God had an immediate plan for redemption, which was revealed when He cursed the devil right after the fall. “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Gen. 3:15). God said there would be a struggle between satanic forces and humanity. The offspring of the woman would begin with Cain and his natural descendants. Out of this offspring would come the Christ. Satan would cripple mankind (strike his heal), but Christ would deliver the fatal blow (crush Satan’s head). The offspring of the serpent would include his demons, and anyone who serves in the kingdom of darkness, those whose spiritual “father” is the devil (John 8:44).
In preparation for the coming of Christ, God established a conditional covenant (Exodus 19), which served as the basis for the Mosaic Law. The law was moral, ceremonial and civil and provided for a temporal means by which the fallen inhabitants of this world could relate to God and each other. However, the law was powerless to give life and therefore righteousness could not be based on the law (Gal. 3:21). See Breaking The Bondage of Legalism (Harvest House, 2003). The law was a tutor that would eventually lead us to Christ who is the only name given under heaven by which we can be saved (Gal. 3:24; Acts 4:12). Ezekiel prophesied what God was going to do in order to save his fallen people (Ezekiel 11:19,20):
I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.
The gospel provides far more than the forgiveness of sins. Paul wrote, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). Jesus had to die on the cross in order for us to be forgiven, because, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:22). But the cross represents only half the gospel. Because of Christ’s resurrection we have new life in Christ. Jesus came to give us life and put a new heart and a new spirit within us. When we are born-again spiritually, our soul/spirit is in union with God as it was for Adam in the original creation. This wonderful truth is most often conveyed in Scripture with the prepositional phrase, “In Christ,” or “In Him.”. After commissioning Timothy, Paul wrote, “He will remind you of my ways which are in Christ Jesus, just as I teach everywhere in every church” (1 Corinthians 4:17 emphasis added, NASB).
What Adam and Eve lost in the fall was life (spiritual life). What Jesus came to give us was life (John. 10:10). Eternal life is not something we get when we physically die. John writes, “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). If you don’t have eternal (spiritual) life before you physically die, all you would have to look forward to is hell. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even when he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25,26). In other words, every born-again believer is spiritually alive and will continue to be so when they die physically. Jesus is the “Bread of life” (John 6:35), “The way the truth and the life” (John 14:6), and every Christian has their name written in the “Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 13:8, emphasis added).
