Quote:
Originally Posted by trettep
So what about babies. They die, how are we going to deal with that issue? I mean if something else can kill us besides sin then where is Jesus addressing what that is?
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Here's how I understand it... When God told Adam not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil, He warned him of what the consequences for disobedience would be: "...In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. When Adam disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, he was cast out of the Garden. He died spiritually
at that moment, because he was separated from God for the first time. He would have continued to be separated from God forever were it not for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. He didn't die physically when he was cast out of the Garden, but he did immediately become
subject to death. The time would come when he would die physically, and he would have remained dead forever were it not for Jesus' sacrifice.
So, I see two kinds of death and two kinds of atonement. There is
physical death, which Adam brought into the world, and the
physical rebirth (or resurrection), which Jesus Christ brought into the world. (For as in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall
all be made alive.) This atonement is
unconditional. It doesn't matter what we believe or how we choose to live our lives. All of us will someday be resurrected.
Then there is
spiritual death, which Adam also brought into the world, and
spiritual rebirth (or redemption), which Jesus Christ brought into the world. This part of the atonement is
conditional, however. Jesus willingly assumed the guilt incurred by you and I and by everyone else who has and will acknowledge Him as their Savior, repents of their sins and makes a commitment to obey His commandments. This includes Adam. Jesus Christ forgave Adam for his sin (the one people refer to as the "original sin"). It's a debt that was paid for by His suffering, and one that is no longer owed. Consequently, none of us have to worry about being held accountable for something we didn't do.
We die because we are mortal. We are mortal because we are descendants of Adam. Death is something we cannot avoid; neither is a resurrection. We inherited Adam's mortal attributes, among which is our sinful nature, or the inclination towards sin. We did not inherit sin itself, because sin requires us to choose evil. We can avoid spiritual death, however, by choosing to repent when we fail to keep God's commandments, and by acknowledging Jesus Christ as our Savior. His Atonement makes it possible for us to ultimately be forgiven for our sins without having to first be punished for them.
I don't know if that makes sense or not. I'm only trying explain the way I see it, and if I haven't been able to do so by now, I'm pretty much out of ways to put it.