Adam’s sin affected everyone for all time because his sin was so terrible that man's very nature was corrupted and disobedience to God became normative. We are estranged from the womb (Psalm 58:3- 11, Ps 51:5). The fact that man's very nature became corrupt did not diminish his accountability to God for his sins. Right up to the present day, man continues to be answerable to God for his actions because man is still created in the image of God, regardless of how shattered that image may be.
As humans created in the likeness of God, we should be living entirely to the praise of His glory (Ephesians 1:12). But, the human race has rebelled against God and is living to the praise of themselves rather than of God. They have turned the whole thing upside down. Men are the source of the problem for which the gospel is the solution.
One important message of Genesis is the failure of men when they act independently from God. Adam was originally perfect in a perfect environment. However, he was also created to be dependent upon God. Adam and his descendants were, and always have been, dependent upon God (Prov. 16:9, Jer. 10:23, Acts 17:28). When Adam was offered the forbidden fruit by Eve, he should have cried out to God for strength to remain obedient. Adam, at that moment, should have called upon God for wisdom and courage to help his poor wife. But Adam chose death! As a result mankind was sentenced to death, physical death and spiritual death. Spiritual death is eternal separation from God; that is, for his disobedience, man will eternally suffer God's wrath in hell. The impact of man's initial sin was so terrible that man's very nature was corrupted and disobedience to God became normative. Like an adulterer who senselessly and stupidly repeatedly returns to the harlot, so man continues to disobey God. Adam's sin was so far-reaching that the whole human race, which issued from Adam and of whom Adam was head, remains in this awful corruption (Romans 5:12) Because of man's enmity toward God, the awful curse of God's wrath continues to rest on him. Satan vanquished man in the Garden of Eden, and man became a slave in the dominion of sin and spiritual darkness, which is ruled by Satan. At the judgment, man must render an account of all his works to God. Matthew 12:36, Romans 2:5-6, Romans 14:10b-12, II Corinthians 5:10. God repeatedly teaches in the Bible that man must answer for his sins. (Luke 13:34, Matthew 21:34-41 and 23:29-30, Revelation 20:12-15).
God is not thwarted in His desire to have a redeemed people. God reaches down into the mire and misery of human sin to save a people for Himself (John 6:37). God will take for Himself as many people as He wants to take, and He will take precisely those people whom He wants to take; He is the Redeemer (Ezekiel 34:11-16.) For those whom God saves, He must pay the penalty that is required by His perfect justice. And so Jesus became sin. He took upon Himself the sins of all those whom God, in His elective decree, planned to save. Christ died for those people who believe but not one of them believed of his own volition. Only because God inclined their wills and opened their eyes and did save them; did they respond to the Gospel. God's gracious intervention occurs only in the lives of His elect. God irresistibly draws them unto Himself (John 6:37, 44). They were given to Christ by the Father (John 6:37, 39, John 17:9, 20); they were born not of the will of man, but of God (John 1:13).
So, the book of Genesis reveals that a perfect man, acting on his own, will choose death. Man is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9) and dead in his sins (Romans 3:10-20) God, in His sovereign will and mercy, declares in Matthew 16:18, "I will build my church" (Eternal church). It is God's purpose to have a people for Himself even though no one voluntarily chooses to believe in Christ as his Savior. Before the foundation of the earth, God named those whom He would save, and He draws these people to Himself. He opens their spiritual eyes and they become saved from the eternal punishment they deserve.
