Most Christians are under the impression that we die because we sin, and that our sin is entirely our fault, and many of them also somehow apply the guilt of Adam’s sin to us at the exact same time. Well, the apostle Paul actually blamed our death on that very man — Adam — rather than on us, and then blamed our sin on that death rather than the other way around, in more than one place in his epistles.
First of all, he made this clear by writing that just as “in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Many Christians assume that Paul was simply referring to being resurrected here (based on the fact that the main point of the first part of this chapter is proving the resurrection of the dead), but we know that everyone who Paul said will be “made alive” includes those who will never die, such as the members of the body of Christ who will still be living at the time they’re caught up together in the air to meet the Lord when He comes for His body, not to mention the members of the Israel of God who will still be alive at the Second Coming and who will remain alive — thanks to the tree of life — until the time they’re finally also made immortal, so being “made alive” (translated from a future-tense variation of ζῳοποιέω/“dzo-op-oy-eh’-o” in the KJV, which is the same Greek word that “quickened” is translated from — and which, yes, literally just means “to give life,” but which is almost exclusively used figuratively in the Bible to refer to our mortal bodies being made immortal) obviously can’t simply be referring to resurrection (which is an entirely different word, translated from the Greek word ἀνάστασις/“an-as’-tas-is” instead) because not everyone Paul said will be “made alive” will actually die and be resurrected (yes, that the dead will be physically resurrected was Paul’s main point in this chapter, but he used his Gospel to prove this point, and in doing so ended up covering details that went far beyond just resurrection, including elements that apply to those who won’t be resurrected — because they’ll never actually drop dead — as well).
As Paul explains later in the very same chapter, being made immortal is what we’re looking forward to as far as our salvation goes, and that being made immortal is how the death Adam brought us all is ultimately defeated, which also means that any human who is made immortal will then be experiencing the final stage of their own salvation as it pertains to Paul’s Gospel). And all that, combined with the fact that not everyone will end up as a corpse prior to being “made alive,” as we just covered — confirms that the “for as in Adam all die” part of the verse can only be referring to being made mortal, meaning being in a state of slowly dying because of what Adam did — tells us Paul was simply explaining that, for as in Adam all are dying, or mortal (and, of course, that, even so in — meaning “because of” — Christ shall all be quickened/made immortal). The Present Active Indicative tense in the original Greek of the verb translated as “die” in this verse in the KJV also makes this clear, I should add, making “in Adam all die” in the KJV a figurative translation of a Greek phrase which literally means “in Adam all are dying” (meaning all are in a state of mortality and are slowly dying).
Of course, most Christians assume that one can’t be “in Christ” without first having made a conscious decision of some sort to end up there, leading them to also assume that only those who choose to be “in Christ” (or only those who are elected by God to be “in Christ,” if said Christian is a Calvinist) can be made alive/quickened (and hence be saved), and they then read that assumption into this verse when trying to interpret it. But aside from what we’ve already covered about the meaning of Paul’s Gospel (which should be enough, in and of itself, to prove that everyone has already been guaranteed general salvation, and can, in fact, already be said to have been saved from at least a proleptic perspective), if you read it carefully you’ll notice that not only does it not actually say one has to make a choice to end up “in Christ” in that verse, it isn’t even talking about being “in Christ” from a positional perspective to begin with. (The reason most Christians conclude that one has to choose to be included in the “in Christ” part of this verse is generally because they’re assuming the sort of salvation Paul was writing about here is either the special “eternal life” sort of salvation he also taught about that involves membership in the body of Christ — and which isn’t a form of salvation everyone will experience — or the “eternal life” type of salvation Jesus spoke about during His earthly ministry which involves membership in the Israel of God — which is a type of salvation where one does have to do something specific if they want to experience it, and which is also not a form of salvation that everyone will experience, although whether one does end up experiencing that sort of salvation is just as predetermined from an absolute perspective as the special salvation of those in the body of Christ is — not realizing that Paul was writing about an entirely different sort of salvation here.) If that’s what Paul had been getting at, he would have written, “for as all in Adam die, even so shall all in Christ be made alive.” Thankfully, that’s not what he actually wrote at all. Instead, the way he carefully worded it (“for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”) lets us know that Paul was using a parallelism there to tell us that everyone affected by the action of the first Adam is, “even so,” also equally affected by the action of the last Adam (referring to Christ Jesus, who is also compared to the first man by being called “the second man” in the same chapter), and completely outside of their own desire or will. The slight difference in wording might not seem important to most Christians (and those who don’t want to accept the possibility of the salvation of all humanity will automatically insist it doesn’t matter, without even taking the time to think about it), but it makes all the difference in the world when you realize that God didn’t simply inspire Paul to just throw words onto the page haphazardly, but rather that He made sure Paul laid the words out the way He did in order to make certain it’s clear that, just as nobody had any say in experiencing the effects of the first Adam’s action (mortality and, in most cases, physical death, aside from the relatively few people who will experience their quickening without having died), even so they also have no say in experiencing the effects of the last Adam’s action (eventual immortality) either. Basically, the order of the words God chose for Paul to use tells us that “in Adam” and “in Christ” simply mean “because of what Adam did” and “because of what Christ did,” and are not positional terms at all in this passage, but are rather causal terms.
The fact that Paul wasn’t referring to being “in Adam” or “in Christ” from a positional perspective there is also backed up by what he wrote in Romans 5. Of course (even if most Christians don’t realize this fact, never having thought it over particularly carefully, although this really is the only way their soteriology could possible work based on the way our brains work), in addition to assuming our salvation is (at least partly) based on possessing a certain attribute that others don’t have which allows us to fulfill a required action we have to do for ourselves in order to be saved (such as having enough natural wisdom and/or intelligence and/or humility and/or righteousness to be able to make a choice to believe the specific thing that ultimately saves us, for example, or at least having the natural ability and desire to build up that required wisdom and/or intelligence and/or humility and/or righteousness so one can make that specific choice), rather than our (general) salvation being based 100% on Christ’s death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection (with no action taken on our part at all in order to contribute to our salvation, since us having to accomplish anything at all to ensure our own salvation — even if it was just managing to repent, meaning managing to choose to change our minds and believe the right thing — would be salvation based at least in part upon something we had to do ourselves, which would ultimately be salvation by works), most Christians also assume that the blame for our mortality, death, and sinfulness falls on each of us as individuals rather than on Adam as well, but that’s not what Paul taught at all. You see, in addition to what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:22 about how we “all die” (meaning how we’re all mortal) “in Adam” (meaning because of what Adam did), over in Romans 5:12, Paul not only confirmed that the specific thing Adam did to bring his descendants mortality and death was his (Adam’s) own sin, but he also went on to explain that the reason we ourselves now sin is because of that mortality we inherited from Adam, when he wrote in that verse: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”
This is one of the most misunderstood passages in Scripture, and most Christians have assumed “for that” in this verse means “because,” and hence have interpreted the last two parts of this verse to mean “and so death passed upon all men because all have sinned” in order to preserve their doctrine that we’re ultimately to blame for our own mortality and death (and many Bible versions have even mistranslated this verse to say as much). But, aside from the fact that this would render the verse literally nonsensical (I can’t see any way that the phrase “and so death passed upon all men because all have sinned” can legitimately follow “wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,” and still make any sort of sense at all, at least not based on any rules of grammar, not to mention logic, that I’m aware of), if we die because we sin, the first part of the verse would be entirely superfluous, and might as well be cut out of the verse altogether, since that part of the passage would tell us basically nothing about why we sin, making it entirely irrelevant (not to mention that it would also turn the words “and so” in the verse into a lie: the words “and so” are connecting the clause in the second half of the sentence to the part of the sentence that came before it, which means that what was written in the first part of the verse has to be the reason for the clause that comes after those words, yet there’s no actual connection made between Adam’s sin and our death and sin in the verse if that clause actually means “because all have sinned,” since that places the responsibility on us rather than on Adam, contrary to what the words “and so” are telling us, as well as contrary to what Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 15:22 — which is that human mortality and death exist because of Adam — and Romans 5:12 can’t contradict any other part of Scripture).
And so, if we break it all down we can see that A) Adam sinned (“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world”), B) his sin brought him mortality leading to eventual death (“and death by sin”), C) because of this, his mortality passed down to his descendants (“and so death passed upon all men”) — and for those who haven’t figured it out yet, similar to the way the word “die” is used in 1 Corinthians 15:22, the word “death” is obviously being used as metonymy for “mortality” in this verse as well, since not everyone will literally drop dead before Jesus returns, as we already discussed — and D) for that reason, meaning because of that mortality, all of us descendants of Adam have also sinned (“for that all have sinned”), giving us a nice unbroken sequence of causes and effects (and giving a purpose to the word “that” in the verse, confirming that Paul literally meant “for that [reason] all have sinned”). But if we were to instead interpret the last two parts of the verse as simply meaning “and so death passed upon all men because all have sinned” we’ve suddenly lost the whole narrative, since this doesn’t tell us why all have sinned the way the literal reading of this verse does, nor does it explain why Paul included the first half of the verse to begin with. “That all have sinned” because “death passed upon all men” answers that question, but reversing the order (making sin the cause and mortality — or even literal death — the effect rather than mortality the cause and sin the effect) just makes a mess of the whole thing, leaving us with the question of why we sin, which was a part of what Paul was trying to explain in the first place with this verse (and as for why mortality leads to sin, it’s simply because, while we can have the strength to avoid sinning some of the time, being mortal makes us too weak to avoid giving in to sin all of the time). In fact, if our sin actually was the cause, the verse should have actually been written as: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin… but wait… that really doesn’t matter at all, now that I think about it, since death actually passed upon all men because all the rest of us have sinned, and this had nothing to do with that one man, despite what I told the Corinthians in my epistle to them, so why did I even mentioned him here?”
And for those of you who are thinking “Original Sin” might be the answer to that question, aside from the fact that “Original Sin” isn’t a term found anywhere in Scripture, it isn’t a concept found anywhere in Scripture either. In fact, the basis for this strange doctrine is a misinterpretation of the very verse we’ve just been looking at, but I don’t see anything in this verse which says we’ve inherited a “sin nature” from Adam (which is yet another term you won’t find anywhere in Scripture, but which many Christians are forced to read into it in order to hold on to certain unscriptural doctrines they don’t want to let go of), or even that guilt for Adam’s sin has somehow been imputed upon us as well for some reason, as those who believe this doctrine claim is the case. Yes, being mortal causes humans to become corrupt and sinful very quickly, but the claims of those who believe in “Original Sin” can’t actually be found in the Bible without heavily reading one’s assumptions into this verse, and to do so would be pure eisegesis. Some people do attempt to use passages such as Psalm 58:3 and Psalm 51:5 to defend their doctrine of “Original Sin” as well, I should say, but the first verse is talking specifically about “the wicked” (who are differentiated from “the righteous” a few verses later in the same Psalm, telling us this isn’t talking about all humans, but is instead about those who are particularly bad; besides we know that newborn babies can’t literally speak lies as soon as they’re born, as the psalmist said they do, because they can’t speak at all yet, so we know he’s employing hyperbole there, meaning the verse can’t be taken as literally meaning all humans start off wicked, but rather that the wicked begin their destructive path at a very young age), and there are so many possible interpretations of the second verse which don’t turn Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:22 into a nonsensical lie, as would be the case if “Original Sin” were a valid concept, that it’s utterly foolish to even consider it as a defence of the doctrine. For example, it could simply be more poetic hyperbole (which is a figure of speech David was known to employ in this book, unless you believe his tears could literally create a whole swimming pool on his furniture), it could be using “in iniquity” and “in sin” as metonymy (which is a figure of speech used all the time in the Bible, as should be obvious by now if you’ve read all the previous articles in this series) for “in a world full of sin,” or it could even be referring to the possibility that he was born as a result of his mother having an affair similar to the one he’s believed to be confessing he had with Bathsheba in this very Psalm (and which is what many people think the verse means, believing that the way he recorded his past treatment by others in Psalm 69:4, 7-8, 11-12, and 20-21 indicates this as well — and yes, I’m aware that these were prophetically referring to Jesus, but they had a double-fulfillment, with the first fulfillment being what happened to David, even if only from a hyperbolic perspective in some cases), and these are just three possible interpretations (there are others I didn’t get into here, which you can dig into for yourself if you’re so inclined), so the concept of “Original Sin” really is a nonstarter.
And so, I maintain that the KJV actually got this correct, and that we should simply stick with what it actually says here and interpret it accordingly — in the sense that Paul meant “and so death passed upon all men, [and] for that [reason] all have sinned” — as this is the only interpretation which gives us answers to both the question of why we sin (while also explaining why Paul said, “the sting of death is sin,” since the word “death” has to be metonymy for “mortality” in 1 Corinthians 15:56 based on what we just covered), as well as the question of why we’re mortal and die (answers which don’t end up contradicting 1 Corinthians 15:22 the way the more common translations and interpretations of this verse in Romans do, I might add), keeping the blame for our mortality, death, and sinfulness squarely on the shoulders of the “one man” Paul meant for us to understand it belongs on: Adam. (At least from a relative perspective, even if God was ultimately the one behind it all from an absolute perspective.)
And so, contrary to what pretty much all Christians have been taught, we ourselves don’t die because we sin. In fact, Adam and Eve were the only humans who died because they sinned — or, rather, began to die/became mortal because they sinned. Yes, that’s what God’s warning to Adam, which is rendered figuratively in the KJV as, “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” meant. Remember, the expression “thou shalt surely die” was used in both Genesis 2:17 and in 1 Kings 2:36-46 in the KJV, and yet, based on the amount of time it would take to travel from Jerusalem to Gath and back (even on horseback, presuming my calculations are correct, although I challenge you to confirm this for yourself), there’s no way that Shimei actually died physically the day he crossed the brook Kidron, as Solomon seems to have warned him that he would in 1 Kings. And he certainly didn’t “die spiritually” that day either, as most Christians mistakenly assume the translation of “surely die” in the KJV means (an assumption they make because they recognize that this is obviously a figurative translation, based on the fact that Adam didn’t physically drop dead on the day he sinned), which confirms that the popular “spiritual death” idea is a complete misunderstanding of the term “surely die” in the KJV. As far as Shimei goes, it just meant that he could consider his days to be numbered as of the day he crossed the forbidden brook, because he essentially signed his own death sentence by doing so. And as far as Adam and Eve go, it basically meant the exact same thing, that they could consider their days to be numbered as of the day they sinned as well, just with a longer period of time before their eventual death sentence “played out.” Simply put, Genesis 2:17 is just telling us that, to die, they began dying — meaning they gained mortality leading to eventual physical death — on the day they ate the forbidden fruit (which makes sense considering the fact that the Hebrew phrase מוֹת תָּמוּת/“mooth ta’-mooth,” translated as “thou shalt surely die” in both passages in the KJV, literally means “to die thou shalt be dying”; this also tells us that “to die” can’t possibly be a reference to being punished in the lake of fire, by the way, because Adam didn’t end up in that location the day he sinned either, so becoming mortal remains the best interpretation of this warning).
Understanding this also helps explain why Jesus was able to avoid sinning, as well as why we’ll stop sinning once we’re made immortal. Basically, Romans 5:12 also tells us that mortality is passed down from our human fathers, not our mothers, since it’s Adam who is blamed for our mortality in that verse rather than Eve (who not only also sinned, but sinned before Adam did), as well as tells us that anyone with a mortal, human father will sin (presuming one doesn’t die as a baby before they have an opportunity to sin). This is why Jesus had to be born to a virgin, because He would have been guaranteed to sin at some point if He’d had a mortal, human father. Of course, traditional Christians will say that the reason Jesus didn’t sin is because He’s God, and that only God in the flesh could avoid sinning so He could be the perfect sacrifice for sin, but what they’re telling us when they say that, even if they don’t realize it, is that we humans could then never be free of sin, not even after our resurrection, since we aren’t going to become God, so that couldn’t possibly be the reason. Instead, the reason is because, not having a mortal father, He was in a state that was neither mortal nor immortal (it’s not a term found in Scripture, but because it’s useful to have a label for this, I personally refer to existing in this state as being “semi-mortal,” for lack of a better term that I’m aware of), which means that, while He wasn’t yet immortal, which means being entirely incapable of dying — as we’ll also be when we’re quickened, just like He is now — the fact that He didn’t have a human father meant that He could die but that He wasn’t slowly dying the way we mortals are either, and not having mortality coursing through His veins, but rather having the Spirit without measure, meant He was strong enough to avoid giving into temptation to sin (this combination of “semi-mortality” and having the Spirit without measure also kept Him alive, even on the cross, until He was ready to die and willingly gave up His life). This means that Adam — who, like Jesus, and like Eve, also had to have been in a “semi-mortal” state in order to be able to become mortal after sinning (and no, Adam and Eve couldn’t have been immortal prior to their sin, because “immortal” means “incapable of ever dying”) — theoretically could have also avoided sinning if the circumstances had worked out that way, although he didn’t have the Spirit without measure like Jesus did, and ultimately gave in to temptation, leading to the mortality and sin that all of us now get to experience as well, thanks to being his descendants.
That Adam is ultimately responsible for our condemnation to mortality, death, and sinfulness is also backed up a few lines later in Romans 5 as well, in verses 18–19, where Paul told us that, just as judgement to condemnation came upon all men because of the offence and disobedience of one, and not because of their own offences or disobedience, righteousness and justification of life will also come upon all men because of the obedience of one, and not because of their own obedience — which would have to include obedience towards any commands to do anything specific in order to experience (general) salvation, including commands to choose to repent and/or to believe anything specific — telling us that only two people are responsible for our current and future states, the first Adam and the last Adam, and that we’re just along for the ride.
You see, when Paul wrote, “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. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous,” he was using another set of parallelisms there, something he seemed to love using to prove this particular point in various epistles, where the “all” and the “many” in the second part of each sentence has to consist of no less than the exact same number of people who fall under the “all” and “many” in the first part of the sentences, or else the parallelisms would fall apart, as would his entire point itself. And for those who are wondering why Paul wrote “many” rather than “all” in verses 15 and 19 of this chapter, there are at least two reasons (there could be more, but I’m going to give you the most important reasons). First, verse 15 had to use “many” because not everyone will physically drop dead, as we already discussed. And second, Jesus was technically affected by Adam’s sin to a certain extent as well, in that He too was condemned to die (even if voluntarily) because of Adam’s action, since He had to die for the sins we now commit because we’re mortal thanks to Adam if He wanted to save us (which is why He could be included in the “all” of verse 18). But since He Himself never sinned, verse 19 couldn’t say “all” became sinners, which is why Paul instead wrote that “many were made sinners,” meaning every human other than Jesus. And again, being a parallelism, all the people who “were made sinners” because of “one man’s disobedience” will also have to “be made righteous” because of “the obedience of one,” or else the parallelism wouldn’t work (and please re-read that carefully: Paul said that it’s because of “the obedience of one,” and not because of their own obedience to choose to repent and/or believe the right thing, that they’re ultimately “made righteous,” even though, yes, those who do happen to believe Paul’s Gospel will get to enjoy that righteousness before everyone else, but it’s still all due to the obedience of one and not due to their own obedience).
But for those who still really want to blame our condemnation to mortality and death on our own sins rather than ultimately blaming it on the first Adam’s sin, I’d be curious to know what they believe the condemnation that came upon all men because of the offence and disobedience of one/Adam actually even is, exactly, not to mention why Paul included the part about “wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin“ in verse 12, and also why he claimed that “in Adam all die” in 1 Corinthians 15:22.
Of course, most Christians like to insist that one has to first choose to receive the free gift to be included in the second half of these parallelisms (completely ignoring the fact that this is not how parallelisms work), based on the inclusion of the word “receive” in verse 17, but Paul didn’t actually say anything about receiving the gift being a choice in that verse at all (although, if it was a choice, then receiving the “abundance of grace” mentioned in that verse would also have to be a choice). The idea that receiving the free gift is a choice is an assumption that one has to read into the verse, since it just isn’t there in the text (you won’t find the words “choice” or “choose” anywhere in the chapter), and receiving something isn’t necessarily something one chooses anyway, as evidenced by how Paul told us that, on five separate occasions, he received thirty-nine stripes. Since he would have experienced those lashes whether he first purposefully chose to receive them or not (at no point are we told that he said to his assailants, “Please whip me”; and had he instead said, “I refuse to receive these stripes,” they still would have whipped him anyway), it’s time to reconsider the idea that “receiving the free gift” is something one chooses rather than simply experiences apart from anything they have to choose to do, because, aside from the fact that this would make salvation something they gained through their own obedience rather than because of the obedience of one/Christ (thus contradicting Paul’s entire point, which is that only the first Adam and the last Adam are responsible for anything that happens to us when it comes to both our condemnation and our salvation, at least as far as our general salvation goes, which is the type of salvation Paul was writing about in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15:22), having to choose to receive it would also be something one had to accomplish in order to be saved, which by definition would make it a work one had to do in order to be saved, and the most difficult work one could ever do at that, based on how difficult most people find it to “choose to receive the gift” and “get saved” (at least as far as the traditional Christian understanding of what salvation is goes, although it’s true that their understanding is completely wrong). And so, rather than being offered money as a gift in order to pay off one’s debts, and having the option to either accept it or reject it (which is an analogy many Christians like to use when discussing salvation), it’s actually more like having money deposited directly into one’s bank account — enough to pay all their debts — and having automatic payments to those they owe money to set up entirely without their knowledge (with evangelism being about telling people the good news that the money is there and that their debts will all be paid with that money, whether or not they happen to believe it, or “choose to receive it,” because their bank accounts have already received it).
The reason most Christians insist that receiving the free gift has to be a choice (aside from simply never having considered the possibility that it might not be) is because they just don’t want to accept that condemnation and salvation could possibly be something we ultimately have no say in, which is why they also insist that we’re entirely responsible for our own condemnation to mortality and death (and its resulting sinfulness) as well, contrary to what Paul wrote (all the while often also contradictorily placing the guilt for Adam’s sin on us at the same time as blaming us, in order to preserve the doctrine of “Original Sin,” which is a doctrine that really only exists in order to be able to claim that everyone deserves to be punished in “hell” without end simply by virtue of being born, and is a doctrine which literally makes no sense at all when you take the time to actually think about it, since there’s just no legitimate way for someone who didn’t commit a particular sin to then be considered guilty of committing that sin just because an ancestor of theirs committed it; and one shouldn’t conflate the “condemnation” Paul wrote about in that passage with “guilt” anyway, because the type of “condemnation” in that verse is just the consequence of Adam’s sin that we all experience, meaning the mortality we inherited from him, which also leads to all of us then committing sins as well, and not to us somehow magically being guilty of eating the forbidden fruit ourselves, even though we didn’t actually eat it at all — which is backed up by the fact that the word “condemnation” there is translated from κατάκριμα/“kat-ak’-ree-mah” in the original Greek, which simply refers to a negative sentence and not specifically to a guilty verdict, and is a word which could also be used to say that one has been “condemned” to die of a terminal illness due to no fault of their own, which is actually pretty close to what the “condemnation” in this passage is referring to). You see, if our condemnation to mortality and its resulting sinfulness is based entirely on the action of one (Adam), as Paul said it was, then our salvation to immortality and sinlessness would have to be based entirely upon the action of one as well (the last Adam), as Paul also said it is, rather than based (at least in part) upon a wise decision we ourselves make to receive the free gift, and the pride of most Christians just won’t allow them to accept that as a possibility (because, although they’ll deny it — even to themselves — most of them, at least on a subconscious level, really want to be able to take the credit for having made the wise decision to “get saved,” based on the fact that they definitely want those who don’t make the same wise choice they believe they made to be responsible for not getting saved, based on the tragically large number of Christians who have asked me things along the lines of, “Are you saying that unbelievers will get the same reward as me? Even though they didn’t choose to accept Christ like I did?”, thus telling us they believe they earned, and even deserve, salvation because they were smart enough to choose to receive it, unlike all those sinners who aren’t smart enough to make the same good choice they did and hence don’t also deserve it the way they do).
I should quickly add, some will point out that 1 Corinthians 15:1-2 also talks about “receiving” the Gospel Paul preached unto them, and that the salvation referred to in that passage seems like it could possibly be said to be conditional, at least if we take the passage on its own without considering the rest of Scripture. But even if we interpreted the passage as Paul referring to receiving salvation rather than simply receiving (or hearing) the message he preached unto them, based on what we’ve already covered (not to mention still have yet to cover), it could only be talking about receiving the special form of salvation which involves joining the body of Christ after hearing his Gospel there (a form of salvation that not everyone receives), and not the completed salvation (being guaranteed future immortality and sinlessness) which is discussed in the next two verses after those, and really throughout the rest of the chapter (as well as which is discussed in Romans 5). So even if someone did have to choose to “receive” this special form of salvation, it doesn’t also mean that anyone has to choose to receive the general form of salvation Christ won for all of us through His death for our sins, burial, and resurrection on the third day. And so, it’s time to recognize that the idea of the salvation Paul primarily wrote about (at least the general type of salvation) being based at all upon something people have to do for themselves — even if what they have to do for themselves is something as supposedly simple as having to choose to believe the right thing — rather than being based entirely upon what one/Christ did for us, is really something one must read into the text based on one’s preconceived idea that this salvation depends at least partly (even if just 1%) on us and our wise decision to believe and/or do something specific rather than depends 100% on what one/Christ did.
To learn more, please read my Consistent Soteriology Bible study, which you can find here: https://kjvgospel.com/kjv