Then he says in 4:1 all the way through 5:11
Here’s how we went about it. And here’s the result. You see now in 5:12 to 21, he summarizes human history as summed up in two people. One of them is Adam, the old Adam, the first Adam, the Adam who was the father of the physical human family. He said he became rebellious. He sinned against God. He doesn’t speak of Eve at this point because it doesn’t suit his purpose at this moment. But he says in Adam, the mess we’re in is summed up in Adam. And Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 will say, Sin came by man. Salvation comes by man. Sin entered and death entered in Adam. Sin and death, salvation and everything else comes through Jesus Christ. That’s what he says in 1 Corinthians 15, 20 and following. It’s what he says here in Romans 5:12 to 21. He said, okay,
Here’s the story. If you’re not in Christ, if you’re in Adam, if the only relationship you have is a relationship with the rebellious Adam, here’s all you get. You get sin and death. And he says, and you need the to read the text. It’s difficult reading, so you must read it for yourself. All he is doing is saying, Adam represents the human family that I have just described. For in 1:18 he begins with Adam and goes all the way to Moses.
Then in chapter 2 verse 1, he goes all the way to 3:20 and deals with Moses and the Jews. And then he writes across the whole human family, faithless. And faithless is exactly what Adam was. Now, if you reject God, you are Abraham, you are Adam’s kids. All right.
If you rebel against God like father, like son, that’s the whole story. He’s not saying because Adam sinned, he made us sinners. No, no, no. We followed in Adam’s steps. So 5:12 and following through 19, 5:12 through 19, like father like son. And then, because the Gentiles didn’t have the covenant Torah, they didn’t have this special relationship with God that the Jews had, they didn’t have the law, the Mosaic covenantal law. The Gentiles didn’t have that. They had truth.
They had moral law and they screwed that all up and ignored it. But then God brought in a covenantal law, wrote it out, acted it out, and gave it to the Jews and the Jews.
They took it. We are special people. And that was true. We are special people and what we have makes us better than all the other nations of the world. That was true and false.