1. Sin Entered the World Through One Man

a. Sin began with Adam, though sin did not originate with Adam

b. Sin originated with Satan

c. Satan tempted Eve to doubt and disobey God’s command; she induced Adam to disobey

d. Why did sin “enter the world through Adam”, and not Eve if she sinned first?

i. It was to Adam that God had given the command directly

ii. Adam had headship over Eve, and as such should have insisted on their mutual obedience to God rather than allowing her to lead him into disobedience

e. With Adam’s disobedience, sin entered into his life - transforming his previous state of innocence to a state of innate sinfulness

i. Adam as the first human represented all of humanity as we have all descended from him

ii. Adam and Eve through procreation transmitted their nature to their descendants - nature = physical, psychological, and spiritual

iii. As such, the corrupted nature of man is passed on to the progeny (physical corruption = death; psychological = propensity to sin, i.e., sin nature; spiritual = spiritually dead from birth, spiritually “stillborn”)

iv. Corporate identity - was not unknown to Old Testament Jews - God frequently punished or blessed an entire tribe, city, or nation based on what a few or even one of it members did (their actions - whether sinful or righteous)

(1) Achan’s family for Achan’s sin of disobedience to God’s command to not keep any of the booty from the sacking of Jericho (Josh. 7:1-26)

(2) Abraham prayed that God would save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah if only as few as ten righteous people could be found, and God agreed, though that number of righteous individuals were not found (Gen. 18:22-33)

f. Critical nature of Adam being historical and the federal representative of the entire human race

i. If Adam does not represent all humanity, then all are not born with a sin nature, and are not in a state of condemnation and corruption due to their connection with Adam’s sin and thus the resulting guilt, of which they are judged guilty as well, though they were not physically present in the Garden of Eden, we all were “in” Adam and Eve

ii. If Adam was neither historical, nor the representative federal head of all humanity, thus making us all guilty of his sin, and having inherited his sin nature from birth; then the idea of a historical Jesus, and His ability (or even the need for it) to die for the sins of all humanity is pointless and impossible

iii. Guilt - Are we guilty for Adam’s sin or our own? Or both? (Eze. 18:19-20)

(1) Consider: If for the moment, for the sake of argument, we say that we are not guilty of Adam’s sin, and that we are born innocent (the argument made by Pelagius in the third century, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagius), than there is the question of where we get the ability to sin, and further begs the question as to whether or not someone couldn’t live the perfect life, thus nullifying the need for a Savior, hence nullifying the need for Jesus’ work on the Cross.

(2) Consider: If we are, however, guilty of Adam’s sin from birth (Psalm 51:5; cf., Job 14:4, Job 15:14-16, John 3:6, Rom. 5:12, Eph. 2:3 ), than the need for a Savior is obviously plain, the requirement for the Old Testament Israelites to make sacrifices to “appease” or “postpone” God’s judgment on their sins makes sense, and children’s ability to sin without being taught is understandable as coming from the corrupted nature that we all inherit from birth.

(3) Consider: If we are then guilty of our sins, and thus guilty of sinning against a holy God, that alone would make us deserving of death; however, when considering that we are born under the stain of Adam’s sin, we are deserving of death from the moment of death

(4) Consider: Based on consideration 3, it is easy to see where a great many people believe that the God that we believe in is unfair, and perhaps even capricious in deciding who lives and who dies, or who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. Yet, based on our sinful condition from birth, we are all hell-bound without hope of salvation without Christ. Yet, is it not of a greater wonder that we are even born at all? That God is gracious in allowing us to be born, and that He allows for us to continue so that we might turn and come to Him through His Son, Jesus, by faith? (2 Peter 3:9)

iv. Children - born into sin - but not guilty of sins yet uncommitted by themselves, though the sin nature is innate to all humanity; hard-wired into our spiritual DNA (latent ability to sin; propensity to sin; sin nature)

2. Death Entered the World Through Sin

a. Because sin entered the world through one man, so also, death as the consequence of sin, entered the world through the one man’s sin (Adam)

b. Adam was not created mortal, thus subject to death, but was warned by God the consequences of disobedience would result in death.

c. Consequences of sin = death

i. Adam did not experience immediate physical death, but became subject to it after his sin

ii. Adam did experience immediate spiritual death; previously he knew God in a way that we do not, and perhaps cannot until the time of our complete restoration (our receiving of Christ’s glory in heaven, when we will see Christ face to face, and come to know God in a way that today we can only imagine; we of course are restored in relationship to God, but the connection that I believe that Adam and God enjoyed is not to be known again until the time of the New Heaven and New Earth, this type of relationship is seen in the life of Jesus)

d. Death exists in three different forms

i. The first form of death is spiritual separation from God (Adam experienced this death immediately, and we know it from the moment of our birth)

ii. The second form of death is physical, which amounts to a physical separation from our fellow human beings

iii. The third form of death is eternal, the ultimate extension of the first kind of death carried out to its ultimate conclusion; this is eternal separation from God, both physically and spiritually.

iv. Christians have no reason to fear death in any of its three forms as Christ has conquered death, and has redeemed us from the kingdom of darkness and delivered us to the kingdom of light.

3. Death Spread to All Men Because All sinned

a. Like a bad virus, death has been transmitted to all men

b. Only the exceptions of Elijah and Enoch besides Jesus have not experienced physical death.

c. We, as recipients of our sin nature from Adam, also inherit the corrupt physical nature that begins from the moment of our birth, that our bodies begin to die, though a great many, if not majority of us do not experience this fully realized death for seven or eight decades of time when our physically corrupt bodies can no longer go on any longer.

d. Consider: If death is the natural consequence of sin, and all of humanity is stained by sin through the “one man” Adam because of his disobedience, than how or why could / would Jesus die? In other words, if He was truly sinless, than He would not have inherited the “death” gene from His “parents” (of course, in His case, in the flesh, He only had Mary as a parent in the flesh by means of physical birth, not discounting Joseph’s role as “step-father” in the flesh), meaning He should not have been able to die since sin had not stained His life, and therefore there was no subsequent death sentence on His life. (Another proof of His deity?)

e. Consider: Being that this is an accepted truth of Christianity that Christ was indeed sinless, death did not have a claim on His life. YET, He died. He died on the Cross. Why? How? Is it even possible that someone not mortal can actually die? (This was a point of discussion among the Greeks with their gods and their mythology.) Yet, Christ did die, physically on that Passover afternoon on an instrument of death on a hill called Golgotha. John 10:17-18 finds Jesus stating that He has the power to lay down His life, and the power to take it up again. This is a telling statement that only someone of other-worldly birth or power could speak. No one in the world could speak the same words, and prove it by actually doing so. (Houdini made a claim of similar words; that after he died, supposedly he would return. Yet, to date he has not returned - I guess his impersonation of General MacArthur coming back to the Philippines was to hard of an illusion to pull off!) Christ did die, and He made the self-proclaimed statement that He could give up His life, and then at His own command come back to life again. If He had not rise from the grave three days later that would have made Him out to be a liar; and the belief in His taking on Himself the penalty for the sins of the world no longer effective. Yet, He did rise from the dead, and He did die - When He died, He took upon Himself the sins of the world, and as a result took upon Himself the penalty of sin - death; and He conquered death by rising from the grave three days later.

4. History Proves Death Reigns Over All Men

a. Critical to this point is that death is indeed universal in humanity.

b. Since Adam, all have physically died (with the previously mentioned exceptions).

c. As this verse (v. 13-14) state though, while “sin was not imputed” because of a lack of law, there was still death.

i. What are the implications in this?

ii. Simply this - once Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden of Eden, and until the coming of the Law to Moses, sin was apparently not imputed against those who could no longer sin “in the likeness of the offense of Adam”. Yet, while sin was not apparently “imputed” for lack of the ability to break a specific commandment - death still “reigned” just the same, meaning that all were subject to the guilt of Adam’s sin, and as a result of being guilty of Adam’s sin, were also subject to the penalty of Adam’s sin - death.

iii. However, here is a thought - before Cain murdered Abel, God told Cain that “sin lies at the door, and it desires to have you”. If sin is a real possibility for what Cain would do to his brother, Abel, which was to murder him, how was this “sin” imputed to Cain? God did not give a specific commandment at that time that we are aware of in Scripture of not murdering. (This is better understood in the context of the destruction of the creation made imago Dei, or in the “image of God”. The destruction of anything that reflects the glory of God is an affront to God. Thus the declaration of murder - pre-meditated - sin.)

d. No one from Adam to Moses (the giving of the Law) or from Moses until now has sinned in the “likeness of Adam” or in the sense of disobeying a commandment from God for which we had total free will since our conscience would not have been tainted.

5. The Contrast in Effectiveness

a. This first contrast is between the free gift of Christ and the transgression of Adam

i. Free gift of grace

(1) A gift from God = Christ’s dying and suffering on the Cross - God’s divine gift that is unmerited by humanity.

(2) A gift to God = Christ’s obedience by going to the Cross to die willingly as a gift to God; thus found both right and acceptable to God.

ii. Transgression

(1) Deviating from the norm; going some place one ought not to go

(2) Otherwise can be interpreted “trespasses”

(3) Deviation from the norm = disobedience from a single command (sin)

iii. Impact of the free gift and the transgression

(1) By the transgression of the one = the many died

(a) had a one-dimensional effect = brought death to everyone

(b) death by nature is static and empty

(2) Gift of God / Gift of Jesus to God = abounded to the many\

(a) restores man to spiritual life

(b) gives him the very life of God

iv. The term “many” - parallelism

(1) definition - In Hebrew poetry, the relationship between two or more line. Hebrew poetry is characterized by parallelism of thought rather than by rhyme. The types of parallelism that have been identified in Hebrew poetry include: synonymous, synthetic, antithetic, emblematic, inverted (chiastic), and climactic.

(2) In this verse and in another verse in this passage the terms “all” and “many” are found to be confusing by those perhaps not use to reading the Bible as literature when interpreting it since that helps with the hermeneutics of interpreting the Bible.

(3) In this verse the term “many” is more applicable to the western way of thinking in terms of the effect of grace rather than the effect of the transgression

v.John Calvin - “Since the fall of Adam had such an effect as to produce ruin of many, much more efficacious is the grace of God to the benefit of many; inasmuch as it is admitted, that Christ is much more powerful to save, than Adam was to destroy.”

(1) John MacArthur - “God’s grace is greater than man’s sin. Not only is it greater than the one original sin of Adam that brought death to all men but it is greater than all the accumulated sins that men have ever or will ever commit.

6. The Contrast in Extent

a. Just as in effectiveness, the extent of Christ’s justification is far greater than Adam’s condemnation.

b. The one sin by one man at one time brought about condemnation to all; however, th free gift came after many transgressions and its result was not simply restoration but justification.

c. God hates sin so much that the sin of one brought death to all.

d. God love for the sinner is so much more greater than His hatred of sin.

i. His loving grace towards man is so great that He provides not only for the redemption of one man from one sin, but for the redemption of all men from all sins.

7. The Contrast in Efficacy

a. Efficacy - the capacity to produce a desired result.

b. The intent of the first sin - their desired result was to be like God; yet the result was just the opposite of the desired result - death, or separation spiritually from God, and separation from humanity.

c. The intent of the gift of Christ achieved exactly what He set out to achieve - to restore those redeemed by His death on the cross, and to have those redeemed to reign in life (which is to have power over sin, not to be sinless, but to change our very nature).

8. The Contrast in Essence

a. One transgression = resulted in condemnation to all men

b. One act of righteousness = resulted in justification of life to all men

i. The use of the term “all” in these verses are similar to the use of “many” in the previous verse earlier, which was used for the sake of parallelism.

c. Essence of the one transgression = disobedience

d. Essence of Christ’s gift = obedience

e. Disobedience = the many were made sinners

f. Obedience = the many will be made righteous

9. The Contrast in Energy

a. The energizing force behind man’s sin is the Law

b. The Law was not given to provide salvation, but to provide a pattern of righteousness but not as a means of righteousness.

c. The Law has no power to produce righteousness, but for the person who belongs to God and sincerely desires to do His will, it is a guide for righteous living.

d. The Law is both a corollary to righteousness and unrighteousness. For the lawless person it stimulates him to the disobedience and unrighteousness he already is inclined to do. For the person who trusts in God, the Law stimulates obedience and righteousness.