from vital connection with Him, there could be no continuance of life.
The Lord warned Adam that his life was conditional upon obedience. "In
the day that thou eatest thereof," He said of the forbidden tree, "thou
shalt surely die." Gen. 2:17. It was a declaration that man was not
immortal, but was dependent upon God for life.

When by unbelief and sin man rejected God, the sentence--death
eternal--must have been executed had not the plan of salvation
intervened. But as the stroke of divine justice was falling upon the
sinner, the Son of God interposed Himself and received the blow. "He was
bruised for our iniquities." In the divine plan, the great sacrifice for
man was as sure then as when, later, it was actually made on Calvary.
Christ was "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

And there Adam, the sinner, now with a fallen human nature, which would
be perpetuated in his descendants in all subsequent time, was granted an
extension of life, every moment of which, whether for him or for his
posterity, was the purchase of Christ by His own death, in order that in
this time of probation man might find forgiveness of sin and assurance
of life to come. Adam was not created immortal, but was placed on
probation, and had he continued faithful, the gift of immortality must
have been given him at some later time, after he had passed the test. As
the original plan is carried out through Christ, "the second Adam," the
gift of immortality is bestowed finally upon all who pass the test of
the judgment and are found in Christ, in whom alone is life.

Having fallen, Adam, now possessed of a sinful nature, must die. "The
wages of sin is death." Rom. 6:23. It was impossible that sin or sinners
should be immortalized in God's universe. So, inasmuch as the tree of
life in Eden had been made the channel of continuance of life to man,