By one man sin entered into the world, It was Adam, who sinned against God and brought separation from God and physical and spiritual death to all humanity (Genesis 2–3). God had warned Adam, "You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die" (Genesis 2:17). Because Adam disobeyed God's command, the judgment of both spiritual and physical death fell on him and all his descendants as well as the physical earth and cosmos. Therefore, death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned Death is the consequence of being under the power of sin. "In Adam all die" (I Corinthians 15:22). It was not how God designed the original plan for human beings to die, but it was the consequence of sin entered the world. As a result, the gift of life we bequeath to our children follows with it the sting of death. All human beings have two characteristics in common: They are sinners, and they will all die. Sin is a wide chasm between who we are and who we were created to be. The law points out our sin and places the responsibility on us, but it offers no remedy. Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. Here Paul uses the word pattern (typos), or "type" to describe Adam's role in history compared with Christ's. Adam, the first man, was a counterpart of Christ, whom Paul calls "the last Adam" in I Corinthians 15:45. Adam's one act determined the character of the world; Christ's one act determined the character of eternity. In modern terminology, we could say that Adam was a flawed prototype, but Christ was the perfect original. Just as Adam was a representative of created humanity. |
