separation from its principle of life, the soul becomes corrupt in its lusts (Ephesians 4:22). 3. Eternal death, or the second death; this is in the human being the consummation of his separation from God by the separation of the soul from the spirit, the soul's faculty for the divine. The soul and body then deprived of this superior principle, the native element of the soul, become the prey of the worm which dieth not (Mark 9:43-48). Of these three meanings, the last does not suit this passage; for the second death does not begin till the judgment. The second is equally inapplicable, because the idea of death would then be compounded with that of sin, which is distinguished from it in this very passage. There remains, therefore, only the first meaning. It is confirmed, besides, by the obvious allusion to the narrative of Genesis (Romans 2:17, Romans 3:19), as well as by the explanation contained in the following verses (13 and 14), where the word death is evidently taken in its strict sense. We should add, however, that death, even when taken simply as physical death, always implies an abnormal state in relation to God, a state which, if it continues and develops, cannot fail to draw after it fatal consequences to man.

What, according to the apostle's view, is the relation between sin and death contained in the preposition διά, by, which he uses a second time? It might be said that death is simply the natural consequence of sin, since, God being the source of moral and physical life, once the bond is broken between Him and man, man must die. But in Romans 5:16 the apostle makes death the consequence of sin through a positive sentence, which proves that if we have to do here with a natural consequence, it is one which is also willed. It is true, two objections may be urged against this opinion, which makes death a consequence of sin. The first is what Paul himself says, 1 Corinthians 15:42, that our earthly body is sown in corruption, weakness, and dishonor, and that because it is psychical. A little further on, 1 Corinthians 15:47, alluding to Genesis 3:19, he adds that the first man is of the earth, earthy, which seems to make the dissolution of his body a natural consequence of his nature. The second objection is this: Long before the creation of man, the existence of death is proved in the domain of animal life. Now the body of man belongs to the great sum total of animal organization, of which he is the crown; and therefore the law of death must already have extended to man, independently of sin. Paul's words in the Epistle to the Corinthians, as well as those of Genesis, the sense of which he reproduces, prove beyond doubt the natural possibility of death, but not its necessity. If man had remained united to God, his body, naturally subject to dissolution, might have been gloriously transformed, without passing through death and dissolution. The notion of the tree of life, as usually explained, means nothing else. This privilege of an immediate transformation will belong to the believers who shall be alive at the time of our Lord's return (1 Corinthians 15:51-52); and it was probably this kind of transformation that was on the point of taking effect in the person of the Lord Himself at the time of His transfiguration. This privilege, intended for holy men, was withdrawn from guilty man; such was the sentence which gave him over to dissolution. It is stated in the words: “Thou art dust (that is to say, thou canst die), and to dust shalt thou return (that is to say, thou shalt in fact die).” The reign of death over the animals likewise proves only this: that it was in the natural condition of man to terminate in dissolution. Remaining on the level of animalism by the preference given by him to inclination over moral obligation, man continued subject to this law. But had he risen by an act of moral liberty above the animal, he would not have had to share its lot (see also on Romans 8:19-22).

From the origin of sin, and of death by sin, the apostle passes to a third idea: the diffusion of death. Once entered among mankind, death took hold of all the beings composing the race. The two prepositions εἰς (into) and διά (through) in the two verbs εἰσῆλθεν and διῆλθεν, indicate exactly this connection between entrance and propagation. As poison once swallowed penetrates to all parts of the body, so it happened in Adam, in whom the whole race was virtually contained; in him the tendency to dissolution victoriously asserted itself over all the individuals that were to come, so that every one of them was born dying. The word οὕτως, so, may be explained in three ways: either it repeats, as Dietzsch, Hofm. think, the notion: by one man: “death, after having entered by one, spread in the same manner (by this one).” Or, as is held by Meyer and Philippi, this so alludes to the relation of cause and effect, which has just been pointed out between sin and death: “and so, by reason of this connection between sin and death, death passed on all,” which assumes as a premiss the understood idea that sin also extended to all. Or, finally, is it not more natural to explain the word so by the connection between the two verbs? “And once entered, it gained by its very entrance the power of passing on all.” The threshold crossed, the enemy could strike immediately all the inmates of the house. What mode would have presented the opposite of that characterized by the so, if death had reached each man individually by a door which he himself had opened? The all is expressly emphasized in contrast to one, because in this contrast between one and all there is concentrated the idea of the whole passage. The Greco-Latin MSS. here omit ὁ θάνατος, death. In this case we must either take the verb διῆλθεν in an impersonal sense: “and so it (this connection between sin and death) happened to all;” or, what would be preferable, take the whole following proposition as the subject: “and so there passed on all, that in consequence of which, or in virtue of which, all have sinned.” Both of these constructions are obviously forced. It is probable that the omission of ὁ θάνατος has arisen, as van Hengel well suggests, from the fact that the whole of the verse was connected with sin; the words: and death by sin, being consequently regarded merely as incidental or parenthetical, and so there was given as a subject to διῆλθε, ἡ ἁμαρτία, sin, of the first proposition.

But why does Paul add the last words: ἐφ᾿ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον, which we have translated by: for that all have sinned? They seem to contradict the idea expressed in the first part of the verse, and to ascribe the death of each man not to the sin of Adam, but to his own. The numerous explanations which have been given of these words may, it seems to us, be reduced to three principal heads; they amount in fact to one or other of these three ideas 1. The death of individual men results wholly from their own sins. 2. The death of individual men results partly from Adam's sin and partly from their own sins. 3. The death of all individual men arises solely from Adam's sin.

Let us begin with the study of the form ἐφ᾿ ᾧ. In the New Testament it is found in the local sense (Luke 5:25); in the moral sense, it is applied either to the object: ἐφ᾿ ᾧ πάρει, “ with what object art thou here?” or to the determining cause of the action or feeling; so without doubt 2 Corinthians 5:4: ἐφ᾿ ᾧ οὐ θέλομεν ἐκδύσασθαι, for that we would not be unclothed, but clothed upon;” probably also Philippians 3:12: ἐφ᾿ ᾦ καὶ κατελήφθην, “I seek to apprehend, because that also I have been apprehended;” perhaps also Philippians 4:10: ἐφ᾿ ᾧ καὶ ἐφρονεῖτε, “(I say so), because that ye also thought;” but this ἐφ᾿ ᾧ may also be understood as a pronoun connected with what precedes: “as regards what concerns me, with which ye were also occupied.” It is easy to see, in fact, that the phrase may have two different meanings, according as we take it as pronominal or conjunctive. In the former case, it bears on what precedes: on account of, or in view of which, that is to say, of the idea just expressed (propterea). In the second, it bears on what follows: because, or in view of the fact that, that is to say, of the idea just about to be enunciated (propterea quod). The difference is analogous to that of διό and διότι. We shall have need, as will appear, of all these meanings in the study of the following phrase.

The first explanation is that which makes the apostle explain the death of all by the individual sin of all. This is the meaning adopted by Calvin, Melanchthon, and several others, particularly by Reuss. The latter expresses himself thus: “No question here of the imputation of Adam's sin or hereditary sin; these are scholastic theses. All have been visited with the same punishment as Adam, therefore they must all have merited it like him.” The idea would thus be that all men die in consequence of their individual sins. There are three reasons which render this explanation impossible 1. The καὶ οὕτως, and so, evidently signifies that each individual dies in consequence of the entrance of sin, and therefore of death, into this world by one Man 1:2. This idea would be in contradiction to the very aim of the whole passage, which is to make the death of all rest on Adam, even as the righteousness of all rests on Christ. 3. The death of infants would be inexplicable on this interpretation; for they have certainly not brought death on themselves by their individual sins. Calvin, Tholuck, and others on this account apply the ἥμαρτον, have sinned, not to particular acts, but to the evil disposition: have become sinners, which might be said also of infants who have died without actual sins. But the verb ἁμαρτάνειν cannot have this meaning. It always denotes sin as an act, not as a state. Paul would have said: ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἐγενήθησαν, or, as in Romans 5:19: ἁμαρτωλοὶ κατεστάθησαν. Mangold alleges that Paul did not take account of infants when he expressed himself thus, and that he meant only to speak of mankind, so far as they really sin. But Paul is not explaining the death of this or that individual; he is explaining the fact of death in itself. If there are examples of death, and that in great number, which do not come under the explanation he gives, it is not enough to say that he does not take account of them; his explanation must be declared insufficient.

A second class of commentators seek to modify the preceding and evidently inadmissible explanation; they give a restricted or determinate sense to ἐφ᾿ ᾧ, making it signify: seeing that besides, or on this condition that, or in so far as; so Julius Müller, Rothe, Ewald. The object of all these attempts is to get at this idea: that the diffusion of death in the world, in consequence of Adam's sin, took place only on a certain condition, and on account of a subsidiary cause, the particular sins committed by each man. There is on this view a personal act of appropriation in the matter of death, as there is one, namely faith, in the matter of salvation. But such a meaning of ἐφ᾿ ᾧ cannot be demonstrated; it would have required ἐφ᾿ ὅσον, or some other phrase. Then this meaning is opposed to Romans 5:16, which directly contrasts condemnation as a thing which has come by one, with the gift of grace as applying to the sins of the many. Besides, would it be possible for Paul to seek to establish no logical relation between these two causes, the one principal, the other secondary, and to content himself with putting them in juxtaposition, notwithstanding their apparent contradiction?

The third class of interpretations may be divided into two groups 1. Those which take ἐφ᾿ ᾧ as a relative pronoun. So Hofmann, who makes θάνατος (death, in the physical and moral sense) the antecedent, and gives to ἐπί and ἐφ᾿ ᾧ the temporal sense: “during the existence, or in the presence of which (death) all have sinned” that is to say, that when all individual men sinned, the reign of death was already established here below, which proves clearly that it was so not in consequence of our particular sins, but on account of Adam's sin. Dietzsch interprets almost in the same way as Hofmann, only he sets aside the temporal meaning of ἐπί, to substitute for it the notion of the condition on which, or the state of things in which, the fact takes place. The same relation of the ἐφ᾿ ᾧ to θάνατος is followed by Gess, except that he understands the word θάνατος of spiritual death, sin: “Upon all (spiritual) death has come, on the ground of which all individual men have consequently committed sin.” We omit other less comprehensible shades. But why have recourse to this form of expression ἐφ᾿ ᾧ, which has usually a quite different sense in Paul, and not say simply, if such was his meaning, that death here below preceded individual sins, and consequently is not their effect? Besides, the fact itself, here ascribed to the apostle, is not strictly true. For the first death on the earth, that of Abel, was certainly preceded by a multitude of particular sins. In Gess's explanation the idea is much simpler: “In Adam death came upon all, moral corruption, as a consequence of which all since have sinned individually.” But this idea lies without the context; for Paul, as we have seen, is not treating here of the origin of sin, but of the origin of death, and of death taken in the physical sense. Death appears here as the visible proof of the invisible judgment which hangs over mankind. Romans 5:13-14, as well as 15 and 17, leave no doubt on this head. In this way it would seem to us simpler to give to ἐφ᾿ ᾧ the neuter sense: on which, in consequence of which, all have sinned. Only this meaning of ἐφ᾿ ᾧ would be, we fear, without precedent. 2. The second mode of interpretation in this third class takes the ἐφ᾿ ᾧ as a conjunctive phrase: for that, and connects it with the idea following: all have sinned. How sinned? Through this one man who introduced sin. So Bengel: quia omnes, ADAMO PECCANTE peccaverunt. It must be allowed that the thought of the δἰ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπον, by one man, which begins the verse, so controls the mind of the apostle that he does not count it necessary expressly to repeat it. This meaning is in harmony with the best established use of the ἐφ᾿ ᾧ in the New Testament (see above) and in the classics (see Meyer). And the idea expressed in this proposition thus understood, appears again without doubt in the first part of Romans 5:15: “through the offence of one many be dead;” and in that of Romans 5:17: “by one man's offence death reigned by one; ” comp. 1 Corinthians 15:22: “as in Adam all die. ” No doubt it is objected that the essential idea in this case: “ in Adam,” is omitted; but we think we have accounted for the omission. And we find, as Bengel has already remarked, a somewhat similar ellipsis in the analogous though not parallel passage, 2 Corinthians 5:15: “If one died for all, then all died;” understand: in him.

True, the question is asked, if it is possible that the eternal lot of a free and intelligent person should be made dependent on an act in which he has taken no part with will and conscience. Assuredly not; but there is no question here about the eternal lot of individuals. Paul is speaking here above all of physical death. Nothing of all that passes in the domain in which we have Adam for our father can be decisive for our eternal lot. The solidarity of individuals with the head of the first humanity does not extend beyond the domain of natural life. What belongs to the higher life of man, his spiritual and eternal existence, is not a matter of species, but of the individual.

The Vulgate has admitted an interpretation of this passage, set in circulation by Origen and spread by Augustine, which, in a way grammatically false, yet comes to the same result as ours. ᾿Εφ᾿ ᾧ is taken in the sense of ἐν ᾧ : “ in whom ” (Adam). But ἐπί cannot have the meaning of ἐν, and even if ᾧ were a relative pronoun here, it would neither refer to Adam, who has not been named, nor to one man, from which it is separated by so many intermediate propositions.

The most impenetrable mystery in the life of nature is the relation between the individual and the species. Now to this domain belongs the problem raised by the words: “ for that (in this one man) all have sinned. ” Adam received the unique mission to represent the whole species concentrated in a single individual. Such a phenomenon cannot be repeated, at least in the domain of nature. The relation of each of us to that man, the incarnation of the species itself, has nothing in common with the relation which we have to sustain to any other man. In the revelation of salvation given to the apostle this mysterious connection was assumed, but not explained. For it belongs to a sphere on which the revealing ray does not fall. And therefore it is that in the two following verses the apostle thinks it necessary to demonstrate the reality of the fact which he had just announced: the death of all through the sin of one. We shall see that the meaning of these two verses comes out only when we approach them with the explanation just given of the last words of Romans 5:12; this will be the best proof of its truth.