First of all, we have in the narrative of Adam’s fall and the consequences thence proceeding to the race, the substratum, so to speak, on which the plan of redemption is built.  From this we learn that alienation from God and wickedness is not the original condition of the race.  Man was made upright and placed in communion with God.  From that condition he fell, in the manner recorded in the Old Testament; and to restore him, through Christ, to his primitive state is the work which the gospel proposes to accomplish.  The great historic event of redemption is that “the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil;” and these are the very works described in the narrative now under consideration, namely, the seduction of man from his allegiance to God, with the misery and death that followed.  The primitive history of man’s apostacy contains, then, the very key to the plan of redemption.  So it is plainly regarded by the apostle Paul.  He builds upon it arguments relating not to the outworks of redemption, but to its inward nature.  He makes the universality of man’s fallen condition through the sin of Adam the platform on which is built the universality of the provisions of salvation through Christ.  “As by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification.  For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”  Rom. 5:18, 19.  “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.” 1 Cor. 15:21, 22.  How could the original transaction of the fall, through the wiles of the devil, and the manifestation of God’s Son to destroy the works of the devil, be more indissolubly bound together as parts of one great whole than in these words of an inspired apostle?

Secondly, the Abrahamic covenant connects itself immediately with the mission and work of Christ.  It was made with Abraham, not for himself and his posterity alone, but for all mankind:  “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”  Gen. 22:18.  And if the Abrahamic covenant had respect to the whole human family, the same must be true of the Mosaic economy in its ultimate design; since this did not abrogate the covenant made with Abraham, as the apostle Paul expressly shows, Gal. 3:17, but rather came in as subordinate to it, and with a view of preparing the way for the accomplishment of its rich provisions of mercy for “all families of the earth.”  The Mosaic economy was then a partial subservient to a universal dispensation.