Romans 5:12-14: The Reason for Christmas: Original Sin

Introduction

Let’s open our Bibles together this morning to the 5th chapter of the book of Romans.

If you would like to, you may move the ribbon in the your Bible that has been firmly planted in the book of Isaiah for the last two and a half years.

For this month of December, I plan to consider the Incarnation of the Eternal Son that we celebrate during the Advent season.

Then for the first three months of 2026, if the Lord wills, I plan to look at “difficult passages” in the Scriptures.

So this morning, let’s consider the Reason for Christmas - the reason God became man and dwelt among us.

Toward that, let’s read verses 12-14 in Romans chapter 5.

[READ ROMANS 5:12-14]

Perhaps you are thinking, “That doesn’t sound very Christmassy”.

Christmas is supposed to be the time of babies and mangers, stables and shepherds, magi and angelic choirs, trees and wreaths and presents.

And all of those are fine things, all part of the celebration we have at this time of the year.

But more basic, more foundational to our understanding of Christmas is the question that must be asked:

WHY did Jesus have to be born in Bethlehem, God taking on human flesh eternally?

Why did He live the EXACT life He did, and why did He die, betrayed and cursed, on a Roman cross?

And our passage this morning takes us to that reason, to the authentic beauty of Christmas.

We move from the tinsel-covered tree to another tree entirely - one planted by God Himself in the middle of His perfect and good creation.

Running Away from Glory

Because the world was really and truly good.

Not like it is now.

Now, the most beautiful things we behold and admire are bent and broken, warped and tarnished from their original glory.

We may still admire the creation around us;

We can listen for the heavens to declare the glory of God.

But the world we know is like the pieces of steel protruding from the ground after the evil men flew planes into the World Trade Centers in 2001.

The sin of our first parents did to ALL CREATION a similar destruction.

I like the way the writer Nehemiah Coxe describes this upheaval:

By the sin of man the frame of the earth and the heavens made for his service and delight was loosed, and their foundations so shaken as would have issues in an utter ruin had not Christ interposed and upheld their pillars. [p.64]

Psalm 75:3 “When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars. Selah”

Hebrews 1:3 “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”

What was this great offense, this ruinous rebellion against God that brought all creation to disaster?

Eating from a forbidden tree.

It wasn’t about the fruit; it was always about the rebellion against God’s explicit command.

It was the only positive command that God gave man at that time to abstain from.

By positive in this context, we mean that it’s a command God gives in addition to His natural law, the Ten Commandments, that is baked into our nature because it is based on His.

He “posits” it; He declares this law for a period of time and particular people.

In this case, it was the period of Adam’s probation in the Garden and it was given to Adam as the sole representative of all people who would descend from him.

We see that in our passage today when it describes Adam in v. 14 as

a type of the One who was to come.

We can say that because there’s no forbidden tree now, is there?

And there was no forbidden tree after our first parents were ejected from the Garden of Eden.

And in the heavens and earth to come we glimpse in the book of the Revelation, there is only the Tree of Life, no forbidden tree to be seen there.

Just a minute more on that idea of “natural law”.

We don’t mean “the law of nature” or “the law of the jungle”.

When we, as believers and Reformed Baptists, speak of natural law, we are talking about the law of God that is baked into who we are.

It is that law that is based on who God is, HIS Nature, and transmitted to His creation.

And it is this natural law that God didn’t even have to give explicitly until thousands of years later when He inscribed it on stone tablets and gave them to Moses at Sinai.

Natural Law is summarized in the Ten Commandments.

God never commanded Adam not to murder.

But it would be ludicrous to think Adam could have taken one look at Eve and strangled her to death in his state of innocency.

Murder was a sin from the very beginning, and it has always been a sin.

Romans 5:13 “for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given”

And that’s the distinction between “natural” and “positive” law.

Natural Law is the law that is in our nature because it is God’s nature.

Positive law isn’t.

We have to be TOLD positive law.

And that law has a particular time and people to whom it applies.

So the command not to each of the fruit of the forbidden tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, was a positive law.

But notice what laws got broken when Adam took the fruit from his wife and ate it.

Just a bite, and everything changed.

With that bite, they disobeyed the expressed command of God.

In Luke 3:38 , in the genealogy of Jesus Christ all the way back to the beginning, we see:“...the son of Adam, the son of God.”

So Adam, in a very real sense, is disobeying his parent, God.

Commandment 5.

When God commanded the man not to eat from this tree, He told Him the penalty would be death.

Genesis 2:16–17 “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.””

We see this same thing in our passage today:

Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—”

So in willfully taking this fruit and eating it, he was killing innocent people -

First himself and his wife, and then everyone descended from him.

Commandment 6.

We are told in Genesis 3:6–7 “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”

Note those reasons - they are all sensual.

Good for food - the lust of the flesh.

Delight to the eyes - the lust of the eyes.

Desired to make one wise - the pride of life.

After all, who was there to impress with their wisdom?

God isn’t impressed with your wisdom; He desires and commands your obedience.

So everything about this sin was a surrender to the flesh and a rejection of the Spirit - a breaking of faith - adultery against God.

Commandment 7.

The fruit was forbidden to them - not theirs at all as a result.

And what do we call it when we take something not ours?

Stealing.

Commandment 8.

And then as soon as they ate the fruit, they hid, fully aware of their great rebellion.

They covered themselves.

And then they deflected blame from themselves toward each other and against God.

False witness.

Commandment 9.

And all of it was born in their hearts when their stroll in the Garden took them within reach of the fruit.

They could have walked anywhere, given the the Tree a wide berth.

But their hearts were drawn toward the one thing God had expressly forbidden.

Yes, it was a delight to the eyes;

Yes, it was edible.

Yes, it would make them wise.

But if their hearts hadn’t coveted the fruit, all its allures would have been useless.

And if they hadn’t seen how close they could get to the only sin God had expressly commanded, it wouldn’t have been within their reach.

The serpent’s voice didn’t call them from across the Garden;

They brought themselves within his influence.

Through the ungodly desire of their hearts.

Covetousness.

Commandment 10.

So how bad is it to eat a simple piece of forbidden fruit?

It violates the ENTIRE law of God written on their hearts.

They KNEW it was wrong.

And Adam had the CAPABILITY of keeping this covenant, the covenant of works.

The Tree of Life was right there, untouched.

He wasn’t a slave to sin like we are born into;

He was FULLY capable of rejecting this sin and choosing life.

And he chose death, for him and for all his children after him.

Redemption

So it makes perfect sense that the guilty pair covered themselves and hid themselves from God in that moment.

God had told them what would happen - they would die.

His wrath would be poured out on them.

And that wrath would be infinite and eternal because they had offended the infinitely good God.

They knew their sin put us in a terrible and terrifying situation, again in the words of Nehemiah Coxe:

For suppose, I pray you, all the lights of heaven to be put out, the whole order, symmetry, and beauty of the creation to be destroyed, and all reduced to a chaos of confusion and horrid darkness about man, and the burning wrath of God kindled on him, now cast into the jaws of eternal despair and tormented by a worm that never dies. Think, I say of this, and you will hardly be able to conceive of a state more dreadful and dismal than the one on which man stood at the very brink.

And now they had eaten the fruit that made them wise, they understood the fulness of their sin and misery.

And so they tried to cover themselves, justify themselves, and betray everyone else to save themselves before holy God’s wrath.

In their selfish desperation, their minds gave no thought to anyone but themselves.

They didn’t consider you, or any of their descendants Adam had brought into this same condemnation through that one sin.

God could justly have stepped in that very moment and destroyed everything, start over with a new heavens and a new earth.

Wipe out all the ruined creation and begin again with a new creation.

And that is exactly what He WILL do.

But before that occurs, there are those He sovereignly loves and calls to Himself.

Descendants of Adam, part of that ruined creation.

And because they are a part of it, also complicit and equally guilty as their first parent.

Now some will ask: how do you know that we are all guilty from that first sin?

Isn’t it HYPOTHETICALLY possible that a person could live a sinless life and, thus, still EARN eternal life under the covenant of works?

Our passage this morning declares loudly: No!

Romans 5:13–14 answer that clearly: “for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”

So what is the apostle saying here?

1. Every person is GUILTY IN Adam - who is what we call the “federal head”, the one representative of all mankind who descended from him by natural means.

We see it even more clearly in verse 15: Romans 5:15 “But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass...”

2. But then he brings a legal argument in the end of verse 13: but sin is not counted (or accounted) where there is no law.

This is the argument of those who would deny the inherited guilt of the sin of Adam by all mankind.

They argue that God would not be just if He held us to a standard He didn't tell us about.

But remember he spent the first two chapter of this same letter explaining how God’s natural law IS apparent to all, though they suppress it:

Romans 1:20 “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

3. And here, we see the proof of that fact: everyone from Adam to Moses DIED.

If death is the wage of sin, then there must be SOME sin that causes death to reign, even where there is no law.

You can also consider it this way: some people die in infancy.

Before they know right from wrong, before they can make a choice or commit a sin - they still can and do die.

Thus it’s not THEIR current sin that is their great malady, but the sin that was theirs because they were in Adam.

Some might think that unfair - the Bible considers it good news.

Because just as people in their natural state are condemned in Adam,

Those who God has called for Himself are saved through one man, Jesus Christ.

Again in Romans 5:15 “But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.”

As a result of the sin of our first parents, everyone is guilty;

Because of the righteousness of Christ inherited by those who are in Him, many are made righteous, at peace with God.

The finest, most upright person who doesn’t know and follow Christ is still condemned in Adam, even though hypothetically he might have committed no other sin (which of course is impossible).

That is why the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit through the church continually cry out to all who will hear:

Repent and believe in Jesus Christ, cry out to Him, and you will be saved.

The destruction our first parents earned for everyone has not been removed, only postponed, until the day when the only true God will judge every man and woman with perfect righteousness and justice.

And only those found in Christ on that day will be saved from His wrath and eternal torment.

We live, for a little while longer, in the days of God’s grace here on earth.

We live in the period where you have not only the opportunity but the duty to repent and leave behind your sin.

The opportunity and duty to trust and follow Jesus Christ, crying out with your heart and voice “Jesus is Lord!”

That original sin, when God came upon the pair and could rightfully executed the sentence then and there, declared grace and mercy toward them.

He promised a man, the seed of the woman, not condemned in that original sin because His Father would be God Himself.

He would be born, and He would be the salvation of all who believe.

So we see in that greatest of all Christmas verses:

Galatians 4:4–7 “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”