THE CROWNED
CHRIST
CHAPTER VI
The
"Second Man"
If the title of the Lord as Son of man shows the
continuity of humanity in Him with humanity as found in men in general - body,
soul, and spirit truly human - there is all the more need for us to realize on
the other side the uniqueness of this humanity in Him - the wondrous new step
that humanity has gained in the Person of the "Man, Christ Jesus."
We
may say, and rightly say, that if we know Him as the "Word made flesh" we know
Him necessarily as the Unique Man, peerless and apart from every other. That is
true, indeed, but it is not all the truth. We could not in fact, if this were
all the truth, speak of humanity having gained a step in Him. He would be
simply alone in this: in this sense He could have no "brethren" the deity
raying through His manhood could not be partaken of, it is plain: in this
respect He must be ever alone.
But Scripture does not leave us to such
a conclusion. It joins together two titles that are His as man, and as a unique
man, in such a way as to assure us of our gain in this very uniqueness - of our
manhood being by divine grace raised to a new plane in Him, so as to make Him
in a peculiar sense "Firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. viii. 29). These two
titles are "the Second Man" and the "Last Adam" - the antitypical parallel,
(and so necessarily contrast) with the "first man Adam" (1 Cor. xv. 45, 47). As
the first man was head of a race, and not to remain alone, but to be in fact a
"first-born among many brethren," so is it also with the "Second Man." He is to
be such, Head of a race, a race of men, but a new race; and it is said as to
Him "the Last Adam," because there is no other Adam to succeed Him, as with the
first man. In Him Gods thought as to man is completely fulfilled, and His
heart completely satisfied.
But it is not of the Last Adam that we are
now to think, but of the Second Man as such: "Second," as a new order of man,
in contrast (as is here seen) with the First: "the first man is of earth
earthy; the Second Man is of heaven." Corresponding to this, "the first man
Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." These
differences will be found to be in relation to one another: as is the earthy
such are they also that are earthy, and as is the Heavenly, such are they also
that are heavenly; and, as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also
bear the image of the Heavenly.
It is the failure of the first man
which has made way for the Second; but the Second it is who alone develops
Gods thought from the beginning, and justifies fully His delights in the
sons of men. It is not with the failed first man merely that the Second is put
in contrast, but with the first also, as here, apart from any failure. The
earthy typifies the heavenly; but in every type the contrast is as plain as the
resemblance.
Man is a microcosm, the world in little, in which is
embodied all that went before him, which in him is raised also to its full
natural perfection. He is the crown and epitome of it all. And nature rises up
to him in successive steps of progress, each retaining what has gone before,
while it transcends it. In the whole series Gods principle of advance is
made so plain, that, while we cannot predict, at any point at which we stop,
just what may be (or whether anything may be) beyond it, yet we are prepared to
estimate it when it comes, and trace the unity of the divine handiwork, and see
how the end has been before Him from the beginning, and how one blessed purpose
runs through all. It may not be in vain for us, even with such a theme as we
have now before us, to look back to the beginning, before man him self was upon
the earth, and learn from nature itself what it may teach us of the
supernatural, and how the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has ruled
throughout the ages.
Scripture testifies to a gradual development of
creation up to man; whether we see in it the immense periods which science
claims for such development, or just six literal days, or whether, perhaps, we
may be permitted to believe that both views have a measure of truth in them,
and one need not exclude the other. Any way, a development there is - from
inorganic to organic, through the plant and animal up to man. So plain is this
that Moses has been claimed as an evolutionist on this account. Progress he
certainly believes in; and if we look at it with sufficient care, a very
orderly progress we shall find it; and its four divisions of nature can better
justify themselves than the three which people commonly believe in, by which
man is sunk into the animal merely, and that which distinguishes him as man is
ignored and set aside.
"Divisions" we may call them, because Scripture
clearly distinguishes them as lifeless; living; the animal with life and soul;
man with life, soul and spirit. Each of these takes up into itself what has
gone before it, and adds its own distinctive element of being, which in the
case of the animal and man are distinctly asserted to be a new "creation." It
will repay us to look more distinctly at them.
The lifeless or
inorganic lies at the bottom of the whole, and need not detain us. In the
crystal it seems to prophesy the organization which it never attains: for there
is a bound here which cannot be passed. No life except from life is the
well-ascertained conclusion of science itself.
The plant takes up the
lifeless into itself, and by some process peculiar to the living thing
transforms it into the living. Out of this it builds up its tissues, a
multitude of small cells combining in the most marvellous way to construct a
most complicated structure; each filling its place and taking its part, with a
division of labour and unity of interest such as have never been excelled
anywhere else. Here is an instinct before instinct, a wisdom below
consciousness, and which cannot belong to these particles of living matter, or
in some ways the higher life that follows it must be a degeneration from it.
The life that has come in is something one cannot define - cannot separate by
any chemical or other test from the matter which it permeates and controls in
so marvellous a way. The invisible and intangible assumes here at the start a
kind of royal state, yet in service: not separating itself from what is lower
than itself, but lifting it up and transforming it. And this is the progress
Scripture shows us to be constantly in nature. It is not evolution: the lower
does not lift itself to higher condition; the higher element is not developed
from the lower, but stoops to it and raises it. Thus already the principle
begins to be revealed, which will carry us on to quite other scenes before its
full power is declared.
From the vegetable we pass on to the animal -
to the living soul.* This is defined, in Gen. i. 30, as "every thing wherein
there is a living soul." That this "soul" is not the same as life is shown by
the very term "living" which is connected with it. But the connection shows
also that a principle of life is in it: a life which is now on a higher plane
than before. As in the plant life and life. The "soul" (nephesh, psuche)
is indeed the life of the animal - is the word used for it, though it means
much more than this, and although there is a distinct word for life also
(chai, zoe). But the soul is the seat of the emotions instincts and
appetites of the body - the whole sensitive nature; and while in the animal the
functions of nutrition and reproduction are styled by physiologists "vegetative
functions," the distinctly animal ones are those of sensation and voluntary
motion. The "living soul that moveth" indicates both these.
* A term which
the R. V., following the older one, disguises as "living creature," "life," -
to the great detriment of the sense.
We see, therefore, how by the
connection of the soul with it, life is lifted in the animal to a higher plane;
while soul is not just this higher life itself, but a new element of being, as
expressly indicated by the term "created," - "God created every living soul."
In man, once more we have a distinct addition, that of spirit; and by
this it is, clearly, that he is created in the image of God. For God is Spirit,
and the Father of spirits (Heb. xii. 9). The son is therefore in the
Fathers image; and in the human spirit, the mental and moral faculties
are added to the instinctive and emotional ones. But then by this union the
gain of the soul over the animal merely is easily seen. The law we have traced
thus far manifests itself again; the soul in its turn acquires an inseparable
union with spirit, by which it shares in the light of self-consciousness in
which the spirit moves, and becomes partaker also in its immortality. The beast
perishes, but not the soul of man, which they that kill the body cannot touch.
*
* The subject is too large to enter into further here. It may be found
more fully considered in "Creation in Genesis and Geology," pp. 25 - 35;
"Spiritual Law in the Natural World," chaps. vii. and viii; "Facts and Theories
as to a Future State," chaps. iv-vii.
Thus the spiritual law manifests
itself at each step of progress in creation up to man. It is by the abasement
of the higher to the lower that all progress is accomplished; and here
redemption is not dimly shadowed in creation. Christ comes in at the next step;
and in the Second Man the abasement of the Higher to the lower finds its
complete exemplification in the inseparable union of the divine and human. The
Eternal Life is linked with humanity, and the Second Man becomes the First-born
among many brethren, the Last Adam-Head of a new race of men.
Contrast
there must be, therefore, between humanity as found in the first man and in
Christ the Second; and this, apart from question of the fall. The first man
was, from the beginning, "of the earth, earthy; the Second Man is of heaven."
He is born as we are new-born, by the direct interposition of the Spirit of
God. Not like Adam, simply "made upright," He is at His birth "that holy
Thing," who "shall be called the Son of God" (Luke i. 35). His nature as Man is
the "divine nature"; and there is not with Him, as there is in us, though born
of God, any contradiction to it. In other respects He does not at first show
His dignity: for sin has come in, and there is a work to be done by Him in view
of it, which can only be done in humiliation. He comes therefore, not in sinful
flesh, (that were wholly impossible and abhorrent to Him), but "in the likeness
of sinful flesh" (Rom. viii. 3). His circumstances are those of other men -
intensified when He comes forth to take up His special work. His spotless
righteousness interposes no external guard against surrounding evil in a world
to which sin has given the character it has. He is specifically in it the "Man
of sorrows and acquainted with grief." Infliction from God, of course, there
could not be, but only the testimony of fullest delight on His part in His Holy
One; until He entered that one awful shadow which at the end of His course.
Here fell upon Him as he came at last to the our place, in which alone He could
lay hold upon us, and bring us out with Himself into the light of God.
We must look on, then, to resurrection to see the Second Man in full
character as that, and to see fully what humanity has gained in Him. But this
will be better considered when we contemplate Him as last Adam, the Head of the
new race of men. For moral perfection, as already said, He could not wait for
that, but was (as even the demons confessed Him) "the Holy One of God,"
perfectly according to His mind, all through. There was no possible mutability
of nature in Him; and we must not pervert the idea of His full moral freedom to
the admission of such a thought. Perfectly free He was, of course, in glorious
holiness: it was the devils thought that He was free to sin - free as
implying in Him a sort of balance of possibilities, and as if this were even
necessary to His perfect trial and the reality of a final victory over evil:
for without struggle, they would say, there can be no victory.
But
struggle with Himself there was not, and victory over Himself would have been
already defeat: He would be no more the Christ of Scripture, "tempted in all
things as we are, apart from sin" (Heb. iv. 15). The "yet without sin" of our
common version, and still remaining in the revised, has done terrible work in
lowering Christ in the imaginations of men. There is no justification of the
"yet" possible. The Greek has nothing of it. It came in through the mere
supposition that "without sin" spoke of final result, instead of an exception
to the kind of temptation. Sin was no possible temptation to Him: there was
absolutely no power of seduction in it. That did not touch the question of His
freedom, but characterized it. The more unassailable by sin we are, the freer
we are, not the less free. We are not perfected by loss of liberty. To walk
with God is to walk in the consciousness of the reality of things, undeceived
and unperverted.
If I say of any one, "He cannot do a dishonest act,"
do I think of him on that account, as less a free man? If there is no moral
certainty about his actions, do I credit him, therefore, with a firmer will and
more perfect self-control? No one can say or think so.
Nor did He who
came into the world as mans Deliverer divest Himself of His necessary
perfection, that He might be on more equal terms with the adversary. Had it
been a necessity to do so, it is hard to see how it could have been
accomplished. For how could moral perfection consent to its own debasement? or
how could its enfeeblement be other than debasement? For even a divine Being
there are impossibilities, which proceed from perfection, and which therefore
are perfection. The impossibility of sinning was a necessary glory of the
Christ of God.
But men object to this on the other side that it
involves an impossibility of sympathy with those encompassed with infirmity
such as belongs to fallen creatures. No doubt it does with everything that
implies sin, or that depravity of nature which cannot be separated from it. But
sympathy with this is (as has often been pointed out) as far as possible from
what a Christian needs or could find true comfort in. He finds in Christ a
perfect atonement for it, and, if he knows deliverance, a power in divine grace
which has broken for him the dominion of sin. Walking in the Spirit, he does
not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. Moreover, the evil in him is that which God
in His wonderful wisdom uses to turn him from self-occupation to Christ, and to
hide from him all pride and self-complacency. But the evil itself he does not
sympathize with, but condemns, while in all else he finds truest sympathy. But
this is not the place in which to enlarge upon all this: it ought to be enough
to quote here the apostles words that "such a high priest became us, who
is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the
heavens"(Heb. vii. 26). But the examination of this belongs also rightly to
another place.
The "Second Man" is, necessarily and emphatically "of
heaven," heavenly. True, His manhood has in it promise for the earth also,
gives indeed for the inhabitants of earth the sweetest possible assurance; but
this too gains, and not loses, by such heavenly character. This is inseparable,
of course, from His being the Son of God in humanity; but it attaches to the
Second Man as such, as the text from Corinthians clearly intimates: for, in
contrast with the first man being "of the earth earthy," the "Second Man is of
heaven."
If we look on to the full "image of the heavenly" (1 Cor. xv.
49), which we are yet to bear, the glorious body which is to be our own, though
the resurrection of what has been sown in the dust, or the present mortal one
changed to immortality, is yet spoken of as "our house which is of heaven" (2
Cor. v. 2). "Mortality" will then, says the apostle, be swallowed up of life"
(ver. 4). There will be then the quickening of our mortal bodies, now "dead
because of sin" (Rom. viii. 10, 11),which will make them, as yet they are not,
to be partakers of "redemption" (ver. 23). Thus the new life-power it is which,
pervading and moulding them, will make them heavenly, the "image of the
heavenly" being reached in them also.
But even now, and while yet we
wait for this, by virtue of the work which has begun in us, we are already
"heavenly" (1 Cor. xv. 48). For the quickening of the Spirit we already have;
the heavenly life is begun, though amid hindrances and in obscurity, in that
which is the highest part of our humanity.
When we turn to consider
the Lord as among us "in the days of His flesh," we find in Him also not as yet
the full heavenly character. As to His body, though in no wise (as with us)
under the power of death, and with none of the penalty of sin upon it, He is
yet "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom. viii. 3) - according to the pattern
of the humanity that has failed in Adam, though without failure or any
consequences of it, save as in grace He might stoop to these.
Every way
He is without blemish, but more: this body of flesh and blood which He has
assumed - as the vessel of earth in which the bird of heaven may die for the
cleansing of our leprosy (Lev. xiv. 5) - is itself, all true as it is, of
course, a "veil" of the higher humanity which has come in with Him, and which
is not innocent and earthy, as in the first man, but holy and heavenly. In Him
is manifested to us "that Eternal Life, which was with the Father" (1 Jno. i.
2), and is now, without fleck of shade or moment of intermission, "the light of
men" (Jno. i. 4).
This Life is "in Him," as it could not be in any
other: "for as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to
have life in Himself (John v. 26). He is thus the Source and Spring of it
for us as the "last Adam;" and possessing it as Man, is characterized
absolutely by that "divine nature" which it implies as divine life. This
touches in no way the full reality of manhood in Him - spirit and soul and
body: for little as we know of the mystery of "life," we do know that it sets
aside none of these, but gives them their full value and reality. As the
"First-born among many brethren" this life manifests itself in Him as a life of
faith, in constant dependence upon God, nay, living (as we would not have dared
to think of Him, had He not Himself taught us so to apply the scripture) "by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matt. iv. 4). To this
indeed, as we know, was His constant appeal, treading in this respect in a path
in which He calls us to follow Him as "Leader" in "and Completer of faith" in
His own Person (Heb. xii. 2, Gk.); while this perfection He did not plead as
title to escape the trials and sorrows of a pilgrim-path, but on the contrary
tasted the cup of affliction fully, even to death, yea, the death of the cross.
But this was His grace and our need only: for Himself He was no debtor to death
at all. No one took His life from Him, but He laid it down of Himself, having
power both to lay it down and to take it again.
Upon this it does not
need to insist here. The word of God speaks with absolute decision about it
all: did one enlarge, how much would have to be written! We are here, however,
but attempting an outline of truth, to fill in which materials are everywhere
to be found, while the full reality is unspeakable. Heaven and earth meet here
together, and all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in the Man Christ
Jesus. How marvellous to be told in this very connection, that "in Him we are
filled up" (Col. ii, 9,10)!
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Seven
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