Romans 5:14 :

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those whose sins weren’t like Adam’s disobedience, who is a foreshadowing of him who was to come.

When Adam sinned, He did it from a position of perfection to start with. We don’t get that chance. We were born into the sin of our father Adam. So, ever since the time Adam sinned, sin has been in power over the world. This doesn’t mean that we don’t commit our own sins or that we would not have done the same thing Adam did. There was only one other who was to come who would have the same opportunity to start out life from perfection and that would be Jesus. So, Adam was a prototype of Jesus who was to come.

This highlights why Jesus had to be born of a virgin. He needed to inherit from God’s perfection not Adam’s sin so that He had a new opportunity to do it right. Since Jesus was like Adam, He was able to live a sinless life before God on His own merit. Then, He went beyond that and took the opportunity to die for us as if He had been the one who sinned.

It is important for us as human beings to recognize that only God is able to be independently good. Even from a good starting point, only Jesus was able to live a sinless life; Adam failed. Fortunately, we are not expected to live independently anymore. We now depend entirely on Jesus for everything in our lives. God is now in charge of our righteousness because our righteousness comes from Jesus.