Not so!
God warned Adam in Genesis 2:17: “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
Did Adam die physically on that day or did he die spiritually?
This caution to Adam didn’t just relate to physical death but also to spiritual death. God warned him that there would be an awful cost for disobeying Him. Sadly, Adam rebelled against the Law of God and consequently paid a terrible price. Adam surrendered that eternal part of his nature by walking in his own power. Physical and spiritual death fell upon man after the fall. Adam became a mortal creature when he disobeyed God. He was immediately separated from God, separated from the life of God, separated from communion with God. This is seen in the fact that the first thing Adam did after the fall was run from God, hide and cover himself with his own covering (Genesis 3:7-10).
Whilst we know from Scripture that Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, we equally know that he didn't physically die on that same day. This was first referring to spiritual death which would separate man from that perfect communion he enjoyed with God. Genesis 5:5 tells us: “And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.”
If spiritual death was the first death man experienced, the next death that he experienced, which was a direct result of the first, was physical death. The fall left mankind in a hopeless ruined state facing a certain two-fold death. Left to his own devices, man was destined for “the Lake of Fire” and eternal spiritual and physical death.
When Adam fell his desires automatically changed from being God-ward to being self-ward. Satan was happy to facilitate this; after all, he has always promoted anything that takes man’s eyes off God. Since the Garden, natural man with Adam’s blood is born with that same corrupt aspiration. He is a rebel. In this, he will always go the way of sin. That is his natural inclination. For man to have hope, this had to be corrected. The only problem was, man couldn’t help himself – he was spiritually dead and now possessed a nature that was skewed to run from God, not to Him.