A study on death: Part one
PART ONE: Adam as the Pattern
Adam’s story provides the framework for understanding what death is and its relationship to sin. The sequence unfolds in Adam first, and then in all men.
1. The judicial sentence for sin
Romans 6:23 (KJV) For the wages of sin is death;
Before Adam ever fell, God had declared the consequence of sin.
This decree stands over all mankind, but Adam is the first to experience its outworking.
2. God is the source of life
John 5:26a (KJV) For as the Father hath life in himself;
Because God is the source of life, to be separated from him is to be separated from life itself.
Isaiah describes this separation:
Isaiah 59:2 (KJV)…your sins have hid his [that is, God's] face from you…
3. Adam died spiritually/relationally the day he sinned
Genesis 2:17 (KJV)…in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
God had warned Adam plainly about the consequence of disobedience.
Death begins with this severing of relationship with the God who is life.
Adam did not fall dead physically the day he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but he did die spiritually/relationally, becoming separated from God, losing fellowship with him and becoming alienated from the life that is in him.
This relational rupture is the immediate death scripture describes. Ephesians 4:18 speaks of being “alienated from the life of God.”
4. Adam eventually dies physically
Genesis 5:5 (KJV) And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
Once spiritually separated from God (the source of life), physical death becomes inevitable.
Adam's physical death is the final outworking of the spiritual/relational death that occurred the moment he sinned.
5. Summary: Adam’s experience reveals the universal pattern - men die because sin brings God’s judicial sentence of death. This produces immediate spiritual/relational death (separation from God) and ultimately results in physical death.
To follow
PART TWO: How Christ broke the Adamic Pattern of Death