"And so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned." Romans 5v12
The word "have" is supplied by the translators for the sake of sense, but in this case it hides the true sense, and so should read "all sinned". The only way this can be properly understood is that all sinned in Adam. This is the biblical concept of imputation in that the one sin of Adam with its consequences was transferred automatically to the rest of us. We can already hear protests of "unfair" "unjust." Why am I made responsible for another man's sin? The answer is, that's just the way it is; if we cannot accept Adam's sin imputed to us, neither can we accept Christ's righteousness imputed to us. We did not live a perfect life, we did not measure up to God's standard, only Christ did. The repeated statement in these verses "the obedience of one" as opposed to the disobedience of Adam means that only in Christ and His obedience to God can any human being be saved. If we accept the one we must also accept the other. It is much easier to understand the imputation of Christ's perfect life and sacrifice for us if we understand the imputation of Adam's disobedience to us.
The truth of IMPUTATION, cursing or blessing by association, is found elsewhere in the Bible. In Exodus 20v5 it says "I the Lord am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." He is an example of the imputation by association in a bad sense. In Hebrews 7v9 it says " Levi, who received tithes, paid tithes in Abraham for he was yet in the loins of his father Abraham when Melchisedek met him." here is a case of the imputation of good before even the Levites were born. This is just how it works. This situation applied said Paul particularly in the period "from Adam to Moses." During that time there was no law and where there is no law, sin is not imputed. The only law that existed was God's commandment to Adam "of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree in the midst of the garden you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat, you will surely die." Adam broke the law, as we know, but this law was not given to his descendants until Moses came. In this period of over 2,500 years there was no divine law in existence in the world, yet people died, without exception. During this time Paul says "sin was in the world," as seen by the existence of death. This can only mean that in this period death reigned because and only because of Adam's sin which was imputed to the rest of us.
He further explains that "death reigned even over those who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression." This could mean since only Adam received a Divine prohibition, the judgement of death came upon those who lived and sinned in ignorance rather than in knowledge. By this I do not mean to minimise in any way the practice of sins, mankind lived apart from God, and how they acted was an offence to the living God, but in fact they did so in ignorance. This statement by Paul could also refer to those in obvious innocence, like infants, and imbeciles, who are clearly not responsible for any sin, yet they still die. All of this demonstrates that the human race was doomed because of the one sin of Adam. At the very point of Adam's sin in Eden, God proclaimed a way back for man by announcing the seed of the woman who would bruise the head of the serpent (Satan) who had brought about man's downfall.
In a modern world, with all its hype and glitzy promises, it is difficult to understand the seriousness of the Fall that took place thousands of years ago, but the evidence of the judgement on sin is all around us. Let us for a moment consider the effects of that one seemingly trivial sin; the bearing of children in sorrow; the hard labour imposed because the ground was cursed (hard to till, the existence of thorns and thistles and as we now know multitudes of weeds) banishment from the presence of God (no communications from God or to God) and ultimately death, preceded by disease and all the ills that we know this one sin has brought on the world in which we live.
The history of the world is the story of the universal consequences of evil brought upon the world because of the one sin of Adam. It is not, however, the end of the story because as we shall see, and in the words of Paul at the close of this section, "Adam is a type (a figure) of HIM THAT WAS TO COME." We live in a day when the anti-type to Adam, Jesus Christ, the promised seed of the woman has now come and this is what Paul is explaining.
We shall see later that " the coming One" would reverse all the curse that the sin of Adam brought on the world. The fact that Adam is stated to be a type of Christ, Adam's role being disobedience, the role of Christ being one of obedience, we shall be focusing on the triumphant obedience of Christ to the will of God on our behalf. The phrase "the obedience of One" summarises His entire existence on this planet from birth to death and is seen as one act of obedience, and one accomplished act of righteousness, and this is the only hope for humanity, but it is a triumphant hope and is described as the abundance of the grace of God towards all mankind.
Tomorrow d.v. we consider Adam as a type of Christ.
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