Adam is the first man and representative beginning of the old humanity, whose rebellion established the world of self-rule, corruption, and death from which Christ creates a new humanity.
Adam received life, God’s image, and dominion as gifts to be exercised under God, not as possessions held in himself. His access to the Tree of Life showed that enduring life was always a gift to be received, never an intrinsic property of the creature.
In rebelling he did not merely break a rule; he seized self-rule, reaching to determine good and evil apart from trusting God, and so founded a humanity structured by autonomy and death. His descendants do not inherit his personal guilt as though they had eaten the fruit themselves; they are born into the world his rebellion constituted and, when morally responsible, confirm its self-rule by their own sin. Christ alone entered Adam’s world and remained faithful — the last Adam, head of a new humanity.
See in Scripture: Genesis 1:26–28; Genesis 2:7–17; Genesis 3:1–24; Romans 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 15:20–22, 45