For by a man came death, and by a man the resurrection of the dead. And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 
-1 Cor. 15: 21-22

God never undoes what He once does, nor unsays what He has once said. When man brought death upon himself through the sin of Adam, God’s plan of redemption was never to remove it, so that man would be immortal again. For man is such that he partakes in his own creation: God brings him into being, but he permits man, of his own free will, to have a hand in what he will finally become. Our first father could be said to have made sin and death a feature of humanity, and God would not revoke that.

Instead He showed His supreme majesty by transforming death into the means of life, and of a new and higher form of life. A truly masterful artist who finds a blot on his canvas won’t throw the canvas away and start over; he will incorporate the blot into his painting so that it seems to have been intended all along. God, who is the supreme artist, not only incorporates the blot that Adam made, but transformed it into the focal point of His masterpiece. Death is no longer only the supreme shame and punishment, but the path to glory and the new creation.  And this is done, not by a mere fiat of God’s, but through the obedience and humility of a Man; a Man who is God, but no less a Man for that, taking mankind itself into the eternal Godhead. He has not so much abolished death, but conquered it, subdued it, and forced it into His service.

Because Christ is risen from the dead, this fallen world of ours is no longer a dead end, but a pathway, which He has marked out, leading through death to our true home.