Most Christians (at least the ones who think about this kind of thing) assert that because of the work of Christ we are being brought back to the way things were at the beginning, before Adam messed it up. Soon enough everything will be paradise, and we will be sinless. My issue with this is that if Christ came merely to undo what was done by Adam, then why will our glorified condition be different from Adam’s supposed original state? We will have no desire for marriage in the new heaven and new earth, Adam did have a desire for marriage in his original condition. We will be impervious to temptation in the new heaven and earth, we will be incorruptible, Adam was not.
Here’s what we need to understand. Redemption does not mean restoration! Restoration means “to bring back to an original state.” Redemption means “To buy back," “To free from captivity by payment...” God’s work of redemption is not a work of restoration.
As I see it from scripture, from the beginning, God intended that Adam and those after him should attain to an immensely greater state of existence than what Adam was, and we are. Even if the “serpent” were in the new earth, he would have no hope of swaying any from their state of perfect righteousness. That is the promise of the New Covenant. That God has put his Spirit in us, and by his Spirit in us he is causing us to fear him and walk in his statutes.
There is nowhere in scripture where God or anyone speaking for him claims that God desires for us to be restored to the condition of Adam before he sinned. However, God has said numerous times that his plan is to redeem us, to buy us back from our slavery. Slavery to what? Well, rather to whom, the “whom” being the devil. We were once children of the devil. The devil was our master because we gave our “members” over to serve him (Romans 6:16). We were enslaved by him, captured by him to do his will. As Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:2 “in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—”
So why did we once live in sin? Is it because Adam sinned or is it because we followed “the prince of the power of the air”? All who are living in disobedience, whom Paul refers to as “the sons of disobedience,” are being worked on by the spirit he calls “the prince of the power of the air.” How about 2 Timothy 2:26 “and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” Those who walk in disobedience, who are not living a life of repentance, are "captured" by the devil “to do his will.”
Do you think these terms have been confused?
Comments welcome.
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