In Genesis 2:7 when God created Adam and made him a "living soul," God designed him to have an inner nature which would survive bodily death. But at that time, God had not created man to be immortal. God had only created his soul and spirit to possess potential immortality. God placed Adam in the garden of Eden and gave him permission to eat of every tree, including the tree of life, but He commanded him not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Although Adam and Eve possessed a living soul and spirit, these could not become activated to the level of immortality until they ate of the tree of life. God desired that Adam and Eve eat of the tree of life and eschew the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so that they could eventually live with Him in heaven forever.
But God had not designed Adam and Eve's flesh and blood bodies for eternal life in heaven. God created them from dust and meant for them to return to dust as He informed Adam in Genesis 3:19. God did not attach a punishment or a curse to physical death. God only cursed the serpent and the ground. God had always meant for Adam and Eve to live in their physical bodies on earth for over 900 years and then die a quite natural and painless death. At that time, God would create immortal spiritual bodies for them designed to be compatible with their immortal souls and spirits and fit to live with Him in heaven forever. I Corinthians 15:42-50. This would have been their destiny had they eaten of the tree of life.
God created absolutely everything, and it all was "very good." Genesis 1:31. God gave innocent goodness to the lives of Adam and Eve. They knew nothing about evil. God truly created them in His own image because before Lucifer's rebellion, God Himself knew nothing about evil. Ezekiel 28:15. In many ways, evil is still a mystery to God. II Thessalonians 2:7. With Lucifer's rebellion, evil entered into God's creations suddenly. The presence of evil caused God's Love to come into question. Was God's Love powerful enough to thoroughly purge all evil from His creations and return it to its pristine beauty and goodness?
God devised a plan to test His Love for the sake of His creations. The Devil believed that if he could invent a way to ruin any part of God's creations forever, then he would prove that God's Love for His creations was not all-powerful. Since "...God is Love," the Devil could prove that God is not Almighty, and thus he could, over time, find a way to kill God and replace Him as ruler of His creations. I John 4:8; Isaiah 14:12-15. God had to allow His test of His Love for His creations to be thorough and complete in order to prove that absolutely nothing could never destroy His Love. All evil comes from the abyss; that is, the non-place of absolute nothingness. For this reason, the Bible often refers to sin as being vanity. God had to allow the Devil to commit the most horrible and vile cruelties imaginable and unimaginable in order for His test of His Love to be valid. I Corinthians 13:8.
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