(For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
All Commentaries on Romans 5:13 Go To Romans 5
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Until the law, sin was in the world. That is, from Adam's fall, both original sin and actual sins truly infected all mankind. (Witham)
Not imputed. That is, men knew not, or made no account of sin; neither was it imputed to them, in the manner it was afterwards, when they transgressed the known written law of God. (Challoner)
All were conceived and born in sin, in what we call original sin, and liable to death, even infants, who were not come to the use of reason, and consequently could not sin after the similitude of the transgression of Adam, or by imitating his sin, but were born in sin: and besides this, all manner of actual sins, which men committed by their own perverse will, reigned every where in the world. But before the law these sins were not imputed, that is, were not declared sins, that deserved such punishments as were ordained by the law.
Adam, who is a figure of him that was to come. That is, of Christ, whom the apostle calls the last Adam, 1 Corinthians xv. 45. But he was a figure by contraries. By the first Adam, sin and death entered into the world; by Christ, justice and life. (Witham)
