The third aspect of Adam's fall was no sin at all. Adam's fall to the lower level of his wife was actually a loving act of self-sacrifice. Adam feared that he and Eve would be separated forever, and that she would be forced to live in terror and loneliness. Because he loved her, he fell to her level of sinful separation from God in order to protect and comfort her. In this way, Adam's sacrifice was similar to the loving sacrifice of the Savior. The difference was that Adam deliberately fell into sin and death for the love he had for his wife, but Jesus, the perfect Savior, took man's sin and death on Himself on the cross in order to separate man from them and raise man to a higher level of salvation and recreation. I Corinthians 15:20-28, 44-48; I Timothy 2:14; Revelation 21:5.
Jesus taught that self-sacrifice is the highest expression of love. John 15:13. Like Adam, we humans sometimes sacrifice ourselves because of our love for others, especially for family and country. Humans still exist partly in the image of God. God, who is Love, could never fail to provide positive rewards for such acts of love. Revelation 22:11-12; Romans 2:9-11. Ecclesiastes 12:13-14. By himself, man can never overcome the power of sin and death. Spiritual salvation requires God's grace. Ephesians 2:8-9. But God can use His consuming fire to separate man's good works from his evil works, throw the totality of his evil works into the lake of fire, and recover his good works to be used to recreate a righteous human race to live on a recreated earth. Revelation 21:1-8; Revelation 22:11-12.
In I Corinthians 15:26, God promised to destroy man's last enemy which is death. God destroys death, not man. Revelation 20:14-15 records the event of this destruction. God has never created anything that is temporary. Ecclesiastes 3:14. Since God is the God "of the living: for all live unto Him," as Jesus taught in Luke 20:38, then God has evidently recorded the new names of all recreated humans in the book of life; humans recreated from God's recovery of their good works. Humans saved by grace will already be in heaven. Revelation 21:5. Only man's death, which is totally evil, will be separated from God forever in the lake of fire. Hell will also be destroyed because it will have already served God's purpose. Revelation 20;15.
Love conquers all. Love can never fail. I Corinthians 13:8. For this reason, God must preserve every loving self-sacrificial act of man to be recreated.
God laid down the law, and all who violate the law must die, but God's Love always transcends and trumps the law. Romans 5:20-21; I Peter 4:8. All true love comes from God's Love. God cannot lie, and yet God put a "lying spirit" in the mouths of false prophets to persuade evil king Ahab to suffer defeat in battle. I Kings 22:23; Titus 1:2. God's Love trumped the law because God used the prophet Micaiah to warn the man He loved, king Jehosaphat, not to go to battle with king Ahab. Jehosaphat ignored God's warning and went anyway, but God protected him anyway. Technically, in Matthew 12:1, Jesus and His disciples worked on the Sabbath when He allowed them to pluck corn and eat. But Jesus did not violate the law because He loved His disciples and did not want them to go hungry. Jesus' love trumped the law. In Matthew 12:3-4, Jesus even taught that David did not violate the law when he and his friends ate the shewbread because he was motivated wholly by love in his care for their hunger. In Matthew 12:5, Jesus taught that if the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, they are guiltless because they were serving the people while motivated by love. Jesus healed on the Sabbath on more than one occasion because He was wholly motivated by love. Love annuls any violation of the law when one is wholly motivated by love. Rarely do humans trump the sentence of the law by being wholly motivated by love. Almost always, some selfishness taints even our best acts of love.
Eve too was partly motivated by love because she thought that her sin would raise herself and Adam to a higher level of existence as gods. Adam and Eve fell because of love tainted by sin. When Jesus hung on the cross, He was Love itself totally immersed in man's sin. Psalm 22:6; II Corinthians 5:21. The difference was that a perfect Christ held the righteous power to overcome and defeat sin and death and leave them behind in hell when He rose from the dead so that He could save some by grace and the rest of humanity by recreation. I Timothy 4:10; Hebrews 2:9.
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