1. The Atonement of Broader Scope than Making Satisfaction for Adam's Sin: So far the Atonement has been considered only with reference to its effect upon the transgression of Adam. It is, however, of much broader scope than that. Not only must the sin of Adam be atoned, but satisfaction must be made for the sins of every man, if the integrity of the moral government of the world is to be preserved. Man is just as helpless with reference to his own, individual sins, as Adam was with reference to his sin. Man when he sins by breaking the laws of God, sins of course against divine law; commits a crime against the majesty of God, and thereby dishonors him. And man is just as helpless to make adequate satisfaction to God, I repeat, as Adam was for his sin in Eden; and is just as hopelessly in the grasp of inexorable law as Adam and his race were after the first transgression. For individual man from the beginning was as much in duty bound to keep the law of God as Adam was; and if now, in the present and for the future he observes the law of God and remains righteous, he is doing no more than he ought to have done from the beginning; and doing his duty now and for the future can not free him from the consequences of his past violations of God's law. The individual man, then, is just as much in need of a satisfaction being made to the justice of God for his individual transgression of divine law, for his violence to the honor of God, for his insult to the majesty of God, as was Adam for his sin.
2. Distinction Between Adam's Sin and Individual Sin: The difference between the sin of Adam and the sin of the individual man is this: First, Adam's sin, which the scriptures call the fall, was racial, in that it involved all the race of Adam in its consequences, bringing upon them both a spiritual and a physical death, the nature of which has already been explained.[A] Man's individual sin is more limited in its consequences though for a time his personal sins may involve the happiness of others in their consequences, yet ultimately they will be narrowed down to personal results; affecting the actual sinner's personal relationship to God, to righteousness, to truth, to progress, to happiness.
[Footnote A: Lesson XV.]
Second. Adam's sin was necessary to the creation of those conditions under which man could obtain the experiences of earth-life necessary to the union of his spirit with earth elements; necessary to his progress as a divine Intelligence; necessary to his knowledge of good and evil in actual conflict; joy and sorrow; pleasure and pain; life and death; in a word, necessary that man might become acquainted with these opposite existences,[A] their conflicts and their values; all which was essential to, and designed for man's progress, for his development in virtue and power and largeness and splendor of existence. But man's individual sins are not necessary to these general purposes of God. That is, the fall of Adam was necessary to the accomplishment of the general purposes of God; but it was not necessary to those purposes that Cain should kill Abel, his brother; or "that every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart" should be "evil continually."[B]
[Footnote A: See II Nephi, ii also "New Witness for God," Vol. III, pp. 219-227.]
[Footnote B: Gen. vi:5.]
The fall of Adam, I say, was necessary to the attainment of these possibilities and hence the atonement made for Adam's sin is of universal effect and application without stipulations or conditions, or obedience or any other act as a condition precedent to participation in the full benefits of release from the consequences of Adam's transgression. Hence it is written: "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."[A] And again: "Therefore, as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men to the justification of life."[B] Free redemption then is provided from the consequences of Adam's transgression, because the fall was essential to the achievement of God's purpose with reference to man. Not so, however, with the individual man. His individual sinning is not absolutely necessary to the achievement of God's purposes. All men may sin; nay, all who come to years of accountability, doubtless, do sin; "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."[C] "And so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." "There is none righteous, no not one; * * They are all gone out of the way; * * there is none that doeth good, no, not one."[D] But while all men sin—except those who die in infancy or early childhood—it is not necessary that men should sin, and hence they may be held fully accountable to the justice of God for their individual transgressions of law, and are so held accountable. The penalty for the individual sins of men is a second spiritual death, not a physical death, not a separation of the spirit and the body of man after the resurrection, for what is achieved for man's physical life by the resurrection remains.[E] But for his own individual sins (and this constitutes the third distinction between Adam's sin and the sins of other men) he is subject to a second spiritual death, to banishment from the presence of God; his spiritual union and communion with God is broken, and spiritual death ensues. The Lord, in speaking of Adam and his first transgression, says: "I the Lord caused that he should be cast out from the Garden of Eden, from my presence, because of his transgression, wherein he became spiritually dead, which is the first death, even that same death, which is spiritual, which shall be pronounced upon the wicked when I shall say—Depart, ye cursed."[F]
[Footnote A: I Cor. xv:21, 22.]
[Footnote B: Rom. v:18.]
[Footnote C: Rom. iii:23.]