In this section, the Biblical doctrine of sin and death will be presented to show how it answers the problem of the need for salvation: why does man need to be saved? It will be shown that idolatry or trust in a false god is the basic sin; that all men sin because of the spiritual death received from the first man, Adam. Thus man needs to be saved because he is spiritually dead, separated from God, not knowing Him personally as a living reality. Thus salvation must be basically from death to life. And since sin is the result of death (Rom. 5:12d ERS), salvation should be secondarily from sin to righteousness. And since the wrath of God is caused by sin (Rom. 1:18), salvation should be also from wrath to peace with God.
Why does man not keep the law? Or, to put the question more generally, why do
men sin? That is, what is the origin of sin? The Biblical answer is twofold:
(a) sin had its historical origin in the act of Adam which is called the
fall, and
(b) sin has its immediate, contemporary and personal origin in the
spiritual death which along with physical death spread upon the whole race
because of Adam's act of sin.
The classical passage of Scripture that sets
forth this twofold origin of sin is Romans 5:12.
"Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world,
and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men,
because of which all sinned: - " (ERS)
The immediate, contemporary and personal origin of sin is set forth in the last phrase, "because of which all sinned". We will discuss this later. The historical origin of sin is set forth in the phrase, "through one man sin entered into the world". This is a direct reference to the first man, Adam, and his act of sin, the Fall. Let us go back to the book of Genesis and examine the creation and fall of man in order to understand the historical origin of sin.
The basic Biblical assertion about man is that he is created by God.
"26 Then God said,Man is a creature. He is not God. He is not divine. He does not have a "spark of the divine" in him. He is a created being, and as such is under the sovereignty and dominion of God by creation. But even though man is a creation of God, he is different from the rest of creation. Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that God created man in His own image. This makes man different from the other creations of God.
'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the earth,
and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.'
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them."
(Gen. 1:26-27).
What is the image of God? The image of God is the Son of God.
"13 He has delivered us from the dominion of darknessThe Son of God is the plan and pattern according to which God created man. Note the Scriptures never say that the image of God is in man, but rather that man has been created in the image of God. What does it mean for man to be created in the image of God? The answer may be seen in Genesis 1:26-27. There are two aspects to man being created in the image of God.
and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
14 in whom we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins.
15 He is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of all creation;
16 For in him all things were created,
in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities -
all things were created through him and for him.
17 He is before all things,
and in him all things hold together."
(Col. 1:13-17; compare II Cor. 4:4)
(2) But there is a second aspect to man being created in the image of God. In these verses of Genesis one we see this in the words "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:26). Man cannot live alone. In Genesis 2:18 "The Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'" Of all the creatures God had created "there was not found a helper fit for him" (Gen. 2:20). So God created, out of man, woman. Man, in the very way in which he was created had a social need - a need for fellowship. This need could only be satisfied through an equal fellow creature. None of the animals could satisfy this need for fellowship. So God made an equal being, a woman. Man as a social being is able to enjoy reciprocal fellowship with an equal being. In this respect man is also like God. In God there is an equality and fellowship between the three persons of the Godhead.
Man's dominion over creation and his fellowship with an equal being - woman - are two aspects of man being created in the image of God. Both of these presuppose freedom - freedom of choice and freedom of action. This freedom is the presupposition and the possibility of being in the image of God. When God created man with freedom, dominion over creation and fellowship with equal beings became possible. With freedom of choice and action man can exercise his dominion over creation. Since love is the essence of fellowship, with his freedom of choice and action, man can love an equal being and thus enter into fellowship with her. This freedom of choice and not his reason, nor self-consciousness, nor self-transcendence, is that which make possible man's dominion over creation and fellowship with an equal being. This is what distinguishes man from the rest of creation. This freedom of decision is what gives to man his existence as a person or self and to his reason that human and personal character. Man is a personal being in a created physical world and as such is a union of spirit (person or self) and body (psycho-physical organism).
"Then the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living being" (Gen. 2:7).
But man did not stay in this ideal state - the way God created him in His image. He has fallen away from the image of God. How did this happen? After He created man and placed him in a garden (Gen. 2:8, 15), God gave to him a command:
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,After the woman had been created, she was tempted by the serpent (Gen. 3:1) who is also called Satan (the adversary) and devil (the slanderer, Rev. 12:9).
"From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,
for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die."
(Gen. 2:16-17, NAS).
3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the fieldThe serpent's temptation contained two lies:
which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman,
"Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"
3:2 And the woman said to the serpent,
"From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;
3:3 but from the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden,
God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.'"
3:4 And the serpent said to the woman,
"You surely shall not die!
3:5 For God knows that in that day you eat from it
your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil." (Gen. 3:1-5 NAS)
"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Gen. 3:5 RSV)
These lies are attacks on God's goodness and love. This is the first element of this satanic temptation: Satan begins with an attack on God's character. God's goodness is attacked indirectly and then directly. The second element of this satanic temptation is the offering of a substitute for the true God - a false god, an idol (compare Matt. 4:8-10). Having undermined her faith and confidence in the goodness of God, the serpent offers Eve the knowledge of good and evil as a substitute for God. The third element in this temptation is the presenting of a method to obtain the substitute god. Satan implied that this knowledge of good and evil could be obtained trough the process of eating. This was part of Satan's strategy. He had to obscure the basic fact that knowledge, moral as well as scientific, is obtained by decision, a choice, an acceptance or rejection. Adam and Eve could have known good and evil by their acceptance of the good (obeying God's command) and their rejection of the evil (Satan's temptation to disobey God's command). Evil may be equally known in its rejection as in its acceptance. Rejection is a far better way to know evil, for one does not have to receive the painful consequences of the choice of evil. The knowledge of good and evil was not something God was trying to keep from them, contrary to Satan's lie. God was trying to give to them in the only way possible, by decision, by a choice between good and evil. Of course it was necessary for Satan to obscure this fact that knowledge comes by decision. Otherwise there would be no necessity for eating of the fruit of the tree and thus disobeying God.
At the serpent's suggestion Eve ate of the tree and gave to her husband, Adam, who also ate (Gen. 3:6). Thus did man first sin. What was the nature of Adam's sin? Was it disobedince, unbelief, rebellion, or a transgression? It was all of these, but also something more. It was not merely something negative but something positive. It was idolatry. In Genesis 3:6 the Biblical explanation of Adam's sin is given:
"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,The woman saw it was good for food - she had probably observed this many times before; we have no record that the serpent told her that. She saw that it was a delight to the eyes. She had surely noticed this before also. Neither of these appeals had previously made this fruit a temptation to her. It was the third element that made it a temptation: It was a tree to be desired to make one wise. As was seen above, the serpent added this element (Gen. 3:5). This was not a temptation to pride as some have affirmed; it was a temptation to put wisdom and knowledge in the place of God. Adam's sin was basically misplaced ultimate allegiance. It was not just unbelief but wrong faith: trust in that which is not God. The technical Biblical term for it is idolatry.
and that it was a delight to the eyes,
and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,
she took of its fruit and ate;
and she also gave some to her husband and he ate."
The sin of the first man was the choice of wisdom and knowledge, reason, as his god. As important and good as reason is in its proper place, it it not supreme or ultimate; it is not God. Adam's sin is basically an idolatry of reason. This is essentially what classical Greek philosophy involved, where reason is the universal and necessary. Even though it was a rejection of the popular Homeric polytheistic religion, this does not mean that Greek philosophy is non-religious. "Greek thought did not cease to be religious when it became philosophical." [1] The interest of the pre-Socratic philosophers was not, or not primarily, scientific but theological. They abandoned the myths of the Homeric poets and rejected the then popular Homeric polytheistic religion, not because these were unscientific but because they presented an unworthy picture of the Divine.
"The Being or Nature which philosophy sought to reach was thought ofThe religious language and concepts of the pre-Socratics are not just relics of the pre-scientific way of thought, not yet outgrown, but the expression of their fundamental religious orientation. As Werner Jaeger says in his Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, "Though philosophy means the death of the old gods, it is itself religion." [3] And this religion is a religion of reason. This became explicit in the teaching of Socrates. Socrates lived and taught the ultimacy of reason and was executed in 339 B.C. for nothing less than the crime of rationalism - an act of destroying the gods by reason. [4] But he was only substituting for faith in one set of gods faith in another god - reason. Plato was inspired by his teacher Socrates to the same faith. The divine, according to the Greek conception of reality, is that which is not subject to change, decay or death; the gods in Homer are "immortals." The divine, therefore, cannot be known through the senses because that which is known through the senses is a world characterized by change, decay or death. But since the objects of reason are always and everywhere the same, the divine can be known through reason. This eternal, unchanging realm of the ideas, the objects of reason, is the divine.
as a worthier conception of the divine than that presented by the
anthropomorphic gods." [2]
"Plato does not hesitate to use religious language of this knowing.With this conception of the divine Aristotle is basically in agreement but without the use of the religious language. He says,
He says that both reason in man and the objects of reason are divine,
and speaks of the kinship of one with other." [5]
"For while thought is held to be the most divine of thingsAfter discussing these difficulties he concludes,
observed by us, the question how it must be situated in
order to have that character involves difficulties." [6]
"Therefore it must be of itself that divine thought thinksThis self-thinking thought is the divine. Thus both Plato and Aristotle held reason to be divine. God is the divine or eternal realm of the ideas in Plato's philosophy, or he is a self-thinking thought of Aristotle's philosophy.
(since it is the most excellent of things) and
its thinking is a thinking on thinking." [7]
According to the Greek thinkers reason is the divine or God. But since the concepts of God and man are correlatives, the Greek concept of man reflects the image of this god. Since reason is god, man viewed in the light of this god, is a rational animal. Reason is the divine part of man. Aristotle says,
"It would seem, too, this (reason) is the true self of every man,
since it is the supreme and better part. It will be strange,
then, if he should choose not his own life,
but some other's...
What is naturally proper to every creature is the
highest and pleasantest for him. And so, to man,
this will be the life of Reason, since Reason is,
in the highest sense, a man's self." [8]
This is not the Bibical view of man or God. God is not reason. God is a person (or more accurately, three persons) whose existence is not in His reason but in His unlimited sovereign free decision and will; man is also a person (or more accurately, a unity of spirit [person] and body - see Gen. 2:7) whose existence is also to be found not in his reason but in his limited free decision and will. And since decisions involve a reference to an ultimate criterion beyond the self, a god, the Bibical view of man is that he is a religious animal, a being who must have a god. Reason is not the divine part in man but is a function of the will of the person. To be is to choose, not to think or to know. Knowledge and reason depend upon a prior decision as to what is real.
"...whatever evidence one accepts,It is upon decision that any knowledge finally depends. Reason is not the ultimate criterion but the sovereign will of the Creator who made all things and has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. This basic incompatibility between the Greek and Biblical view of God and man explains the conflict between Greek philosophy and the Christian faith and the failure of the attempted synthesis of these divergent points of view by Augustine and Aquinas. All attempts to synthesize the classical Greek view of God and man with the Biblical view will fail. Worst of all, the Biblical view of God and man will be obscured and misunderstood.
whether that of experience or that of logic,
will depend upon neither logic or experience alone,
but upon a decision by the individual concerned
in favor of the one or the other." [9]
The consequence of Adam's act of sin is expressed in the second clause of Romans 5:12: "and death through sin." God had given Adam an explicit command, a prohibition, the transgression of which would result in death.
"16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying,Adam and Eve disobeyed God's command and died. But in what sense did they die? Obviously they did not immediately die physically. But since God promised that they would die in the day that they ate of the tree and since God cannot lie (Num. 23:19; I Sam. 15:29; Psa. 89:35; Heb. 6:18), they must have died that day in some other sense than physical death. The death that they experienced that day has been called spiritual death. Even though the distinction between spiritual and physical death is not made explicitly anywhere in the Scriptures, the distinction is implied by (Gen. 2:17; 3:8) and assumed by the Scriptures (Matt. 8:22; Luke 9:60; I Tim. 5:6). Jesus recognized this distinction between spiritual death and physical death when he said, "Let the dead bury their dead" (Matt. 8:22 KJV; Luke 9:60), that is, "Let the spiritually dead bury their physically dead." This spiritual death is implied by the Hebrew experssion which is translated "you shall surely die" in Gen. 2:17 and which is literally "dying you shall die." That they died spiritually is clearly seen in that they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God (Gen. 3:8) and later were driven out of the garden, away from the tree of life (Gen. 3:23-24). Just as physical death is separation of man's spirit (the person or self) from the body and not extinction, annihilation or merely the dissolution of the living organism, so spiritual death is the separation, alienation of man from God - not the death or annihilation of the spirit (Eph 4:18; Col. 1:21). It is the opposite of spiritual life which is to know God personally and have fellowship and communion with Him (John 17:3; 5:24; Eph. 2:1; Gal. 4:8-9; I Cor. 1:9; I John 1:3, 5-8). Spiritual death is a negative or no personal relationship between man and God. It is like a barrier or "iron curtain" between them. It is separation from God or, more accurately, it separates man from God. Death is a power. It is personified in the Scriptures as a king who reigns over the whole human race. Paul says, "by the offense of one, death reigned through one" (Rom. 5:17; see also Rom. 5:14). Death as a kingly power separates man from God (spiritual death) and brings about eventually the separation of man's spirit from his body (physical death). Physical death is the outward expression and necessary accompaniment of spiritual death (Psa. 88:3-5; Isa. 38:10-11, 18; Psa. 6:5; 30:9; 115:17; Eccl. 9:18). Even though we may distinguish between them, they are never separated from each other. From the Biblical point of view spiritual and physical death are inseparable, and in the Scriptures death always seems to include both. This may be the reason that Jesus (John 11:11-14) and other early Christians (Acts 7:60-8:1; I Cor. 15:18, 20; I Thess. 4:13-15) spoke of physical death as "fallen asleep" in Christ. Since believers in Christ had been saved "from death to life" in Christ, they had not really died when they died physically but had just "fallen asleep" in Christ.
'From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat
from it you shall surely die.'" (Gen. 2:16-17 NAS)
But spiritual death not only affects the relationship of man to God, it also affects the relationship of man with his fellowman. This is apparent from the fact that Adam and Eve were ashamed before each other of their nakeness and sought to make themselves clothes for covering (Gen. 3:7). Men cannot bear the thought of letting other people see their true selves. They hide themselves behind masks and often pretend to be something other than they really are. This is because the fellowhip with their fellow man is broken. They are separated and alienated from each other as well as from God (I John 3:14). Spiritual death is spiritual isolation from man and from God. But spiritual death also affects the relationship of man to himself. Man's body is no longer under the complete control of man's will. Just as man has lost his dominion over the physical and biological world as a result of Adam's sin, he has also lost his dominion over his own body. He can no longer completely control his desires and impulses. It too lies under the curse (Gen. 3:17- 19). We groan inwardly because of the effects of the curse on our physical bodies (Rom. 8:22-23; II Cor. 5:2-4). Our bodies are not only physically dying, subject to physical death, mortal, but they are spiritually dead also - out of fellowship with our spirits. "Your bodies are dead because of sin" (Rom. 8:10), because of the sin of Adam (Rom. 5:12). As the result, physical and spiritual death are at work in us (II Cor. 4:12a). "For the flesh sets its desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you wish" (Gal. 5:17 ERS). This is not to say that the body is sinful or that we have a sinful nature. This only means that our bodies are spiritually dead, not under the complete control of our spirits (Matt. 26:41; Mark 14:38). Spiritual death has affected the relationship of man to himself as well as to God and his fellow man. And this is the result of Adam's act of sin. Man has fallen from the image of God in which he was created. When Adam and Eve sinned, they lost both the dominion over creation (Gen. 3:17-19) and fellowship with each other (Gen. 3:7, 11-12). However, the presupposition of these - the freedom of choice - was not lost; the possibility of restoration to the image of God is still there in man.
Adam's sin did not just affect himself and his wife alone, but all his descendants. This is expressed in the third clause of Romans 5:12: "and so death passed unto all men." Adam's descendants are not born in the image of God but in the image of Adam. For when Adam became the father of a son, Seth, he begat him in his own likeness, after his own image (Gen. 5:3). Adam's descendants now bear the image of the man of dust (I Cor. 15:47-49), the old man (Col. 3:9; Eph. 4:22). They are each subject to death, physical and spiritual. According to Romans 5:14 and 17 death reigns as a king over the human race. Men today, Adam's descendants, are different from Adam himself. As Adam was originally created, he was physically and spiritually alive, walking in fellowship with God (Gen. 3:8). There was no barrier between him and God. But this is not true of Adam's descendants. They are born spiritually dead and in the process of dying physically. From birth they are in a state of alienation from God. This is not because of anything they have done but because of what Adam had done. Paul makes this important point by the digression in Romans 5:13-14:
"13 For until the law sin was in the world;In the period between Adam and Moses, before the Mosaic law was given, there was no law. And since there was no law, there could be no transgression of it (Rom. 4:15b) and death was not the result of sin. Those between Adam and Moses did not have a divine commandment like Adam or a divine law like the children of Israel after Moses that makes death the result of sin. They did not sin like Adam; their sin was not a transgression of a commandment or law which made death the result of sin. But yet death reigned between Adam and Moses. They died not because of their own sins but because of the sin of Adam. And this true not only of those descendants of Adam between Adam and Moses but of all Adam's descendants: they are all born spiritually dead and in the process of dying physically not because of their own sins but because of Adam's sin.
but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses,
even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of the
transgression of Adam." (ERS)
Man is not responsible for this condition of spiritual and physical death inherited from Adam. The descendants of Adam are neither held accountable for the sin of Adam nor for the spiritual or physical death resulting from it (Rom. 5:13-14). They are only responsible for their own personal rejection of the true God and their ultimate commitment to and trust in a false god. Even though man is born into the world spiritually dead, alienated from God, not knowing God personally, he is not thereby exempt from responsibility for the choice of a false god. As Paul says in Romans 1:20, "...since the creation of the world the invisible things of Him, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, so that they are without excuse." (ERS) This knowledge of the true God leaves man without an excuse for his idolatry. This knowledge does not save him because it is a knowledge about God and not a personal knowledge of God. But even though it does not save him, it is sufficient to leave man without excuse for his idolatry. He knows that his impersonal and/or powerless god is a false god and is not the personal, all powerful true God (Isa. 46:5-11; Jer. 10:10-15). Man is thus responsible for his personal rejection of the true God and his trust in a false god. And man is also responsible for remaining in the state of spiritual death when deliverance from it is offered to him in the person of Jesus Christ. If he refuses the gift of eternal and spiritual life in Christ Jesus (I John 5:12), he must reap the harvest and receive the wages of his decision, eternal death. "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 6:23). If a man refuses the gift of spiritual and eternal life in Jesus Christ and continues to put his trust in a false god and to remain in spiritual death, then after he dies physically, at the judgment (Heb. 9:27) he will receive the wages of his decision, eternal death. Eternal death is the continuation of spiritual death, after physcial death and the last judgment, into eternity without the possibility of change. This is hell, eternal separation from God, the second death (Rev. 20:14; 21:6-8). No one sends a man to hell; he chooses it himself and the last judgment confirms that decision for eternity. Thus there are three kinds of death: physcial, spiritual and eternal death. Man is not responsible for the physical or spiritual death, which he has received from Adam, but only for the eternal death.
The relationship between the death, spiritual and physical, that was passed unto all men, and the sin of all men is given in the last clause of Romans 5:12: eph ho pantes hemarton which is usually translated "because all [men] sinned" (RSV, NAS, NIV).
The interpretation of this clause hangs on the meaning of the Greek prepositional phrase at its beginning, eph ho. This phrase is made up of a preposition epi and a relative pronoun ho. The preposition epi has several different meanings depending upon the immediate context and the case of the noun or pronoun with which it occurs. The primary meaning of the preposition epi is superposition, on, upon. Since the relative pronoun ho is in the dative case, the metaphorical meaning of ground, or reason, seems best here for the preposition epi. Thus it should be translated on the ground of, by reason of, on the condition of, because of. [11] The meaning of the relative pronoun depends upon its antecedent. In the Greek language the relative pronoun agrees with the antecedent in number and gender. [12] Here the relative pronoun ho is singular in number but it may be either masculine or neuter in gender. Accordingly the following interpretations have been given to this phrase.
"13 For until the law sin was in the world;Thus by giving the prepositional phrase eph ho the meaning "because," the meaning of the verse is obscured and Paul is made to appear to contradict himself. This interpretation of the clause has lead one famous German New Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultman, to conclude that Paul is obscure in this passage; he says,
but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses,
even over those who had not sinned after the likeness of the
transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who was to come."
(Rom. 5:13-14 ERS)"...For if by the offense of one the many died,
much more did the grace of God and
the gift by grace of the one man, Jesus Christ,
abound unto the many." (Rom. 5:15 ERS)"For if by the offense of the one,
death reigned through the one,
much more shall those who receive
the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness
reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ." (Rom. 5:17 ERS)"21 For as by a man came death,
by a man has come the resurrection of the dead.
22 For as in Adam all die,
so also in Christ shall all be made alive."
(I Cor. 15:21-22)
"For the context, it would have been sufficient toIt is not Paul who is obscure here but his interpreters and their interpretation of this phrase has caused the obscurity and makes Paul to appear to contradict himself. Thus this interpretation must be rejected.
mention only Adam's sin; there was no need to
speak of the sin of the rest of man, for whether
they were sinners or not, through Adam they had
simply been doomed to death - an idea that was
expressed not only in Judaism but also by Paul
himself (v. 14). However, Paul gets into
obscurity here because he also wants to have the
death of men after Adam regarded as the punishment
or consequence of their own sin: 'and so death
spread to all men - because all men sinned'" (v.12)! [17]
Furthermore, this interpretation of the clause destroys the parallel which Paul draws between Adam and Christ in this passage, Romans 5:12, and in I Cor. 15. If Paul had meant that all men became subject to death because of the sins that they themselves committed, then it would have to follow, if there is a parallelism between Adam and Christ, that all men enter into life because of the righteousness that they themselves have achieved. This is certainly the opposite of what Paul says. Life is a gift which each man may receive by faith (Rom. 5:17, 15; etc.) and not something they earn by their righteousness. There are differences between Adam and Christ (Rom. 5:15-17) but this is certainly not one of them. This interpretation of the clause, then, destroys the parallelism between Adam and Christ and thus for this reason also it must be rejected.
"If St. Paul had meant this, why did he not say so?This interpretation has all the appearances of being read into the passage (eisegesis) rather than out of it (exegesis). Furthermore, the phrase pantes hamarton [all sinned] normally refers to the personal sins of all men as it does in Romans 3:23. The aorist tense of the verb harmarton [sinned] signifies nothing as to the completeness of the action. A constative aorist may refer "to a momentary action (Acts 5:5), a fact or action extended over a period of time (Eph. 2:4), or a succession of acts or events (II Cor. 11:25)." [19] Nowhere in the Scriptures does it teach that all men sinned in Adam. On the contrary, this interpretation appears to contradict what Paul says in verse 14:
The insertion of en Adam [in Adam] would have removed all ambiguity." [18]
"Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses,If all men sin when Adam sinned, then they all would have sinned after the likeness of Adam's trangression. But those from Adam to Moses did not sin after the likeness of Adam's transgresssion because there was no law from Adam to Moses (Rom. 5:13). Therefore, all men did not sin when Adam sinned. Thus it appears that this interpretation of the clause must also be rejected.
even over those who had not sinned
after the likeness of the transgression of Adam." (ERS)
How is it possible for all men to sin because of death? This may be explained in the following way. Since man is born into this world spiritually dead, not knowing the true God personally, and since man by the structure of his freedom must choose a god, then he will obviously choose a false god because he does not know personally the true God. Since the true God is not a living reality to him, and since he must have a god, man will choose some part or aspect of reality as his god, deifying it. "...they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator..." (Rom. 1:25). Paul, writing to the Galatians, described this relationship of death to sin when he reminded them of their condition before they became Christians.
"Formerly, when you did not know God,Not to "know God" personally as a living reality is to be spiritually dead. And a man is "in bondage to beings that are no gods" when he chooses them as his gods. He is in bondage to them because he does not personally know the only true God, that is, because he is spiritually dead. Thus man sins (idolatry, basically) because he is spiritually dead. This relationship between death and sin is what Paul is describing in the last clause of Romans 5:12: "because of death all men sinned." Spiritual death in the case of Adam's descendants leads to sin; not the other way around.
you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods" (Gal. 4:8).
This is the view of Theodor Zahn (1838-1933). Lenski says concerning his interpretation of this phrase:
"Another turn is given the phrase so as to have it means:
'under which condition.' letting Paul say
that in Adam's case it was first sin then death
but in the case of all men it was death first and
then life of sinning (Zahn's view)." [22]
Also Berkouwer says concerning Zahn's view:
"Along with the two explanations referred to here
there is still a third, namely that of Zahn.
This holds that the issue at stake is not
an 'inclusiveness' in Adam, since this thought
is untenable ('unvollziehbar') for anyone
who does not believe in the pre-existence of souls
in Adam (Zahn, Komm., p. 265);
concept of "all men in Adam" imperils
the image of 'through one man.'
Therefore Zahn translates: 'and on the basis of this
(or, under these circumstances) all have sinned' (267).
Through the sin of the one man death come upon all,
and in such circumstances, all have now sinned.
Death was the foundation 'on which the sinning
of all the children of Adam has sprung forth.'" [23]
The only reasons that are given for rejecting this interpretation are not grammatical but theological. Godet's objections to this interpretation are clearly theological as are those of Sanday and Headlam. [24] This interpretation clearly does not fit into the legalistic theological framework of Roman Catholic and Protestant scholasticism which sees death only as the penalty of sin. Death is usually taken to mean physical death or the penalty of sin, and thus it is impossible to sin because of death.
The relationship of death to sin now after the fall is different from the relationship between them at the fall. At the fall death was the result of sin ("through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin." Rom. 5:12ab ERS). This was established by the divine decree implicit in the command God gave to Adam ("for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Gen. 2:17 NAS). Adam's sin was unique since it was the act of the head of the race; Adam's position in the human race is unique, as Paul teaches clearly in Romans 5:12-21 and I Cor. 15:21-22, 44-49. His sin affected the human race in a way that the sin of no other man after him has; it involved the whole race in death, spiritual and physical. Adam's descendants do not have to sin to die, spirituallly and physically. They are born into the world over which death reigns and are involved from birth in spiritual and physical death ("Let the dead bury their dead" Matt. 8:22 KJV; Luke 9:60). Now since the fall, sin is the result of death. Since the fall, man does not have to sin to die but sins because he is already dead. Since the fall, this is the basic relationship between death and sin. Later, "the law came in besides" (Rom. 5:20 ERS) and superimposed upon this basic relationship of sin-because-of-death (spiritual) the relationship of death-because-of-sin. "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezek. 18:4, 20: see also Deut. 24:16; Isa. 59:2). The law clarifies not only the nature of sin (Rom. 3:20) as basically idolatry (Ex. 20:3) but also man's responsibility for his sins (see the whole of chapter 18 of Ezekiel). But the coming of the law did not change the basic relationship: man sins because he is spiritually dead.
Paul expresses this basic relationship between death and sin in other words elsewhere in his letters. For example, in Romans 5:21, he expresses it in the following way: "...sin reigned in death." Sin reigns as a king in the sphere of death. That is, death is the sphere in which sin reigns as a king over all men. Death reigns as king over his kingdom of death; "...by the offense of one, death reigned through one..." (Rom. 5:17; see also Rom. 5:14). Death reigns over all men and sin reigns as a king within the sphere and kingdom of death. Sin reigns in the sphere of death because death is the ground or condition upon which all men sin. Another example is I Cor. 15:55-56:
"O Death, where is thy victory?Paul expresses the relationship of death to sin by calling sin the sting of death and not death the sting of sin. Augustine tried to overturn this relationship by trying to make the genitive "of death" into an objective genitive rather than a subjective genitive. He says:
O Death, where is thy sting?
The sting of death is sin,
and the power of sin is the law."
"For all die in the sin; they do not sin in the death;The distinction between objective and subjective genitive here is irrelevant; the genitive is a possessive genitive. The cup of death is not a parallel case. Whose sting is it? Is it the sting of sin or the sting of death? "O Death, where is thy sting?" It is death's sting by which death hurts all men. And since death causes sin, death can hurt man. For if death could not cause sin, then there would be no fear of death; death would have lost its sting. Sin gives death its sting. Some have argued that the death Paul is talking about in I Cor. 15 is physical death since he is discussing there the resurrection of the dead. It is true that physical death is in the foreground in this passage of Scripture, but, as was pointed out earlier, from the Biblical point of view physical and spiritual death are inseparable and the Biblical concept of death always includes both. Thus spiritual death is not totally absent from Paul's thoughts as are not other concepts which seem to be irrelevant in the context - "the power of sin is the law." And as a careful study of Romans 7 will show, the concepts of spiritual death, sin and the law form an interlocking complex in Paul's thinking. The man under law is in spiritual death and spiritual death leads to sin; hence the man under law sins because of spiritual death (Rom. 7:23).
for when sin precedes, death follows -
not when death precedes, sin follows.
Because sin is the sting of death -
that is, the sting by whose stroke death occurs,
not the sting with which death strikes.
Just as poison, if it is drunk, is called the cup of death,
because by the cup death is caused,
not because the cup is caused by the death." [25]
Even though man is born into the world spiritually dead, alienated from God, not knowing God personally, he has not lost his freedom of choice. He does not have a sinful nature which causes him to sin. Spiritual death has not done anything to man's ability to choose. He neither lacks the alternatives to choose between nor the ablility to choose. Then why does man sin, that is, why does he choose a false god? He chooses a false god because the true God is not a living reality to him. He knows about the true God (Rom. 1:19-20) but he does not know him personally as a living reality. And lacking this personal knowledge, man does not have an adequate reason for choosing the true God. The true God Himself is the only adequate reason for choosing Him. He cannot be choosen for any other reason than Himself. For then He would not be God to that person but that reason for which he is choosen would be God. Only a living encounter with living and true God can produce the situation in which God Himself may be choosen. God Himself is the only adequate condition for the choice of Himself. Thus apart from the personal revelation of God Himself, man will usually choose as his god that which seems like god to him from the creation around him or from among the creations of his own hands and mind. Man does not necessarily have to sin, but he usually will. And spiritual death (in the absence of this personal revelation of the true God) is not the necessary cause but the ground or condition of his choice of a false god. Therefore, since all men are under the reign of death, all have sinned. "For all have sinned and are in want of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23 ERS). The glory of God is the manifest presence of God, and all men do not have this; they are all in want or need of it. [26] They are all spiritually dead. Therefore, all have sinned.
This view of the relationship between death and sin affects our understanding of the need for salvation and of salvation. Since all men sinned as the result of death, then for man to be saved from sin (and hence from God's wrath) he must be saved from death, primarily, from spiritual death. This is why man needs to be saved. He is spiritually dead and dying physically. Man needs life -- he needs to be made alive -- to be raised from the dead, not just physically but spiritually. And if he receives life, if he is made alive to God, death which leads to sin is removed. And if death which leads to sin is removed, then man can be saved from sin. Thus man needs to be saved primarily from death and then secondarily from sin. Accordingly, salvation must be understood to be primarily from death to life, and then secondarily from sin to righteousness. And this is exactly what God has accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son. He died our death ("My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?") and we are made alive together with Him in His resurrection (Eph. 2:4-5). His resurrection is our resurrection. Now having taken away death, the cause of sin, sin (idolatry) can be removed. When one turns from his false gods (repentance) and to the true God and receives by faith Jesus Christ whom He sent, one is made alive to God with Christ, having received Him who is the life (John 14:6). Thus that one is saved from death to life, and consequently from sin to righteousness, faith being reckoned as righteousness.
"23 But the words, 'it was reckoned to him as righteousness,'
were not written for his [Abraham's] sake,
24 but for ours also.
It [righteousness] will be reckoned to us who believe in him
that raised from the dead Jesus our Lord,
25 who was put to death for trespasses and
raised for our justification." (Rom. 4:23-25).
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[1] Michael B. Foster, Mystery and Philosophy
(London: SCM Press Ltd., 1957) p. 32.
[3] Werner Jaeger, Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers
(Oxford: The Claredon Press, 1947), p. 72.
[4] William Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
(New York: Doubleday & Co., 1958), p. 72.
[5] Forster, Mystery and Philosophy, p. 32.
[6] Aristotle Metaphysics, 12. 9. 1074b16, in vol. 8 of
Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), p. 605.
[8] Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, 10. 7. 1178a2-7,
quoted in Barrett, Irrational Man, p. 78.
[9] Cherbonnier, "Biblical Metaphysics," p. 372.
[11] G. Abbott-Smith A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1948), pp. 166-167 and
F. Arnt and F. Wilbur Gingrich,
A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1957), pp. 286-287.
[12] J. Gresham Machen, New Testament Greek for Beginners
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957), p.47.
H. E. Dana and Julius R. Mantey,
A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), p. 125.
A. T. Robertson and W. Hersey Davis,
A New Short Grammar of the Greek Testament
(New York: Harper & Bros. Publishers, 1933), p. 269.
[13] Augustine, "Against Two Letters of the Pelagians," bk. 4, Chap. 7, in
Philip Schaff,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Vol. 5
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), p. 419.
[14] William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam,
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans in
The International Critical Commentary
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915), p. 133.
[15] John Murray, The Imputation of Adam's Sin
(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1959), p. 9.
F. Godet, Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 1977), p. 209
This commentary was originally published
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1881), p. 350.
[16] F. L. Godet, Commentary On Romans, p. 207 and
Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p.133.
[17] Rudolf Bultman, Theology of the New Testament
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951), p. 252.
[18] William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam,
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans in
The International Critical Commentary
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915), p. 134.
[19] Dana and Mantey, Manual Grammar, p. 196.
[20] Godet, Epistle to the Romans, pp. 252-353. Sanday and Headlam
say, p. 133,
"Some Greeks quoted by Photius also took the rel. as masc. with
antecedent thanatos: 'in which,' i.e. 'in death,' which is even more
impossible."
I have not been able to ascertain who are these Greeks that were
quoted by Photius since Sanday and Headlam do not give any references.
I have found that Theodore of Mopsuestia in his treatise "Against the
Defenders of Original Sin" held to such an interpretation. Another
contemporary of Augustine, Mark the Hermit, also held to a similar view.
[21] "epi with its relative pronoun refers back to the preceding
thanatos (eph ho = epi thanato)..."
Ethelbert Stauffer, New Testament Theology, trans. John Marsh
(New York: The Macmillan Co., 1955), p. 270, note 176.
However, he goes on to give a different meaning to the preposition.
"[epi] does not mean as translations mostly suppose 'on the basis
of' but 'in the direction of' (cf. Phil. 4:10; II Tim. 2:14)... Here
epi is the reciprocal preposition to the dia of the first
phrase. So we must accordingly paraphrase: 'death to which they fell man by
man through their sin.'", p. 270. This turns out to be the same interpretation
as "because all sinned."
[22] R. C. H. Lenski,
The Interpretation of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans
(Columbus, Ohio: Wartburg Press, 1960), p. 361.
[23] G. C. Berkouwer, Sin
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971),
p. 494, footnote 37.
[24] Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p. 134.
[25] Augustine, "Against Two Letters of the Pelagians" in Philip Schaff,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 5
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), p. 419.
See also Augustine,
"On the Merits and Remission of Sins and On the Baptism of Infants",
bk. 3. chap. 20. Schaff, pp. 76-77.
[26] G. Abbot-Smith,
A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, p. 464.
C. K. Barrett, The Epistle to the Romans
(New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1957), p. 74.