One Ransom for All

“It was necessary [in accordance with God’s will] that man [should] learn obedience—not only to obey, but the importance of obedience. Man must obey not just because he is told to, but also because he wants to. This makes him free—the desire to comply rather than the constraints to comply. God as Creator knew that the available means of learning were instruction, observation, and experience. Man could not learn first by observation, because there was no disobedience to observe. God would have preferred if man could have learned without experience, although he knew that the tendency of a free mind would lead it toward experimentation. So God first taught man by instruction.

God warned man that disobedience would result in death. He wanted to impress upon man that disobedience, because it would result in chaos, was so serious that God’s Justice felt compelled to demand death (extinction) for it. God’s instruction did not satisfy man. Man disobeyed. He was condemned to death, and he continues to die.”

“God, however, was wise and economical in allowing one act to be the catalyst for teaching us all. Because of this love of God could provide a JUST remedy. God wants man to live; that is why He created man in the first place. So God has arranged a way to remove the sentence of death from Adam (and from us all who came from Adam). God sent His son, Jesus—not a son of Adam, but yet a man—a perfect man as was Adam—no more, no less. This man, Jesus, had a right to life because he was always perfectly obedient. But he voluntarily gave up his human life rights as an exchange or “ransom” for the life rights of Adam. (1 Tim 2:5, 6; 1 Cor 15:22) Justice is satisfied by this ransom exchange (“a life for a life“—Deut 19:21) A human life is still claimed as the price for disobedience, but Adam is now legally free to live again—and so are all of us! (“If there is a God, Why?” Pages 3 and 4)

“Consider the logic of God’s Plan to save all men from evil and death: Father Adam, perfect, sinned. The penalty of death passed upon him and the prospective human race yet in his loins. Deliverance from death required the payment of a corresponding price, the death of a perfect man. No member of the sinful (imperfect) human race could pay this price. (Psa 49:7) Only Jesus, who was “holy, harmless, separate from sinners” could. (Heb 7:26) The perfect man Jesus died for Adam’s sin, taking his place in death, thereby redeeming Adam and all his offspring-the human race-from death. “For Christ also has once suffered for sins; the just (Jesus) for the unjust (Adam), that he might bring us to God.” 1 Pet 3:18

The sin of the world is the sin of Adam, for “in him all have sinned.” Rom. 5:12

“By one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death (the wages of sin) passed upon all men. Therefore, as by the offense of one (Adam) judgment (the sentence) came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one (man, The Man Christ Jesus) the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.” Rom 5:12, 18 (“A Ransom for All”, Page 2)

Now someone might ask, on what grounds to you ascertain that Adam was a perfect man?

“The very brief scrap of history furnished us in Genesis, together with the fact that the flood completely obliterated all evidence of the genius and handiwork of the father of our race, and his earliest progeny, give us no basis of calculations respecting his mental and physical abilities. For information we are thrown upon the fact that all God’s work is “perfect,” his own declaration (Deut 32:4); and his further declaration that man “sought out many inventions,” and defiled himself (Eccl 7:29); and the fact that even under the curse, and under the unfavorable conditions in which man lived after being thrust out of the Garden of Eden–despite all these unfavorable conditions, so grandly perfect was this human organism that the father of humanity was sustained for the long period of nine hundred and thirty years.” Gen 5:5 (E 406)

We must picture in our minds the first perfect man, with all his powers of mind and body a moral and intellectual image of the Great Spirit, fashioned appropriately to his earthly conditions and nature, pronounced “very good”; by the very highest authority on the subject. Gen 1:31

“Mental and physical perfection, under the conditions presented in the divine account of the creation, clearly and positively imply moral perfection; for we are to remember that, according to the Scriptures, moral obliquity and consequent degradation had not set in. Nor is it supposable that man, without moral elements to his mental development, would be described in the Scriptures as a “very good” man, or as an image of his Creator. To have created Adam perfect physically and perfect mentally, except in moral qualities, would have been to make him a very bad man, on the principle that the greater the abilities the greater the villain, unless the abilities be under moral control.” (E 407)

“The Apostle points out that father Adam, when tried at the bar of God, was a willful transgressor, and not a deceived one. (1 Tim 2:14) He thus shows us that in moral quality he was capable of obedience to the divine requirements, for it would have been unjust on God’s part to have tried and to have condemned for failure a being that, through defective creation, was incapable of standing the trial successfully, rendering obedience to his commands. The fact that Adam had a trial in which the issues were life and death everlasting, and the fact that his failure under that trial was willful, and justly drew upon him the sentence of the great Judge to the full penalty of the law, must prove to every unbiased, logical mind that Adam was in every sense of the word perfect, and properly susceptible of trial.

And the fact that God, even after the ransom price has been paid, refuses to try mankind again before the same supreme and unimpeachable Court, and declares the reason to be that in a fallen condition we are incapable of a trial at his bar of absolute justice, and that by our best deeds none could be justified before him–all this proves conclusively, not only that the race has grievously fallen, but also proves that God would not have tried Adam at all had he not been much better than we are, and thoroughly fit for trial–a perfect man.” (E 408)

Since the first man, Adam, was a perfect human being, it follows that Jesus, as a corresponding price, must also be a perfect human being and that the resultant life must be perfect human life. The whole race was in and sprang from Adam their father, by mother Eve but not from her. And thus it is written “all in ADAM die,” but not all in Eve. Because the race came of Adam, it was tried in his trial, condemned in his failure and included under his sentence.

Now we see that our Lord Jesus left the Heavenly glory that He might accomplish a ransoming work for Adam and his race. We see that his change of nature from a spirit to a human being was with a view to enabling him to be the Ransom-price—a perfect man for a perfect man— Anti-lutron —a corresponding price for the first perfect man whose fall involved all our race, and whose redemption also involves all the race.

This concept of the corresponding price is a fixed law of God’s universe! It is expressed in Israel’s Law Covenant: “You shall give LIFE for LIFE, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” Exod 21:23-24

Our Lord in giving his life as a Ransom for Father Adam was in truth giving His life as the Ransom price for the sins of the whole world. Inasmuch as all men died in Adam, the sacrifice of the one perfect man, Christ Jesus, was sufficient to accomplish the redemption of the whole human race, which was in Adam’s loins when he sinned.

“Now the free gift (justification to life, eternal life) is not like the offense. For if through the offense of one (man, Adam) many be dead (under condemnation to death), much more the grace of God (the gracious plan of salvation), and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.” (Rom 5:15) Paul here begins to zero in on his main subject, a contrast between original sin and the act, which brings redemption. Although the ransom is a corresponding price, a perfect life for a perfect life, Paul is emphasizing the differences between the redemption and the sin for which it atones. The original sin was of one man; the atoning act covered the sins of many. The original sentence was for one act of disobedience; the atonement covers a multitude of transgressions, i.e. the sins of the world.

The fact is that Jesus’ death was the equivalent or corresponding price for Adam’s sin and penalty, and quite sufficient to legally effect the release of every member of the race.

The economical feature of the Divine Plan is a most wonderful thought. By one man’s disobedience God permitted the results of that transgression to affect all of Adam’s children. All mankind were involved under the original sin, of the one man.

“Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men.” (Rom 5:12)

Then in due time God so arranged that the sin of the one man, Adam, would be met by the Man Christ Jesus; that thus Adam would in due time be freed from the death penalty; and that all his children, who inherited death as well as weakness and imperfection through him, would also be amenable to this one redemption–that the one Ransom-price was sufficient for Adam and all his posterity.

“Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment (i.e. the sentence or curse) came to all men (extensively) resulting in condemnation… (All fall short of the glory of God, there is none righteous, no not one) even so through one man’s righteous act (the Man Christ Jesus who gave his life a ransom for all) the free gift (redemption from the Adamic curse) came to all men (co-extensively) resulting in (the sentence of) justification of life.” (Rom 5:18)

God’s justice which is very precise and exacting cannot be changed nor altered, thus what he declares to be, shall be. “My counsel (my purpose or will) shall stand” Isa 46:10; 55:11

God has declared that the “wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23), therefore in no way can he free the sinner from this sentence, the penalty must be fully met and that in accordance with the law which he himself has laid down as he expressed to Israel, “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Exod 21:23-24). It was a perfect man who had sinned therefore in order to meet the claims of justice it must be a perfect man who must pay the penalty, nothing short of this would do. And so Christ taking the form of a bond-servant (Phil 2:7) became flesh NOT simply part flesh, for example 50% flesh and 50% spirit, nor 100% human and 100% spirit as our Trinitarian friends might suggest, No! This would not do he must of needs in order to fulfill divine justice become an actual 100% human being, howbeit a perfect human being, for as you recall it was a perfect human being who had sinned. God’s justice being very exact, very precise therefore can accept nothing less than the exact requirements of the law, an exact corresponding price, something of equal value nothing more, nothing less; to be otherwise would be un-just.

The Scriptures are quite clear on this matter Adam was created a fleshly being, flesh and blood; there is absolutely no mention anywhere in the Scriptures that he was anything more than this. He was not possessed of a dual nature, part spirit and part human, but was completely flesh, besides God’s own law as expressed in the Genesis account forbids the combination of two natures, besides being evil like their parents why do you imagine the LORD destroyed the offspring (the Nephilim) of the fallen angels, it was because God had not authorized such a race of beings a mixture of both angelic and human natures, spirit and flesh.

What we are trying to say here is that our Lord in order to become mans ransom or anti-lutron a corresponding price must under the terms of divine justice in order to fulfill the law become an actual man, be made flesh as fleshly and as human as Adam was. And thus it was that he was “made (brought forth) a little lower than angels for the suffering of death (this lower nature the perfect human nature is but one step below that of the perfect spirit nature, this nature he took in order that he might become the ransom a corresponding price, a perfect man for a perfect man) …that he by the grace of God, might taste death (the penalty, the wages of sin) for everyone.” (Heb 2:9)

So then shall we understand that the resurrection of the dead is optional or compulsory upon Justice?

Christ having “tasted death for every man,” it is certainly compulsory on Justice to release the prisoners held for sin. Christ’s sacrifice having been accepted as “the propitiation (settlement) of our sins, and not of ours (believers) only, but also for the sins of the WHOLE WORLD,” all must go free because God is Just.

“For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior; who will have (unconditionally) ALL MEN to be saved (from the original Adamic curse), and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom FOR ALL, to be testified in due time.” (1 Tim 2:3-6)

Understand that we are not Universalist, God having saved (redeemed) all men from the original curse which was upon Adam and his race does not guarantee everlasting life to any, he merely releases us from the original sentence, brought upon us by Adam’s sin. Eternal salvation will be determined upon the conclusion of the trial (a new trial) of each individual, the Church presently during this the Gospel Age as each prospective member of the body passes beyond the Vail of death, and the remainder of the world by the end of the Mediatorial reign at the end of the millennial age.”