Fall and Redemption.
Adam's transgression was malum prohibitum, or wrong because forbidden; not malum in se, or wrong in itself. It had a beneficent purpose, but it put the world in pawn, and Death was the pawnbroker, with a twofold claim upon all creation. Adam could not redeem himself, and the human race, which sprang from him, was likewise powerless. No part of what had been pledged could be used as the means of redemption. Something not subject to death was the required ransom. The life of a God was the price of the world's freedom; and that price was paid by the sinless One, the Lamb "without spot or blemish", who made himself a redemptive sacrifice, to mend the broken law, pay the debt to justice, repoise the unbalanced scale, and restore the equilibrium of right. Christ, the World-Deliverer, was as a greater Moses, leading an enslaved universe out from the Egypt of sin, out from the bondage of death.