And if we put a microscopic point on it:
Romans 5:
12Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned.
13For sin was in the world before the law was given; but sin is not taken into account when there is no law.
14Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the way that Adam transgressed.
I keep running into instances where one must choose between applying "all" to everyone and when it is just speaking of a particular section of everyone, but I won't let that prevent me from trying to sort out the logic...
Sin entered through Adam, and death through sin...Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who did not sin in the way that Adam transgressed.
If sin was not taken into account until Moses (the time come when there is law), then all that died up to then died solely on the account of death being in the world, yet death passed on to all men because all sinned... This begs the question then, who was or was not doing any accounting?
![Unsure :unsure: :unsure:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
The fact that, after entering through Adam's sin, death reigned may provide an answer for that. Adam rendered all men subject to death, but would it require a leap over a gap in logic to claim that Adam rendered all men subject to sin? I'm not so sure that it does. Susceptible, surely, I can't find reason to argue that. But as long, as there was one man that did not bow his knee to sin, then I can't confidently claim that "all men are subject to sin." Jesus was 100 percent man, born under the law but, though He was tempted in all ways as we are, He was never subject to sin, nor did He ever make Himself subject to sin.
We can simply say as Jesus did, of course. But Nicodemus needed it to be spelled out for him as he, by default, that of emerging from the womb, and Jesus replied with a proverbial facepalm. "Are you not a master of Israel...?"
Can we be certain that, when Jesus said, "you must be born of water and spirit," he wasn't speaking of passing through any sort of heavenly birth canal as much as He was speaking that you must be born in a sense of being 'carried by' water and spirit, that is be carried into the kingdom in order to see it. And so, as we were carried by our mother before we were born into the kingdom of this world so must we be carried in our Lord to be born into the kingdom to come.
I'm just not as ready to discard that as an impossibility as others think I should be so, consequently, I' can't discard the possibility that infants can't be carried into the kingdom with being 'born again' in the otherwise common sense of its understanding.