Quote:
Originally Posted by solifide  Thanks for the great answers! 
I'm still not sure what it means to not sin like the transgression of Adam, as mentioned in verse 14. Also, are you saying that there are two types of sin that condemn us, one from the womb and one from the law? These are just clarifications really, you guys have done admirably handling this. |
I believe that to not sin like the transgression of Adam means that we didn't actually eat the forbidden fruit ourselves, yet we still sinned in Adam by our union to him as our covenant head and we also suffer the same consequence of that sin.
WLC 1:22 WLC 22 Did all mankind fall in that first transgression? A. The covenant being made with Adam as a publick person, not for himself only, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation,(1) sinned in him, and fell in that first transgression.(2)
(1)Acts 17:26.
(2)Gen. 2:16,17 with Rom. 5:12-20 and with 1 Cor. 15:21,22.
Paul's point then is that even though all haven't sinned exactly as Adam did, we're still sinners by fact of our union to him and we've inherited our sinful natures from him by which we commit our own actual sins that we're guilty of as well.
W.G.T Shedd offers helpful insight when he adds:
"The relation between their [our] sin and Adam's is not that of resemblance, but of
identity. Had the sin by which death came upon them been one
like Adam's, there would haven been as many sins to be the cause of death, and to account for it, as there were individuals. Death would have come into the human world by millions of men, and not 'by one man' (ver. 12); and judgment would have come upon all men, to condemnation, by millions of offences, and not 'by one offence" (ver. 18)." From Shedd's commentary on Romans pg. 133.