Sin and Death. Romans 5:12-19
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 fulfil 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
Then in verses 15-17 there is
a contrast between Adam’s sin and grace in relation to Christ. In verse 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
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 [a(martia] which is used three times in
Romans
A second Greek word is parabasis [parabasij] which
means to transgress, and it means to break a specific law. Then there is paraptoma [paraptwma] 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 [parakoh], which is an
act of disobedience, a specific act. Then plane
[planh] which
has the idea of wandering away, getting lost, and is used figuratively for
error. The anomia [a)nomia] 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 [a)dikia] which means “unrighteousness.”
1 John
adikia.
Then paranomia [paranomia], which
also has to do with nomos—
“Therefore, just as through one man sin
entered into the world…” The word “entered” is not eiserchomai, it is another compound of erchomai [e)rxomai] 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 [qanatoj]
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 emphasising the
qualitative nature of the noun. So with death without the article it could be
emphasising 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 realise 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
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