Ro 5:12-21. COMPARISON AND CONTRAST BETWEEN ADAM AND CHRIST IN THEIR RELATION TO THE HUMAN FAMILY.

      (This profound and most weighty section has occasioned an immense deal of critical and theological discussion, in which every point, and almost every clause, has been contested. We can here but set down what appears to us to be the only tenable view of it as a whole and of its successive clauses, with some slight indication of the grounds of our judgment).

      12. Wherefore--that is, Things being so; referring back to the whole preceding argument.
      as by one man--Adam.
      sin--considered here in its guilt, criminality, penal desert.
      entered into the world, and death by sin--as the penalty of sin.
      and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned--rather, "all sinned," that is, in that one man's first sin. Thus death reaches every individual of the human family, as the penalty due to himself. (So, in substance, BENGEL, HODGE, PHILIPPI). Here we should have expected the apostle to finish his sentence, in some such way as this: "Even so, by one man righteousness has entered into the world, and life by righteousness." But, instead of this, we have a digression, extending to five verses, to illustrate the important statement of Ro 5:12; and it is only at Ro 5:18 that the comparison is resumed and finished.

JFB.