That is, “I was born spiritually alive, not spiritually dead because the law did not apply to me yet, but when the law began to apply to me, then sin sprang to life and I died.” The concept here is that men are born spiritually alive, and do not die spiritually until they personally sin. We are not condemned to hell, in other words, for Adam’s sin, but only for our own. Adam’s sin is enough to kill the body, but not the soul. This is asserted also in Ezekiel 18:20 “The soul that sins is the one that shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor shall the father bear the guilt of the son:” which is spoken of the soul only, and not the body, for Exodus 20:5 asserts that God is “a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate [him]” which is spoken of the body. The sum then is this, that the sin of Adam has made our bodies liable to death, but does not condemn the soul. The soul is condemned by our personal sins committed after birth, even rather after we have achieved a state of reason in which we know good and evil. For Paul was born alive apart from the law, and so lived a long time, till the time that he attained to the age or state of reason, in which he knew good and evil, and the commandments of the law began to apply to him, at which time he broke them, and therefore died spiritually by his own personal sins.

Commentary by jk
Posted on: 4/18/2008 22:59 pm