Adam and Eve: First Christians and the Foundations of Faith (Episode One)

The Atonement of Jesus Christ was necessary because Adam and Eve brought sin and death into the world, so that humanity could exist. Is it not logical that they would look forward to redemption through the promised Messiah?

Jesus is that Messiah. Adam and Eve knew of Him. That’s what this article is about.

Jesus Christ committed no sins of His own for which to repent. That sinlessness made it possible for Him to suffer for ours. He did not deserve death. He could have lived forever. All elements of creation honor Him and hearken to His command.

Understanding these truths carries eternal consequences.

The reason Christ could suffer the penalty of sin was this: He had no personal sin. He was and is spiritually clean. And because He had no sin of His own for which to die, He could take upon Himself ours. He did not earn death—yet He accepted it, so that we could be redeemed.

As a partner in the great Plan of Salvation authored by Heavenly Father, Jesus fulfilled His divine role so that mankind could live again. Adam secured mortality, opening the way for humankind to be tried and tested—so that through Jesus Christ, we might overcome death, hell, and the devil and return to the presence of God.

In 2 Nephi chapter 9, we're instructed that Christ’s sacrifice "must needs be an infinite atonement—save it should be an infinite atonement this corruption could not put on incorruption. Wherefore, the first judgment which came upon man must needs have remained to an endless duration." [2 Nephi 9:7]

This “endless duration” refers to Adam and Eve's sentence of death or the state of physical and spiritual death introduced by the Fall. He continues to explain that

this flesh must have laid down to rot and to crumble to its mother earth, to rise no more ... if the flesh should rise no more our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the Eternal God, and became the devil, to rise no more. [2 Nephi 9:51]

Nephi revealed the awful alternative if the atonement of Jesus Christ is not infinite, eternal. Mortal man, weighed down by his own sins, could not pay the price for his or her own sins, let alone the sins of another. The elements of the universe would honor no such being as mortal man, seeing as how those beings did not, and do not, honor the commands of Jehovah/Jesus Christ.

The elements would not remain bound together to support the created-of-dust humankind. The atomic bonds forming the bodies of all people eventually would fly apart to rise no more. These atomic structures would cease cooperating for all creation, humans, animals, and things--frustrating the plan of the Father to exalt humanity for those who want it.

The elements obey God's original command to produce life, but they also obey the original command to end in death because of the Fall from Eden. Death became a side-effect of Adam and Eve partaking of the fruit in direct disobedience to the Creator.

The Atonement of Jesus Christ encompasses all the sins of humanity, from Adam to the very last soul born on Earth. It had to be infinite.

Nephi taught that if our bodies were left to decay—because the sacrifice of Christ had not been accepted by the elements that obey Him—then, at death, our spirits would become like Lucifer:

“Our spirits must have become like unto him [Lucifer], and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies, in misery, like unto himself!”
(2 Nephi 9:9)

Why devils?

Because devils have no bodies—only spirits. God’s purpose is to clothe the spirits of men and women in physical bodies, that we might become glorious and powerful through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But without resurrection, we would remain only spirits. We would have no power to rise. We would be eternally cut off—consigned to endless mourning and suffering, unable to change our condition without the grace that comes through the miracle of forgiveness and the power of Christ’s resurrection.

Life, without the perfect and eternal Atonement of Jesus Christ—who suffered the penalty of death brought upon humanity by Adam and Eve—would amount to nothing. Without Christ’s partnership with Adam and Eve, all would suffer the fate of the one-third cast down to earth—to tempt humankind away from God’s plan. Mortal men and women would become demons—damned and disembodied forever!

Those who passed through mortality would suffer more than the one-third who rebelled with Satan, for they would know the joy of a physical body—and all the beauty and nuance it brings—yet be denied it forever. The first test was to accept the Plan of Salvation presented by God the Father in Heaven to us. This is called the First Estate. Those who kept their first estate and did not rebel against God constitute all humans ever born or who will be born. For eternity, they would know that they would never taste, touch, or enjoy marital connection again because the means to do so is a physical body.

Nephi teaches that without Christ, we would become like the devil—the Serpent, “that being who beguiled our first parents, who transformeth himself nigh unto an angel of light, and stirreth up the children of men unto secret combinations of murder, and all manner of secret works of darkness” (2 Nephi 9:9).

Nephi reminds us that this fate has been prevented because Christ kept His part of the partnership with Adam and Eve and fulfilled the Atonement, that all humankind might be spared from suffering for sin, if we choose to follow Him.