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Romans

About this book
Chapter 5

1 Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have also obtained access into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory. 3 Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance, character, and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.⁠ 6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 (For rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person perhaps someone might possibly dare to die.) 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, because we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from God’s wrath. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, since we have been reconciled, will we be saved by his life? 11 Not only this, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation. 12 So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned—⁠ 13 for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but there is no accounting for sin when there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type of the coming one) transgressed. 15 But the gracious gift is not like the transgression. For if the many died through the transgression of the one man, how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ multiply to the many! 16 And the gift is not like the one who sinned. For judgment, resulting from the one transgression, led to condemnation, but the gracious gift from the many failures led to justification.⁠ 17 For if, by the transgression of the one man, death reigned through the one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ! 18 Consequently, just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man many were constituted sinners, so also through the obedience of one man many will be constituted righteous.⁠ 20 Now the law came in so that the transgression may increase, but where sin increased, grace multiplied all the more, 21 so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Texts in conversation

Compare Romans 5:12 and 4 Ezra 7:118

New Testament · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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Summary

In Romans 5, Paul describes Adam as the one who brought sin and death into the world, which spread to all people. 4 Ezra also describes Adam’s sin as bringing death to everyone, reflecting a Jewish tradition using Adam as a unique theological focus.

Passages

Romans 5:12

New Testament
12 So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned— 13 for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but there is no accounting for sin when there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type of the coming one) transgressed. 15 But the gracious gift is not like the transgression. For if the many died through the transgression of the one man, how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ multiply to the many! 16 And the gift is not like the one who sinned. For judgment, resulting from the one transgression, led to condemnation, but the gracious gift from the many failures led to justification.
55–58 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Romans

4 Ezra 7:118

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · 2 Esdras
116 I answered then, “This is my first and last saying, that it would have been better if the earth had not produced Adam, or else, when it had produced him, to have restrained him from sinning. 117 For what profit is it for all who are in this present time to live in heaviness, and after death to look for punishment? 118 O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the evil hasn’t fallen on you alone, but on all of us who come from you. 119 For what profit is it to us, if an immortal time is promised to us, but we have done deeds that bring death? 120 And that there is promised us an everlasting hope, but we have most miserably failed?
70–132 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 4 Ezra

References

"... Punishment is the most significant to this study as it directly relates to the eventual “undoing” that Christ does in Paul’s Adam Christology. Furthermore, the relationship between death and sin are thoroughly explored by later writers but seemingly absent of any treatment within Genesis itself. The punishment of eventual death begs the question: would Adam and Eve have lived forever before eating the forbidden fruit? Kugel suggests one possible explanation for this by interpreting the consequence for eating that God warns about in Genesis 2:17 - namely that “as soon as you eat of it you will surely die” - as “gaining mortality” or the “stripping of immortality,” which would suggest that Adam was essentially immortal before. He then offers a convenient summary of a series of Jewish materials from the late 2nd Temple period on this issue which I will survey briefly here. The Wisdom of Solomon (1st c. BCE) suggests that man was made immortal, whereas it was through the “devil’s envy death entered the world” (Wisdom of Solomon 1:13; 2:23-24). Similarly, the collection of writings known as 1 Enoch suggests that humans were made no different from angels and that death as a condition came about to humans only through knowledge (1 Enoch 69:11). Philo (20 BCE - 40 or 50 CE), outright makes the claim that Adam gave up immortality for death. In the first book of the Sibylline Oracles, it is written that God expelled them from the place of the immortals (Sibylline Oracles 1:39-41, 50-51). 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch (late 1st Century CE), both agree that Adam’s violation of his commandment caused the death of all of his descendants (4 Ezra 3:7 and 2 Baruch 17:2-3; 23:4) ..."
Jacob William Ferrier, “Paul's Adam Christology, the Eden Myth and Augustine's Idea of Original Sin” (diss., University of North Carolina Charlotte, 2021), 7.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Romans 5:12 and 4 Ezra 7:118

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