Romans 5:13

Rom_5:13-14

For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed where there is no law.

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses.

The sin of those who died before the law

1. Sin supposes law.

2. But sin was in the world before the law.

3. Hence there is a law in the conscience to which all men are amenable. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The reign of death

is--

I. Perpetuated by sin.

II. Universal. Because all have sinned either against--

1. Positive commands, as Adam.

2. Or the moral law written in the heart.

3. Or in the Word of God.

III. Absolute. He strikes where and when he pleases--the young and old, etc.

IV. Irresistible. All must bow to his sceptre.

V. Would be eternal, but for the interposition of Christ. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

In Adam all die

1. Some say that there can be no criminality where there is not wilful transgression of the law: and therefore God could not impute guilt from birth to every child of Adam. To this we answer, that there is no other way of explaining the certain facts. All men suffer the penalty of sin and death. Now, why? Our explanation is that they are primarily held guilty before God. To deny this is to involve the question in yet greater darkness. It is to charge God with inflicting suffering upon our whole race without a reasonable cause.

2. Paul argues in the text that death had reigned from Adam to Moses, and therefore could not have resulted merely from the violation of the Mosaic law. It took effect on myriads who had no law to guide them but the dictates of conscience or of tradition, and on children who died in unintelligent infancy. But death is the practical imputation of sin: and such imputation implies the existence of a broken law. What law, then, can it be, but Gods command to Adam? And what breach of its but his transgression? And therefore, it was because they were regarded as having been implicated in Adams sin, that they were surrendered to the tyranny of death. Yet their criminality was very different from his. Theirs was indirect and accredited, while his was direct and real. Theirs was unconscious and involuntary, his deliberate and intentional. Theirs was through the crime of another, his through his own. His was the root, and in its damage the branches equally suffered. He was the fountain, and in its defilement all the stream of human existence was polluted.

3. Nor does this contravene our natural sense of justice. We ascribe blameworthiness to wrong states and tendencies of disposition, without staying to inquire how these were originated. A commoner may be elevated to the peerage, and thus confer titles and dignity on all future generations. Or a nobleman, convicted of treason, may involve his posterity in poverty and ignominy.

4. Now, this procedure on the part of God may strike you at first as unjust. And so it would be, if it stood alone. But--

I. We must consider it in connection with Gods great scheme of redemption. Paul invariably links the two together. Here he shows that Adams headship is a type of Christs: and if in one all men have been made sinners, so in the other all have, at least conditionally, been restored to righteousness. Similarly in 1Co_15:1-58 he affirms that as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

II. Our ruin by the fall does not entail on us the doom of final perdition. The life to come is always set forth as the retributive consequence of the present. And no principle is more clear or more frequently stated than that each man must give an account of himself before God, and receive the reward of his own doings. We are here treated as sinners for Adams sake: but hereafter, if so treated, it will be for our own sake. The necessary loss which we have sustained by the fault of another is limited and temporal; it will be our own fault if we make it absolute and eternal. This arrangement, then, has simply altered the conditions of our probationary life. There are two distinct courses which such probation may take.

1. Men might be created holy, and be left to obey or disobey. In the former case their righteousness would be sealed to them forever; but in the latter they must forfeit it forever. In this way the probation of angels was accomplished: and that of Adam and Eve.

2. The other mode is that of souls originally depraved, but furnished with adequate means of self-recovery through grace. And this is the method adopted in regard to all the posterity of Adam and Eve; and it is with reference to it that they are all born under the imputation of the first great transgression.

III. Compare these two alternatives, that you may see how much more desirable that one is, in which we find ourselves concerned. We see what our probation now is, and how easy it is for us, through Gods grace in Christ, to escape perdition, to triumph over our native depravity, and to lay hold on eternal life. But suppose the opposite method had been adopted, do you think that your eternal safety would have been more likely or certain than it is now? Is it not probable that the great majority of mankind would act as Adam and Eve did?

IV. The immense preponderance of good which accrues to the saved, through the economy of grace in Christ. There is a mighty superiority in the Saviours headship above that of Adam. The ultimate benefits of our salvation will infinitely exceed the little temporary sufferings of our loss and ruin through the fall. Conclusion:

1. Let us tremble at the thought of sin, when we survey its terrible results in the ravages of death.

2. Be convinced of sin, and stirred up to seek salvation from it.

3. Let us confidently accept and embrace the salvation of the gospel.

4. Here is an argument for submission and patience under the ills of life. Our subjection to affliction and sorrow is not meant to be our permanent and everlasting state. (T. G. Horton.)

The educating power of mortality

Dr. Bushnell, in his Moral Uses of Dark Things, shows how man can never be at his best without the influences of alarm and threatening, for these enable him to appreciate critical situations, and develop in him the grand qualities of caution and prudence. Surely God knew what was needed to bring the royal elements of our nature to full account when He put death into the world, hiding a mercy under a curse. It is a schoolmaster we should be thankful for, since without it we should lack expression for most that is finest and tenderest in ourselves. We cannot afford to miss the educating power of mortality and its sorrows--the suggestions of the burial scene and the last farewell, the lessons of sick room duty, the privilege of dying bed consolation and grace. We need the discipline of suffering and decay, the culture of fear and danger, the wakenings of latent virtue in fatal emergency and accident. Something must reveal to us the fittest ways of pity and kindness, the dearest facilities of affection, the noblest means of philanthropy, the purest offices of patience, the holiest opportunities of sympathy, the sweetest uses of hope, and the highest service of piety. And in a world where death is we have them all.

Who is the figure of Him that was to come.--

The figure of Him that was to come

If we see great streams of people journeying from every direction towards one common destination, we infer that this spot must be the centre of some unusual attraction. It is a pretty sight to stand some summer Sabbath morning upon a rising ground, and see the lanes dotted with pilgrims wending their way towards the church of God. Suppose a wayfarer encounters groups of travellers, and the nearer he draws to the adjacent town, finds the crowds increasing, and the interest heightening on every face. He asks the object of this unusual excitement, and learns that the foundation stone of a great temple is to be laid by a great man; that there is to be a procession and a gala day of banners, music, and rejoicing. So does a survey of the landscape of past history disclose the lives of many men tending towards one point; and, standing as we do upon our gospel vantage ground, we can see a long procession of lives tending in their acts and history to one point; we can hear the music of many a deed celebrating beforehand one greater deed than all. There was a divinity shaping the ends of many of the lives of the Old Testament worthies, to the purpose that they might be typical of that life which is our life, and by which our stifled souls might breathe again with their destined immortality. A mark had been impressed upon the lives of men in earlier times, and a map had been sketched upon the page of history, whose lines converged towards the one great central fact, that Jesus Christ should come into the world. If we look amongst the men whose lives were eminently typical of the Redeemer, we shall not find one in whose case it will be a more easy task to trace the parallel than that of Adam. But just in proportion as the similarity is striking, so will the points of difference be prominent.

I. Points of correspondence.

1. Both were formed by and came directly from God. Here, of course, we speak of Jesus in His humanity. In the method of his birth the first man differed from all the rest of his posterity, and the only parallel we find to it is in the miraculous conception of the Child of Bethlehem. Of course, even in this, the points of difference are greater than those of likeness. But it was the breath of the Lord which breathed into Adams nostrils the breath of life; it was the Spirit of the Lord which overshadowed the Virgin.

2. Both were formed in the same glorious likeness, designed as the mirrors to reflect the life and image of the Author of all life. And as in Adam, ere he fell, the unblushing cheek, where shame had been ashamed to sit, formed the mirror which reflected the likeness of the Father, so was that same likeness printed on the form and feature of the spiritual life of Jesus Christ, so that He could claim His heavenly pedigree, and declare, He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.

3. The fatherhood of both over a numerous race.

(1) The tawny slave who hoes the rice field in the burning sun; the dark-eyed denizens of China and of India; the fiery Afghan; the tall Circassian; the dwarfish Hottentot; the fur-clad dweller amidst northern ice; and the naked panter in the tropic heat; the homeless Jew and clannish Gentile; the readers of the Koran, of the Shasters, of the Bible; the worshipper of the sun, of Juggernaut, and of Jesus; each creature who bears the form and likeness of a man, dates his paternity to Adam.

(2) The seed of the Second Adam shall be also numerous. All souls are His, purchased by Him, that they may be born again through Him. And though the work of regeneration by no means keeps pace with the increase of the race, He shall yet see His seed, and that seed shall outnumber sand or stars for multitude, and be gathered out of all lands. And they shall bear the family feature clear in life and lineament. As by nature they once bore the image of the earthly, so by the redundant grace of this new birth shall they bear impressed upon them the image of the heavenly.

4. The lordship and dominion with which each was invested.

(1) Man was made only a little lower than the angels, and has been crowned with glory and honour. He holds dominion over the very work of Gods own hand; he wounds the earth that it may give him food. All things are put beneath his feet; the beasts range plain and mountainside, but they cannot range so widely as the thought of man; the birds soar high, but they cannot cleave their way to such fair altitudes as mans ambition may attain; the fishes dive down into the ocean gorge, but they cannot pierce to such a deep profound as that intelligence which marks mankind and sets the human over the brute creation.

(2) And if a man is thus large in lordship and dominion, how much more the Son of Man, who came to reassert the creatures claim after it had been flung away, by sharing His own dominion with that creature. The dominion of Jesus is illimitable. While man is made a little lower, He is made so much better than the angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For when the power of Omnipotence showed forth its mightiest sinew, it was when it wrought in Christ, and raised Him from the dead, etc. (Eph_1:20-23).

5. The conjugal union ordained by God respecting them. Paradise was inadequate to appease the need of the first man, and bring him to rest, till woman was created. And so the Maker hushed him into a deep sleep, and from his side He took the comrade meet for him, and made his happiness complete. Now this is one of the most striking types of Christs union with His Church. He is the Bridegroom, and that Church is the bride, the Lambs wife. Adam and Eve were not more intimately and emphatically one flesh than Christ and the Christian are one spirit. This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.

II. Points of contrast.

1. The first Adam was of the earth, earthy; the Second Adam was the Lord from heaven.

2. The first Adam possessed the Divine image, and effaced it; the Second Adam put on the human image, that He might restore in us the Divine. The serpent hissed its evil breath, and filmed the brightness which God had spread over His creatures brow; and, just as the foul vapour on a looking glass blurs the reflections on its disc, so did the image stamped by the Creator there become distorted and disturbed. But Christ rubbed off the taint of the tempters breath, and wrote the name of God upon the creature in His own blood.

3. The spirit of apostate Adam was proud, unbelieving, discontented, and rebellious; that of the Second Adam was humble, submissive, obedient, and faithful.

4. The first Adam was the medium of death, while the Second brought salvation and life.

5. By the first Adam paradise was lost; by the Second that paradise is regained. (A. Mursell.)

Adam a type of Christ

I. As the federal head of mankind.

II. As the source of life--natural--redeemed.

III. As the cause of universal but widely opposite experiences--sin, death--life, righteousness.

IV. As the prototype of human nature--earthly--heavenly.

V. As the ruler of the world--natural--Divine. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Adam a type of Christ

This is the earliest and deepest of all the types; God the Spirit grasps the first fact of mans history, and therewith prints the lesson of mans redemption. Note--

I. The agreement between the type and the Antitype.

1. Adam and Christ were the true sources or heads of their respective families.

(1) There are two conceivable methods of constituting humanity; one, to make each man independent of all; the other, to make the first man the head and source of humanity. This latter method our Maker has adopted, and it is useless to question whether the other would have been better. When the bird is shut up in a cage, it is better that it should not dash itself against the bars. It was in an attempt to be as God that our first parents fell. If we would escape their fate, we should abandon speculations and address ourselves to facts. In point of fact we all come into the world with darkened minds and wayward hearts, which the Scriptures explain by the fall. Some complain of the difficulties they find there on this subject; but the difficulty lies, not in the Scriptures, but in the fact. Creatures manifestly the head of creation, under the government of an omnipotent and beneficent Being, lie in sin and suffering, and have done so from age to age, without intermission or mitigation. This is the difficulty; all Bible difficulties are small when compared with this.

(2) The first man stood as head and representative of the race. His fall brought all down. At the head he stands, and at first the line of march is narrow: on the apex one; and behind him two or three walk abreast: broader and broader grows the stream, until, in our day, the file of march is a million of millions deep. On the other side stands He that was to come. Alone He stands at the head; already a multitude, which no man can number, tread the pilgrims path; and now we look forward to that time when the stream of the Second Adams children shall be co-extensive and coincident with that of the first.

2. These two representatives stood side by side from the first, and redemption began to flow from Christ as soon as sin was brought in by Adam. The promise sprang at the gate of Eden, an echo of the curse. Christ began to act as the Head of the redeemed the moment that the first man became the head of a fallen race. Under the earlier economies many felt the drawing of the unseen Christ, and in the days of His personal ministry, although He manifested Himself only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, He had compassion on the surrounding heathen, and hastened forward to the day of their redemption.

3. On both sides it is by birth that the members are united to their head and his destiny. We have been born to this inheritance of sin and suffering; we cannot shake it off. But be of good cheer, prisoner of hope: if by a corresponding new birth you are one with the Second Adam, you have no cause to weep. You cannot, indeed, escape from being a man; but if you are a new creature in Christ Jesus, the second birthright is as irrevocable as the first. It is a fixed principle of natural science that species do not change. But that which is impossible with man is possible with God. He has undertaken in the gospel to make a new creature.

II. The difference. The chief point lies in this, that whereas Adams seed derive from their head sin and death, Christs seed derive from their Head righteousness and life. One of the strangest facts in history is that multitudes are proud of their first birth, and do not give themselves any concern about a second. Under this, however, there are many specific points of difference.

1. While Adams seed possess the moral nature of their head complete, Christs possess His moral nature only in part. When we derive a sinful nature from the first man, we have previously no better nature, that may mingle with it and mitigate its evil. In me, that is in my flesh--in all that I derive from man my father--there dwelleth no good thing. But on the other hand, the regeneration is the getting of a new nature, indeed, through union in spirit with Christ; but it is gotten by one who previously possessed an evil nature, and that evil nature is cast down from the throne, but not cast forth from the territory. The two contend against each other; and there is not peace, but a sword (see Rom_7:1-25). The union with Christ in the regeneration is likened to the grafting of a fruit tree. The tree at the first, which springs from seed, is wholly evil. When it is grafted it is made good; but not so completely as it was originally made evil. In some way, however, the remnants of the old will be filtered out; and nothing shall enter heaven that would defile its golden streets or be a jar in its new song.

2. The two bands are not equally numerous. Adams company includes absolutely the whole of the human race; Christs company is contained within it, and is therefore necessarily smaller. Adams company consists of all the born, and Christs of all the born again. Gods creatures of the old and new creation seem to envelop each other, after the manner of a sphere within a sphere, the most precious being embedded in the heart. Humanity, comparatively small in bulk, is surrounded by the mightier mass of beasts that perish. In the heart of humanity lie the regenerate--the true, vital seed of the kingdom; and the crust that surrounds them will crumble and be cast away. When the earth and all that it contained have passed away, Christ and Christians will remain, inheritors together and alone of the eternal life.

3. Although we inherit this corruption from the first man, we personally have no relation to him; we received it from the last that stood before us in the line. But from Christ our life flows as its fountain, and each generation of believing men continue to draw their spiritual life and justifying righteousness immediately from Him. The new creature does not propagate its kind. If the first Adam were annihilated, man would still be born in sin; but if Christ were no more Christ, there could be no more for any man a new, a holy life. The difference is somewhat like that between a tree propagating its kind by seed and one sustaining its branches. When once the seed is ripened and cast, the progenitor tree may be burned. But even when the branch has been put forth by the tree, the branch is ever directly dependent on the tree. If the tree should die, all the branches would die too. Adam might say, I was the tree, and ye grew from the seed which I shed; but Christ says, I am the vine, ye are the branches. And as Christians hold directly of Christ, Christ holds individually by Christians. The Head endures pain when the members are injured. How safe is that life which is hid with Christ in God?

4. The gain by the second Adam is greater than the loss by the first (verse 15). He pays our debt, and makes us rich besides. He sets free the slave, and makes him a son. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. (W. Arnot, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

5:13-14 Paul continues his explanation of “everyone sinned” (5:12) by stating that people who died between the times of Adam and Moses were not subject to specific commandments from God. Therefore, their condemnation was not only because of their own sin. It was because of their union with Adam, who sinned by violating an explicit commandment of God.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Rom 5:13. Ἄχρι, until) Sin was in the world, not only after the law was given by Moses, but also during the whole period before the law from Adam down to Moses, during which latter period sinners sinned without the law, ch. Rom 2:12, for the condition of all before Moses, and of the Gentiles subsequently [after Moses’ time], was equal; but this sin was not, properly speaking, the cause of death: because there is no imputation of sin without the law, and consequently there is no death; comp. Rom 5:20. The sin committed by Adam, entailing evil on all, is called the sin (ἡ ἁμαρτία) twice in the preceding verse; now, in this verse, sin in general is called ἀμαρτία without the article.—οὐκ ἐλλογε͂ιται, is not imputed) The apostle is not speaking here of men’s negligence, which disregards sin in the absence of a law, but of the Divine judgment, because sin is not usually taken into any account, not even into the Divine account, in the absence of the law.—Comp. ἐλλόγει, impute, or put it to my account, Phm 1:18, note. Sin therefore does not denote notorious crimes, such as those, for which the inhabitants of Sodom were punished before the time of Moses, but the common evil. Chrysostom on this passage shows exceedingly well, what Paul intended to prove by this argument, ὅτι οὐκ ἀυτὴ ἡ ἁμαρτία τῆς τοῦ νόμου παραβάσεως, ἀλλʼ ἐκείνη ἡ τῆς τοῦ Αδὰμ παρακοῆς, ἀυτὴ ἦν ἡ πάντα λυμαινομένη, καὶ τίς ἡ τούτου ἀπόδειξις; τὸ καὶ πρὸ τοῦ νόμου πάντας ἀποθνήσκειν, “that it was not the very [actual] sin of transgressing the law, but that of the disobedience of Adam—this was the sin that brought universal destruction, and what is the proof of this? The fact that all died before the giving of the law.”

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom_5:13 f. Demonstration, that the death of all has its ground in the sin of Adam, and the causal connection of that sin with death. This argument, conducted with great conciseness, sets out from the undoubted historical certainty (it is already sufficiently attested in Genesis 4-6) that during the entire period prior to the law (ἄχρι νόμου = ἀπὸ Ἀδὰμ μέχρι Μωϋσέως, Rom_5:14) there was sin in humanity; then further argues that the death of individuals, which yet has affected those also who have not like Adam sinned against a positive command, cannot be derived from that sin prior to the law, because in the non-existence of law there is no imputation; and allows it to be thence inferred that consequently the death of all has been caused (ἐφʼ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον) by the sin of Adam (not by their individual sins). Paul however leaves this inference to the reader himself; he does not expressly declare it, but instead of doing so he says, returning to the comparison begun in Rom_5:12 : ὄς ἐστι τύπος τοῦ μέλλοντος, for in that death-working operation of Adams sin for all lay, in fact, the very ground of the typical relation to Christ. Chrysostom aptly says: εἰ γὰρ ἐξ ἁμαρτίας ὁ θάνατος τὴν ῥίζαν ἔσχε, νόμου δὲ οὐκ ὄντος ἡ ἁμαρτία οὐκ ἐλλογεῖται, πῶς ὁ θάνατος ἐκράτει; ὅθεν δῆλον ὄτι οὐκ αὐτὴ ἡ ἁμαρτία ἡ τῆς τοῦ νόμου παραβάσεως, ἀλλʼ ἐκείνη τῆς τοῦ Ἀδὰμ παρακοῆς, αὕτη ἦν ἡ πάντα λυμαινομένη. Καὶ τίς ἡ τούτου ἀπόδειξις; τὸ καὶ πρὸ τοῦ νόμου πάντας ἀποθνήσκειν· ἐβασίλευσε γὰρ κ.τ.λ[1275] Compare Oecumenius.

ἌΧΡΙ ΝΌΜΟΥ] i.e. in the period previous to the giving of the law, comp Rom_5:14; consequently not during the period of the law, ἝΩς Ὁ ΝΌΜΟς ἘΚΡΆΤΕΙ,[1277] Theodoret; comp Origen, Chrysostom, and Theodore of Mopsuestia.

ἐλλογεῖται] preserved nowhere else except in Boeckh, Inscript. I. p. 850 A, 35, and Phm_1:18 (text rec[1279]), but undoubtedly meaning: is put to account (consequently equivalent to λογίζεται, Rom_4:4), namely, here, according to the context, for punishment, and that on the part of God; for in the whole connection the subject spoken of is the divine dealings in consequence of the fall. Hence we are neither to understand ab judice (Fritzsche), nor: by the person sinning; so Augustine, Ambrosiaster, Luther (then one does not regard the sin) Melancthon (non accusatur in nobis ipsis) Calvin, Beza and others, including Usteri, Rückert, J. Müller, Lipsius, Mangold, and Stölting (there the sinner recognises not his sin as guilt), whereby a thought quite irrevelant to the argument is introduced.

μὴ ὄντος νόμου] without the existence of the law; νόμος, as previously ἄχρι νόμου, meaning the Mosaic law, and not any law generally (Theodore of Mopsuestia, and many others, including Hofmann), as ἁμαρτία already points to the divine law. Comp Rom_4:15. The proposition itself: Sin is not imputed, if the law is absent, is set down as something universally conceded, as an axiom; therefore with repetition of the subject (in opposition to Hofmann, who on account of this repetition separates ἁμαρτία δέ κ.τ.λ[1281] from the first half of the verse and attaches it to what follows), and with the verb in the present. The proposition itself, inserted as an intervening link in the argument with the metabatic δέ, without requiring a preceding ΜΈΝ, which Hofmann is wrong in missing (see Dietzsch and Kühner, II. 2, p. 814), has its truth as well as its more precise application in the fact, that in the absence of law the action, which in and by itself is unlawful, is no transgression of the law (Rom_4:15), and cannot therefore be brought into account as such. That Paul regarded the matter in this light, and had not, as Hofmann thinks, sinning generally, as it was one and the same thing in the case of all, in view apart from the sins of individuals, is plain also from καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς μὴ ἁμαρτ. ἐπὶ τῷ ὁμοιώματι τῆς παραβάσ. Ἀδάμ, in Rom_5:14. His thought is: If the death of men after Adam had been caused by their own sin, then in the case of all those, who have died during the period from Adam till the law, the sin which they have committed must have been already reckoned to them as transgression of the law, just as Adams sin was the transgression of the positive divine command, and as such brought upon him death; but this is inconceivable, because the law was not in existence. In this Paul leaves out of consideration the Noachian commands (Genesis 9), as well as other declarations of God as to His will given before the law, and likewise individual punitive judgments, such as in the case of Sodom, just because he has only the strict idea of real and formal legislation before his mind, and this suggests to him simply the great epochs of the Paradisaic and Sinaitic legislations. A view, which does not subvert the truth of his demonstration, because mankind in general were without law from Adam until Moses, the natural law, because not given positively, remaining out of the account; it makes the act at variance with it appear as sin (ἉΜΑΡΤΊΑ), but not as ΠΑΡΆΒΑΣΙς ΝΌΜΟΥ, which as such ἘΛΛΟΓΕῖΤΑΙ.

Rom_5:14. ἈΛΛʼ] at, yet, although sin is not put to account in the absence of the law. It introduces an apparently contradictory phenomenon, confronting the ἁμαρτία οὐκ ἐλλογεῖται Κ.Τ.Λ[1282]; one, however, which just proves that men have died, not through their own special sin, but through the sin of Adam, which was put to their account. ἐβασίλευσεν] prefixed with emphasis: death has not perchance been powerless, no, it has reigned, i.e. has exercised its power which deprives of life (comp Rom_5:17-21). Hofmann (comp also Holsten, Aberle, and Dietzsch) finds in the emphatic ἐβασ. the absolute and abiding dominion, which death has exercised independently of the imputation of sins (ἀλλὰ being taken as the simple but), just as a king, one by virtue of his personal position once and for all entitled to do so, exercises dominion over those who, in virtue of their belonging to his domain, are from the outset subject to him. But no reader could educe this qualitative definite sense of the βασιλεύειν, with the highly essential characteristic elements ascribed to it, from the mere verb itself; nor could it be gathered from the position of the word at the head of the sentence; on the contrary, it must unquestionably have been expressed (by ἐτυράννευσεν possibly, or τυραννικῶς ἐβασίλευσεν) seeing that the subsequent καί (even over those, etc.) does not indicate a mode of the power of the (personified) death, but only appends the fact of its dominion being without exception.

μέχρι Μωῢσ.] equivalent to ἄχρι νόμου in Rom_5:13. A distinction of sense between μέχρι and ἄχρι is (contrary to the opinion of Tittmann, Synon. p. 33 f.) purely fanciful. See Fritzsche, p. 308 ff. and van Hengel in loc[1285]

καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς μὴ ἁμαρτήσαντας κ.τ.λ[1286]] even over those[1287] who have not sinned like Adam, that is, have not like him transgressed a positive divine command. Even these it did not spare. It is erroneous with Chrysostom (but not Theodoret and Theophylact) to connect ἘΠῚ Τᾯ ὉΜΟΙΏΜΑΤΙ Κ.Τ.Λ[1288] with ἐβασίλ. So Finckh again does, following Castalio and Bengel: quia illorum eadem atque Adami transgredientis ratio fuit.… i.e. propter reatum ab Adamo contractum. Erroneous for this reason, that Paul, apart from the little children or those otherwise incapable of having sin imputed, whom however he must have indicated more precisely, could not conceive at all (Rom_3:23) of persons who had not sinned (μὴ ἁμαρτήσαντες without any modal addition more precisely defining it), and a limitation mentally supplied (sine lege peccarunt, Bengel) is purely fanciful. The καί, even, refers to the fact that in the period extending from Adam till Moses, excluding the latter, positively given divine commands were certainly transgressed by individuals to whom they were given, but it was not these merely who died (as must have been the case, had death been brought on by their own particular sins); it was also those,[1289] who etc. Their sin was not ἐπὶ τῷ ὁμοιώμ. τῆς παραβ. Ἀδάμ (ἐπί used of the form, in which anything occurs, see Bernhardy, p. 250); they did not sin in such a way, that their action was of like shape with the transgression of Adam, quia non habebant ut ille revelatam certo oraculo Dei voluntatem, Calvin. For other definitions of the sense see Fritzsche, p. 316, and Reiche, Commentar. crit. I. p. 45 ff. Reiche himself explains it of those who have transgressed no command expressly threatening death. So also Tholuck. But this peculiar limitation is not suggested by the context, in which, on the contrary, it is merely the previous μὴ ὄντος νόμου which supplies a standard for determining the sense of the similarity. According to Hofmann καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς down to Ἀδάμ is meant to be one and the same with the previous ἀπὸ Αδὰμ μέχρι Μωϋσέως, inasmuch as a transgression similar to that of Adam could only then have occurred, when God placed a people in the same position in which Adam found himself, when he received a divine command on the observance or transgression of which his life or death depended. This misconception, springing from the erroneous interpretation of ἐφʼ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον, is already excluded by καί,[1290] as well as, pursuant to the tenor of thought, by the fact that in the pre-legal period in question all those, who transgressed a command divinely given to them by way of revelation, sinned like Adam. Their sin had thereby the same moral form as the act of Adam; but not only had they to die, but also (καί) those who had not been in that condition of sinning. Death reigned over the latter also.

The genitive with ὁμοιώμ. is not that of the subject (Hofmann), but of the object, as in Rom_1:23, Rom_6:5, Rom_8:3; the sins meant are not so conceived of, that the παράβασις of Adam is homogeneously repeated in them, but so that they are, as to their specific nature, of similar fashion with it, and consequently belong to the same ethical category. They have morally just the same character. As to ὁμοιώμα see on Rom_1:23.

ὅς ἐστι τύπος τοῦ μέλλοντος] whoto educe now from Rom_5:13-14 the result introduced in Rom_5:12, and so to return to the comparison there begunis type of the future (Adam). Theophylact correctly paraphrases: ὡς γὰρ ὁ παλαιὸς Ἀδὰμ πάντας ὑποδίκους ἐποίησε τῷ οἰκείῳ πταίσματι (by bringing upon them death), καίτοι μὴ πταίσαντας, οὕτως ὁ Χριστὸς ἐδικαίωσε πάντας, καίτοι μὴ δικαιώσεως ἄξια ποιήσαντας. Compare 1Co_15:45. Koppe, following Bengel, takes μέλλ. as neuter (of that, which should one day take place), and ὅς for ὅ. This agreement of the relative with the following substantive would perhaps be grammatically tenable (Hermann, a[1291] Viger. p. 708; Heind. a[1292] Phaedr. p. 279), but seeing that Ἀδάμ immediately precedes it, and that the idea of Christ being ὁ ἔσχατος Ἀδάμ is a Pauline idea (1 Cor. l.c[1293]), it is quite unjustifiable to depart from the reference of the ὅς to Adam; and equally so to deny to the μέλλων its supplement from the immediately preceding Ἀδάμ, and to take it as the man of the future (Hofmann), which would nevertheless yield in substance the same meaning.

τύπος] type, so that the μέλλων is the anti-type (1Pe_3:21). The type is always something historical (a person, thing, saying), which is destined, in accordance with the divine plan, to prefigure something corresponding to it in the future,in the connected scheme of sacred historical teleology, which is to be discerned from the standpoint of the antitype. Typical historical parallels between Adam and the Messiah (so that the latter is even expressly termed the last Adam) are found also in Rabbinical authors (e.g. Neve Schalom f. 160, 2 : Quemadmodum homo primus fuit primus in peccato, sic Messias erit ultimus ad auferendum peccatum penitus; Neve Schalom 9, 9 : Adamus postremus est Messias), and are based in them on the doctrine of the ἀποκατάστασις πάντων. Compare the passages in Eisenmenger, entdeckt. Judenth. II. p. 819, 823 ff. Paul based this typology of his on the atoning work of Christ and its results, as the whole discussion shows; hence in his present view Christ as the μέλλων Ἀδάμ is not still to come, but is already historical. Comp Chrysostom; also Theodore of Mopsuestia: ὥσπερ διʼ ἐκείνου (Adam) τῶν χειρόνων ἡ πάροδος ἐγένετο, οὕτω διὰ τούτου τῆς τῶν κρειττόνων ἀπολαύσεως τὴν ἀφορμὴν ἐδεξάμεθα. For this reason however ὁ μέλλων may not, with Fritzsche and de Wette, be referred to the last coming of Christ; but must be dated from the time of Adam, in so far, namely, as in looking back to the historical appearance of Adam, Christ, as its antitype, is the future Adam (comp ὁ ἐρχόμενος).

[1275] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[1277] As is well known, Peyrerius (Praeadamitae s. exercitat. exeg. in Rom_5:12-14, Amst. 1655) referred the νόμου here to the law given to Adam in Paradise; and found thus a proof for his Preadamites.

[1279] ec. Textus receptus, or lectio recepta (Elzevir).

[1281] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[1282] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[1285] n loc. refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[1286] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[1287] βασιλεύειν with ἐπί is a Hebraism (צל). Compare Luk_1:33; Luk_19:14; 1Sa_8:9; 1Sa_8:11; 1Ma_1:16.

[1288] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[1289] Consequently the two classes, formed by Paul, are not to be so distinguished that the one shall embrace men before Noah, and the other the Noachian race (van Hengel). Both classes are included in the whole period from Adam till Moses.

[1290] Which necessarily assumes a class of sinners in the pre-legal period, whose sin was homogeneous with that of Adam. This also, in opposition to Mangold, p. 121, and Dietzsch, p. 98; according to whose and Hofmanns definition of the sense, Paul ought either to have omitted the καί altogether, or to have inserted it before ἀπὸ Ἀδάμ.

[1291] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[1292] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[1293] .c. loco citato or laudato.

REMARK 1. Those who refer ἐφʼ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον to the proper sins of individuals, or even to the principle of the ἁμαρτία dwelling in them, ought not to find, as Baumgarten-Crusius, Umbreit, and Baur still do, the proof for the πάντες ἥμαρτον in Rom_5:13 f.; for how in the connection of the passage could any proof for the universality of sin be still required? Certainly just as little as in particular for the fact, that, with death already existing in the world (Dietzsch), all individuals have sinned. Consistently with that reference of the ἐφʼ ᾧ π. ἥμαρτον there must rather have been read from Rom_5:13 f. the proof for this, that the death of all results from the proper sins of all. But how variously has this demonstration been evolved! Either: although sin has not until Moses been imputable according to positive law, yet each one has brought death upon himself by his sin (Rom_5:14), which proves the relative imputation thereof. So de Wette. Or: although sin, which even from Adam till Moses was not lacking, be not imputed by a human judge in the absence of positive law, yet the reign of death (Rom_5:14) shows that God has imputed the pre-Mosaic sins. So Fritzsche. Or: in order to show in Adamo causam quaerendam esse, cur hominum peccata mors secuta sit, Paul declares that death has reigned over all from Adam till Moses, whether they sinned like Adam or differently. So van Hengel; comp also Weiss, bibl. Theol. p. 264. Or: not even in the period from Adam till Moses was sin absent; but the clear proof to the contrary is the dominion of death in this period. So Baur, and with a substantially similar view of the mode of inference ab effectu ad causam,[1297] Rothe also. But however it may be turned, the probative element has first of all to be read into the passage; and even then the alleged proof (Rom_5:14) would only be a reasoning backwards from the historical phenomenon in Rom_5:14 to the cause asserted by ἐφʼ ᾧ π. ἥμαρτ., and consequently a mere clumsy argument in a circle, which again assumes the assertion to be provedid quod erat demonstrandumin the phenomenon brought forward in Rom_5:14 : and moreover utterly breaks down through the proposition that sin is not imputed in the absence of law. Ewald, in his former view (Jahrb. II.) rightly deduces from Rom_5:14; consequently it only appears the more certain, that death propagated itself to them only by means of Adams, but attributes to this inference, consistently with his view of ἐφʼ ᾧ π. ἥμ., the sense: that they all sinned unto death just in the same way as, and because, Adam had sinned unto it. In his later view (Sendschr. d. Ap. P.) he supposes that in connection with ἐφʼ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον the possible doubt may have arisen, whether it was so certain that death had come upon those oldest men from Adam till Moses in consequence of their sins? which doubt Paul properly answers in Rom_5:13 f., thereby all the more corroborating the truth. But the emergence of a doubt is indicated by nothing in the text; and that doubt indeed would have been dissipated by the very fact that those men were dead, which does not prove however that they died on account of their sins. Thus also the matter would amount to a reasoning in a circle. According to Tholuck the argument is: that death has passed upon all through the disposition to death (?) introduced in Adam, and not through their own sins, is plain from the fact, that pre-Mosaic sin, though not positively threatened with death, as in the case of Adam and in the law, was nevertheless placed under its dominion. Only thus, he holds, is the logical relation between the clauses apparent. In general this is right; but by this very circumstance Tholuck just attests the correctness of our explanation of ἥμαρτον, namely, that it is not meant of individual sin. The caution which he inserts against this inference, namely, that Paul regards the actual sins only as the relatively free manifestations of the hereditary sinful substance, is of no avail, seeing that they remain always acts of individual freedom, even though the latter be only relative, while the argument in our passage is such that the individuals own sins, as cause of death, are excluded. Ernesti joins ἁμαρτία δὲ κ.τ.λ[1298] with ἘΦʼ ᾯ Κ.Τ.Λ[1299]: since indeed all have sinned, but sin is not placed to account, etc. The ἄχρι.… κόσμῳ, standing in the way, he encloses in a parenthesis. But why this parenthesis? The πάντες ἥμαρτον, in the sense of Rom_3:23, needed no proof; and it could not occur to any one to date sin only from the epoch of the law. The ἄχρι.… κόσμῳ acquires its pertinent significance when, as an essential element in the syllogistic deduction, it is closely united with the axiom ἁμαρτία δὲ οὐκ ἐλλογ. κ.τ.λ[1300] attached to it, and is not set aside in a parenthesis as if it might equally well have been omitted. According to Holsten the argument turns on the fact that objective sin entered the world through Adam, and death along with it; thus death has passed upon all because all were sinners (in the objective sense)a diffusion by means of one over the whole, which is illustrated by the thought that, while sin was in the world until the law, this sin could not, in the absence of law, be imputed as subjective guilt; but death became ruler, in accordance with the objective divine law of the universe, with a tyrannical power not conditioned by the subjects of its rule, even over those who were indeed (objectively) sinners, but not (subjectively) transgressors like Adam. Holsten has certainly in this way avoided the error of making universal death conditioned by the subjective sin of the individuals; but he has done so by means of a distinction between objective and subjective sins, which is so far from being suggested by the text, that it was just through Adam that the subjective sin, joined with the consciousness of guilt, entered the world, and therefore the divine action, in decreeing death upon sin, could not be conceived as indifferent to the subjectivity. Hofmannwho sees in ἄχρι.… κόσμῳ a [very unnecessary] ground assigned for the ἘΦʼ ᾯ Π. ἭΜΑΡΤΟΝ, upon which there follows in ἉΜΑΡΤΊΑ ΔῈ Κ.Τ.Λ[1301] a declaration regarding death in the pre-legal period, according to which this could not have been caused by the sinning of that period, seeing that on the contrary the latter took place when death was already presentconfuses the entire exposition of the passage, and by his artificial rendering of ἐφʼ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον makes the understanding of it impossible. In general the entire history of the interpretation of our passage shows that when once the old ecclesiastical explanation of ἐφʼ ᾧ (this however taken as propterea quod) πάντες ἥμαρτον is regarded as the Charybdis to be shunned at all hazards, the falling into the Scylla becomes unavoidable. Even Klöpper, in attributing to πάντες ἥμαρτον the underlying thought that Adams sin penetrated to all, and Dietzsch, by his simplifying and modification of Hofmanns exposition, have not escaped this danger.

[1297] According to the correlation of the ideas sin and death, comp. Baur, neut. Theol. p. 138.

[1298] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[1299] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[1300] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[1301] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

REMARK 2. Since Paul shows from the absence of imputation (ἐλλογεῖται) in the absence of law, that the death of men after Adam cannot have been occasioned by their own individual sins, but only by Adams, in which all were partakers in virtue of their connection with him as their progenitor, he must have conceived that Adams sin brought death not merely to himself but also at the same time to all by way of imputation; and therefore the imputatio peccati Adamitici in reference to the death, to which all are subjected, certainly results from our passage as a Pauline doctrine. But as to original sin (not however as to its condemnableness in itself), the testimony of our passage is only indirect, in so far, namely, as the ἐφʼ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον, according to its proper explanation and confirmation in Rom_5:13 f., necessarily presupposes in respect to Adams posterity the habitual want of justitia originalis and the possession of concupiscence.

REMARK 3. The view of Julius Müller as to an original estate and original fall of man in an extra-temporal sphere (comp the monstrous opinion of Benecke, p. 109 ff., and in the Stud. u. Krit. 1832, p. 616 ff.) cannot be reconciled with our passage and its reference to Genesis 3.[1303] See Ernesti, p. 247 ff., and among dogmatic theologians, especially Philippi, III. p. 92 ff.; and (against Schelling and Steffens) Martensen, § 93, p. 202 ff. ed. 2.

[1303] Nor with the N. T. generally, which teaches an extra-temporal mode of existence only in the case of Christ. The extra-temporal condition and fall supposed by Müller are not only outside of Scripture, but at variance with it.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom 5:13 f. These two verses are rather obscure, but must be intended ( γὰρ ) to prove what has been asserted in Rom 5:12 . ἄχρι γὰρ νόμου = ἀπὸ Ἀδὰμ μέχρι Μωυσέως , Rom 5:14 , the law meant being the Mosaic. The sin which was in the world before the law is not the guilt of Adam’s fall imputed to the race as fallen in him, but the actual sin which individuals had committed. Now if law has no existence, sin is not imputed. Cf. Rom 4:15 . The natural inference would seem to be that the sins committed during this period could not be punished. But what was the case? The very opposite of this. Death reigned all through this period. This unrestrained tyranny of death (observe the emphatic position of ἐβασίλευσεν ) over persons whose sins cannot be imputed to them, seems at variance with the explanation just adopted of πάντες ἥμαρτον . Indeed Meyer and others use it to refute that explanation. The reign of death, apart from imputable individual sin, implies, they argue, a corresponding objective reign of sin, apart from individual acts: in other words, justifies the interpretation of ἐφʼ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον according to which all men sinned in Adam’s sin, and so ( and only so ) became subject to death. But the empirical meaning of ἥμαρτον is decidedly to be preferred, and we must rather fill out the argument thus: “all sinned. For there was sin in the world before Moses; and though sin is not imputed where there is no law, and though therefore no particular penalty death or another could be expected for the sins here in question, yet all that time death reigned, for in the act of Adam sin and death had been inseparably and for ever conjoined.” καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς μὴ ἁμαρτήσαντας ἐπὶ τῷ ὁμοιώματι κ . τ . λ . even over those who did not sin after the likeness of Adam’s transgression. For ἐπὶ , cf. Winer, p. 492. This describes not some, but all of those who lived during the period from Adam to Moses. None of them had like Adam violated an express prohibition sanctioned by the death penalty. Yet they all died, for they all sinned, and in their first father sin and death had been indissolubly united. And this Adam is τύπος τοῦ μέλλοντος sc. Ἀδάμ . In the coming Adam and his relations to the race there will be something on the same pattern as this. 1Co 10:6 ; 1Co 10:11 , Heb 9:14 , 1Co 15:22 ; 1Co 15:45 ; 1Co 15:49 . Parallels of this sort between Adam and the Messiah are common in Rabbinical writings: e.g. , Schöttgen quotes Neve Schalom , f. 160 2. “Quemadmodum homo primus fuit unus in peccato, sic Messias erit postremus, ad auferendum peccatum penitus;” and 9, 9 has “Adamus postremus est Messias”. Cf. Delitzsch: Brief an die Römer , p. 82 f. The extent to which the thoughts of this passage on sin and death, and on the consequences of Adam’s sin to his descendants, can be traced in Jewish writers, is not quite clear. As a rule (see above on Rom 5:12 ) they admit the dependence of death on sin, though Schöttgen quotes a Rabbi Samuel ben David as saying, “Etiamsi Adamus primus non peccasset, tamen mors fuisset”. On the unity and solidarity of the race in sin and its consequences, they are not perfectly explicit. Weber ( Die Lehren des Talmud , p. 217) gives the following summary: “There is an inherited guilt, but not an inherited sin; the fall of Adam has brought death upon the whole race, not however sinfulness in the sense of a necessity to commit sin; sin is the result of each individual’s decision; it is, as far as experience goes, universal, yet in itself even after the Fall not absolutely necessary”. This seems to agree very closely with the Apostle’s teaching as interpreted above. It is the appeal to experience in Paul ( πάντες ἥμαρτον ), crossing with a transcendent view of the unity of the race in Adam, which gives rise to all the difficulties of interpretation; but without this appeal to experience (which many like Bengel, Meyer and Gifford reject) the whole passage would hang in the air, unreal. There must be something which involves the individual in Adam’s fate; that something comes into view in πάντες ἥμαρτον , and there only; and without it our interest dies. A sin which we commit in Adam (and which never becomes ours otherwise) is a mere fancy to which one has nothing serious to say.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13. ἄχρι γὰρ νόμου = just so far as there was law there was sin. It has been shown (Rom 2:14-15) that there was law, in a certain and true sense, before the law given to Moses; action against this law was sin, and the fact that it was so is here confirmed by the consideration that the penalty of sin, death, was obviously present in the world before the law of Moses was given. γὰρ then introduces a fresh piece of evidence of the universality of sin—for death, as understood by sinners, was there, therefore sin, sin in proportion to knowledge. So I take ἄχρι ν. = up to the degree of law, just to the extent to which law was present. So ἁμαρτία, anarthrous—men’s acts had the character of sin. See Additional Note, p. 210.

ἁμαρτία δὲ, sc. but that law was present, and therefore men’s acts were sins, is shown by the reign of death; the law in question is shown to be the law described in Rom 2:14 f., because the reign of death, the punishment of sin, extended over men who did not sin as Adam did against a positive external command. The two Rom 5:13-14 together justify the statement πάντες ἥμαρτον. See Add. Note, p. 213.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

B. ON Rom 5:13

The usual interpretation takes ἄχρι νόμου = till the Mosaic law was given, and understands S. Paul to deny that sin could be imputed in the full sense to those who were ignorant of that law: consequently πάντες ἥμαρτον is regarded as = all men sinned in Adam. It cannot be denied that this interpretation is highly strained; but the extreme complexity of the passage might be taken to excuse that, if two further objections did not arise: (1) By supplying ἐν τῷ Ἀδὰμ with π. ἥ. we assume the omission by the writer of words essential to the understanding of the passage; (2) by taking ἄχρι νόμου = until the Mosaic law was given, and making the consequent assumption that sin was not imputed to Gentiles till they were aware of the Mosaic law (for the interpretation must extend so far), we make S. Paul say here that sin could not be imputed to the Gentiles, including Adam and the Patriarchs up to Abraham, because they had no law. But this is in direct contradiction with one main argument of the preceding chapters, and of course with the whole teaching as to the sinful state of Gentiles. I should further urge that for this meaning here the article would be indispensable before νόμου, as there is a specific reference to the Mosaic law as and when given. The interpretation given in the notes involves the difficulty (which I do not minimise) of translating ἄχρι νόμου = so far as there was law. ἄχρι is used frequently of time and place (Act 20:4, alibi): the gen. expresses generally the point of time or space reached; but sometimes expresses also the interval before that point is reached; cf. ἄχρι καιροῦ, for a season (Luk 4:13; Act 13:11); ἄχρι ταύτης τῆς ἡμέρας w. perfect (Act 23:1), ἄχρι τούτου τοῦ λόγου w. imperfect (Act 22:22). The extension of meaning to = just in the degree that law, so far as there was law and no further, seems justifiable. If this meaning can be taken, then ἀλλὰ ἐβασίλευσεν κ.τ.λ. goes closely with ἁμ. οὐκ ἐλλογᾶται, as an indication that the punishment of sin being in evidence sin itself must have been there. καὶ ἐπὶ κ.τ.λ. brings out the fact that the sin was not on all fours with that of Adam, so making explicit the restriction hinted in ἄχρι νόμου, the unlikeness consisting in the fact that Adam sinned against a positive revealed command, men in general sinned against the internal law of a conscience, enlightened, if only partially. This interpretation is in strict agreement with the view put forward in the early chapters, and does not make S. Paul say anything but what he says explicitly.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vv. 13, 14. “For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed if there is no law; and nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the resemblance of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of Him that was to come.”

According to the first two interpretations of the preceding proposition, which lay down the sins committed by each individual as the sole or secondary cause of his death, the argument contained in Rom 5:13-14 would be this: “All die because they have all sinned; for even during the time which elapsed down to the giving of the law sin was in the world; now sin is undoubtedly not reckoned in the absence of law. Nevertheless, that did not prevent sin from reigning during all the interval between Adam and Moses, which proves certainly that it was nevertheless imputed in some measure. How could that be? Because of the law of nature written even in the heart of the Gentiles.” Such is De Wette’s interpretation, also that of Lange and Reuss. In this sense the second proposition of Rom 5:13 must be taken as an objection made to Paul on which he raises himself. Then he would be made to answer in the sequel by confining himself to stating the very fact of the reign of death. But the explanation of death is the very point in question; how could the fact itself be given in proof? Then a simple δέ would not have sufficed to indicate such a shifting in the direction of the thought. The text rather produces the impression of a consecutive argument. Finally, at the close of such an argument, the apostle could not have left to be understood the solution which he himself gave of the problem, namely, the natural law written in the heart of the Gentiles. This idea, on which everything rested, was at once too essential and too unfamiliar to the minds of his readers to be passed over in silence as self-evident. It has been sought to meet these difficulties by giving to the word ἐλλογεῖν, to put to account, a purely subjective meaning, and so to make the proposition, Rom 5:13 b, a simple observation interjected by the way. Ambrose and Augustine, then Luther, Calvin, and Melanchthon, and in our days Rückert, Rothe, and J. Müller, do in fact apply the imputation expressed by ἐλλογεῖν not to the judgment of God, but to the reckoning which the sinner makes to himself of the trespass which he has committed: “Every one died for his own sin, for sin existed even before the law, though the sinners did not take account of it, nor esteem themselves guilty. But death, which nevertheless reigned, proved that God on His part imputed it to the sinner.” But this purely subjective signification of the term ἐλλογεῖν cannot be justified. It would require to be indicated in some way. How, besides, could Paul have affirmed in terms so general that the sinners between Adam and Moses did not impute their sins to themselves, after saying of the Gentiles, Rom 2:15, that “their thoughts mutually accuse or excuse one another,” and Rom 1:32, that these same Gentiles “knew the judgment of God, that those who do such things are worthy of death”? Finally, the idea that, notwithstanding this want of subjective imputation, the divine imputation continued ever in force, would have required to be more strongly emphasized in Rom 5:14. In general, all these modes of interpretation, according to which Paul is held to explain the death of individuals by their own sins, run counter to the object which he had before him in this whole passage, the parallel between the justification of all in one, and the condemnation of all in one.

Let us then resume our explanation of the end of Rom 5:12; and let us seek from this viewpoint to give account of Rom 5:13-14 : “Death passed upon all, for that (in Adam) all sinned.” The course of the following argument at once becomes easy to understand: “Sin was assuredly in the world at that time (and you might consequently say to me: it was for that reason men died); but I answer: sin is not imputed if there is no law (it could not therefore be the cause of the death with which every individual was visited); and yet death reigned even over those who had not like Adam violated a positive law.” The conclusion is obvious: “Therefore all these individuals died, not for their own sin, but because of Adam’s,” which had been affirmed in the close of Rom 5:12 and which was to be proved. We might in our own day argue in exactly the same manner to explain the death of the heathen or of infants: Since they are still without law, they die, not because they have sinned personally, but because they all sinned in Adam. It is clear also how the argument thus understood is in keeping with the object of this passage. All having been, as is proved by the death of all, condemned in Adam, all can likewise be really justified in Christ. Hofmann and Dietzsch, who have explained ἐφ᾿ ᾧ in the sense of: “on the ground of which (death) all have sinned,” are of course obliged to interpret Rom 5:13-14 differently from us, though to arrive at the same result. We think it useless to discuss their explanation, which falls to the ground of itself, with that which they give to the last words of Rom 5:12.

Having explained the argument as a whole, let us return to the details of the text itself. The for, at the beginning of Rom 5:13, bears not only on the proposition of which it forms part, but on the entire argument to the end of Rom 5:14.

The words ἄχρι νόμου, until the law, might signify, as the old commentators would have it: “as long as the law existed,” that is to say, from Moses to Jesus Christ. For ἄχρι may have the meaning of during. But Rom 5:14, which paraphrases the words thus: “from Adam to Moses,” excludes this meaning.

The absence of the article before νόμου, law, certainly does not prevent it here from denoting the Mosaic law; comp. Rom 5:14: until Moses. But it is not as Mosaic law, but as law strictly so called, that the Jewish law is here mentioned. And so the translation might well be: till a law, that is to say, a law of the same kind as the commandment which Adam violated. The absence of the article before ἁμαρτία, sin, has a similar effect; there was sin at that period among men. In the following proposition it is again sin as a category which is designated (being without article). If the substantive ἁμαρτία, sin, is repeated (instead of the pronoun), it is because, as Meyer says, we have here the statement of a general maxim.

The verb ἒλλογεῖν is not found elsewhere except in the Epistle to Philemon, Rom 5:18, where Paul asks this Christian to put to his account, his, Paul’s, what Onesimus, whom he is recommending, may still owe to him. Between this term and λογίζειν, which he more frequently uses, the one shade of difference is that of the ἐν, in, which enters into the composition of ἐλλογεῖν: to inscribe in the account book. It is wholly arbitrary to apply this word to the subjective imputation of conscience. The parallel from the Epistle to Philemon shows clearly what its meaning is. But does the apostle then mean to teach the irresponsibility of sinners who, like the Gentiles, have not had a written law? No; for the whole book of Genesis, which describes the period between Adam and Moses, would protest against such an assertion. The matter in questior is an immediate and personal imputation, resting on a threatening like this: “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die.” The infliction of the punishment of death in the sense of this divine saying necessarily supposes a positive law violated; it supposes in general a theocratic government set up. Only in such circumstances can the violator be brought to account to be immediately judged and subjected, either to capital punishment, or to the obligation of providing an expiatory act, such as sacrifice (taking the place of the punishment of death). Outside of such an organization there may be other great dispensations of a collective and disciplinary character, such as the deluge, the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the abandonment of the Gentiles to their own corruption (chap. 1). These historical dispensations are vast pedagogical measures taken in respect of the whole human race; they have not the character of judicial and individual sentences, like those which rest on some article of a code violated by an individual with full knowledge of the law; comp. the contrast between the ἀπολοῦνται, shall perish, and the κριθήσονται, shall be judged, Rom 2:12.

The subjective negative μή before ὄντος νόμου represents the fact as it exists in the mind of the author of the maxim.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom_5:13, Rom_5:14

For until the law. sin was in the world, etc. These verses are connected by for with Rom_5:12, as introducing the proof of the declaration that death had passed on all men, on account of one man. The proof is this: the infliction of penal evils implies the violation of law; the violation of the law of Moses will not account for the universality of death, because men died before that law was given. Neither is the violation of the law of nature sufficient to explain the fact that all men are subject to death, because even those die who have never broken that law. As, therefore, death supposes transgression, and neither the law of Moses nor the law of nature embraces all the victims of death, it follows that men are subject to penal evils on account of the sin of Adam. It is for the offense of one that many die.

In order to the proper understanding of the apostles argument, it should be born in mind that the term death stands for penal evil; not for this or that particular form of it, but for any and every evil judicially indicted for the support of law. Pauls reasoning does not rest upon the mere fact that all men, even infants, are subject to natural death; for this night be accounted for by the violation of the law of Moses, or of the law of nature, or by their inherent native depravity. This covers the whole ground, and may account for the universality of natural death. But no one of these causes, nor all combined, can account for the infliction of all the penal evils to which men are subjected. The great fact in the apostles mind was, that God regards and treats all men, from the first moment of their existence, as out of fellowship with himself, as having forfeited his favor. Instead of entering into communion with them the moment they begin to exist (as he did with Adam,) and forming them by his spirit in his own moral image, he regards them as out of his favor, and withholds the influences of the Spirit. Why is this? Why does God thus deal with the human race? The fact that he does thus deal with them is not denied by any except Pelagians. Why then is it? Here is a form of death which the violation of the law of Moses, the transgression of the law of nature, the existence of innate depravity, separately or combined, are insufficient to account for. Its infliction is antecedent to them all; and yet it is of all evils the essence and the sum. Men begin to exist out of communion with God. This is the fact which no sophistry can get out of the Bible or the history of the world. Paul tells us why it is. It is because we fell in Adam; it is for the one offense of one man that all thus die. The covenant being formed with Adam, not only for himself, but also for his posterity (in other words, Adam having been placed on trial, not for himself only, but also for his race,) his act was, in virtue of this relation, regarded as our act; God withdrew from us as he did from him; in consequence of this withdrawing, we begin to exist in moral darkness, destitute of a disposition to delight in God, and prone to delight in ourselves and the world. The sin of Adam, therefore, ruined us; it was the ground of the withdrawing of the divine favor from the whole race; and the intervention of the Son of God in our salvation is an act of pure, sovereign, and wonderful grace.

Whatever obscurity, therefore, rests upon this passage, arises from taking the word death in the narrow sense in which it is commonly used among men. If taken in its scriptural sense, the whole argument is plain and conclusive. Let penal evil be substituted for the word death, and the argument will stand thus: All men are subject to penal evils on account of one man; this is the position to be proved, Rom_5:12. That such is the case is evident, because the infliction of a penalty supposes the violation of law. But such evil was inflicted before the giving of the Mosaic law; it comes on men before the transgression of the law of nature, or even the existence of inherent depravity; it must therefore be for the offense of one man that judgment has come upon all men to condemnation. The wide sense in which the sacred writers used the word death, accounts for the fact that the dissolution of the body (which is one form of the manifestation of the divine displeasure) is not only included in it, but is often the prominent idea.

Until the law. The law here mentioned is evidently the law of Moses. The word ἄχρι is properly rendered until, and not during the continuance of, a sense which the particle has in some passages. Until the law is immediately explained by the words from Adam to Moses. Sin was in the world, i.e. men were sinners, and were so regarded and treated. Sin is not imputed, that is, it is not laid to ones account, and punished. See Rom_4:8, Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity; and the familiar equivalent expressions. His iniquity shall be upon him, Num_15:31; and, He shall bear his iniquity. The word (ἐλλογεῖται) here used, occurs nowhere else in any Greek writer, except in Phm_1:18. The common word for impute is λογίζομαι. When there is no law, μὴ ὄντος νόμου, there not being law. Sin is correlative of law. If there is no law, there can be no sin, as Paul had already taught, Rom_4:15. But if there is no sin without law, there can be no imputation of sin. As, however, sin was imputed, as sin was in the world, as men were sinners, and were so regarded and treated before the law of Moses, it follows that there must be some more comprehensive law in relation to which men were sinners, and in virtue of which they were so regarded and treated. The principle here advanced, and on which the apostles argument rests is, that the infliction of penal evil implies the violation of law. If men were sinners, and were treated as such before the law of Moses, it is certain that there is some other law, for the violation of which sin was imputed to them.

Instead of the interpretation just given, there are several other methods of explaining this verse, which should be noticed. Calvin, Luther, Beza, and not a few of the modern commentators, say that the clause, sin is not imputed when there is no law, means, men do not impute sin to themselves, i.e. do not regard themselves as sinners; do not feel their guilt, when there is no law. To a certain extent, the sentiment thus expressed is true. Paul, in a subsequent chapter, Rom_7:8, says, Without the law, sin was dead; that is, unknown and disregarded. It is true, that ignorance of the law renders the conscience torpid, and that by the clear revelation of the law it is brought to life; so that by the law is the knowledge of sin. If, however, by law, is meant a written law, or a full and authenticated revelation of the will of God as a rule of duty, then it is only comparatively speaking true, that without law (i.e. such a law,) sin is unknown or disregarded. There is another law, as Paul teaches, Rom_2:14, Rom_2:15, written on the heart, in virtue of which men feel themselves to be sinners, and know the righteous judgment of God, by which they are exposed to death; see Rom_1:32. The objections, however, to this interpretation are decisive:

1. In the first place, it is inconsistent with the meaning of the words here used. To impute sin never means to lay sin to heart. The imputation is always made from without, or by another, not by the sinner himself. Tholuck, therefore, calls this interpretation a desperate shift. Noch, he says, ist eine gewalt same Hülfe zu erwähnen die Manche diesem Aussprüche des Apostels zu bringen gesucht haben. Sie haben dem ἐλλογεῖν eine andere Bedeutung beigelegt. Sie haben es in der Bedeutung achten, Rücksicht nehmen genommen.

2. This interpretation proceeds on a wrong assumption of the thing to be proved. It assumes that the apostle designs to prove that all men are in themselves sinners, and for their personal guilt or defilement, are exposed to death. But this, as has been shown, leaves out of view the main idea of Rom_5:12. It is true, that all men are sinners, either in the sense of actual transgressors, or of having a depraved nature, and consequently are exposed to death; but; the specific assertion of Rom_5:12 is, that it was by one man death passed on all men. This, therefore, is the thing to be proved, and not that all men are personally sinners. Of course it is not denied that men are subject to death for their own sins; but that is nothing to the point which the apostle has in hand. His design is to show that there is a form of death, or penal evil, to which men are subject, anterior to any personal transgression or inherent corruption.

3. This interpretation assumes that the apostle is answering an objection which has no force, or refuting an opinion which no one entertained. It supposes that the Jews held that the Gentiles, before the law of Moses, were not sinners, whereas they regarded them as pre-eminently such. It makes the apostle reason thus: All men are sinners. No, objects the Jew, before Moses there was no law, and therefore no sin. Yes, replies Paul, they were sinners, although they were not aware of it. But as no human being believed that men were not sinners before the giving of the Mosaic law, as Paul himself had proved at length that the whole world was guilty before God, as he had expressly taught that the Gentiles, although they had no written law, were a law unto themselves, and that they stood self-condemned in the presence of God, it is unreasonable to suppose that the apostle would stop to refute an objection which has not force enough to be even a cavil.

Paul had before laid down the principle (Rom_4:15), that where there is no law, there is no aggression, which is only another form of saying, sin is not imputed when there is no law. But as sin was imputed before the law of Moses, there must have been some other law, for the violation of which men were condemned. It is that the apostle designs to prove, and not that men were personally sinners; a fact, so far as the heathen were concerned, no Jew denied.

Another interpretation, which is adopted by a large number of commentators and theologians, supposes that the word death is to be understood of natural death alone. The reasoning of the apostle then is, As on account of the sin of one man, all men are condemned to die, so on account of the righteousness of one, all are made partakers of life, Rom_5:12. The proof that all are subject to death on account of the sin of Adam, is given in Rom_5:13, Rom_5:14; The infliction of the specific penalty of death, supposes the violation of a law to which that particular penalty was attached. This could not be the law of Moses, since those die who never violated that law; and, in short, all men die, although they have never broken any express command attended by the sanction of death. The liability of all men, therefore, to this specific form of evil, is to be traced not to their own individual character or conduct, but to the sin of Adam. Some of those who adopt this view of the passage, are consistent enough to carry it through, and make the life which is restored to all by Christ, as here spoken of, to be nothing more than the life of the body, i.e. the resurrection from the dead.‹14› It will be observed, that this interpretation is, as to its main principle, identical with that presented above as correct. That is it assumes that Rom_5:12 teaches that God regarded the act of Adam as the act of the whole race, or in other words, that he subjected all men to punishment on account of his transgression. And it makes Rom_5:13, Rom_5:14, the proof that the subjection of all men to the penal evil here specially in view, to be, not the corruption of their nature, nor their own individual sins, but the sin of Adam. It is, however, founded on two assumptions; the one of which is erroneous, and the other gratuitous. In the first place, it assumes that the death here spoken of is mere natural death, which, as shown above, is contrary both to the scriptural use of the term and to the immediate context. And, secondly, it assumes that the violation of the law of nature could not be justly followed by the death of the body, because that particular form of evil was not threatened as the sanction of that law. But this assumption is gratuitous, and would be as well authorized if made in reference to any other punishment of such transgressions; since no definite specific evil, as the expression of the divine displeasure, was made known to those who had no external revelation. Yet, as Paul says, Rom_1:32, the wicked heathen knew they were worthy of death, i.e. of the effects of the divine displeasure. The particular manner of the exhibition of that displeasure is a matter of indifference. It need hardly be remarked that it is not involved either in this or the commonly received interpretation of this passage, that men, before the time of Moses, were not punishable for their own sins. While this is admitted and asserted by the apostle, he proves that they were punished for Adams sin. No one feels that there is any inconsistency in asserting of the men of this generation, that although responsible to God for their personal transgressions, they are nevertheless born in a state of spiritual death, as a punishment of the sin of our great progenitor. The pains of child birth do not cease to be part of the penalty of the original transgression, although each suffering mother is burdened with the guilt of personal transgression.

As the effort to make these verses prove that all men are actual sinners fails of giving them any satisfactory sense, so the interpretation which assumes that they are designed to prove inherent, hereditary depravity, is no less untenable. If ἐφ ̓ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον, in Rom_5:12, means, Death has passed on all, because all are tainted with the hereditary corruption derived from Adam, then the argument in Rom_5:13, Rom_5:14, must stand thus: All men are by nature corrupt, for as sin is not imputed when there is no law, the death of all men cannot be accounted for on the ground of their actual sins; therefore, since those die who have never sinned, as Adam did, against a positive law, they must be subject to death for their innate depravity. But, so far as this argument assumes that men, before the time of Moses, were not justly subject to death for their actual sins, it is contrary to truth, and to the express teaching of the apostle. Yet this is the form in which it is generally presented. And if it only means that actual sin will not account for the absolute universality of death, since those die who have never committed any actual transgression, the argument is still detective. Innate depravity being universal, may account for the universality of natural death; but θάνατος; includes much more than natural death. What is to account for spiritual death? Why are men born dead in sin? This is the very thing to be accounted for. The fact is not its own solution. Pauls argument is, that they are so born on account of Adams sin. It is another objection to this interpretation, that it destroys he analogy between Christ and Adam, and therefore is inconsistent with the great design of the whole passage. Pauls object is to show, that as we are justified by the righteousness of Christ as something out of ourselves, so we are condemned for the sin of Adam as something out of ourselves. To make him teach that we are condemned for our inherent depravity, to the exclusion of Adams sin, necessitates his teaching that we are justified for our inherent goodness, which destroys all hope of heaven. There is no interpretation of this passage consistent with the meaning of the words, the nature of the argument, the design of the context, and the analogy of Scripture, but the one given above, as commonly received. Köllner complains that Pauls argument is very confused. This he accounts for by assuming that the apostle had two theories in his mind. The one, that men die for their own sins; the other, that they die for the sin of Adam. His natural feelings led him to adopt the former, and he accordingly says, in Rom_5:12, Death passed on all men, because all have sinned. But as the Jewish doctrine of his age, that men were condemned for the sin of Adam, afforded such an admirable illustration of his doctrine of salvation through the merit of Christ, the apostle, says Köllner, could not help availing himself of it. Thus he has the two theories mixed up together, asserting sometimes the one, and sometimes the other. To those who reverence the Scriptures as the word of God, it is assuredly a strong argument in favor of the common interpretation of the passage, that it saves the sacred writer from such aspersions. It is better to admit the doctrine of imputation, than to make the apostle contradict himself.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

That this is so, that both guiltiness and death began not after the giving and transgressing of Moses’ Law, it appeareth manifestly by that, that men died before that Law was given: for in that they died, sin, which is the cause of death, was then: and in such sort, that it was also imputeth: whereupon it followeth that there was then some Law, the breach whereof was the cause of death.

Even from Adam to Moses.

Where there is no Law made, no man is punished as faulty and guilty.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

For until the law sin was in the world--that is during all the period from Adam "until the law" of Moses was given, God continued to treat men as sinners.

but sin is not imputed where there is no law--"There must therefore have been a law during that period, because sin was then imputed"; as is now to be shown.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 13. For until the law sin was in the world] As death reigned from Adam to Moses, so also did sin. Now, as there was no written law from Adam to that given to Moses, the death that prevailed could not be the breach of that law; for sin, so as to be punished with temporal death, is not imputed where there is no law, which shows the penalty of sin to be death. Therefore, men are not subjected to death for their own personal transgressions, but for the sin of Adam; as, through his transgression, all come into the world with the seeds of death and corruption in their own nature, superadded to their moral depravity. All are sinful-all are mortal-and all must die.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13. For until the law, etc. This parenthesis anticipates an objection: for as there seems to be no transgression without the law, it might have been doubted whether there were before the law any sin: that there was after the law admitted of no doubt. The question only refers to the time preceding the law. To this then he gives this answer, — that though God had not as yet denounced judgment by a written law, yet mankind were under a curse, and that from the womb; and hence that they who led a wicked and vicious life before the promulgation of the law, were by no means exempt from the condemnation of sin; for there had always been some notion of a God, to whom honor was due, and there had ever been some rule of righteousness. This view is so plain and so clear, that of itself it disproves every opposite notion.

But sin is not imputed, etc. Without the law reproving us, we in a manner sleep in our sins; and though we are not ignorant that we do evil, we yet suppress as much as we can the knowledge of evil offered to us, at least we obliterate it by quickly forgetting it. While the law reproves and chides us, it awakens us as it were by its stimulating power, that we may return to the consideration of God’s judgment. The Apostle then intimates that men continue in their perverseness when not roused by the law, and that when the difference between good and evil is laid aside, they securely and joyfully indulge themselves, as if there was no judgment to come. But that before the law iniquities were by God imputed to men is evident from the punishment of Cain, from the deluge by which the whole world was destroyed, from the fate of Sodom, and from the plagues inflicted on Pharaoh and Abimelech on account of Abraham, and also from the plagues brought on the Egyptians. That men also imputed sin to one another, is clear from the many complaints and expostulations by which they charged one another with iniquity, and also from the defenses by which they labored to clear themselves from accusations of doing wrong. There are indeed many examples which prove that every man was of himself conscious of what was evil and of what was good: but that for the most part they connived at their own evil deeds, so that they imputed nothing as a sin to themselves unless they were constrained. When therefore he denies that sin without the law is imputed, he speaks comparatively; for when men are not pricked by the goads of the law, they become sunk in carelessness.

But Paul wisely introduced this sentence, in order that the Jews might hence more clearly learn how grievously they offended, inasmuch as the law openly condemned them; for if they were not exempted from punishment whom God had never summoned as guilty before his tribunal, what would become of the Jews to whom the law, like a herald, had proclaimed their guilt, yea, on whom it denounced judgment? There may be also another reason adduced why he expressly says, that sin reigned before the law, but was not imputed, and that is, that we may know that the cause of death proceeds not from the law, but is only made known by it. Hence he declares, that all became miserably lost immediately after the fall of Adam, though their destruction was only made manifest by the law. If you translate this adversative δε, though, the text would run better; for the meaning is, that though men may indulge themselves, they cannot yet escape God’s judgment, even when there is no law to reprove them.

Death reigned from Adam, etc. He explains more clearly that it availed men nothing that from Adam to the time when the law was promulgated, they led a licentious and careless life, while the difference between good and evil was willfully rejected, and thus, without the warning of the law, the remembrance of sin was buried; yea, that this availed them nothing, because sin did yet issue in their condemnation. It hence appears, that death even then reigned; for the blindness and obduracy of men could not stifle the judgment of God.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(13) So much we can see; so much is simple matter of history, that sin was in the world from Adam downwards. But here comes the difficulty. Sin there was, but why guilt? And why death, the punishment of guilt? The pre-Mosaic man sinned indeed, but could not rightly be condemned for his sin until there was a law to tell him plainly the distinction between right and wrong.

It will be observed that the law of nature (Rom_1:19-20; Rom_2:14-15) is here left out of consideration. In the places mentioned, St. Paul speaks of the law of nature only as applicable to his contemporaries or to comparatively recent times. He does not throw back its operation into the primitive ages of the world; neither does he pronounce upon the degree of responsibility which men, as moral agents, then incurred. This would fall in with the doctrine that the consciousness of right and wrong was gradually formed. It is not, indeed, to be said that St. Paul exactly anticipated the teachings of the inductive school of moralists, but there is much in their system, or at any rate in the results to which they seem to be coming, that appears to fall into easy and harmonious relations with the teaching of the Apostle.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13. for until the law] This and the following verses are not a parenthesis: see on Rom_5:12.—“Until” here practically = “before.” The period “from Adam to Moses” is in view, the Law of Moses being taken as the first elaborate statute-giving of God for man. “Laws” existed long before Moses; e.g. those of Marriage, of the sanctity of Life, and of the Sabbath. But the Mosaic Law covered the field of duty in a way unknown before; so as to suggest the question whether human beings, in the previous ages, in some instances, had not satisfied the claims of then-known duty, and so escaped death. But no: in those ages, as in the Mosaic, “death reigned;” therefore there was sin; therefore there was broken law; and that law, in numberless cases, (viz. infantine,) must have been broken only “in Adam;” for it was unknown to the persons in question.

law … law] Both these words in the Gr. are without the article. In spite of some difficulty, we must interpret the first of the Mosaic Law, and the second of Law in some other sense; here probably in the sense of the declared Will of God in general, against which, in a particular case, Adam sinned, and we “in him.”

is not imputed] So as to bring penalty. Therefore, had there been in no sense a (broken) law in the primeval age, there would have been no death. But death was universal.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For until the law, sin was in the world,.... This is a proof of sin's having entered into the world, by one man's transgression of the positive law of God, which forbid him the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; since it was in the world before the law of Moses was given: the sin of Adam and the guilt of that were in the world before, and came upon all men to condemnation; the general corruption of nature appeared before; and actual sins, and transgressions of all sorts were committed before; as by the immediate posterity of Adam, by the men of the old world, by the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, by the patriarchs and their posterity, by the Egyptians, Canaanites, and others. They were all guilty of sin, corrupted by it, and under the dominion of it, except such as were released from it by the grace of God: now when sin is said to be until this time, the meaning is not that it existed and continued until the law of Moses took place, and then ceased; for that law did not, and could not take away sin, it rather increased it, at least it became more known by it; but that it was in being before it, and had influence and power over the sons of men, so as to subject them to death:

but sin is not imputed when there is no law. This looks like an objection, that if there was no law before Moses's time, then there was no sin, nor could any action of man be known or accounted by them as sinful, or be imputed to them to condemnation; or rather it is a concession, allowing that where there is no law, sin is not imputed; but there was a law before that law of Moses, which law was transgressed, and the sin or transgression of it was imputed to men to condemnation and death, as appears from what follows.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Ver. 13. Sin is not imputed] In men’s esteem, as Rom 4:15.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Until the law, sin was in the world. That is, from Adam’s fall, both original sin and actual sins truly infected all mankind. (Witham) --- Not imputed. That is, men knew not, or made no account of sin; neither was it imputed to them, in the manner it was afterwards, when they transgressed the known written law of God. (Challoner) --- All were conceived and born in sin, in what we call original sin, and liable to death, even infants, who were not come to the use of reason, and consequently could not sin after the similitude of the transgression of Adam, or by imitating his sin, but were born in sin: and besides this, all manner of actual sins, which men committed by their own perverse will, reigned every where in the world. But before the law these sins were not imputed, that is, were not declared sins, that deserved such punishments as were ordained by the law. --- Adam, who is a figure of him that was to come. That is, of Christ, whom the apostle calls the last Adam, 1 Corinthians xv. 45. But he was a figure by contraries. By the first Adam, sin and death entered into the world; by Christ, justice and life. (Witham)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

For until the law sin was in the world: q.d. It appears that all have sinned, because sin was always in the world, not only after the law was given by Moses, but also before, even from the beginning of the world till that time.

But sin is not imputed when there is no law: q.d. It appears there was a law before the law of Moses, for if there had been no law all that while, then sin would not have been imputed to men, so as to make them liable to punishment or death; but sin was imputed or charged upon men before the law of Moses, and death passed upon all. Therefore there must have been a law, by the transgression of which men were sinners, before that time. And that was either the law of nature, or the positive law which God gave to Adam, the transgression whereof is imputed to all, as we shall see, Rom 5:19. Some think the apostle doth here obviate a cavil: q.d. Let no man think that sin began to have its being together with the law, for there was sin before there was any written law to forbid it. The same acts that were forbidden afterwards by the law, were before committed, and were really sinful in the sight of God. But sin was not so well known, nor so strictly charged upon the sinner, as it is since the law was given. It was not imputed comparatively, though absolutely it was, as may appear by many instances, as the drowning of the world, the destruction of Sodom, &c.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13. The apostle suspends the prosecution of the parallelism in order to show to the Jews that the antithesis is not narrowed to the period of the Mosaic law alone, but covers the whole human history and race, including the patriarchate from Adam to Moses.

Until the law—During the patriarchal period. This verse reasons thus: During the patriarchate there was sin, and therefore law. (See notes Rom_9:6-14.)

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 13, 14. For until Law (i.e. all through the time previous to the revelation of law) sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam"s transgression. Though nomov , where it first occurs in ver. 13, refers definitely, as appears from the context, to the Law of Moses, yet it is without the article, as denoting the principle of law, of which the Mosaic code was the embodiment; and it has therefore, in accordance with the rule laid down in this translation, been rendered as above. The purport of these two verses, connected by gar with pantev hmarton of ver. 12, is to prove that the primeval sin did really infect and implicate the whole race of mankind. It might be supposed that those only would be implicated who had themselves transgressed, as Adam did, a known command; it being an acknowledged principle of Divine justice that only sin against law of which the sinner is conscious is imputed to him for con-detonation. (cf. Rom_4:15; also Joh_9:41) Nay. but the universal dominion of death, the doom of sin, over all alike, whether or not they had themselves so sinned, was proof that sin was all along dominant in the world, infecting all. The Mosaic Law is spoken of as the distinct revelation of Divine Law to man; and therefore attention is first drawn to the fact that before that revelation, no less than after it, death had reigned over all. But is it thus implied that until the Law from Mount Sinai men had been without any kind of law, for transgressing which they were responsible? Not so. That Law is indeed regarded as the first definite enunciation of law under evident Divine sanction, after which, to those that were under it, sin became indubitably and exceeding sinful; but that men are conceived as having sinned previously against law of some kind, appears from the phrase, Even over those (kai epi touv) who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam"s transgression," i.e. consciously against a known command. This surely implies that some had so sinned; and thus the essential point of the argument is that even over those who had not so sinned (such as the unenlightened and invincibly ignorant, or persons dying in infancy) death had equally reigned. Who is the figure of him that was to come. This is added so as to bring round the thought to the main subject of the chapter, viz. the reconciliation of all mankind through Christ, to which the scriptural account of the condemnation of all mankind through Adam had, at ver. 12, been adduced as analogous. Who refers to Adam, who has just been for the first time named; he that was to come is Christ, who is called, in 1Co_15:45, "the last Adam." Adam was a type ( tupov) of Christ in that both represented entire humanity; one as the representative and author of fallen, the other of restored, humanity the transgression of the one and the obedience of the other alike affecting all (see vers 18, 19). But there is a difference between the two cases; and this is pointed out in vers. 15, 16, 17, which follow.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

For until the law sin was in the world - All, I say, had sinned, for sin was in the world long before the written law; but, I grant, sin is not so much imputed, nor so severely punished by God, where there is no express law to convince men of it. Yet that all had sinned, even then, appears in that all died.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The apostle having asserted the doctrine of original sin in the former verse, he prosecutes and pursues it in this and the following verses: asserting, That it is evident all have sinned, because sin was always in the world; not only after the giving of the law by Moses, but also before, even from the beginning of the world to that time.

As if the apostle had said, There was certainly a law given before there was a law written: a law given to Adam, before a law written by Moses; now this law was either the law of nature written in Adam’s heart, or the postive law of God given to Adam, against which law men were capable of offending before the law of Moses was written; otherwise sin would not have been imputed to them, for sin is not imputed where there is no law."

Learn hence, That God having created man a rational creature, capable of moral government, is by immediate resultancy his King and governor, and has ruled him from the beginning by a law, yet not barely by a law, but by a covenant, with promises and threatenings annexed, rewarding him for his obedience, and punishing him for his rebellion.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13, 14. “For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed, there being no law; but death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the type of him who is to come.” Here is an allusion to the infants, idiots and heathens who did not sin after the manner of Adam, i. e., break a known law; yet they all died physically, thus paying the penalty and showing to all the world their guilt in a sense, i. e., corroborating the above conclusion that all sinned seminally in Adam. How was Adam the type of Christ? Only representatively. Both Adam and Christ represent the entire human race. This is so fortunate for us. We all failed in Adam; but we all have a second chance in Christ; otherwise we must have gone like the fallen angels

(Jud 1:6) to abide in adamantine chains and penal fires forever.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

for until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law .

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

13. For until the law. Paul now shows that all must have sinned in Adam. Until law is given sin is not imputed. Yet sin must have been in the world from the time of Adam until the law of Moses, because death, which is due to sin, reigned. The prevalence of death proved the existence of sin.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

13.] How, consistently with ch. 4:15, could all men sin, before the law? This is now explained. For up to (the time of) the law (= ἀπὸ Ἀδ. μέχρι Μωυς. ver. 14: not ‘during the time of the law,’ as Orig., Chrys.,—τοῦ νόμου δοθέντος, … ἕως ὁ νόμος ἦν,—Theodoret,—an allowable rendering of the words, but manifestly inconsistent with the sense;—nor, ‘as far as there was law, there was sin,’ as Dr. Burton,—which is both inadmissible from the μέχρι Μωυσέως following, and would not answer to the simple matter of fact, ἦν ἐν κόσμῳ) there was sin in the world (‘men sinned,’ see Gen 6:5-13; committed actual sin: not, men were accounted sinners because of Adam’s sin; the Apostle reminds us of the historical fact, that there was sin in the world during this period): but sin is not reckoned (as transgression) where the law is not.

ἐλλογεῖται has given rise to much dispute. Very many Commentators (Aug., , Luth., Melanc., Calv., Beza, Rückert, Tholuck, Stuart, al.) explain it of consciousness of sin by the sinner himself, as in ch. 7:7: but (1) as De Wette observes, this is not the natural sense of the word, which implies two parties, one of whom sets down something to the account of the other (ref.): (2) this interpretation would bring in a new and irrelevant element,—for the Apostle is not speaking in this chapter at all of subjective human consciousness, but throughout of objective truths with regard to the divine dealings: and (3) it would be altogether inconsistent with the declarations of ch. 2:15,—where in this sense the ἐλλογισμός of sin by the νόμον μὴ ἔχοντες distinctly asserted.

I am persuaded that the right sense of ἐλλ. is, reckoned, ‘set down as transgression,’—‘put in formal account,’ by God. In the case of those who had not the written law, ἁμαρτία is not formally reckoned as παράβασις, set over against the command: but in a certain sense, as distinctly proved ch. 2:9-16, it is reckoned and they are condemned for it. Nor is there any inconsistency, as Tholuck complains, in this view. Other passages of Paul’s writings support and elucidate it. He states the object of the law to be, ch. 7:13, ἵνα γένηται καθʼ ὑπερβολὴν ἁμαρτωλὸς ἡ ἁμαρτία διὰ τῆς ἐντολῆς. The revelation of the law exaggerated, brought into prominent and formal manifestation, the sinfulness of sin, which was before culpable and punishable, but in a less degree. With this view also agree Act 17:30; ch. 2:12, ὅσοι ἀνόμως ἥμαρτον, ἀνόμως καὶ ἀπολοῦνται,—and 3:25, in so far as they state an analogous case. The objection to taking οὐκ ἐλλογεῖται relatively, ‘is not fully reckoned,’ will hardly be urged by those who bear in mind the Apostle’s habit of constantly stating relative truths as positive, omitting the qualifying particles: see e.g. ch. 7:7, where with ἁμαρτίαν and with οὐκ ᾔδειν both, we must supply qualifications (see notes there).

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

13. ἄχρι γὰρ νόμου κ.τ.λ. At first sight this seems to give a reason for just the opposite of what is wanted: it seems to prove not that πάντες ἤμαρτον, but that however much men might sin they had not at least the full guilt of sin. This is really what St. Paul aims at proving. There is an under-current all through the passage, showing how there was something else at work besides the guilt of individuals. That ‘something’ is the effect of Adam’s Fall. The Fall gave the predisposition to sin; and the Fall linked together sin and death.

St. Paul would not say that the absence of written law did away with all responsibility. He has already laid down most distinctly that Gentiles, though without such written law, have law enough to be judged by (2:12-16); and Jews before the time of Moses were only in the position of Gentiles. But the degree of their guilt could not be the same either as that of Adam, or as that of the Jews after the Mosaic legislation. Perhaps it might be regarded as an open question whether, apart from Adam, pre-Mosaic sins would have been punishable with death. What St. Paul wishes to bring out is that prior to the giving of the Law, the fate of mankind, to an extent and in a way which he does not define, was directly traceable to Adam’s Fall.

ἁμαρτία δὲ οὐκ ἐλλογεῖται κ.τ.λ. The thought is one which had evidently taken strong hold on St. Paul: see on 4:15, and the parallels there quoted.

ἐλλογεῖται: ‘brought into account’ (Gif.), as of an entry made in a ledger. The word also occurs in Phm 1:18, where see Lightfoot’s note.

ἐλλογεῖται (or ἐνλογεῖται) אc B C D E F G K L P, &c., ἐλλογᾶται אd: ἐνελογεῖτο א*, ἐλλογᾶτο A 52 108; imputabatur Vulg. codd. Ambrstr. al. The imperf. appears to be a (mistaken) correction due to the context. As to the form of the verb: ἐλλόγα is decisively attested in Phm 1:18. but it would not follow that the same form was used here where St. Paul is employing a different amanuensis: however, as the tendency of the MSS is rather to obliterate vernacular forms than to introduce them, there is perhaps a slight balance of probability in favour of ἐλλογᾶται: see Westcott and Hort, Notes on Orthography in Appendix to Introd. p. 166 ff.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Until the law. In the period between Adam and Moses.

Is not imputed [ουκ ελλογειται] . Put to account so as to bring penalty. From logov an account or reckoning. Only here and Phl 1:18.

Figure [τυπος] . See on 1Pe 5:3.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.