Sin and Death Even Apart From the Law
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. Romans 5:12-14
The dash at the end of verse 12 emphasises that Paul feels what he’s just said needs elaboration before he can finish the comparison between Adam and Christ that is at the heart of this section of the chapter.
We can easily miss the point in verses 13 and 14, ‘for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam.’ What does this mean? Adam’s sin was a violation of a known command (not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil [Genesis 2:17]). Death was a direct consequence of the violation. Then quite some time later God gave Israel the Law. With God’s standard before them, Israel’s sin likewise became a violation of God’s known command and a violation justly deserving and earning the death of all violators. But what of those in between Adam and the giving of the Law, in between Adam and Moses? They didn’t ‘sin by breaking a command, as did Adam’ but yet they all died. They didn’t break any given commandments from God that had a clear penalty attached. It seems that in Paul’s thinking the death of every human being from Adam’s time on was due to their breaking the creation command, though whether this is because humanity is seen by Paul to be all in Adam and so all having sinned in his sin, or whether we continue to sin in the likeness of Adam’s sin (continuing to sin in a way that copies eating of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil) is not clear.
Interestingly, later Jewish tradition regarded the seven commandments to Noah in Genesis 9:1-7 as binding on all Gentiles. Paul clearly makes no reference to them. The oldest form of this tradition recognised that six of the seven were already creation ordinances. The only new one was eating flesh with the blood still in it. In Paul’s eyes the death-deserving ungodliness of the pagan world consisted in breaking the creation ordinance (Romans 1:18-32).
Paul ends this paragraph (5:12-14) which has centred on Adam’s sin and death, with a brief allusion to the corresponding figure of Christ, ‘Adam … was a pattern of the one to come.’ For now it is sufficient to call Adam a type of Christ, a concept he is about to explain. Like Adam, Christ is the head of a whole new humanity.