Fear and death in the Garden of Eden

Q: Why was Adam afraid of death in the Garden of Eden if death was a consequence of original sin?

A: I did some more research into your question last night about why was Adam afraid to stand up to the serpent. I found the missing link. Original sin did bring death into the world, but sacrifice, the necessary ingredient for love existed before original sin (hence the command of God to Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. They had to sacrifice that tree to show their love for God.). Now God allowed Eve to be tested and thus Adam also to prove their love for Him. Eve failed due to her own free will, but Adam failed all the worse because he did not look after his bride (also done from his free-will).
Now, there are, if you may, three ways you could give your life: naturally, unfreely, or freely. Natural death is when someone dies from natural causes such as old age because their body just decays. This did not exist before original sin. The decay of the body was not something that is natural to human nature, it's an after effect of original sin (So I would still have a decent hairline if it wasn't for original sin). Then there is the ending of life in an unfree way, for example murder. Remember the demons and Satan had all ready fallen at this point and honestly did want to murder man (both male and female). So this kind of death did exist before original sin and this was the giving of life that Adam was afraid of.
The last type of giving of life is as a free gift. 1Jn 4:18 says, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love." Adam's fear was due to the fact that he would have to give his life, but if he really loved his bride with God's love (which was put in him from the very beginning), he would have laid down his life freely for Eve. Thus, it would not be fear of losing his life that drove him, but a glorification of His love for His bride. Our Lord tells us this, "No greater love than this, than to lay down one's life for one's friends."-John 15:13. This laying down of life for love then no longer becomes murder, but marytrdom. Martyr comes from the Greek word martus which means witness. This laying down of Adam's life would be a witness/sign/sacrament-a visible sign of an invisible reality- to three things: the love Adam had for his bride Eve, his virginity (the togetherness of both his body and soul/emotions to make a gift of himself to his bride and God by laying down his life for them) and His trust that God is a Father and would look after him as such, not just as a master who could dispense with one of his creatures.
If Adam would have stood up to the serpent, he may have lost his life, but he would have obtained the beatific vision in light of it. He would not have died per se because death is simply the term for the seperation of body and soul (that's why I haven't been writing \nthere are 3 ways to die). He, as well as Eve, would have probably been assumed both body and soul into Heaven just as our Blessed Mother was after her earthly life because she never lost her virginity (in the true since of the word, not in the secular sense that the world defines it), hence her body never acted in a way that seperated her from the good of her soul. I say probably becasue we will never know if this were the case since Adam did fall. Hence, his reward is only something we can speculate about.
The laying down of one's life as a "gateway" to Heaven, was part of God's plan from the beginning because love was part of God's plan from the very beginning, and still is. Sin has not snuffed this out just as we noted in class. If you look in the book of Revelation, it shows us that there are two types of people that we know will be heaven: the virgins (Rev. 14:4) and those who have laid down their life for their spouse (whom it is revealed as Christ-see Rev.19:7) known as martyrs (Rev. 6:9; 14:13). Thus in the Eschaton (end times), we see that those in heaven are those who are virgins and martyrs, just as Adam and Eve were called to be in the beginning and as we are called to be now. Hope this helps. God bless and know that you're in my prayers!