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From this verse to the end of the chapter, the apostle makes a large comparison between the first and Second Adam, which he joins to what he had said by the causal particle wherefore: q.d. Seeing things are as I have already said, it is evident, that what was lost by Adam is restored by Christ. This verse seems to be lame and imperfect; the reddition is wanting in the comparison; for unto this,
as by one man sin entered into the world, there should be added, so by Christ, &c. But the reddition, or second part of the comparison, is suspended, by reason of a long parenthesis intervening to Rom_5:18,19, where the apostle sets down both parts of the comparison.
By one man: viz. Adam.
Objection. Eve first sinned, 1Ti_2:14.
Answer. He is not showing the order how sin first entered into the world, but how it was propagated to mankind. Therefore he mentions the man, because he is the head of the woman, and the covenant was made with him: or, man may be used collectively, both for man and woman; as when God said: Let us make man, & c.
Sin; it is to be understood of our first parents’ actual sin, in eating the forbidden fruit; this alone was it that affected their posterity, and made them sinners, Rom_5:19.
Entered into the world; understand the inhabitants of the world; the thing containing, by a usual metonomy, is put for the thing contained.
And death by sin; as the due reward thereof.
Death here may be taken in its full latitude, for temporal, spiritual, and eternal death.
And so death passed upon all men; seized upon all, of all sorts, infants as well as others.
For that all have sinned; others read it thus, in which all have sinned, i.e. in which one man; and so it is a full proof that Adam was a public person, and that in him all his posterity sinned and fell. He was our representative, and we were all in him, as a town or county in a parliament man; and although we chose him not, yet God chose for us.
The words ef’ w are rendered in which, in other places, and the preposition epi is put for en; see Mar_2:4 Heb_9:10: and if our translation be retained, it is much to the same sense; for if such die as never committed any actual sin themselves, (as infants do), then it will follow that they sinned in this one man, in whose loins they were: as Levi is said to have paid tithes in Abraham’s loins, Heb_7:9.