Romans 5:12-14 – How Adam Bought Death

Romans 5:12–14 sits right in the middle of Paul showing us all the riches God gives us by His grace when we’re justified by faith.

Romans 5:1 starts with, “Being justified by faith, we have…” and then Paul lists all these blessings. We’re justified by faith when we believe Christ died for our sins and rose again, then God declares us righteous based on that faith alone which sets us apart from the world, separated or sanctified unto Him, and that gives us great spiritual blessings.

Romans 5:12 reads,

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

 

We see that, again, as we enter this passage, we’re entering into another series of integrated arguments where Paul explains a concept more fully by using the words “wherefore”, “nevertheless”, “for if”, “therefore” and moreover”,  tying in these deeper explanations of the main theme.

We also notice in this passage that Romans 5:13 through to Romans 5:17

is one big parenthesis, or a detour if you like, from the main point in order to explain more deeply the subject being talked about.

We could read from Romans 5:12 then go directly to Romans 5:18 to see the point, the whole subject, but then if we did that we’d be confronted with more therefores and moreovers that expand on the thought even more, and we’d also lose the treasures of those detours that help us understand the subject more completely.

Romans 5:12 starts with a “wherefore” which means it’s a continuation of the previous verse, Romans 5:11, which, in turn, starts with “and not only so, which means it’s a continuation of verse 10, which begins with “for if” connecting it to verse 9. The book is a whole series of these connections that tie together not only the verses but entire chapters together.

The chapter and verse divisions of the bible are a great help to bible study but we must be aware that they don’t separate a theme which often exists through many verses and chapters and Romans is a perfect example of this.

We’ve got to recognise the integration of the whole book and, in fact, the whole bible. If we don’t we end up with a massive collection of individual verses which, although they can be useful, and may be a statement of truth within themselves, they won’t let us understand the whole integrated message and this’s where a heap of confusion comes into the church.

As we’ve often discussed before, this method of explaining a deeper meaning within a subject is Paul’s style, which, when we know how to handle it, clarifies many issues within a main point.

Up until now Paul’s been talking only about Jesus Christ and how He died for us while we were sinners in verse 9, how we’re saved from wrath through Him, and reconciled by His death in verse 10 and how we’ve received the atonement in verse 11.

Then suddenly in verse 12 he brings up Adam.

Why?

Paul’s explaining to us why this one Man, Jesus Christ, who is the fullness of God, and is fully God and fully man, could bring righteousness, atonement, and life to the whole world without the law, without Israel and without covenants as we’ve seen in Romans 4, and this is where Adam is vital to our understanding.

As Adam brought sin and death into the world, Christ brings life and righteousness.

This way of explaining salvation is something we don’t find before Paul’s epistles. Today it seems normal to say “Adam brought sin, Christ brings salvation,” but that understanding comes from Paul’s revelation from Jesus Christ Himself. Without Romans 5 and Paul’s letters, we wouldn’t know this connection.

Before Paul, the Bible showed Adam brought sin, and God chose Israel to deal with sin through the law, sacrifices, and their Messiah.

But Paul’s already shown that we don’t need Israel or the law to be justified.

We’re justified by God’s grace through faith. And just like one man (Adam) brought sin, one Man (Christ) brings all these blessings.

Paul also shows our problem is bigger than breaking God’s law.

Yes, sin is breaking the law, not obeying God’s commands and not blessing what God blesses. But sin goes much deeper. Sin affects our nature, not just our actions. That’s why 2 Timothy 1:9-10, says God saved us “not according to our works” but by His purpose and grace given in Christ before the world began, now revealed through Christ who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

It’s not “How do we get people to do right?” It’s “How can people live forever?” which’s a much bigger issue.

Christ doesn’t just fix Israel’s covenant problems. He fixes the problem that goes all the way back to Adam, the first man and without Paul’s revelation of the mystery, we wouldn’t understand Adam’s connection to Christ.

Romans 5:12 says “by one man”, meaning Adam was a real man. This, of course,  teaches against ideas of evolution with no single first man. It also shows the creation of male and female (as Jesus said in Matthew 19:4 and Mark 10:6). And it shows man is not like angels.

Sin entered the world by man, not angels. The devil sinned first, but sin didn’t enter the world until Adam sinned, because God gave dominion of the earth to man though Adam. Angels don’t reproduce, but man does, so Adam’s sin, the nature of sin, passed to all descendants of Adam right down to you and I today, along with our descendants.

God made one man and one woman, and they had children, and that’s how we all got here. We weren’t there in the beginning, but Adam and Eve were.

So when Romans 5:12 says “by one man sin entered the world,” that tells us something important. Sin came in through a man, and the solution also had to come through a Man.

Paul talks more about Adam and creation than anybody else in the New Testament. For example, in Colossians 1:16-17, he says this,

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

 

All things—visible and invisible, principalities and powers—were created by Christ.

Genesis 1 tells of the material creation, but Paul shows there were spiritual things created too, things not listed in the Genesis six days account.

In Ephesians 3:9, Paul says,

And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:

 

Genesis says God created, and Jesus is God, but Paul makes it clear that Christ Himself is the Creator.

This matters because the same Christ who created everything is the One who brings life and immortality (2 Timothy 1:10). Before the world began, God already purposed salvation through this Man.

God didn’t create humanity and then later figure out how to become human. He made man in His image because He already planned that the image of God—Jesus—would one day become a Man. That’s why humans can bear God’s image, but rocks, trees, and animals cannot.

Paul also talks about creation in a way that shows why evolution doesn’t work. Evolution can’t explain angels, souls, or spiritual reality. God is Spirit, and the spiritual world came before the material. Evolution denies spiritual reality. If we believe everything came by natural selection, then we can’t believe in a soul or a spiritual judgment before God.

Paul reveals these spiritual truths so we can think about them correctly.

In Genesis 3, Eve ate the fruit first. So why does Paul say sin came by Adam?

This’s where people get confused. Some even twist the story to say Eve was wiser, or that the story is “pro‑female,” or that women brought humanity forward, and that isn’t new. It was common amongst pagan religions. Ephesus had a huge temple to Artemis built on that idea.

Timothy lived in Ephesus, and Paul warned him in 1 Timothy 2 about false teaching influenced by that culture. When Paul says he doesn’t allow a woman to teach or usurp authority, he’s talking about wrong doctrine in the assembly based on these pagan ideas.

Paul tells men to be quiet too when they teach wrongly. His point isn’t that man was created first so woman must be silent. His point is in verse 14 (1 Timothy 2:14) where we see that “Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived…”

The Bible teaches we all came from one man, Adam, not one woman. That doesn’t glorify man, because it’s the man who brought sin and death into the world.

In 1 Timothy 2:14, where Paul says that Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, he’s pointing out that she was tricked, deceived, by the serpent as Genesis 3 shows us, but that Adam sinned knowingly.

That’s why sin is counted to Adam, not Eve.

Maybe Eve didn’t hear God’s command directly, because in Genesis 2 God spoke to Adam, not Eve.

Eve was deceived but that’s not the same as breaking a known command, and since the command was given to Adam, his sin is the one that counted. Eve could eat, but Adam had the rule.

Maybe Eve shouldn’t have acted on her own and gone to Adam and put the matter before him. Instead of that, she allowed herself to be deceived by Satan and she also fell into transgression.

The Bible simply teaches that Adam sinned.

That’s why Romans 5:12 says, “By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin.” Not by Eve. Not by deception. By Adam. God told Adam directly not to eat. Scripture never shows God giving that command to Eve.

Job even mentions Adam.

In Job 31:33, Job says he didn’t hide his sin “as Adam.”

Adam sinned, then hid, making fig leaves and hiding from God. That’s human nature— to sin and then deny it. Paul already proved in Romans chapters 2–3 that all the world is guilty. In Romans 5 he explains why, because we all come from Adam, and we all inherited the sin nature that was in him.

Because all humanity comes from one man, there’s no Jew or Gentile in Adam. Adam wasn’t an Israelite and there were no covenants, no temple, no law. When Paul goes back to Adam, he sets aside the whole Jewish system to show the root problem which was that sin entered humanity through one man, and the Savior had to be one Man too—Christ—who brings righteousness to all – like Adam brought sin to all.

Paul also makes clear that sin did not enter before Adam. All theories about pre‑Adam worlds, pre‑Adam people, or sin before Adam have no Scripture behind them. Sin entered by Adam, and death came with it.

Romans 5:12 teaches that sin affects all of us, completely—mind, body, heart, thoughts, everything we do. The life we inherited from our fathers is corrupted. Sin destroys what God made for life and blessing. Some people say our bodies die but our souls stay pure, or that we can reach righteousness by our own mind. But Scripture says sin touches every part of us. That’s why we need a quickening Spirit to save us, which is the Spirit which brings life out of death.

Sin is the reason for death, and it’s also the reason for pain, suffering, judgment, injustice, poverty, and all the evil in the world. People ask, “Why did God make the world this way?” He didn’t. Sin corrupted it.

Paul says death came by sin, and death has “passed upon all men.” Death is universal. Everybody dies.

People today try to deny sin and try to chase life through science or some sort of enhanced spirituality without even knowing what life or death really is. But Hebrews 9:27 says it plainly,

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

 

If death is universal, then sin is universal, and that means the problem is bigger than Israel and bigger than the law or our sorry attempts to “be good”.

The law can’t fix death. Sin came before the law.

Telling a broken thing to “do right” doesn’t fix it. If the inside is corrupted, commands won’t help. So the solution must be beyond Israel and beyond the law.

That solution is Jesus Christ. Adam’s sin caused death; Christ brings life. Christ came to save all mankind, to bring heaven and earth together in Him.

Romans 5:12 says sin entered by one man, and death by sin, and death passed upon all because all sinned. We’re genealogical descendants of that one man.

In Genesis 1:27, God made Adam in His own image. But in Genesis 5:3, Adam’s son was born in Adam’s image—a fallen image.

So we all inherit corrupted life from Adam and that’s why we all die.

People argue about Genesis, saying chapter 1 and 2 contradict each other, but they don’t. Genesis 1 gives the creation days; Genesis 2 gives the story of the garden. The same writer wrote both. The real question is: how did Adam die?

God said in Genesis 2:17,

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

 

Adam and Eve ate in Genesis 3, but they didn’t drop dead that moment. They lived long enough to be cast out, have children, and grow old. So what was the death that happened that day?

In Genesis 3:3 Eve told the serpent God had said not to touch the tree, even though God never said that.

The serpent denied death and promised “your eyes shall be opened… ye shall be as gods.”

She ate and didn’t fall over dead, so she may have thought nothing happened. But Scripture explains there’s physical death and spiritual death.

In Ezekiel 18:4 God says,

Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

 

When Adam and Eve sinned, they lost their fellowship with God. They were no longer justified. Their communion with God was broken.

Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 2:14

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

 

That spiritual understanding was cut off in Genesis 3. That’s why they were driven out of the garden—so they wouldn’t eat the Tree of Life while spiritually dead. Angels who sinned had no hope, but God let Adam and Eve live in the flesh so they could be redeemed. God even replaced their fig leaves with animal skins, showing the first sacrifice.

So when Adam brought sin into the world, the death that came was both physical and spiritual. Physical death came later, but spiritual death came that exact same day. They lost access to the Tree of Life and to God Himself. That’s the death Romans 5 is talking about, and that’s why we need Christ, the One who brings life where Adam brought death.

In Romans 5:9–11, Paul says that in Christ we now have atonement, we’re reconciled, we have forgiveness, we’re saved from wrath and we have eternal life because our spirit’s made alive.

But in Adam, we only have death.

So, when Paul says in Romans 5:12,

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

He’s laying the foundation for the next chapters which have to do with the difference between the old man, the one in Adam and the new man, the one in Christ. The old man is fallen and dead in sin while the new man is justified by faith.

Paul says death passed upon all men.

Do we die because we personally sinned? The wages of sin is death, yes, but even babies die and they haven’t committed sins, yet they die because they inherited death from Adam.

We’re not sinners because we sin. We sin because we’re sinners by nature and we’re born that way.

Some old teachings said people are born innocent until they sin. But Scripture shows we were broken the day we were born, because we were born in Adam. The life we inherited is not eternal life. Every person born eventually dies, showing that our life’s corrupted.

Does the fact that “all have sinned” mean we were somehow inside Adam, choosing sin with him? No. That would be unjust. God says He does not hold children guilty for their father’s sins as we see in a number of places especially Ezekiel 18:20 and Deuteronomy 24:16.

Adam is our father, but we weren’t there in the garden. We’re guilty for our own sins, not Adam’s. Paul already covered that in Romans 1–3.

So why bring up Adam?

Because Paul’s showing that we’re not sinners only because of our actions. We’re sinners because we were born spiritually dead. We sin because we’re sinners.

Our first sin came from a broken nature. We were born disconnected from God, and sin naturally follows.

This is what people call original sin. Adam, the first man, made sinners by his sin.

Romans 5:19 says, “By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners.” Adam didn’t force us to sin, but when he fell and had children, those children were born in his fallen image which we see in Genesis 5:3.

A newborn baby hasn’t done anything right or wrong yet, but they will die because they’re descended from the man who brought death into the world through sin, Adam.

We do not inherit Adam’s guilt.

We inherit Adam’s corrupt, broken, mortal nature. A fallen creature cannot produce an unfallen, eternal one. That’s why every child, no matter how sweet, will one day die.

Ever since Adam, sinners are born, sinners sin, and sinners die. That’s our nature. And when a person finally faces that, they often blame God. They ask “If there is a God, why did He make us this way?”

But God didn’t make the world this way. Sin did. And God showed His love by sending Christ to die for us, while we were yet sinners, as Romans 5:8 says, all to save us from the power and the consequences of that sin.

Christ came to fix what Adam broke. Adam brought death; Christ brings life. In Christ we can be spiritually quickened, or made alive, forgiven, reconciled, and given wisdom Adam never had after he fell.

Salvation isn’t just a religious idea—it’s God rescuing us from the ruined condition we’re born into.

Like giving a broken child education, food, and help, Christ lifts us out of Adam’s curse and gives us blessings from heaven.

In Christ we inherit what He has—eternal life, glory, resurrection.

In Adam we inherit death. Humanity’s under Adam’s curse, and then we add our own sins on top of it.

Scripture teaches this everywhere.

Psalm 14 says none are righteous. Psalm 39:5 says that even at a man’s best state he is vanity or empty. Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

This starts at birth. Parenting and nurturing tries to help, but children are still born sinners. Even with every advantage, they still choose wrong.

1 Corinthians 2:14 says that the natural man cannot know the things of God while Romans 3:10 says none are righteous.

Romans 7:24 shows Paul crying out, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” And the answer in Romans 7:25 is Jesus Christ our Lord.

So when Romans 5:12 says “death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned,” it means God doesn’t hold us guilty for Adam’s sin, but we still suffer the death and corruption that came from him.

We’re responsible for our own sins, but we’re born spiritually dead because of Adam.

Then Paul continues in Romans 5:13 and here’s where the parenthesis, or the detour starts,

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

 

He’s showing the timeline. Sin entered in Genesis 3 through Adam. The law came much later at Mt Sinai through Moses.

Sin and death were already here long before Moses. That’s why the law cannot fix the problem. The root is Adam, and the solution is Christ.

Romans chapter 2 told us that if there’s no law to break, then there’s no transgression of that law. In Romans 3:20 he tells us the law brings the knowledge of sin.

Religious thinking says, “You’re a sinner because you broke the commandments.” But Paul’s showing that the law only reveals that we’re a sinner. It’s not what made us a sinner. We’re a sinner because of Adam.

From Adam to Moses there was no written law. Genesis moves fast through this time—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob—and then in Exodus the law’s given and Israel becomes a nation. But Paul goes all the way back before Israel and before the law to show where the real problem started. Sin didn’t begin with Moses. Sin began with Adam, the first man. And from Adam to Moses, sin was still in the world even though there was no law.

Paul destroys the thinking that sin only exists when there’s a command to break by saying sin was present without the law.

Just read Genesis—Cain killing Abel, the wickedness before the flood, the whole world judged in Noah’s day. God judged sin long before the law of Moses. So the problem’s not Israel’s law. The problem is humanity itself, going back to Adam.

When Paul says here in Romans 5:13 that “Sin is not imputed where there is no law.” That doesn’t mean God ignored sin. The flood proves He didn’t. It means man didn’t fully recognize his sin. The law shows sin clearly, but it isn’t the only way to know sin.

In Romans 2, Paul says Gentiles without the law still perish without the law because they have a conscience. God wrote the work of the law in their hearts. Adam hid from God because he knew he sinned. People know right and wrong inside.

So the issue isn’t the law. It’s a spiritual problem.

In Romans 5:14, still in this parenthesis. Paul says,

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

Adam sinned by breaking a direct command: “Don’t eat from the tree.” No one else had that command. Yet they still died. Why? Because they were sinners by nature, spiritually dead children, descendants of Adam.

Adam’s sin was unique. He was sinless when he sinned. You and I are sinners who sin—that’s expected of fallen people, but Adam didn’t have a sinful nature to start with. He chose to disobey God. We never sinned the way Adam sinned, yet we still die because we inherited his corrupted life.

The life we receive from Adam is a life that ends in death, both physical and spiritual.

God gave man the ability to produce life, but after Adam sinned, the life he passed on was broken meaning every person born eventually dies.

But the life that comes from Christ is eternal.

1 Corinthians 15:45 says this,

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam (Christ) was made a quickening spirit.

Christ is a quickening or life giving spirit.

He makes dead spirits alive. In Adam we’re all spiritually dead, and only Christ can give resurrection life, eternal life.

Adam was made alive, but he brought sin and death into the world.

“The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” according to Ezekiel 18:4 and 18:20 Christ, the last Adam, is a quickening Spirit.

2 Corinthians 5:1-2 says,

FOR we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:

This speaks of our present mortal body as our earthly house, this tabernacle or tent. A tent’s not a permanent dwelling. It’s a portable one for pilgrims and travellers.

Christians look forward to death—not because we hate life, but because we know that when this earthly body dies, we have “a house, a body, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

We groan in these weak bodies. Life in the flesh is burdensome, corrupted, falling apart.

But Paul says we’re not wishing to be “unclothed” or not wishing for no life at all. Instead we’re longing to be clothed with better life, eternal life, like trading tattered clothes for a perfect new suit. That shows the difference between Adam and Christ.

In Adam something’s missing. Communion with God, access to eternal life. Adam lost that, and every child born after him’s missing it too. In Christ we regain what Adam lost and immortality is brought to light through the gospel.

So, in Romans 5:14, Paul says death reigned even over those who “had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.”

Adam sinned by breaking a direct command. No one else had that command. Yet all still died because all inherited Adam’s fallen condition. Then Paul says Adam “is the figure of him that was to come.” Adam is a type—a picture—of Christ.

The Bible uses figures and shadows, but it also defines them so we don’t invent our own.

Jeremiah 18:6 for example says this,

O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD . Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.

God says Israel is the clay and He is the potter. That figure is about Israel, not the church.

In Isaiah 5:7 we read,

For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: …

The vineyard is “the house of Israel.”

In Hebrews 9:24, the earthly temple is a “figure of the true” in heaven.

In Hebrews 10:1, the law is a “shadow of good things to come,” and the sacrifices are shadows of Christ.

Jesus Himself used this pattern in Matthew 12:40: “As Jonah was… so shall the Son of Man be”.

Stephen used it too in Acts 7, showing how Israel rejected Joseph just like they rejected Christ.

So when Paul says Adam is a figure of Christ, he means Adam’s one act affected all humanity, and Christ’s one act also affects all humanity.

Adam came before Israel, before the law, before sin entered. Yet he’s still a picture of Christ—the One who would undo what Adam did and bring life where Adam brought death.

Adam being a figure of Christ goes far beyond the shadows in the law. Colossians 2:17 says that meats, drinks, holy days, and Sabbaths are only shadows, but the body is Christ.

Adam’s figure is older and greater than all those patterns. Hebrews talks about shadows in the law, but Adam’s picture reaches back before Israel, before Moses and before the law itself.

In Romans 5:18, Paul sums up his point,

Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.

By one man, Adam, all became sinners. By one Man, Jesus Christ, all who believe become righteous and live. Paul shows the parallel: by Adam came sin and death; by Christ comes righteousness and life.

Adam and Christ share many similarities as figures.

Both were men.

Both had God as their Father.

Both were made without sin.

Both had bodies of flesh and blood.

Both were named by God and bore God’s image.

Both could have lived forever.

Both were offered dominion over the world.

Both were given a command. Both spoke with God in a garden. Both were under a law.

Both faced a choice that affected all humanity.

Both were cursed.

Both bore thorns.

Both died because of sin.

Both died by a tree.

Both brought imputation on all.

Both brought something that would reign over the world.

And both obtained something no one else could.

Paul uses Adam, not Israel or Moses, to explain our position in Christ.

If we understand the Adam problem, we understand why Christ had to come—and how His one act fixes everything Adam broke.

That’s what Paul is revealing in Romans 5.

Before we finish, I urge you to have a listen to the article we’ve just broadcast called “Was Jesus God”.

For us to properly understand the gift that Romans 5 speaks of, along with every other writing in scripture, we must know who Jesus Christ really is. The Bible says He’s God, God manifest in man’s flesh.

If that’s not true the Bible is useless and there’s no Christianity, no salvation from sin and no hope other than this world and this life.

However, many people, even many claiming to be Christians, don’t believe that Jesus was God.

This article will hopefully help to answer the question, “Was Jesus God”?