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§13 Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained (Rom. 5:12–21)

Paul now embarks on a bold typological contrast between Adam and Christ. He continues the train of thought already begun in chapter 5, however, for verse 12 begins, “on account of this,” or therefore, which links 5:12–21 to 5:1–11. Paul’s purpose is to illustrate that the work of redemption has universal significance. The focus shifts from our redemption in the first person plural in 5:1–11 to the two seminal figures of humanity, Adam and Christ, in the third person singular. Heretofore the gospel has been discussed primarily in relation to Israel (e.g., the law, chs. 2–3; and Abraham, ch. 4), but Paul now extends his purview to show that Jesus not only fulfills the promise given to Abraham, but also mends a deeper, fundamental rift stemming from Adam himself. In so doing he elevates Christ from a figure of parochial importance to universal significance. The vast sweep of history is embraced in two prototypes, Adam and Christ.

The two epochs signified by Adam and Christ stand in stark antithesis and are underscored by contrasting language: “just as” in Adam, “so also” (or “how much more”) in Christ. Paul introduces the typology by saying that “[Adam] was a pattern (Gk. typos) of the one to come” (v. 14). A “type” is a particular person or thing that foreshadows or prefigures something true of a larger group to follow. Sparta was a type of the military state, Machiavelli of the despotic ruler, Jefferson of the liberal democratic mind. Adam and Christ are types too. Like the “lesser light” of Genesis 1:14ff., Adam represents humanity apart from salvation. There are many satellites in his orbit: “trespass” (v. 15), “sin” (v. 20), “disobedience” (v. 19), “judgment” (v. 16), “condemnation” (v. 16), “law” (v. 20), and “death” (v. 12). But Christ is the “greater light” whose starry host is far brighter. He governs “obedience” (v. 19), “justification” (v. 16), “grace” (vv. 15, 17, 20, 21), and “life” (v. 17). Paul, however, does not resign the world to a cosmic tug-of-war between two equal but opposite forces—God and the devil, light and darkness, good and evil—each vying for humanity. On the contrary, Christ is vastly superior to Adam, for the last Adam’s power to save is far greater than was the first Adam’s power to destroy.

Arguments from typology intend to present global or universal truths, not unlike Paul’s use of allegory elsewhere (Gal. 4:21–31). The general nature of typology, however, limits its effectiveness in dealing with details and exceptions. Types are yardsticks, not calipers. Their effectiveness consists in the essential truths they convey, not in every logical possibility they imply, and to push them beyond such limits runs the danger of logical casuistry. In verse 19, for example, Paul says that one man’s obedience overcame another man’s disobedience. This clearly implies that Jesus’ obedience in the wilderness won what Adam’s disobedience in the garden lost; but it is not at all clear, despite what some commentators say, that this verse teaches universal salvation.

What effect might the Adam-Christ typology have had on Jewish-Gentile rivalry in Roman Christianity (see Introduction)? In progressing from Abraham and Christ in chapter 4 to Adam and Christ here, Paul signifies that Jewish-Gentile differences are secondary to the more fundamental categories of condemnation and grace, and of sin and salvation. At the bedrock of existence all humanity holds a common hope in life and faces a common enemy in death. “There is no difference” (3:22). The ultimacy of human destiny relegates ethnic and even religious disputes to penultimate categories.

5:12 / Verse 12 recapitulates the story of the fall in Genesis 3. The accent falls not on the particulars of the temptation but on the all-encompassing consequence, namely, that disobedience brought death into the world. Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men. Milton captured the thought of this verse in the title of his epic poem, Paradise Lost. Paul omits the name Adam, stressing instead the universal correspondence between the one and all. Although he does not explain exactly how Adam’s sin affected humanity, he understands Adam’s sin to have infected the race so that it is not free not to sin. Sin is not a coincidence, it is a contagion. Sin is a compelling power at work both within and without. Jesus said, “The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man!” (Mark 14:21). This verse probes the ineffable tension between the inevitability of sin, on the one hand, and human responsibility for sin, on the other. Humanity is not free to choose not to sin, and yet each sin is freely chosen. Sin is derivative from one man, and, like a despot, sin controls its subjects. Three times Paul emphasizes that sin (or death) reigns (vv. 14, 17, 21). And yet all sin willingly, thus deserving condemnation (v. 18). Adam’s sin was the root, ours are its offshoots, says Bengel (Gnomon, vol. 3, p. 76).

In Genesis 3 the serpent tempts Eve to “be like God” (v. 5). There are two ways of being “like God.” One is positive, in which we honor and emulate God, whereby to “be like God” is admirable. But the temptation story carries a negative sense of rivaling God and willing to displace God. It begins with a desire to discredit God (“ ‘Did God really say?’ ”), and ends with a willful disobedience of God’s concrete command. In a mysterious and terrible way Adam’s sin becomes our sin. Genesis 3 is the story of every sinful act. All humanity disputes God’s word and usurps God’s authority.

In the history of theology verse 12 (also 1 Cor. 15:22) has been the breeding ground of the doctrine of original sin. The OT links sin with death (“when you eat of [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you shall die,” Gen. 2:17), but it is silent concerning how sin and death were transmitted to the race. By the first century A.D., however, a theory had developed in Jewish thinking linking Adam’s sin and human corruption and death. Fourth Ezra says, “You laid upon [Adam] one commandment of yours; but he transgressed it, and immediately you appointed death for him and for his descendants” (3:7). From Second Baruch, “O Adam, what did you do to all who were born after you? And what will be said of the first Eve who obeyed the serpent, so that this whole multitude is going to corruption?” (48:42). Again from Second Baruch, “For, although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torment. Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam” (54:15, 19). The last passage in particular speaks of sin’s origin in Adam, but its responsibility in individual transgressions. More than three centuries after Paul, Augustine (354–30) stamped Western thinking indelibly with the theory that sin and guilt are transmitted sexually. This theory, which is indebted more to neo-Platonism than to the Bible, is one reason why the church has tended to regard sex as sinful. During the Reformation Luther and Calvin differentiated between human nature and personal guilt. Adam, they maintained, corrupted human nature so that it is not free from sin, which they referred to as “total depravity.” This oft-misunderstood term does not mean that humanity is incapable of good; it simply means that humanity is incapable of saving itself. But Adam has not, continued the Reformers, conferred his guilt on the race. Human nature is hereditary, but guilt is a matter of personal responsibility.

From a human perspective the problem of original sin is an unsolvable mystery. The boat will capsize whether one jumps to the one side or the other. On the one hand, there are those who, with Augustine, overemphasize Adam’s progenitive role in sin and the damning consequence of death. Relying on the Latin text of verse 12 (in quo omnes peccaverunt), Augustine derived the interpretation “in whom (i.e., Adam) all sinned.” But this jeopardizes human potential and responsibility, as well as the divine mandate for genuine moral change. At the same time, the modern tendency is to relegate sin to the level of moral lapses, slips, flaws, mistakes, and so forth. Not only does this fail to deal with the crucial question of the origin of sin (i.e., why all people sin), it underestimates the power and gravity of sin. God would not have sent his Son to Calvary for moral peccadillos.

Verse 12, in fact, does not actually discuss the problem of sin from a theoretical perspective. The premise of the argument is not sin but death: if all die, all must deserve to die because of sin. Thus, a more plausible antecedent for the much-debated Greek phrase, eph’ hō, would be death, and not Adam as Augustine supposed. At any rate, nearly all Greek authorities agree that eph’ hō pontes hēmarton should be rendered because (of death) all sinned, rather than “in whom (i.e., Adam) all sinned.” Paul’s starting point is thus the empirical reality of death. The grim stalker of life is, to be sure, the result of an equally horrid disobedience to God by the rebellious human will, but Paul does not explore this connection or the way in which human sin and death result from Adam’s disobedience. His purpose here is not the development of a doctrine of original sin but the establishment of a typological contrast between Adam and Christ. He is content to say typologically what he said in 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The curse of Adam’s sin is death, and death, as Paul taught elsewhere, is “the last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Cor. 15:26).

5:13–14 / The protasis “just as” (v. 12) leads the reader to expect a completion of the Adam-analogy in Christ. But in order to discuss the effects of the law and Moses on sin, Paul refrains from introducing Christ until verse 15. Verses 13–14 are therefore something of a footnote to verse 12, clarifying what Paul said before, that “through the law we become conscious of sin” (3:20), and that “where there is no law there is no transgression” (4:15). Verse 13 repeats that sin was in the world before Moses gave the law, whether or not sin was recognized as such. The reign of death from Adam onward proves as much. Sin thus precedes death, but the universality of death became apparent before the universality of sin which caused it. This is the sense of the statement, sin is not taken into account. Taken into account (Gk. ellogeitai) was a commercial term meaning “to charge to someone’s account.” Since sin existed before the law, it was independent of the law. Sin was hence as offensive and punishable before the law as it was afterward when it became fully recognizable, and consequently, death reigned even before people knew why.

The wording is somewhat misleading, but the latter half of verse 14 attempts to elucidate this point. A literal translation is, “death reigned from Adam to Moses and upon those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam’s transgression.” This might suggest that there were persons before Moses who did not sin, which, of course, would contradict Paul’s trump argument that all humanity stands under sin (3:9, 23; 5:12). Despite what some commentators suppose, it is unlikely that this verse refers to infants who died before the (illusive) age of accountability. The key to its meaning rather seems to be the phrase, “those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam’s transgression,” i.e., those who had not consciously disobeyed a divine commandment as Adam did. The NIV renders the passage, those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam. This is an interpretative translation, but the sense seems to be justified. Even where a deliberate rebellion against God was lacking, there was still the presence of sin and its terrible consequences.

As disastrous as sin’s effects were, they were in one respect a harbinger of hope: as Adam initiated an epoch which determined the beginning of time, so Christ initiates an epoch which determines the end of time. Both Adam and Christ have universal significance, Adam for death and Christ for life. In the one respect that his sin has universal consequences Adam becomes a type for Christ. Thus, Paul calls Adam a pattern of the one to come. The Greek word for pattern, typos, means “the impression made by a blow,” hence a “stamp,” “model,” or “pattern.” In all other respects, however, Adam and Christ are antitypes, for the wrong which Adam did in his disobedience, Christ in his obedience did not do; and the good which Adam could not do because of his sin, Christ did in his righteousness. In 1 Corinthians 15:45 Paul calls Christ “the last Adam.” He is not called the “second Adam,” i.e., a repetition or even improvement of the first Adam. Christ is not Adam’s successor, but his redeemer, the final word of God who, though not part of the old, redeems the old in the new.

5:15–17 / Now for the first time in verse 15 Paul completes the analogy between Adam and Christ. If the many died by the trespass of one man … the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, will overflow to the many! Adam and Christ may be antitypes, but they are not equally balanced, as Paul’s opening line indicates (the gift is not like the trespass). It took less effort for Adam’s disobedience to release sin and death than for Christ’s obedience to overcome sin and death. It was easier for Adam to lead to ruin than it was for Christ to lead to life. The effects of each are conveyed by the one and many, a familiar distinction in the ancient world. As one led to condemnation, so will a greater one lead to righteousness. The term many, which reappears in verse 19, is an inclusive term, roughly equivalent to “all” in verses 12 and 18. It does not mean that some do not share in Adam’s transgression, or that there are some for whom Christ’s death is not efficacious. Again Paul employs the rabbinic argument from the lesser to the greater that we saw in 5:9–10. Its logic contains the key to the Adam-Christ typology, the how much more of grace! Calvin said it well, “Christ is much more powerful to save, than Adam was to destroy” (Romans, p. 206).

Verse 16 repeats that the propositions about Adam and Christ are not equal: The gift of God is not like … one man’s sin. Adam’s sin resulted in condemnation, but Christ’s gift prevailed over it and brought justification. There is a word play in Greek between judgment (krima) and condemnation (katakrima). Condemnation means both the pronouncement of a sentence and its execution—death. Sin, condemnation, and death may be self-evident, needing no proof, but Paul’s vocabulary regarding Christ’s work is no less conclusive. The Greek word rendered gift, charisma, does not mean, as it does in 1 Corinthians 12, the various manifestations of grace; rather, it concerns the work of grace already accomplished on the cross. Likewise, the word for justification, dikaiōma, is a cognate of Paul’s preferred term and means the result of being justified, namely, being reconciled with God.

Paul extends the contrast between Adam and Christ to its zenith in verse 17. Again he employs the qal wāḥômer analogy from lesser to greater: how much more efficacious is Christ’s gift of life than Adam’s road to ruin. Paul speaks of God’s abundant provision to denote the excess of grace over sin. The word for abundant, perisseia, recurs five times in this section (vv. 15, 17, 20 [3x, in various forms]). Moreover, Paul says that believers reign in life … through Jesus Christ. The Greek word for reign is the verbal form of “king,” meaning to rule with final authority. Grace and righteousness are sovereign gifts of God which break the hegemony of Adam’s fall.

From a human perspective one or the other will rule: disobedience or obedience, sin or righteousness, death or life. It is not a question of whether we will submit to such masters, only to which ones we will submit. Either death reigns or life reigns, but not both. To be human is to stand at a crossroads of choice: there is the way of the past, the way of death, or the way of the future, the way of life in Christ. There is the first Adam, and there is the last Adam. But that is only the human perspective. Paul writes from the divine perspective, assuring us that the influence and effect of Christ’s work defeat the tragic effects of Adam’s trespass. The sin of one is cancelled by the righteousness of the other; the curse of one is overcome by the grace of the other. The one causes death, the other swallows up death in life. In every way Christ surpasses Adam.

5:18–21 / The Adam-Christ typology is repeated in verse 18, and for the first time in perfect parallelism. The Greek construction behind Consequently at the beginning of verse 18, ara oun, indicates a conclusive, summary statement. Milton fashioned a key passage in Paradise Lost after the Adam-Christ typology, concluding that “Heav’nly love shal outdoo Hellish hate” (3.287–301). Especially noteworthy is Paul’s emphasis on all men. St. Chrysostom said that Adam and Christ are types in this way: as Adam became a source of death to those who followed him, although they had not eaten of the fruit of the tree, so Christ has become the provider of righteousness to those belonging to him, although they have not performed what is righteous (see Bengel, Gnomon, vol. 3, p. 71). There are for Paul no exceptions to Adam and Christ. Adam’s sin corrupts all, and Christ’s righteousness justifies all. Paul’s language should be taken quite seriously. It is an undeniable fact of experience that all persons are sinners. It is an undeniable fact of logic that if Christ died for sinners, indeed for the ungodly (5:6), his righteousness clothes all. Both are biblical truths. This is not necessarily to assert universal salvation, however. In verse 17 Paul spoke of “those who receive God’s grace and righteousness.” Salvation by grace is not salvation by fiat, much less coercion. Grace is only grace where it grants the other freedom to receive—or reject—Christ’s self-sacrifice for forgiveness at the cross.

The typological balance continues in verse 19 where Paul introduces a new set of contrasts, Adam’s disobedience and Christ’s obedience. Adam’s fall was not due to an oversight, lapse, or mistake. Adam was not a tragic hero, but a treacherous rebel. His act was one of disobedience, a willful choice to break God’s commandment, and his disobedience could be overcome only by Christ’s obedience. Christ’s obedience need not be understood as his substitutionary death on the cross alone; the word directs attention to the whole course of his life, from his obedience in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13) to his obedience in Gethsemane (Mark 14:32ff.), wherein he reversed the disobedience of Adam.

It is often assumed that since Jesus shared a greater likeness to God than we do—indeed is God, according to the implication of Scripture and explication of the creeds—that it was easier for him to be obedient than it is for us. Both Scripture and logic would rigorously contest that assumption. According to Hebrews, “[Jesus] learned obedience from what he suffered” (5:8), and Philippians says that “he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (2:8). Who can read the intensity of Jesus’ temptation and suffering in Gethsemane as a mere sham (Mark 14:32–36)? C. S. Lewis reminds us that the higher one is in the order of being, the greater are one’s temptations. A dog cannot be either as good or as bad as a child, nor a child as good or as bad as a genius. Christ’s temptations exceeded ours to the degree that his divine nature exceeds ours. Hence, his obedience effects a righteousness that we cannot achieve for ourselves.

The verb in verse 19 is also instructive. Paul says that the many were made to share the condition of their prototype: in Adam they were made sinners, in Christ they will be made righteous. The future tense here (and in v. 21) indicates that the completion of salvation must await the future eschaton. Equally significant is the verb itself, kathistēmi, meaning “to appoint, make, cause,” or “to constitute according to (an image).” It is clearly implied that the effects of the prototype are applied to the lot: the many are acted upon by a force outside themselves. People do not fashion their fate as much as they like to think. It is rather they who are fashioned by the masters they serve, a point Paul will elaborate in 6:15ff. Ultimately, both sin and salvation are extra nos, as the Reformers taught. They originate not within us but outside us in Adam and Christ, and they manifest themselves as persons adapt to their pattern.

Paul now returns to the law (v. 20), although both stylistically and theologically its interjection disrupts the antithetical parallelism between Adam and Christ. The law does not play a determinative role in the contest between Adam and Christ because the law did not bring sin and death into the world, nor can the law remove sin and death from the world. The law thus promises no ultimate solution to the meaning of existence. This was assuredly no small offense to Paul’s Jewish readers, as it is to the moralistic of every age, for it excludes “living a good life”—the way of legal piety—from the whole question of salvation. Beyond Adam and Christ there is no third alternative of moralism, legalism, or good works.

The law, in fact, belongs to the way of sin and death in Adam. Earlier Paul said that the law makes us “conscious of sin” (3:20) and “brings wrath” (4:15). Here he heightens the offense to include those who take refuge in moral scrupulosity. The law was added so that the trespass might increase. As Paul will argue in chapter 7, the law not only reveals sin, it actually incites it! The prohibition, “Do not,” creates an appetite in the sinful will for the thing it forbids, thus exposing the depth of human complicity in sin. That was its intent from the beginning. Its purpose was not to convince Israel of its goodness and separate it from the Gentiles, but to expose Israel’s solidarity with the Gentiles in sin. Here again, Paul undercuts Jewish legal pride and narrows the gap between Jews and Gentiles—a shot we trust was not wasted on the two quarrelsome factions in early Roman Christianity. Until we stand in grace we cannot see how we are mired in sin; and yet, until we learn what we lost in Adam we cannot appreciate what we have gained in Christ.

But where sin increased, grace increased all the more. This verse provided John Bunyan with the title of his autobiography, Grace Abounding. However prevalent, nay rampant, sin may be, grace is more rampant yet, says Paul. Grace outweighs sin, indeed overwhelms it. After Bethlehem, evil can never again tip the scales in its favor! In his meditation, On the Incarnation, Athanasius celebrates the power of redemption in Christ that outstrips the power of destruction in sin—no small hope in a world such as ours where the specter of nuclear holocaust can reduce the earth to vapor and ash, or where injustice and social decay threaten the world with a dark age of moral and political anarchy. God, however, has not consigned the world to its madness. Barth speaks of “total help over against total guilt” (Dogmatics in Outline, p. 107). Milton’s poetic pen again bespeaks an infinite wonder, that grace turns even wickedness to good.

While [Satan] sought

Evil to others, and enraged might see

How all his malice served but to bring forth

Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shown

On Man by him seduced (PL, 1.215–20).

Adam, evil, and sin will be engulfed in an avalanche of love. “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:54).

Joshua challenged the Israelites to choose between the Lord and alien gods (Josh. 24:15). Elijah forced a decision between Yahweh and Baal (1 Kings 18:24). The Psalmist taught of the way of the blessed or the way of the wicked (Ps. 1). A Christian homily in Paul’s day began in the words, “There are two Ways, one of Life and one of Death, and there is a great difference between the two Ways” (Didache 1:1). Paul speaks of Adam and Christ. Ultimately, life is an either-or. Either submission to death and the negation of all longing and hope, or submission to the reign of righteousness and eternal life. Life, however, is greater, for death is not eternal. It is life which is eternal, through Jesus Christ our Lord.