“When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.” Romans 5:12 NLT 

Footsteps #300. Have you noticed that we don’t need to teach our children how to sin? It comes naturally as Rom.3:23 has already pointed out – sin is universal. Where ever there is history there is sin. It is caught in our lives, our thoughts, hungers, and ambitions. It is bundled in humanity’s avarice and cruelty Sin is in kindness and generosity. Sin is a net of good and evil. This is humanity’s one story! 

Sin came, Paul says, through one man, this caused death, which spread to all humanity. The implication is clear that all people are sinners through some connection to Adam. Paul does not explain how sin and death spread to everyone. He just treats it as a fact. In Romans 5:12-21, rather than trying to explore how sin and death took over humanity, he just focuses on Adam and Christ as models of two types of life. Paul is not interested in showing us how big a mess Adam got us into, he is interested only in Christ’s solution that not only cleaned up the mess but went far beyond. We were all lost in Adam but redeemed in Christ and we had nothing to do with either event. 

Notice vs13-14 How could Paul say all people sinned and therefore subject to death when they didn’t have the law. Did he not say in Rom.4.25 that “where there is no law there is no transgression”? V13: Of course sin was in the world before the coming of the law. He could have pulled up many illustrations of idolatry, murder, adultery, lying, etc. Sin and its results are major themes of the Bible throughout the patriarchal period. That existence of sin before the giving of the law on Sinai is a fact that none of Paul’s readers would doubt. Even before the law given on tablets of stone at Sinai, we were under its condemnation. V14 declares that death reigned from Adam to Moses. The law existed before Sinai. (Gen.26:5) God had Moses write it down on tablets of stone, demonstrating its permanence. It is evident that the law and death reigned from Adam to Moses.