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

The Atonement of Jesus Christ was not a rescue plan invented after the Fall—it was the central covenant of creation. Adam and Eve brought mortality and death into the world so that life could continue, but from the beginning they also looked forward to redemption through the promised Messiah.

Jesus is that Messiah. Adam and Eve knew His name, His purpose, and His role as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Their story is not one of despair but of divine design—a partnership between mortality and immortality, between the Fall and the Atonement.

Because Christ committed no sin, He alone could bear ours. Though He had the power to live forever, He submitted Himself to death so that all creation might live again. Every element of the universe recognizes His command, for all things were created through Him.

To understand these truths is to glimpse the very structure of salvation—and the eternal logic that binds Eden to Calvary.

The Fall and Its Divine Side Effect

As a partner in the great Plan of Salvation, authored by the Eternal Father, Jesus Christ fulfilled His foreordained role so that mankind might live again.
Through Adam came mortality—the testing ground of faith and agency; through Christ came immortality—the victory over death, hell, and the devil.
Together, their roles formed one eternal partnership in God’s plan to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Nephi taught:

“It 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)

That “endless duration” describes the permanent separation—both physical and spiritual—caused by the Fall.
Nephi further warned:

“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 9:8)

Without the Atonement, mortal man—limited and sin-laden—could not redeem himself nor another.

Even the elements of the universe would not hearken to such a being, for they recognize only the voice of their Creator, Jehovah.

If Christ had not fulfilled His part, the very atoms that compose creation would disband, and the Father’s design to exalt humanity would be frustrated.

The elements obey two original commands: to give life and to yield to death.
Adam and Eve, by partaking of the forbidden fruit, activated that second law—the law of death—making mortality possible and necessitating the Atonement of Christ to reverse its final sting.

The Atonement of Jesus Christ embraces every sin ever committed—from Adam to the final soul who will live upon the Earth. Because death and sin are universal, His sacrifice had to be infinite and eternal.

Nephi taught that if our bodies were left to decay—if Christ’s offering had not been accepted by the obedient elements—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 are disembodied. They have spirit but no body—no instrument of exaltation. God’s purpose is to clothe the spirits of His sons and daughters in mortal flesh, that through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they may progress toward glory and power.

Without resurrection, that divine process would stop. We would remain only spirits—incapable of rising, unable to change, consigned to endless mourning and suffering. Only the grace born of Christ’s infinite Atonement grants power over death and restores both body and spirit to eternal life.

Life—without the perfect and eternal Atonement of Jesus Christ, who bore the penalty of death brought upon humanity by Adam and Eve—would collapse into meaninglessness.

Without Christ’s partnership with Adam and Eve, all would share the destiny of the one-third cast down with Lucifer: spirits exiled from God, chained to misery, forever separated from flesh.

Mortal men and women would become demons—damned and disembodied, cut off from the very bodies that once gave them joy.

Those who have known mortality would suffer even more than the one-third who rebelled with Satan, for they would remember the warmth of touch, the beauty of mortal life, and the intimacy of creation—yet be denied it eternally.

The first test was to accept the Father’s Plan of Salvation in the premortal world—the First Estate.

Those who kept that estate became heirs to mortal embodiment.

But without the Redeemer’s victory, that gift would have turned to torment; the memory of flesh would echo only as loss.

Nephi warned of that horror, describing the Serpent “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).

His words still echo: without Christ, we would become as he is—angels to a devil, shut out from the presence of God.

But that fate was prevented.

Jesus Christ fulfilled His covenant with Adam and Eve and completed the infinite Atonement, so that all humankind might escape endless sorrow and rise again through Him.

By His triumph, He preserved the union of spirit and body and opened the path of exaltation to every soul willing to follow.