Romans 5:14
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
The fact that sin did exist during the period from Adam to the Law is proved by the fact that death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses (lit., “from Adam until Moses”). And death also reigned over people who had not broken a command as did Adam (cf. “death reigned,” v. 17, and “sin reigned in death,” v. 21). Adam had disobeyed a specific command of God (Gen. 2:17) and committed a transgression, something that his descendants did not do when they sinned till other specific commands from God were received. But yet all Adam’s descendants had sinned with Adam (Rom. 5:12), and therefore death did reign (cf. Gen. 5:5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 27, 31). Since death was present, that proved all had sinned in Adam (cf. comments on Rom. 5:12).
The mention of Adam by name (cf. “one man,” v. 12) brought Paul back to the point of referring to him, who was a pattern of the One to come. A parallelism exists between Adam and Jesus Christ as heads of groups of human beings (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45-49), but the parallelism is more contrastive than comparative.
Excerpt from:
Walvoord, J. F., Zuck, R. B., & Dallas Theological Seminary. (1983-c1985). The Bible Knowledge Commentary : An Exposition of the Scriptures. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
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