Man’s Enduring Guilt - by John MacArthur

Excerpted from here. Our comments in bold.

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Paul could have made his argument many ways without having a New Testament at his disposal. Indeed, in the course of his epistle to the Romans, he returns to this point and sometimes brings up additional arguments that prove the sinfulness of all humanity. For example, in Romans 5:14, he points out that “death reigned from Adam until Moses” even before there was a written law defining what sin was. He argues that sin must be universal because death is universal. Sin is, after all, the whole reason people die. “Death [entered the world] through sin” (Romans 5:12). “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). And everyone dies. That 100 percent statistic furnishes undeniable proof that everyone is a sinner. - Dr. John MacArthur

Dr. MacArthur almost gets it. But it isn't that we are all sinners, even though that's true. It's that we are all dead. That's what we inherited. We have discussed this in the context of the idea of original sin, and our examination led us to some surprising conclusions. 

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The difficulty many Christians face is how pastors and teachers repeat the things they've been taught, learned from men who themselves have been taught those same things. Thus traditional understandings become entrenched over time and are uncritically received by people who rarely check things for themselves.

This is perhaps why many of us think we inherited Adam's sin, where in actual fact we inherited death because of Adam's sin. Paul tells us this very directly in Romans chapter five:

Ro. 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned...

When Adam sinned, everything died. We were born into death. Death has been the condition of the world ever since:

Ro. 5:14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses...

The gift of the death and resurrection of Jesus brings life:

Ro. 5:15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

Paul repeats his point several times in this passage, using various ways of expressing the thought:

Ro. 5:16 Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.

Notice that Paul focuses on one sin, Adam's. That one sin was judged, and the result was condemnation. Again:

Ro. 5:18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.

This is the crucial point of Paul's argument: One man's sin = death and condemnation for all men. One Man's righteousness = righteousness for all men. 

Death and condemnation is the result of one sin, this is where we all start:

Jn. 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already...

This judgment happened long ago when everything died from Adam's sin. 

So when we get to the final point of Paul's discourse, we discover something very surprising: The wages of sin was received by Adam, not by us. We didn't receive Adam's wages of sin, we received the result of Adam's wages: Death. 

It's Adam's death and condemnation which we inherited.