When God placed Adam in the garden of Eden, He commanded him to not eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, with the warning that on the day that he did so, he would die. Adam sinned against God by heeding to his wife, Eve. Satan’s stratagem in tempting Eve to tempt Adam was to ensure that Adam’s transgression would be without deception, so that the sentence of condemnation would be certain. Consequently, the seed of the woman provided the opportunity for redemption to occur for the human race.

Mankind’s fall into the state of sin and death has not abrogated the image that he bears of God, as it is still a sin to murder men under the Fall.

Death is the principal result of the Fall and may be summarily defined as separation. The Scriptures portray death on two levels. There is the first death and then there is the second death. The first death is the physical separation of the body from the soul, rendering the creation of man obsolete as body and soul. Upon the first death, the spirit of man goes to God. The second death is the separation of an image bearer (angelic or human) in their whole form from any sense of the presence of God. The day Adam and Even sinned against God they experienced spiritual death, which finds its fulfilment in the second death.

The first death is death on Satan’s terms, while the second death is death on God’s terms. Satan is in constant dread of the second death, as hell was created for the devil and his angels [Matt. 25:41], and yet it will not occur until the first death is fully and completely abrogated by means of the general resurrection [1 Cor. 15:26].

Because of the Fall, mankind is subject not only to the two deaths, but in this life men and women are subject to every form of evil and suffering, living their lives in ignorance and hardness of heart, without God and without hope.