Whenever we are speaking from the perspective of the apostle Paul, “Sin” and “Death” are capitalized as Powers — a subject to be fully discussed in later chapters. Sin is not so much a collection of individual misdeeds as it is an active, malevolent agency bent upon despoiling, imprisonment, and death — the utter undoing of God’s purposes. Misdeeds are signs of that agency at work; they are not the thing itself. It is “the thing itself” that is our cosmic Enemy.
