members, because above Adam and before Adam is Christ. Our relationship to Christ has an essential priority and superiority over our relationship to Adam. He is the Victor and we in Him are those who are awaiting the victory. Our human nature is preserved by sharing Adam’s nature, because Adam’s humanity is a provisional copy of the real humanity that is in Christ. And so as Adam’s children and heirs, in our past as weak, sinners, godless, and enemies, we are in this provisional way still men whose nature reflects the true human nature of Christ. And so, because our nature in Adam is a provisional copy of our true nature in Christ, its formal structure can and must even in its perversion be the same.
The whole argument turns on this provisional character of Adam and of our human nature in its relation to him. Right from the start we have to take account of the essential disparity between him and Christ, and between our bond with him and our bond with Christ. This is not a case of right against right, but of man’s wrong against God’s right, not of truth against truth, but of man’s lie against God’s truth. It is not even a case of power against power, but of man’s powerlessness against God’s power. Least of all is it a case of God against God—a god of this world against God the Creator—but simply of man against the one God, and, on the other side, the same one God for man. That is why we cannot rest content with the formal parallel and why the question about the priority and superiority of one side over the other can only be answered in one way. The main point of Rom. 5:12–21 is that here man stands against God in such a way that, even in his opposition, his wrongness, his lie, and his powerlessness, he must be a witness for God, that even as Adam and Adam’s child he must be the mirror that reflects God’s work, and so be the precursor of Christ. Even in his bad relationship to Adam, he still remains man, and the structure of his nature is such that it can find its meaning and fulfillment in his good relationship to Christ. Even under the lordship of sin and death his nature is still human nature and so is the image and likeness of what it will be under the lordship of grace and life. That is how the essential disparity between Adam and Christ is contained within their formal identity. Our relationship to Adam is a subordinate relationship, because the guilt and punishment we incur in Adam have no independent reality of their own but are only the dark shadows of the grace and life we find in Christ.
That is the point which Paul is making clear in the middle section, vv. 15–17. The point here is that when we compare man’s relationship to Adam with his relationship to Christ, although the two are formally symmetrical, there is really the greatest and most fundamental disparity between them. It should be noticed that this passage comes before vv. 18–19, in which the parallel is developed. Paul himself has not adopted our procedure of getting a clear outline of the whole by first concentrating upon the formal identity of the two sides and then going on to explain their essential disparity. What he sees and says first is rather that our relationship to Adam is completely different from and subordinate to our relationship to Christ. It is by first emphasizing the disparity that he comes to recognize the identity as well. The parallel between the one and the many, the heis and the polloi, on both sides in vv. 18–19 is introduced as a corollary of the disparity between them, as the inferential “then” (ara oun) of v. 18 shows. Paul sums up that disparity in two statements which have the same construction, and which taken together make his meaning clear.
The first of these is in v. 15a: oukh hōs to paraptōma, houtōs to charisma—literally: “It is not the same with grace as it is with the transgression.” In other words, grace is not to be measured by sin; in spite of the formal identity between them, the sin of Adam is not comparable with the grace of Christ. V. 15b gives the reason for this statement. It is, of course, true that the sin (paraptōma = peccatum) of the one Adam, brought about the death of the many, not only as its consequence but as something directly involved in itself. It is true that there and then, with sin, death also broke into the world of men (v. 12), so that there and then the many died, even before they were born. But over and against that stands the other truth that in the grace of the other One, the man Jesus, the grace of God overflowed upon these many who were already dead in and with the sin of Adam. Why “overflowed”? Because Adam’s sin is only Adam’s sin, but the grace of Jesus Christ is the grace of God and His gift. And so eperisseusen, it overflowed, it prevailed, it was greater than sin. Thus, when the work of Christ is compared with the work of Adam, though they are formally identical, yet the difference between them is the radical, final, and irremovable difference between God and man. That is why v. 15a said that the grace (charisma) was not to be measured by the transgression (paraptōma). That is why the opposite alone is possible. Paul is not denying that Adam’s sin still brings death to all men, but he is affirming that the grace of Christ has an incomparably greater power to make these dead men alive. He is not saying that there is no truth in Adam, but he is saying that it is a subordinate truth that depends for its validity on its correspondence with the final truth that is in Christ.
The second of our two statements is in v. 16a: kai oukh hōs di’henos hamartēsantos to dōrēma—literally: “It is not the same with the gift [given us through the grace of God] as it is with what has come upon us through the one who sinned.” In other words, the result of grace is not to be measured by the result of sin; in spite of the formal identity between them, the effect of Adam’s sin is not comparable with the effect of Christ’s grace. The supporting argument in vv. 16b–17 is more detailed than in v. 15. It is arranged in two contrasts between Christ and Adam, the first of which prepares the way for the second. V. 16b contains this introductory contrast. What has come upon us through the one who first sinned (ex henos) is judgment (krima) which inevitably led to punishment (katakrima). In and with him we are found guilty and condemned. That is the result of sin. What that means in practice will be explained more closely in v. 17. In v. 16b it is first contrasted with the completely different result of grace. Grace (charisma) enters in just at the point where the work of sin, which started in the one, has been completed in the many, so that in their relationship to the one all men have now sinned and become guilty and ripe for condemnation (v. 12). The place where grace makes its first contact with men is in the transgressions of many, the paraptōmata pollōn, and that is the very place where sin justifies its claim that all men are guilty in and with Adam, and renders them liable to Adam’s condemnation. It is not strange that sin should bring judgment and judgment condemnation in its train. But it is very strange that at the precise point where sin has brought all men under condemnation, grace should intervene, so that what actually follows the paraptōmata pollōn (the transgressions of many) is not the condemnation of sin, but its very opposite, the pardon of God. Paraptōmata—dikaiōma, sin—pardon, the pardon after which the katakrima that follows the krima is not taken into account any more. “There is now therefore no condemnation (katakrima) for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). But how can sin lead to pardon, how can we pass ek pollōn paraptōmatōn eis dikaiōma (from many transgressions into justification)? Is it not impossible to find a way to pardon from sin? V. 16b leads us to the question by showing us that although it is easy to understand how sin leads to condemnation, it is impossible to understand how grace can lead to pardon for sinful men. But it is v. 17 that gives the real reason for the statement in v. 16a. It should be noted that v. 17 has the same grammatical construction as v. 15b: ei gar tō tou henos paraptōmati.… (if through one man’s transgressions.…). The thing, on the one side, that we can understand, and the thing, on the other, that we cannot understand, are now named. The external disparity of the two sides, which is indicated in v. 16b, is now explained by bringing out what actually happens when sin and grace set to work among men.
What is this katakrima, this punishment or condemnation? Paul’s answer is that it is the lordship of death. By the transgression of the one that lordship has been established and is now being exercised. And through that one it is lordship over the many as well, and all the more so because the many also have sinned, each for himself. To say that death rules over all men is not the same as to say, with v. 15b, that all men have died. It emphasizes that death is an objective and alien power that is now exercising its lordship over man. Death, like sin, is an intruder into human life; in
