Why Every Human is Guilty of Adam's Original Sin. Romans 5:12-15

In Romans chapter 5 the topic that were looking at in these first five or six versus is understanding how the entire human race becomes guilty of sin. We all understand that Adam sinned. Eve ate from the fruit of the tree first and her sin only affected her. But when Adam ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we are told in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, for example, that in Adam all die. And that is not the result of some of paternalistic writing of Scripture, it's not some of patriarchal interpretation of the human race, it is because God in the way he created the human race, created man first and then women.

It is interesting that once you throw away the doctrine of creation you can start coming up with all kinds of theories as to who was created first and why one was created over the other, and it is just all speculation. People come up with different things just to fit their own social and political agendas, because once you get away from any bedrock certainty any kind of truth and revelation then all you basically doing is just making things up to fit the current narrative. And that's exactly what happens in our postmodern world, our postmodern environment. But the Scripture teaches that it was Adam's sin that was determinative here, because Adam was designated as the head of the race. So Adam sins, and not only does he come under the condemnation of that sin penalty when he sins, but then as a result of his sin all of his descendents are also judged guilty and received that imputation. Some people say that's not fair, that's a choice Adam made, but I would've made different choice. Oh really? Is that true? How do you know that for sure?

I was having a conversation with somebody day and it's really interesting to get us to think a little bit about the fact that we can be sure something is happening. We can have a high level of certainty of some things being true but that's not the same as something being 100% true, and a lot of people confuse that. An example of one we were talking about today is that God the Holy Spirit works in our lives in many ways. God the Holy Spirit works in our lives to bring to our consciousness doctrines that we have learned to help us recall Scripture, and God the Holy Spirit works in our lives in and prodding us, maybe motivating us, to witness to people. In a lot of ways the Holy Spirit works behind the scenes and brings things into our mind. But that's not just necessarily the Holy Spirit working internally.

Go back into the Old Testament when believers did not have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We are never told that Nehemiah ever had the enduement of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. There are frequent statements made by Nehemiah in the book like “and God put it on my heart to, God put it into my mind to do something". And so he attributes to God bringing into his consciousness certain ideas in certain things, and that's not done through the indwelling God the Holy Spirit. That was just done through some sort of special revelation. And, of course, we know special revelation isn't for today; but because we have indwelling of the spirit, because we have the filling of the Spirit, and as the Spirit is active in our sanctification, I can say with certainty that God the Holy Spirit brings doctrine to my mind. But when I'm driving down the road or I'm going through life and something happens, and doctrines or promises or principles come to my mind, can I say with 100% certainty that that came to my mind as a result of the Holy Spirit? Or did it come through the natural processes of the way our brain works, the way our mind works? I am going to give the Holy Spirit the benefit of the doubt as most Christians do, but you can't answer that question with certainty because we don't know.

There are many times when unbelievers—many are very brilliant and their brain works just as well as an believers many cases—are studying something, and all of a sudden they get an insight because the brain issue so remarkable, such a high-speed intricate computer, and all of a sudden it starts making connections and all the little pistons start firing off, lights go off; and all of a sudden there is a fresh idea. It doesn’t come from God and doesn’t come from the Holy Spirit; it's just the way God built our brains to work. So people have insights, they have intuitive flashes, they have all these different things and they’re not believers. So how do you know when you have a memory, when something comes to your mind as a Christian, that at that particular instant that particular thought, that particular promise at that moment, came from God the Holy Spirit? And I would challenge you that you don't. We know that generally He works that way, but we can't say that for any specific incident that that was the Holy Spirit who brought that into our mind. We had a good idea and wanted to do something; we had a sense that we ought to do something. Unbelievers had that kind of thing.

So we have to be very careful that we don't somehow shift. It's very easy for that kind of thing to become a way in which people make decisions. They often say, well you just a gut decision, and a gut decision often is just a combination of your life experiences and all of this is the process for a period of 20, 30 40, 50 years. And you have certain experiences, and your brain is processing, everything is going around you so quickly that you're not even aware of all the steps that are happening, and these ideas are firing off inside of the brain. And we want to give credit to God and that's great, it's wonderful and we should, but I'm sure that the Holy Spirit is God credit for number of things He has done, and there's another word for that. The Holy Spirit has gotten blamed for a lot of things He hasn’t done. And that's the path of mysticism, it's looking somewhere other than the authoritative Word of God for truth and for and for answers. And so we have to always go the Word to see the answers to our questions, because the Word’s going to be clear. And we often have values and ideas and norms and standards in our soul that have been influenced by the world, and one of the words that I really just vibrate over—and I’ve vibrated over it for years. I don’t vibrate quite as much, or maybe I just manage to suppress it in righteousness or something so that I keep it buried at the third basement level down—is when people start talking about being fair. Our president has talked about this several times lately: they want fairness. Fairness is a nebulous concept.

We sometimes say that God is fair. What does that mean? “Fair” is a really wimpy word. “Just”: now there’s a word you can you can sink your teeth into; “righteous”: those are words that have real content and solid meaning. But fair often brings into it a lot subjective baggage as to what we think is somewhat equitable. And often today there are so many egalitarian ideas, and these are basically influenced by communism, that everybody ought to get the same results. Fairness is not understood as equal opportunity; fairness is understood as equal results. And that no matter what our circumstances maybe we all are to have the same chance to make a lot of money, and be rich and famous as Bill Gates or as some Hollywood celebrity, or somebody else. And often we will never hear the back story on so many people in terms of the struggles that they had in their own life and the difficulties that they overcame, we just see sort of the end results. And even with celebrities that had a certain advantages (not all of them did), we don't see all of the incredible hard work that goes into doing the things that they do. Whether they perform on stage or whether they are in music or whether they write or something they still put a lot of effort into it and that's why they are so successful and have the results that they do.

This idea of fairness, especially when it applies to God, really is the slippery slope of bad theology and we have to be careful with that. God is righteous, and that means that God is always going to do the right thing. God is just. He is always going to judge every body by the same standard, His standard of absolute righteousness. So when we come to attacks like this where we begin to learn that because Adam made a bad decision, a simple decision, a disobedient decision, and that we bear the consequences for that, there are people that you will talk to, unbelievers, who will say, well that's just not fair for me to be condemned, born spiritually dead, because of something somebody else did.

And so we ought to think a little bit in terms of how we answer a question like that. How do we explain that to people? How do we get them to think that through? And where do you think the best place would be to go in order to understand that? The best place to go is place where Paul always goes whenever he starts explaining anything, and that's always to the character of God and the plan of God. We have to get to understand who God is. Often the hidden assumption or presupposition that unbelievers have is the view of God that is so anthropocentric, so man-centered. It is basically that God is just an enlarged human. He has more capabilities than a human being, a little bit smarter in some cases than human beings. He has a little more power and ability than human beings, but He is basically just a large human being. And we have to disabuse the unbeliever of that because that's part of his truth suppression mechanism. And so helping him to understand that we have to think in terms of how the Bible presents our understanding of God: that God is all knowing and He is perfectly righteous, and so He can devise a plan for the human race that is going to be perfectly righteous, but is going to take into account all circumstances. And so when God sets up Adam as the original human being and delegates that responsibility to him, that his decision would have consequences that would affect the entire entirety of his progeny, then God knows that if any human being any other human being were put in that position that the same results with what would take place.

That is what Paul is trying to explain here: the significance of this in relation to justification. And what he's driving toward is verse 18 where he reaches this conclusion: ^NASB “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.” So he set up his comparison and contrast of this section, and what is he driving to? There is condemnation on the one hand, and then what's on the other side? The righteous act of Christ on the cross, which comes to all men, and which results in justification.

So we are right back to the topic that was at the heart of Romans three and Romans four, which is justification. And then having come back to this he talks about “there resulted justification of life,” and I think that would be the implication of justification resulting in life. And then he uses that to raise the question in the next three versus the first part of chapter 6: Well if Christ has done all of this then what is the implication for us? The reason for saying that is it helps us to see where we’re driving to, trying to understand how Adam's sin is transmitted and passed on to the human race, and that it is all important because it helps us to understand the depths and the complexity of our of our condemnation.

As pointed out last time this section begins a comparison and contrast with between Adam and Christ that begins in verse 12 and then there is this break at verses 13 through 17 that basically takes us through a version to make sure we understand why all men can be condemned. And then he's going to come back to it in verse 18. So the first 12 sets up the comparison and contrast, versus 13 and 14 show the contrast in the relation between sin and death, and then 15 through 17 are going to contrast Adam's sin with God's grace through Jesus Christ. Then 18 and 19 connect Adam’s sin condemnation with Christ's obedience and justification. So the main question is how does death spread to all men?

Last time we went through the details of the exegesis of Romans 5:12, and the opening is important because it does set up for us the direction that Paul is going and how the sort of break between the first verse and the other versus comes along. In verse 12 he says, ^NASB “Therefore …” Literally, for this reason. So he is going to describe the ground or the motive or cause sin coming into the world. He then draws a comparison using the Greek word hosper [w(sper] “… just as.” In Greek grammar when the protasis, the first part of this comparison is set up and is introduced by hosper, the apodosis is introduced by either the Greek word houtos, meaning “this” or “thus and,” but not kai houtos. So its word order is very important there. Paul starts out, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world …” Notice the order. First sin enters the world and then death enters the world. There's no death before sin. So first there is that sinful choice of disobedience and then as a result of that death comes into the world, and death then spread to all men. And the term that is used here for men is anthropos [a)nqrwpoj], indicating all mankind, not all males.

“…death spread to all men, because all sinned—” He concludes by saying “because all sinned,” so there is this intrinsic connection between Adam and his sin and every single human being.

There are a couple of different ways in which people have tried to explain this. Four observations: a) the reason for death is sin; b) the sin of one man enters the whole world; c) the sin brings death not only the one but to the whole; d) these three aorist tense verbs indicates that the entire race is viewed as sinning in Adam's one sin, so that every human being is participating in some way in that sin, in a way that they are all guilty.

So thus “death spread spreads to all men,” and that phrase is this word kai houtos. There was a professor of Greek that began his instruction at Dallas seminary back in the late 40 by the name of Lewis Johnson. He was a very well known and loved professor of Greek though a little confused with hyper Calvinism. The man had great integrity and because he understood that this really wasn't the tradition of the school he….

He wasn’t a hyper Calvinist. People often misuse that term. He was just a high Calvinist. A hyper Calvinist doesn’t believe you need to witness to anybody because if God elected them God is going to save them one way or the other and you don't need to be involved. So hyper Calvinist doesn't believe in evangelism or witnessing whereas a high Calvinist is just a five point Calvinist that has a very strong view of predestination and election.

….. and Dr. Johnson though taught Greek exegesis at Dallas Seminary for many years and he used to say the most important elements in and studying the Bible are not the big words like justification, reconciliation, redemption; they are the little words like the “ands” and the “thuses” and “therefores” because that tells you how the big words relate to each other. That's what you what you really need to pay attention to. So this is one of those words that is important. houtos usually indicates what comes, and looks forward to something. It is not saying, “Thus and what I just said because what I just said,” it is saying, “In the manner I'm not telling you, in this manner to follow, death spread to all men because all sinned.” Spread to all men—why? Because all sinned. And this expresses that idea very, very strongly that sin is not something that is individual but refers to a participation in Adam's sin in some way.

Now there are two views on how this transmission occurred. This gets a little technical but you need to learn this language because it helps you think. The first view is called seminalism. Seminalism was frequently associated with another theological view on the origin of the soul called traducianism. Traducianism is and has that idea that the soul as well as the body is transmitted through the act of human procreation. The first person to first theologian to coin and use the term Traducianism was a second century theologian by the name of Tertullian. Tertullian gave us another word that you use all the time without any difficulty, and if you used it with some of your neighbors they would think you were just a very complex theologian. And that's the word Trinity. He coined this term trinitos, from the Latin, to express the idea that God is one but also three at the same time. He's not three distinct persons and essences, He is one in essence but three in person. And he also had this idea of Traducianism, that the human soul is transmitted through the human act of procreation. But actually the Roman Catholic Church made people think that's the foundation for why a Christian should be against abortion, because it is through human procreation that the soul is passed on. But another Roman Catholic theologian by the name of Thomas Aquinas, who was considered the most authoritative theologian in Roman Catholicism wrote that to think that the soul which is immaterial (he believed it was immaterial) is transmitted to the semen is heresy.

But Tertullian believed that because he had a materialist view of the soul. Think about that just a little bit. We get all caught up at this at this sort of surface level in this debate over abortion and abortion rights and what kind of life is in the womb. And in the Christian church often people are not well taught theologically and have never worked their way through any of these early medieval debates among very learned theologians in working through these ideas. But in Traducianism this idea was that the soul gets transmitted through procreation. It comes from a man who believed that the soul is material. Since ideas have consequences the idea that the soul can be transmitted materially is inherently related to the idea that the soul is material, so how can we separate? Can we separate the conclusion that the soul is transmitted materially from its presupposition that the soul is immaterial? I don't think we can. That is one view, called Traducianism, and Traducianism historically has been associated with a view called seminalism. And you can hear the root word here seminal: semen, the word for seed. And so it is the idea that there is a physical genetic transmission. Seminalism is the view that the entire human race, body and soul, was genetically present in Adam. Thus God considered every human being to be physically participating in Adam's original sin and thus receiving the same penalty.

That is a very prominent view among large number theologians down through history. Now they don't just come up with this in abstraction. This is not just some philosophical idea that they dream up, they have a text that they go to in order to prove this. The text is in Hebrews chapter 7 verse nine, a verse that is in the context of the writer of Hebrews talking about the superiority of the Melchizedekian priesthood over the Levitical priesthood. And the writer of Hebrews is going to give very sophisticated argument and say that the priesthood of Melchizedek is superior because Abraham, in whose loins Levi was, paid tithes to Melchizedek. Interesting argument.

Hebrews 7:9 ^NASB “And, so to speak, through Abraham even Levi, who received tithes …” He is talking about not just the person of Levi; he is clearly talking about an individual who is the head of a line. In the first century as one would go to the temple the tithe would be given to a priest. That priest was from the tribe of Levi. So the writer of Hebrews says, You are paying a tithe to Levi through his descendant. “…paid tithes”—through Abraham, so to speak. He is not talking literally. Literally in the Greek it is “in a manner of speaking” or “in a way of speaking.” He's just using this as a metaphorical analogy.

Hebrews 7:10 ^NASB “for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.” That's the phrase that were looking at; that's the key phrase that they go. He was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him. The only way he could be in the loins of his father was in a genetic way. He is genetically there because he is genetically linked in a direct line to his great-grandfather Abraham. So Melchizedek is paid because Abraham sees Melchizedeck is a higher spiritual authority. Since Levi descended from coming from Abraham he could be any higher and greater than Abraham, so therefore Levi's priesthood could not be of a higher order than Melchizedek’s priesthood. The theological conclusion is that God considers every human being to be physically participating in the actions of their forefathers because of this genetic connection. So they would be genetically present. That is the view of seminalism, so there's some foundation for that in the scriptural text.

The other view is a view called Federalism. It's using the same language, the same vocabulary that we use when we talk about the federal government as opposed to a government of a confederacy. Federal government is talking about one that is a representative government. We have a federal democracy, we have a representative democracy; we don't act like the citizens of Athens the end of the fifth century BC and have everybody go vote on everything. We elect representatives, those representatives go to Washington DC, and those representatives who are voting in our place are voting for laws, and that vote for that law is our vote. Federalism is the view that Adam stood as the designated head and representative of the entire human race, and that Adam's decisions were on behalf of all of his descendents, all of humanity. God. viewed Adam's sin as the act of all people through representation, and thus Adams penalty is judicially imputed to all mankind. This view is most consistently linked to the creationist view of the origin and transmission of the soul.

When we used the word “creation” here, this is not talking about creationism versus evolution as the word is used in discussions of Genesis chapter one. In theology this term was used to describe a view of how the soul came into existence. There was the Platonic view that a soul is pre-existent. That's the same view that you have in Mormonism. For example, in Mormonism there’s a view that all the souls pre-exist and keep getting kind of recycled. It's not a true reincarnation view, so don't push it that far. But for example, in Mormon theology there is the view that all of the souls of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison Monroe—all the founding fathers of the United States—were these little pre-existent founding father souls. They use the phrase “God the Father” but it sounds funny when it comes from their mouth because this is Elohim who is not the Elohim of the Bible, they just borrow this name, which is the generic term for God. And remember Elohim, God the Father, is the Father of Jesus, and Lucifer as their brothers. God the father, in their view, sent those founding father souls to inhabit those little babies that came along at that time, and with the mission to create the United States. And as a result of that what they wrote in terms of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Bill of Rights was divinely inspired. Not divinely inspired like we talked about: well Shakespearean plays are inspired, not inspired like we listen to Mozart, he had this flash a musical genius and boom the right something out, or Handel who wrote the Messiah. In the Mormon view we’re talking about a view of inspiration that is more akin to our view of divine inspiration of Scripture. But it really doesn't go quite that far.

Then there's the third view, and that's what's called the creationist view that whenever a new human life develops inside of the womb it is God who immediately and simultaneously immediately creates, and simultaneously imparts places that immaterial soul inside of the of the newborn baby. When that baby takes its first breath, which is what the Hebrew said was neshammah, “the breath of life.” That creationist view is a view that's been around forever and ever. Now some theologians and people because of the hot debate topic of abortion decided to flip-flop on their view of by the origin of the soul—back when this got real hot in the early 70s and late 60s—not on the basis of exegesis but on the basis of experience, what was going on legally. They didn’t want to be on the side of the pro-abortionists, the pro-choice crowd. And the thing is that that the federalist and creationist view do not justify abortion, although some people are trying to argue that we make it sound that way, because the God is involved intimately in the production of the physical part of man from conception on. What is going on inside the wound is under normal circumstances going to be a full human being, that no one has the right to interfere with that normative process. That's called the nascent life view and some years ago I taught on this and quoted from and one of Encyclopedia of Judaism that I have, which is exactly the primary rabbinical view on the origin transmission of the soul: that God creates it in imparts it at birth, but no one has the right to interfere with the gestation process because what is the process is inevitably going to end up with a human being and no one has the right to interfere. So there's not a connection necessarily, inherently between the federal view, the creationist view and a view on, abortion. So this is the federalism view.

The Pelagian view: Pelagius was a British monarch who lived in the late four hundreds at the same time as Augustine. Pelagius believed that every few individual human being is created and born with the same innocence of Adam the day he was created. There is no pain from Adam on any human being, they all come out of the womb pure and innocent and able to make perfect decisions for the rest of their life. Augustine, rightly so, just pounced all over him and he was declared a heretic. The Pelagian view was that people incur death when they sin after Adams example. See we always ask the question because it is kind of a brain twister: do you sin because you're a sinner or are you a sinner because you sin? For Pelagius you are a sinner because you sin, but for a biblicist you sin because you are a sinner. You were born with that sin nature and as a result of that we sin. But for Pelagius people don't come under the condemnation of sin until they actually sin. They are condemned for their sin, and Adam's sin affected only Adam. No one else in the human race is affected by Adam’s sin, and modern adherents of this view are basically the Unitarians, and the very liberal, that is, in terms of theology, very liberal Christian denominations. And the Roman Catholic view is what's called a semi-Pelagian view. The Arminian view: Jacobus Arminius was the opponent of Calvinism—not Calvin; Calvin was long dead by the time Arminius came along. Arminius said that all people consent to Adam sin, then sin is imputed. For Arminian positions, Adam sinned and his sin partially affected humanity. The difference is, for Arminians you're sick, you’re not spiritually dead. You still can do some good things that God can give you credit for. Depravity for them is not total, people received a corrupter of nature from Adam but they don't receive guilt or culpability for Adam sin. And this is the view of most of your Methodists. Wesley held his view, so those of you who came out of the Wesleyan tradition, Methodists, holiness, Pentecostals; these all tend to have a heaven Arminian view.

The federal view is that sin is imputed to humanity because of Adam’s sin. Adam sins and that is imputed legally to all those who represent the entire human race. Their view is that Adam alone sinned but the whole human race was affected. Depravity is total in the sense that every aspect of human the human soul and body is corrupted by sin. It doesn't mean you're as evil as you can be; it is just that every part of us has been affected by sin and sin’s corruption. In that federal view sin and guilt are imputed. This would be Presbyterians and others holding to a covenant theology. You say we are not Presbyterians and we don’t hold to covenant theology. But we are in that tradition. If you look at the historical line that comes down from the Reformation it starts with this shift in the 1500s to Sola Scriptura, the Scripture alone; justification by faith alone. You track this down through the 1600s and 1700s to early 1800s and you end up with a guy named John Nelson Darby who was an Anglican. And the Anglican confession or doctrinal statement at that point was very reformed and mostly covenant theology. He says that's not consistent with our foundational theology beliefs and in a literal interpretation of Scripture. Somehow he understands that by the mid 1600s Calvin's theology became sort of a calcified. It hardened into stone with no more development.

See this is always a problem when you get somebody who comes along who is brilliant in theology and they make various new insights, and then everybody just wants to stop and say, that was it; that was the end; he was the greatest thing to come along since sliced bread, and so we’re going to stop here and just worship at his feet—which is what they do with every great theologian that has come down the pipe, rather than building and developing on that. So later on repeat when people like Darby, later Schofield, Chafer, Walvoord, and almost all of those men I just mentioned were ordained Presbyterians. L.S Chafer was ordained in the northern Presbyterians and had it shifted to the southern Presbyterians, and they brought them up on heresy charges in 1928 because he was a dispensational. John Walvoord was an ordained Presbyterian pastor of North West Presbyterian church in Fort Worth Texas where the greatest elder he ever had was a man named Bob Thieme. (Walvoord told that to me in his office one day) It was a Presbyterian Church and John Walvoord sprinkle-baptized every one of his children. Louis Sperry Chafer didn’t have any children so he didn’t sprinkle-baptize them, but he was an ordained Presbyterian.

So we come out of a heavy, heavy Presbyterian background in our theological tradition. From that there is an emphasis on this federal view. And then there's the Augustinian view, which is the view that sin is imputed to humanity because of Adam’s sin. Humanity sinned in Adam, depravity is total; sin and guilt are imputed. It's not all hugely different from the federal view but the federal view has certain secondary attributes to it that fitted to covenant theology. The Augustinian view basically is a view that gets adopted by many of the reformers and later Calvinists. What we say here is that the Seminal view tends to show up among the Pelagians and the Arminians. And so this is polarization over this theology between these two views. The reality is that there are elements of truth in both views, so it's not either or, it's both and. But what do we keep from both and what do we throw away from both? In the Seminal we have this genetic connection with the entire human race. That's important because that means that just as Adam sin has a physical biological connection to every single human being, and that affects the transmission of the sin nature, that it means that Jesus Christ who is also born fully human has that same genetic connection to every human being. There is another creation that's important to think about in connection with this and that's the angelic creation. God created every angel individually. That's why they're called sons of God. God creates every angel individually and directly. He did not create momma and daddy angels and they didn't have little baby angels. I don't care what Michelangelo drew on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Cherubs are not little baby babies that have wings, and there are no baby angels. Update: that is, all angels are directly created.

God can’t provide salvation for the Angels related to a substitutionary atonement because there's no organic connection between the angels. There's an organic connection between every one of us in Jesus Christ because He is fully human, so He can die as our substitute. Now that is important because that that recognizes that there is an aspect where there is a physical genetic link to all human beings. But the other side is true also. The Bible talks about the whole idea federalism, of a representative that pays or performs some action for which the guilt is transmitted or pays the penalty, which is at the core of all substitutionary sacrifices. From the sacrifice in the Old Testament where they sacrificed the scapegoat, and the priest puts his hand on the goat and recites the sins of the nation, and then that one goat is slaughtered (he has his hands on both goats) and the other goat is taken out of the wilderness. There's no organic connection between Aaron and the goat. There's a representative relationship, so that's the federal headship idea. This allows Adam to be the federal head who represents the entire human race and it is in that represent representative capacity that the guilt of his sin is the guilt of all. On the other hand, because of his the physical connection, through the transmission of physical body and DNA that is corrupted by sin, we have the transmission physically of the sin nature, and that capacity and propensity to sin that we all receive. We received from conception a body that is corrupted by sin. This helps explain both aspects, so rather than going either or, if we cut the Gordian knot, so to speak, and splice it together we have a much clearer understanding in Scripture. And then we don't have to throw out scriptural support as a holding to this form of federal representative; there is no problem with Hebrews 7:9, which fits perfectly with my views. If I hold the literal nature of Hebrews 7:9 I don’t have a problem with Romans 5:12. It solves the problems.

So what made it then address these four questions: What is sin? What's the penalty of sin? What is the sin nature's relationship to the corporeal human body? And how is this passed on? Some that is already answered. Sin is separation from God. When sin is disobedience to anything in God's character the penalty for sin is the judicial penalty of spiritual death, it is separation from God. Other forms of death are the consequence of that. That happened instantly when Adam sinned, and all the other forms of physical death: sexual death, physical death, positional death, carnal death, temporal death, eternal death; all these other things are the result of that one spiritual death. And it's passed on genetically through the sin nature, but then that sin nature receives the imputation of Adam's original sin in terms of the guilt at the instant of birth.

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