So this was the alternative that lay before him (Adam). Choosing the way of the Spirit, the way of obedience, he would become a “son” of God, living in dependence upon God for his life; or, taking the natural course, he could put the finishing touch to himself, as it were, by becoming a self-dependent being, judging and acting apart from God. The history of humanity is the outcome of the choice he made…

The consequence for him was death, rather than life, because the choice he made involved complicity with Satan, and brought him therefore under the judgement of God. That is why access to the tree of Life had thereafter to be forbidden to him… Adam’s choice was sin because he thereby allied himself with Satan to thwart the eternal purpose of God…

Thus in Adam, we all become sinners, equally dominated by Satan, equally subject to the law of sin and death, and equally deserving of the wrath of God. Adam chose self-life, rather than divine life…

We must all go through the Cross, because what is in us by nature is a self-life, subject to the law of sin. Our old life has been crucified…Now that Jesus is in the Spirit, every one of us can receive Him, and it is by partaking of His resurrection life that we are constituted children of God…

Regeneration and justification go together. By the new birth we possess what Adam missed, a life he never had…When we receive the Son of God, not only do we receive the forgiveness of sins, we also receive the divine life which was represented in the Garden by the tree of Life…

Nee, Watchman. The Normal Christian Life. Tyndale House Publishers, 1957.