“It was necessary [in accordance with God’s will] that man [should] learn obedience—not only to obey, but the importance of obedience. Man must obey not just because he is told to, but also because he WANTS to. This makes him free—the desire to comply rather than the constraints to comply. God as Creator knew that the available means of learning were instruction, observation, and experience. Man could not learn first by observation, because there was no disobedience to observe. God would have preferred if man could have learned without experience, although he knew that the tendency of a free mind would lead it toward experimentation. So God first taught man by instruction.
God warned man that disobedience would result in death. He wanted to impress upon man that disobedience, because it would result in chaos, was so serious that God’s Justice felt compelled to demand death (extinction) for it. God’s instruction did not satisfy man. Man disobeyed. He was condemned to death, and he continues to die.”
“God, however, was wise and economical in allowing one act to be the catalyst for teaching us all. Because of this love of God could provide a JUST remedy. God wants man to live; that is why He created man in the first place. So God has arranged a way to remove the sentence of death from Adam (and from us all who came from Adam). God sent His son, Jesus—not a son of Adam, but yet a man—a perfect man as was Adam—no more, no less. This man, Jesus, had a right to life because he was always perfectly obedient. But he voluntarily gave up his human life rights as an exchange or "RANSOM" for the life rights of Adam. (1 Tim 2:5, 6; 1 Cor 15:22) God's Justice is satisfied by this ransom exchange ("a life for a life"—Deut 19:21) A human life is still claimed as the price for disobedience, but Adam is now legally free to live again—and so are all of us!
“Consider the logic of God's Plan to save all men from evil and death: Father Adam, perfect, sinned. The penalty of death passed upon him and the prospective human race yet in his loins. Deliverance from death required the payment of a corresponding price, the death of a perfect man. No member of the sinful (imperfect) human race could pay this price. (Psa 49:7) Only Jesus, who was "holy, harmless, separate from sinners" could. (Heb 7:26) The perfect man Jesus died for Adam's sin, taking his place in death, thereby redeeming Adam and all his offspring-the human race-from death. "For Christ also has once suffered for sins; the just (Jesus) for the unjust (Adam), that he might bring us to God." 1 Pet 3:18
The sin of the world is the sin of Adam, for "in him all have sinned." Rom. 5:12
"By one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death (the wages of sin) passed upon all men. Therefore, as by the offense of one (Adam) judgment (the sentence) came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one (Jesus) the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." Rom 5:12, 18
Now someone might ask, on what grounds to you ascertain that Adam was a perfect man?
“The very brief scrap of history furnished us in Genesis, together with the fact that the flood completely obliterated all evidence of the genius and handiwork of the father of our race, and his earliest progeny, give us no basis of calculations respecting his mental and physical abilities. For information we are thrown upon the fact that all God's work is "perfect," his own declaration (Deut 32:4); and his further declaration that man "sought out many inventions," and defiled himself (Eccl 7:29); and the fact that even under the curse, and under the unfavorable conditions in which man lived after being thrust out of the Garden of Eden--despite all these unfavorable conditions, so grandly perfect was this human organism that the father of humanity was sustained for the long period of nine hundred and thirty years.” Gen 5:5 (E 406)
We must picture in our minds the first perfect man, with all his powers of mind and body a moral and intellectual image of the Great Spirit, fashioned appropriately to his earthly conditions and nature, pronounced "very good"; by the very highest authority on the subject. Gen 1:31
“Mental and physical perfection, under the conditions presented in the divine account of the creation, clearly and positively imply moral perfection; for we are to remember that, according to the Scriptures, moral obliquity and consequent degradation had not set in. Nor is it supposable that man, without moral elements to his mental development, would be described in the Scriptures as a "very good" man, or as an image of his Creator. To have created Adam perfect physically and perfect mentally, except in moral qualities, would have been to make him a very bad man, on the principle that the greater the abilities the greater the villain, unless the abilities be under moral control.” (E 407)
“The Apostle points out that father Adam, when tried at the bar of God, was a willful transgressor, and not a deceived one. (1 Tim 2:14) He thus shows us that in moral quality he was capable of obedience to the divine requirements, for it would have been unjust on God's part to have tried and to have condemned for failure a being that, through defective creation, was incapable of standing the trial successfully, rendering obedience to his commands. The fact that Adam had a trial in which the issues were life and death everlasting, and the fact that his failure under that trial was willful, and justly drew upon him the sentence of the great Judge to the full penalty of the law, must prove to every unbiased, logical mind that Adam was in every sense of the word perfect, and properly susceptible of trial.
And the fact that God, even after the ransom price has been paid, refuses to try mankind again before the same supreme and unimpeachable Court, and declares the reason to be that in a fallen condition we are incapable of a trial at his bar of absolute justice, and that by our best deeds none could be justified before him--all this proves conclusively, not only that the race has grievously fallen, but also proves that God would not have tried Adam at all had he not been much better than we are, and thoroughly fit for trial--a perfect man.” (E 408)
Since the first man, Adam, was a perfect human being, it follows that Jesus, as a corresponding price, must also be a perfect human being and that the resultant life must be perfect human life. The whole race was in and sprang from Adam their father, by mother Eve but not from her. And thus it is written "all in ADAM die," but not all in Eve. Because the race came of Adam, it was tried in his trial, condemned in his failure and included under his sentence.
Now we see that our Lord Jesus left the Heavenly glory that He might accomplish a ransoming work for Adam and his race. We see that his change of nature from a spirit to a human being was with a view to enabling him to be the Ransom-price—a perfect man for a perfect man— Anti-lutron —a corresponding price for the first perfect man whose fall involved our race, and whose redemption also involves the race.
This concept of the corresponding price is a fixed law of God's universe! It is expressed in Israel's Law Covenant: "You shall give LIFE for LIFE, eye for eye, tooth for tooth" Exod 21:23-24
Our Lord in giving his life as a Ransom for Father Adam was in truth giving His life as the Ransom price for the sins of the whole world. Inasmuch as all men died in Adam, the sacrifice of the one perfect man, Christ Jesus, was sufficient to accomplish the redemption of the whole human race, which was in Adam’s loins when he sinned.
Continued with next post.
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