One Man’s Sin Means My Death?
Why should the sin of the first human being become the downfall of the entire race? Why should all subsequent human beings stand under God’s judgment against a basic sinfulness for which none of us is ultimately responsible? How, in the face of such claims, are we to believe that God is just?
This text has provided the basis for commonly held doctrines about the nature of the human predicament. Many of the questions and problems that arise from it are in fact the result of improper interpretations or misunderstandings of the text itself.
The word
sin (and its synonym,
trespass) is the key word in Romans 5:12, just as it is in Paul’s description of the human condition in the first three chapters of this epistle. How are we to understand what Paul means by that term? What is his understanding of the origin of the human situation which he describes with this term?
Paul’s understanding of human sinfulness is expressed in two phrases: (1) “they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God” (Rom 1:28) and (2) “you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God” (2:17). Sin is seen as refusal to accept our creatureliness, to acknowledge our dependence on our Maker, to recognize our limitations. “We are sinners” does not mean, primarily, that we have moral problems, but that in the deepest and final sense we are severed from relationship with God because of refusal or bragging.
Sin is not a
genetic defect. The idea that sin is passed on genetically and thereby becomes the property of each individual through heredity ultimately led to a low view of sex. Sex came to be seen as the prime locus of human sinfulness—tolerated for the purpose of procreation, but not celebrated as a part of God’s economy for human wholeness and fulfillment.
Nor is sin a
perverted inner nature. The problem with this understanding of sin is that it divides the individual into a number of separate boxes. It arises from the idea that the Fall resulted in the perversion of one essential part of ourselves. A number of candidates for this part have been proposed. For some, the perverted part is the will. For others, it is the emotions or passions. For still others, it is reason. The pervasive mood of anti-intellectualism in some Christian circles is traceable to such an understanding. Since the mind was affected by the Fall, our reasoning capacity is perverted and depraved and the quest of the mind cannot be trusted. But such a view does not do justice to all the biblical data. As total persons we are fallen and stand under the judgment of God. Both our heads
and hearts stand under the signature of death. Both are dust.
From the biblical point of view, the term
sin designates a particular kind of relationship between the creature and the Creator. And a relationship cannot be inherited; it can only be established or destroyed, affirmed or denied. Sin is thus a
relational reality.
We are sinners insofar as we are unrelated to God. The questions raised by that statement are:
Why are we that?
Why is that our condition?
Why do we find ourselves in such a dilemma? Paul’s answer to such questions is found in Romans 5:12–13.
This text has traditionally been seen as the biblical foundation for the Christian doctrine of original sin: “We all stand under the Fall of first man; that is why we are in the mess we are in!” But this view is inadequate. For Paul does not say that we sin
because Adam sinned. He does not say that we die
because Adam sinned. What he does say is this: Sin (alienation from God) entered the stage of history in the first man’s rebellion (“sin entered the world through one man”
. The result of that separation is disintegration and death. But the universal penetration of that condition is due to the fact that all persons have sinned; all persons have become revolutionaries against God (“because all sinned”
.
There is a two-sided perspective here in Paul that must be taken seriously if we wish to understand him adequately. On the one side of this dual perspective is the Hebrew idea of
human solidarity, the recognition that each individual shares in a common humanity. On the other side is the recognition of
individual responsibility. By virtue of the former, we are in bondage; by virtue of the latter, we become responsible for participation in that bondage.
Human solidarity. Paul was heir to a tradition concerning the human condition that was deeply rooted in Jewish beliefs. That tradition recognized the intimate interdependence of individuals and the effect that such solidarity could have, both positively and negatively. The Old Testament concept that the sins of parents would have their effect down through several generations reflects the Hebrew idea of corporate solidarity. The immediate background for Paul’s statements concerning the relation between first man and the rest of humankind (Rom 5:12–21) can be clearly seen in a Jewish work of the first century a.d.:
[Adam] transgressed. … Thou didst appoint death for him and for his descendants. …
For the first Adam, burdened with an evil heart, transgressed and was overcome, as were also all who were descended from him. Thus the disease became permanent. (2 Esdras 3:7, 21–22)
O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the fall was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descendants. (2 Esdras 7:118)
Paul clearly reflects this Jewish understanding in Romans 5:12–13. Adam, the typical representative and first human being, yields to the temptation to determine his own existence and his own destiny (that is, he sins). The result of that self-determination is death. Death is the condition of separateness, since the creature apart from the Creator does not have life. Physical death is clearly a part of this picture in the Hebrew-Pauline understanding. Separation from the source of life results in decay and disintegration.
But both for the Old Testament and for Paul, death is also an existential reality, a real condition of life. Thus Ezekiel receives a vision of “dry bones” that are representative of the failure of Israel to be and remain God’s people (Ezek 37). Hosea can speak of the resurrection of Israel from the grave of its national downfall (Hos 6:2). And Paul can speak of Christians as those “who have been brought from death to life” (Rom 6:13). The uniform affirmation of this biblical tradition is that there exists a mysterious relationship between human self-determination and death and between the first man’s self-determination and our own death. We belong to one another, and the condition of one has inevitable consequences for others.
Sociological and psychological studies have confirmed that scriptural understanding of human solidarity. We have been shown how heredity, upbringing and environment play major roles in the formation of our personalities. I am, to a large degree, the product of my world. What I am in the present is a continuation of all that I have assumed—consciously and unconsciously—from my past. Thus the child raised in an environment with violent models is more likely to be involved in violent behavior than those not raised with such models. The child of psychologically disturbed parents is more likely to become neurotic than the child of mentally healthy parents. The child who grows up in a broken home is less likely to become a whole, healthy person than one raised in a home with genuine love and caring from both parents in a consistent and stable relationship.
All of us are born into a human community that is overshadowed by the cumulative weight of human sinfulness, oppressive structures, prejudices and injustices. We are, all of us, more or less affected by the shadows that these clouds cast over our motives and orientations, our attitudes and priorities.
Individual Responsibility. In Romans 5:12–21, Paul not only reflects Jewish religious thought that we share a common humanity and that we are affected by that interdependence, but also reflects the Jewish belief that as individuals we are responsible and held accountable for the way we relate to that common humanity.
At the time of Ezekiel a protest was raised against the ancient Hebrew idea that the sins of parents will be visited upon the children and that the children will be held accountable for their parents’ transgressions. In Ezekiel 18 the prophet speaks the decisive word of God for individual responsibility:
Yet you ask, “Why does the son not share the guilt of his father?” Since the son has done what is just and right, … he will surely live. The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father. (Ezek 18:19–20)
This concept of individual responsibility made itself increasingly felt and is clearly enunciated in Jewish writings close to the time of Paul. In the Wisdom of Solomon, which dates from the first century b.c., the author discusses the presence of evil in the world in clear allusion to Genesis 2:
Do not invite death by the error of your life, nor bring on destruction by the works of your hands; because God did not make death. … But ungodly men by their words and deeds summoned death. (1:12–13, 16
RSV)
The parallel between this understanding of individual responsibility and Paul’s statement in Romans 5:12 is unmistakable. The same idea is voiced in a Jewish book of the first century a.d., the Apocalypse of Baruch:
Adam is therefore not the cause, save only of his own soul, But each of us has been the Adam of his own soul. (2 Baruch 54:19)
Paul also affirms that each person continues the rebellion and self-determination of Adam in his or her own life. It is in that sense that each of us becomes a part of that fateful history that stands under the signature of death. Each individual participates in the Adamic humanity and becomes accountable for that participation. Death marches across the pages of human history because humans in their own individuality have sinned. They do what Adam did. And the attempt to determine our own existence, however that may work itself out in everyday living, leads to separation from God.
Paul, in this text, affirms both parts of Jewish teaching about the origin and nature of sin: we stand in mysterious solidarity with
Adam (Eve and Adam) in sin; we are also individually responsible. There is a sense in which we are determined; there is another sense in which we are absolutely free. But since we are both, neither the one nor the other is the final word.
This Pauline understanding of sin as dynamic, relational reality leads directly to what is his final word; namely, that this paradoxical reality of our bondage to, and freedom from, sin is overcome in a new relationship—one with Jesus Christ. Through that relationship, we are reconciled to God, and in Christ we become members of a new humanity.
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