Ephrim the Syrian wrote in one of his many hymns: Paul spoke of the “New Adam” in Romans, he was not merely referring to a new covenant in a legal/judicial sense but was referring to a New Covenant through a new nature, a nature that we can inherit through Christ.
The New Covenant has destroyed the power of the devil (1 John) and has given us new life in Christ, victory over the powers of darkness. Paul says, Christ is our “ransom.” The devil took him as a ransom and now the devil no longer has God’s people in bondage. It was Satan that initiated the crucifixion of Christ, believing that Christ’s death would allow him to triumph over God’s people. It was Satan that began to thwart the divine relationship and plan of God with His people (Genesis 3). Because we are born as image-bearers of God we are born and designed to have a relationship with Him, to reconcile our wavering will to His perfect will. This “synergy,” this union between man and God that is now being formed, is an important process in our relationship with God. Since we have not been completely separated from the love of God and are still able to function within God’s creative order, even spiritually – if man could not function to any spiritual degree he would be completely demon possessed – we can now chose to have communion with Him, through the avenues that He has now made available that is, we must will to honor Christ in all that He is, was and ever shall be. One way that we begin to conquer our unnatural desire is to begin to shape and mature the will within us. The results of the fall are all unnatural and awaiting redemption through Christ. This modern concept deems all of man born in to what much of the west likes to refer to as “sin nature.” This western concept confuses the very concept of humanity! It is certainly not natural to die. This is far different from the modern/western concept of man inheriting guilt from Adam and thus needing to be legally justified from the due punishment. We now have a weakened will one that the Greeks call ‘desire’ and the Latins call ‘concupiscence.’ It is this will that needs to be guided back to God so that death can begin to become conquered in the life of the person. After the Fall they still remained image-bearers of God, icons of God, if you will! Death, an unnatural occurrence, was assumed by man and thus changed the entire direction of humanity to constantly draw away from the will of God to the will of self.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that they became completely separated from God. God says in Genesis 2:17, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Adam and Eve ate the fruit, and they began to die. Adam’s fall consisted essentially in his disobedience of the will of God he set up his own will against the divine will…” Bishop Ware goes on to say that because of this disobedience, a new form of existence manifested on the earth, one of disease and death. As Bishop Kallistos Ware says in his book The Orthodox Church(p.222), “Instead of continuing along the path marked out for him by God, he turned aside and disobeyed God. In order to truly understand our salvation in Christ we must travel back to the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve made a choice to separate themselves from God. The loving kindness of God manifests both spiritually as well as existentially, through both the invisible as well as the visible! There is always renewal and rejuvenation through God’s Holy Trinity, via His Church and even creation itself. And although it is somewhat of a dangerous journey, with many snares and pitfalls of the enemy, it does not leave us in despair. In the Orthodox faith salvation is likened to a journey which God has set before us to travel.