Inheritance of Sin, Inheritance of Grace

"Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men."

- Romans 5.18

Here's an interesting way to think of the fall of man, and then of salvation. Looking at the fall of man as an inheritance, we note that we all are of Adam's line - we have received from him the inheritance of a tainted soul, dipped in sin. Though none of us like it, through Adam, our minds and even our souls have been exposed to sin - those deceitfully intense but alarmingly quickly fading pleasures of sin, indulgences of ourselves. Carried in the lifeblood of his soul, this stain is passed on to the next generation from him or his offspring. Before the fall, Adam accompanied God daily, walking and talking intimately. How? He was pure, unsoiled. But after eating of the fruit, he became stained, a rottenness eating away at him from within, and he could not interact intimately with God because of the stain upon his soul.

But God desired the company of man, of Adam and his descendants. Yet Adam's line was stained, his blood spoiled, and none who came from him would be worthy to know God in intimacy. So God, seeing the dilemma in his infinite wisdom, perceived a solution to the problem. If the original plan had been for man to receive his purity of spirit as an inheritance from his father (a purity Adam would have been able to pass on had he not taken the apple). All God needed was one man who would give his inheritance of purity to Man, and who would then take on Man's rotten blood line (for the impurities in Man's line were not those that could be disposed of, they were written upon the very spirit of man, and could only be removed by being written upon the spirit of an unstained line).

Thus was Christ brought forth. God knew there were none who could provide this for Man, so he (God) provided it himself in Christ. Into a rotted and despoiled world he came, purity in flesh. And he set aside his inheritance of purity, of intimacy with God, so that we might take it up. All we must do is set aside our stained and spoiled inheritance, to take up his perfected bloodline.
That is salvation, the taking up of Christ's inheritance, and the setting aside of our own.