For more than six thousand years, humanity has been exposed to evil, and by experience has been learning the awful results of disobedience. The seeds of death are manifest in everyone, by myriads of infirmities and diseases of mind and body. Neither the young nor the old have escaped. Upheavals of nature in an unfinished earth, accidents, and men’s own cruelties to one another in war and in crime all contribute to the process.

Throughout the ages God has not interfered with the great enemy Death. Paul informs us concerning the people as a whole that “God gave them over to a mind void of judgment.” (Rom. 1:28, Margin) He has not restrained humanity from taking its own course, although selfish and sinful.

God’s great design does not end with the human race prostrate in death, for through Jesus, the Redeemer, he has made a provision for all to be awakened from death and restored to life. Paul wrote, “By man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (I Cor. 15:21,22) This pro- vision of life through Christ is based on Jesus’ own death and resurrection. He said, “My flesh … I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:51) It was for this rea- son that Jesus was born into the world as a human.—Heb. 2:9,14

In describing the arrangement by which Jesus became the Redeemer of the world, the Bible uses the word “ransom.” (I Tim. 2:6) The word used in the Greek text means “a corresponding price of release.” Jesus was a perfect man, just as Adam was a perfect man before he sinned. Thus in death Jesus became a corresponding price for the forfeited life of Adam. And as all mankind lost life through Adam, so all mankind is redeemed from death through Christ.