Verses 12-21. - (b) From consideration of the blessed effects on believers of faith in the reconciliation through Christ, the apostle now passes to the effects of that reconciliation as the position of the whole human race before God. His drift is that the reconciliation corresponds to the original transgression; both proceeded from one, and both include all mankind in their results; as the one introduced sin into the world, and, as its consequence, death, so the other introduced righteousness, and, as its consequence, life. It may be observed that in ch. 1 also he has in one sense traced sin backward through the past ages, so as to show how all mankind had come to be under condemnation for it. But the subject was regarded from a different point of view, the purpose of the argument being also different. There he was addressing the heathen world, his purpose being to convince the whole of it of sin, on the score of obvious culpability; and, suitably to this design, his argument is based, not on Scripture, but on observation of the facts of human nature and human history. It did not fall within his scope to trace the evil to its original cause. But here, having shown Jew and Gentile to be on the same footing with respect to sin, and having entered (at Romans 3:21) on the doctrinal portion of his Epistle, he goes to Scripture for the origin of the evil, and finds it there attributed to Adam's original transgression, which implicated the human race as an organic whole. This is the scriptural solution of the mystery, which he here gives, not only as accounting for things being as they are, but also, in connection with the stage of the argument at which he has now arrived, as explaining the necessity and the purpose of the atonement for the whole guilty race, effected by the second Adam, Christ. Verse 12. - Wherefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all sinned. To this sentence, introduced by ὥσπερ, there is no apodosis. One has been sought in the course of what follows, and by some found in ver. 18. But ver. 18 is a recapitulation rather than resumption of the argument, and is, further, too far removed to be intended as a formal apodesis. It is not really necessary to find one. The natural one to the first clause of the sentence would have been, "So through One righteousness entered into the world, and life through righteousness;" and such may be supposed to have been in the writer's mind. But, after his manner, he goes off to enlarge on the idea expressed in the second clause, and never formally completes his sentence. A similar anacoluthon is found in 1 Timothy 1:3. Sin is here, as elsewhere, regarded as a power antagonistic to God, which has been introduced into the world of man, working and manifesting itself in concrete human sin (cf. Romans 5:21; Romans 6:12, 14; Romans 7:8, 9, 17). Its ultimate origin is not explained. Scripture offers no solution of the old insoluble problem, κόθεν τὸ κακὸν: its existence at all under the sway of the Omnipotent Goodness in which we believe is one of the deep mysteries that have ever baffled human reason. All that is here touched on is its entrance into the world of man, the word εἰσῆλθε implying that it already existed beyond this mundane sphere. The reference is, of course, to Gem fit., as the scriptural account of the beginning of sin in our own world. It is there attributed to "the serpent," whom we regard as a symbol of some mysterious power of evil, external to man, to which primeval man, in the exercise of his prerogative of free-will, succumbed, and so let sin in. Through sin entered also death as its consequence; which (primarily at least) must mean here physical death, this being all that is denoted in Genesis (comp. Genesis 3:19 with Gen 2:17), and necessary to be understood in what follows in the chapter before us (see ver. 14). But here a difficulty presents itself to modern thought. Are we to understand that man was originally so constituted as not to die? - that even his bodily organization was immortal, and would have continued so but for the fatal taint of sin? We find it difficult at the present day to conceive this, however bound we may feel to submit our reason to revelation in a matter so remote, so unknown, and so mysterious as the beginning of human life on the earth, in whatever aspect viewed, and indeed of all conscious life, must ever be. But St. Paul himself, in another place, speaks of "the first man" having been, even on his first creation, "of the earth, earthy" (1 Corinthians 15:45, 47), with a body, like ours, of" flesh and blood," in its own nature corruptible (1 Corinthians 15:50). Neither is the narrative of Genesis 3. inconsistent with this idea. For it seems to imply that, but for his eating of the mystical "tree of life" (whatever may be meant by it), the first man was in his own nature mortal, and that his liability to death ensued on his being debarred from it (Genesis 3:22). It may be impossible for us to understand or explain. The following considerations, however, may perhaps help us in some degree.

(1) When we pay regard to man's spiritual capabilities and aspirations, even as he is now, death does seem to us an anomaly - a contradiction to the ideal of his inner self. That a beast of the field should die appears to us no such anomaly; for it has done all that it seems to have been meant to do, or to be capable of doing: it has served as a link in the continuance of its kind, not having been conscious, as far as we know, of anything beyond its surroundings. But man (i.e. man as he is capable of being, so as to represent the capacity of humanity) connects himself in his inner self with eternity; his mind resents the idea of death, as an unwelcome stoppage to its development and its yearnings. It goes on ever maturing its power, enlarging its range, thirsting for higher knowledge, entertaining affections that seem eternal; and then bodily decay and death arrest its progress as it were in mid-career. Thus death, as it comes to us and affects us now, seems to involve a contradiction between man's inner consciousness and the facts of his existence at present; it is shrunk from as something that ought not to be. It is true that, when faith has once grasped the idea of bodily death being but a transition to a better life, the anomaly disappears: but such is its aspect to the natural man: and thus we can enter into the scriptural idea of death, as it comes to us so inevitably now, being something not originally meant for man, though we may be unable to say how it would have been with him had not sin entered.

(2) Though physical death, obvious to men's eyes, and not spiritual death of the soul either in this world or in the world to come, is here evidently in view (see ver. 14), yet we must bear in mind the general idea associated with the word "death" in the New Testament. It is sometimes used so as to imply more than the mere parting of the soul from the body, including in the conception of what it is all the woes and infirmities that flesh is heir to, which are its precursors in the present state of things (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:31; 2 Corinthians 4:10, 12, 16; 2 Corinthians 6:9), being thus regarded also as the visible sign before our eyes of man's present alienation from the life that is in God. St. Paul, then, in the passage before us, though alleging mere natural death as sufficient evidence of sin, may be conceived as having in his view Death armed as he has been with a peculiar sting to man through all known time. The main point of his argument is that the doom recorded in Genesis as having been pronounced on Adam had obviously remained in force throughout the ages; and there is surely no difficulty in assenting to the position that the dominion of death, as it has been exercised since that doom, is evidence of its continuance, and consequently of sin. "For that all sinned" (more correctly so than, as in the Authorized Version, "all have sinned") seems to mean, not that all since Adam in their own persons committed sin, but that all sinned in him - were implicated in the sin of the progenitor (cf. ver. 15; also 1 Corinthians 15:22, "in Adam all die;" and 2 Corinthians 5:14, where all are said to have died to sin in the death of Christ). The doctrine of original, as distinct from actual, sin, thus intimated, has been, as is well known, the subject of much controversy since the time of Pelagius. It does not fall within the proper scope of this Commentary to discuss the theories of divines, but rather to set forth candidly what the language of the portions of Scripture commented on in itself most obviously means, viewed in the light afforded by general Scripture teaching. With respect to the passage before us, it may suffice to say:

(1) That more must be understood than the mere imputation of Adam's transgression to his descendants, irrespectively of any guilt of theirs. This notion, which jars on our conception of Divine justice, is precluded by the entire drift of the earlier chapters of this Epistle, which was the actual culpability of mankind at large, and also by what follows here, sin itself being spoken of - not the imputation of it only - as being in the world after Adam, and universal too, as evidenced by the continued reign of death. All men are said to have sinned in the sin of the first transgressor, because sin was thus introduced, as a power in human nature antagonistic to God, and because this "infection of nature" has continued since. And thus

(2) the Pelagian position is also precluded, according to which "original sin standeth (only) in the following of Adam" (Art. 9.), i.e. in actual imitation of his sin, which man is supposed to have still, as Adam had, the power to avoid. For it is expressly said (ver. 14) that death reigned over - in proof that sin infected - even those who had not sinned after the similitude of his transgression. But

(3) we must guard against confusion between the idea of man's natural liability to condemnation on the ground of transmitted sinfulness, and that of God's actual dealing with him. It is nowhere said or implied that the natural infection which they could not help will be visited on individuals in the final judgment. All that is insisted on by St. Paul is that man, in himself, as he is now, falls short of the glory of God, and cannot put in a plea for acceptance on the ground of his own righteousness. But he no less emphatically declares that "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound."