Acacius of Caesarea
Nicene & Post-Nicene · AD 325–500 · d. AD 366 · 3 passages across 1 books
Commentary
Romans 1:17
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
The righteousness of God is revealed in … the believer. Paul says that the revelation of righteousness is the approbation of those who do right. Thus he is able to say likewise that wrath is revealed toward those who do the opposite. The Jew has been brought from the faith of the appointed law to the faith which is through Christ and the Gentile from the faith of nature to the same faith in Jesus Christ.
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.
Paul said this in order to contradict those who thought that the Genesis story of the fall applied to nobody but Adam himself. For here he says that all have sinned, even if not exactly in the same way as Adam, and that the Genesis account applies to all men.
Romans 5:18
Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
Paul does not mean by this that because one man sinned everybody else had to pay the price for it even though they had not committed the sin, for that would be unjust. Rather he says that from its beginning in Adam humanity derived both its existence and its sinfulness.