The First Death, That of the Innocent

"...in the day that though eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17).

These are of course the words of God to Adam forbidding him from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God gave the first man Adam dominion over all of the creation with only one prohibition, declaring that man was not sovereign and that God was.

Of course, Adam disobeyed God and plunged the entire human race into the depravity of sin. God promised death and eventually we read that Adam died, but before he did he was allowed to see death as a spectator first. This must have been a sobering reality to the seriousness of Adam's crime; after all the first human death recorded is when Adam's oldest son murdered his younger brother. But this wasn't the first death Adam was allowed to see. In fact, the first physical death in God's creation was not a human one.

Adam and Eve were the guilty ones. When God came looking for them in the garden they hid themselves from God and attempted to cover their nakedness with leaves, or by their own effort. There was no outrunning their Creator; God knew where they were all along. After their interrogation, surprisingly God spared them for a time. They would eventually face death, but not on this day. Instead, God slew an animal and clothed Adam and Eve with coats of skins (Gen. 3:21). What a shock this should be to us and should have been to them! The first death was not the death of the wicked, but the guilty were spared and the life of the innocent was taken!

What a reminder this is of our Lord Jesus Christ who was slain from the foundation of the world! Before the first sin was ever committed, God had the provision; the Lamb. Calvary was not God making the best out of a bad situation but a precise plan that worked according to God's divine will. He, the just, died for the unjust. Jesus, the innocent, died in place of the guilty. How fitting that redemptive history would begin with a picture of what was to come; the innocent dying in the place of guilty sinners.