Sin and Death
Romans 5:12–19
Romans Lesson #062
May 31, 2012
www.deanbibleministries.org

What Paul is doing here is developing a comparison and contrast between Adam and Christ. Adam is the first Adam; Jesus is the second Adam. What makes Jesus the second Adam? Adam and Jesus both entered into this world without a sin nature; they both entered into the world in a state of absolute perfection. But what Paul is saying here is that that is not true of any other human being. So Jesus can mirror Adam’s decision in His true humanity because He doesn’t have a sin nature. And even though He is in hypostatic union and is fully God (hypostatic union means that Jesus is fully God and fully man, but that He isn’t using His divine attributes to handle the problems that His humanity faces) when Jesus is tempted He is not accessing His holiness, His righteousness and His omnipotence on the divine side to handle the problem of temptation to sin. He is handling it through His reliance on the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, just like we do. If He was handling it by relying on divine attributes then His pattern of life would have no benefit for us because we have no divine attributes to access. So Jesus is handling whatever problems He faces in life on the basis of the Spirit of God and the Word of God, which sets the pattern for us. That is the whole point of the Kenosis: He is willingly restricting and limiting His access to His divine attributes.

It is a sort of interesting firewall between the two because there are times when He does access His divine attributes in order to demonstrate that He is God. When He changes the water into wine this is an act of God as the Creator to demonstrate that He controls creation and He is God. It is the same thing when He exercises control over the demons, He is doing this from His position of authority as the eternal second person of the Trinity. He is not doing it out of His humanity; He is doing it from His deity. Remember, He is casting the demons out to solve the problem with the demoniac; He is not casting the demons out to solve temptation problems in His life or personal problems in terms of the angelic conflict. That is the difference. Jesus uses His deity to demonstrate that He is God because He has to do that as part of His credentials as the Messiah. But He shuts off that firewall when the issue has to do with His own personal relationship to God or dealing with temptation.

And so He comes in as the second Adam to do what Adam failed to do the first time. Adam failed to say no to temptation. Jesus is going to say no to temptation all the way to the cross, qualifying Him to go to the cross and pay the penalty for our sin. As the second d Adam He is going to be the one who is able to fulfill the original Genesis 1:28 mandate to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, etc. So in Jesus as the eternal Son of Man, man is finally going to rule over creation. We are in Christ, so the church participates in that rule via our position in Christ.

So Paul begins this comparison and contrast and then runs off in a rabbit trail in verses 13 and 14 in order to make sure before he builds the analogy that everyone understands the issue of the origin of sin, the transmission of sin and the guilt of the entire human race, and that that guilt is not based on our personal sin or our personal sin nature. The reason we are all condemned is because of Adam’s sin. We are not condemned because we sinned; we are not condemned because we have sin natures. We are condemned because Adam sinned, and in Adam’s sin there is a corporate biological, genetic unity among all human beings, such that Adam as both the physical head (seminalism) and Adam as the designated representative head (federalism), is the basis for our condemnation. So we are born condemned under sin before we ever do anything because of that organic unity back to the first Adam. And this is why Jesus is able to pay the penalty for the sin of every human being, because He is organically, genetically tied to every human being. That is important because that also means that Jesus can’t die for the angels because there is no organic unity there, no connection.

Then in verses 15–17 there is a contrast between Adam’s sin and grace in relation to Christ. In verses 18, 19 Paul connects Adam’s sin and condemnation with Christ’s obedience and justification.

Romans 5:12 ^NASB “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—” The point he is making is that all sinned in Adam. Adam’s decision is our decision. Death spread to all men positionally.

The four questions that have to be covered in this section: What is sin? What is the penalty for sin? What is the sin nature’s relationship to the corporeal human body? How is this passed on?

This is really important. Many Christians think that the sin penalty that is laid down in Genesis chapter three is physical death. There is a real problem with this; it has to be spiritual death.

The core Hebrew word for sin means the same thing that the Greek word means. It is the word chata which means to miss the mark, miss the target. That is what sin is. We miss the mark; we fail to hit whatever it is we are aiming at, and so man never does achieve that which fits the character of God. Romans 3:23 ^NASB “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The phrase “glory of God” is a term that refers to the totality of God’s essence. We just don’t measure up to God’s standard. Cf. Judges 20:16; Proverbs 19:2; 8:36.

The next word is avar which means to transgress. It also means to pass over, to go through a country, so we see where it gets the idea of transgress or move across a boundary. Both this word and the next is translated in English as “transgress.” That is important for this passage because transgression implies a known law, so it means to violate a specific law. The second word is fesha, meaning a rebellion or a revolt. It focuses on that aspect of rebellion against an authority. Both of them imply that there is a clear standard, a specific command that is being violated.

Then there is the word ra, which is translated “evil,” and the word aven which is also translated “evil” but also as “wickedness” and “emptiness.” These words describe a sort of complex of issues related to what sin is. It is ultimately missing the mark but it is a transgression of law and it brings about evil and wickedness.

On the Greek side is the word HAMARTIA, which is used three times in Romans 5:12 and indicates missing the mark. Notice that sin is not defined as something you do to other human beings. We can only sin against God.

A second Greek word is PARABASIS, which means to transgress, and it means to break a specific law. Then there is PARAPTOMA, which is often translated “transgression,” and it means to violate a moral standard. It is used 19 times in the New Testament and 5 times in Romans chapter five. That tells us that there is a real emphasis on this aspect of sin in this chapter. Then there is PARAKOE, which is an act of disobedience, a specific act. Then PLANE, which has the idea of wandering away, getting lost, and is used figuratively for error. The ANOMIA, which is the absence of law. It is translated “lawlessness” in 1 John 3:4. It is a rejection of God’s law. Then ADIKIA which means “unrighteousness.” 1 John 5:17 ^NASB “All unrighteousness is sin”—ADIKIA. Then PARANOMIA, which also has to do with NOMOS—PARA meaning to go around the law—also translated “transgression.” All of these are involved in understanding sin.

“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world…” The word “entered” is not EISERCHOMAI, it is another compound of ERCHOMAI indicating that it just spreads and mushrooms down through all of humanity. Then it says, “and the death.” There is a definite article with the noun THANATOS for “death” here. Why does it use the article? Why should we translate it “the death”? It is going to bring out something really significant in understanding this passage and why Paul uses the article here. In Greek the lack of the article doesn’t mean it is indefinite, it just means it is emphasizing the qualitative nature of the noun. So with death without the article it could be emphasizing the qualitative nature of the death, but Paul is using this is a distinct sense. That is going to lead us to the question of what kind of death this is.

1.       These different uses for the word “sin” are also applied in different ways. Some of them are used for personal sins which are the infractions of individuals. Sin itself in the singular can refer to sin in its ultimate origin, or it can refer to sin as the sin nature. There are different emphases in each one of these words and so it is important to pay attention to what words are used.

2.       When it refers to the sin nature it is referring to that capacity to evil that is developed with Adam.

3.       Sin is sin because it violates God’s character and His righteousness. It is never understood as violating some sort of standard that is external to God. God is not holy because His holiness conforms to an abstract standard of what is right; God’s character is what is right, and that is what defines justice.

4.       Sin first entered the universe through a creature. God didn’t cause sin but He created an environment where people could exercise their volition. What that meant was that they could choose to do not just little bad things but really bad things. People who have bought into liberalism and the basic goodness of man also (even though they don’t always realize the connection) have bought into the idea that when certain really evil things happen it must be God’s fault. For example, if God is really a good God and He knows everything then He wouldn’t have allowed the holocaust to take place. What they don’t understand is that God has created the human race with volition and if they choose to do evil things God is not going to move in and pull away the consequences. To do that would mean that God would be controlling volition and ending freedom. So sin entered the universe through a creature, Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12-14), by his own unhindered volition.

5.       The second determinative sin is that of Adam in Genesis chapter three, which brings the present world into condemnation and all of Adam’s descendants into condemnation, and it impacts us in two ways. It impacts each one of us in terms of an inherited corruption and sin nature and the imputation of Adam’s guilt to that sin nature. That means we are all born spiritually dead.

So we end with the question we started with. What kind of death is this going to be? There are seven kinds of death in the Bible. How do we know that that core death in Genesis 2:17 is spiritual death? It is because in Ephesians 2:1 Paul says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.” That is the status we are in when we are physically alive prior to salvation, but we are dead in some sense. It is not physical; it is spiritual. This demonstrates that there is a clear biblical teaching on spiritual death, and that is mirrored in Colossians 2:11, 12.

Romans 5:12 ^NASB “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death [not physical, but spiritual] through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—” Spiritual death is the source of those other deaths. So this is sort of a plenary use of the word “death”; it implies all of them. Death in all of its manifestations comes in through Adam’s sin. And is spreads to all men because all sinned—not their personal sin but their position in Adam.