Why does everyone have to die?
Death is universal because humanity is born in sin, and God's law decrees that the soul who sins shall surely die. From Adam onward, no one escapes that sentence. Yet Scripture presents a loophole: by faith, believers identify with Christ's death, so His death becomes theirs. This mirrors the seed, which must die before new life emerges.
Les explains that the analogy is a planted seed: it first dies, then germinates and brings forth new life. He says the whole system of nature and springtime pictures death, burial, and resurrection, and the same is true in the Spirit—we have to die. God told Adam and Eve that the day they ate of the tree they would surely die, and Ezekiel later states the same law: the soul that sinneth shall surely die. So the human race has no alternative but to die because we are born in sin. But Les points to a loophole: we can die in the person of Christ on the cross by identification, by faith, and by trust—when He died, I died, and when He died, you died.