THE CROWNED
CHRIST
CHAPTER VII
The Last Adam
It is the first epistle to the Corinthians alone, and in
the same passage, which gives us the two important terms, so closely related as
they are to one another, of "Second Man" and "Last Adam" (xv. 45, 47). The one
looks backward; the other forward. The "Second Man" implies that before Him we
have only the first man, repeated, in his descendants; now a new type has
appeared; and that this, which is the full and final thought of man, may become
the true heir of the inheritance, the "Second Man" is the "Last Adam." He is
the "last" not "second," because plainly there is no other to succeed Him. "The
Last Adam" (in opposition to "the first man Adam," (who "became a living soul")
becomes "a Spirit giving life."
The apostle does not say that the
Second Man became a Spirit giving life, for an obvious reason. The Second Man,
as such brings before us the new humanity, in the likeness of which every one
of the new race will be ultimately found; but the Last Adam is the Head of the
new race, and to be a "Spirit giving life" is peculiar to Himself. Man as man,
and not merely the first man, has the mysterious power imparted to him of
propagating his kind; but the new humanity is of too high a nature to permit
this to the men of it. Only the Last Adam can communicate the new "life" which
is its characteristic; and He, inasmuch as He is, what they are not, above man
altogether. We cannot think of the Last Adam aright without explicitly taking
into account His Deity - that He is the "Word made flesh."
Noticeable
it is in this way that we who are Christs, and to whom Christ is life,
are yet never spoken of as the children of Christ. Of the first Adam we are
naturally children; of the last Adam, and as implied by that very relationship,
we should be children also, in a higher and so a fuller way: yet we are never
taught to call Christ "Father." For this there must be reason, and therefore
that in it as to which we may rightly and reverently inquire why it is.
In the Old Testament, and not the New, we come nearest to the thought of
children of Christ. In the fifty-third of Isaiah, the abundant seed-field of
New Testament truth, we find first of all Messiah come and cut off, without
posterity. "Who shall declare His generation?" asks the prophet: "for He was
cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was
He stricken" (ver. 8). Thus there seems utter failure of blessing: cut off
Himself, He has none who spring from Him - who perpetuate His name and
character.
So it naturally would appear; but the question has other
answer before the prophecy ends; and in that very death in which for the sins
of others He has been cut off, there is at last found the secret of a blessing
such as seemed to be gone without remedy: "When Thou shalt make His soul a
sacrifice for sin, He shall see a seed, He shall prolong His days, and the
pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in His hand" (ver. 10). This "seed" and
prolonging of His days are the double answer to the question which His death
had raised.
Christ really then has a seed; the Last Adam as a
quickening Spirit points to nothing else: but this only makes it more certain
that there is a reason for the avoidance of such expressions as we naturally
look for. We are taught by Christ Himself to speak of His Father as our Father
(John xx. 17), though this, of course, is not inconsistent with His relation to
us as Last Adam. Of the first Adam it could be said also, as has been before
remarked, that he was a "first-born among many brethren," without prejudice to
his relationship to these as father.
In the Gospel of John it is that
the Lord is seen as the Eternal Life, the Son, to whom "the Father hath given
to have life in Himself," just as the Father hath life in Himself (ch. v. 26).
The words show that it is as Man He is speaking, and that thus in manhood He
becomes a Source of life: "as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth
them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will" (ver. 21). Thus it is in
Johns Gospel also that we find Him, after His resurrection, in character
as Last Adam, (so much the more as in contrast with the first,) "He breathed on
them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (xx. 22). Johns is
the Gospel of His Deity, and yet this remarkable characteristic action is
reserved for it.
So, too, in his epistle John links them: "This is the
true God and eternal life" (1 John v. 20).
"As the Father...
quickeneth, so the Son quickeneth." "The Spirit" also "is life" (Rom. viii.
10). It is a divine inspiration, of which the breathing into the first Adam
(Gen. ii. 7) was but a significant type. Even by that, man became the
"offspring of God" (Acts xvii. 28), and thus by creation (not position) in His
image (Gen. i. 27), as the son is in the fathers image (Gen. v. 3). Man
received thus (what the beast has not) a spirit; and God is the "Father of
spirits" (Heb. xii. 9). But this is only what is natural, and what has been
debased by the fall; we need, therefore, a new begetting of God, a new
communication of life: "that which is born of the flesh is flesh"- not merely
human nature, but human nature degraded, as it were, to its lowest point,
"flesh": as if the spirit had left it, "dead," therefore, while living.
So, with a sad harmony, Scripture everywhere asserts: man must be born
again.
The breath of a new life enters into him, and he lives. This is no
mere moral renewal. If "that which is born of the flesh is flesh,"- flesh has
produced flesh; there has been a real communication of nature, as shown in the
being brought forth. So also "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,"
partakes of the nature of that from which it is derived. Divine parentage is
shown in participation in the divine nature (2 Pet. i. 4), and we are become
true children of God, with His likeness. "Passed from death unto life" (John v.
24), the life we have received is eternal life: which means, not that it will
always last, for so will the wicked always live - if you call it "life"- but
that it has always been also, not in us, but in God. This is the life that
deserves to be called eternal; and this is the life in which we have begun to
live. In us it has its beginning, its growth, its practical expression: this
imperfect at the best, and varying from that in the infant to the young man and
the father, it is nevertheless eternal life all through, whether it be as yet
undiscernible by man or making a possessor of it a shining light amid the
darkness of the world.
Much of what I am here saying is in contention
by many; and there are perhaps few things of equal importance that are held
more variously than what new birth is, and its connection with or disconnection
from eternal life. It would carry us too far to discuss these variations: it is
enough, perhaps, to say that, on the one hand, the signs of it given in
Johns first epistle show plainly that righteousness, love to God and to
the brethren, and faith in Christ, characterize all who are born (or begotten)
of God; and on the other, that he writes to all that "believe on the name of
the Son of God" that they may know that they have eternal life. I may be told
indeed by some that these things are quite different; that faith in the Son is
more and later than faith in Christ; but the gospel of John assures us that he
that believeth not on the Son is one still under condemnation and the wrath of
God. It is not the saint but the sinner who passes from death unto life; and
that change, momentous as it is, cannot be a long process.
Thus, then,
the "quickening Spirit" acts in every one born of God. As the Father raiseth up
the dead and quickeneth them, just so the Son quickens; and none the less it is
of the Spirit we are born again. It is a divine work, and Father, Son and
Spirit all partake in it. Thus it is manifest that we are by this birth
children of God; and while the Son as Mediator is He in whom life is for us,
and the Spirit is the positive Agent in communicating it, the Father it is
whose blessed will the Son and Spirit alike work, and "of whom every family in
heaven and earth is named" (Eph. iii. 15, Gk.). "To us there is but one God,
the Father, of whom are all things and we for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
by whom are all things, and we by Him" (1 Cor. viii. 6).
Thus, although
we have been very recently told that there is no new communication of a new
nature in new birth, yet the Lord Himself has taught us, on the contrary, that
"that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,"- that it partakes of the nature
of Him who has brought it forth. And He says, "that which is born," (not "he
who is born,") because the new life communicated does not as yet (as we have
already seen) pervade the whole man. The body is still, in this respect, "dead,
because of sin" (Rom. viii. 10), even "if Christ be in you;" and the "flesh"
also thus (it must still be asserted) "because of sin," remains, even in the
man delivered from its dominion, a cause for constant watchfulness and
self-judgment. * But the youngest babe born of God has nevertheless the nature
of its Parent: even though here there be as much difference between the
new-born babe and the man, as there is in the physical prototype. Abundant room
for development must be admitted, while the development itself proves but the
essential sameness of the nature in these wide extremes.
* As the "thorn in
the flesh," needed by a man who had been in the third heaven, and needed on
that very account, will surely prove for any who have an ear to hear.
The Second Man, then, is also the Last Adam; but in the latter term
much more is implied than in the former and that the result of that union of
the divine and human which faith can joyfully accept while it acknowledges the
inscrutability of it. "No one knoweth the Son, but the Father." No human mind
can think out the divine-human Person who is here before us; but to seek to
have the value of scripture statements is another matter, and is the part of
faith. It would be wronging the love which has enriched us with them, not to
seek to appropriate our riches.
The connection of truth in this chapter
in Corinthians which furnishes us with our present text is noteworthy. The
apostle is writing to us of the resurrection, and has been contrasting the
natural body as sown in the grave with the body of the saint in resurrection.
"It is sown a natural body," he says; "it is raised a spiritual body. There is
a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, the first
man, Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit."
The connection here is very much obscured by the translation: what
connection could one suppose between "a living soul" and "a natural body"? None
at least that one could argue, from the language used; and in fact, as
elsewhere said, we have in English no clear way of making apparent the
connection. If we were at liberty to use the word "soulual," (which is not in
the dictionary,) we should be able to do this: we should then read, "There is a
soulual body,"... "the first man Adam was made a living soul;" as on the other
hand, "There is a spiritual body," and "the last Adam was made a quickening
Spirit."
The first Adam had a soulual body, a body characterized by
the soul its tenant: for he was himself a living soul. It is remarkable, while
quite intelligible, that, though a mans spirit is his highest part, and
it is by this he "knows the things of man" (1 Cor. ii. 11), and is in relation
to God, yet while here in the body he is never called a "spirit," but only what
the beast is, a "soul." On the other hand, as soon as he has left the body, he
rises to the measure of his distinctly human part, and is now a "spirit."
Common usage recognizes the same difference. In some sense the connection of
soul and body is a shrouding of his higher nature. The same word psychical or
soulual, is translated in our common version "sensual" (Jas. iii. 15; Jude 19),
though this, of course, is a use of it which is not due to mans condition
as created but to the sin which has entered in. It is similar to the use of
"flesh" for a condition in which fallen man, as if the spirit had departed from
him, is characterized as "dead." Yet the psychical or "soulual" body, as in
contrast with a "spiritual" one, is easily understood as that which hems in and
disguises necessarily mans spiritual nature. In the babe this is sunk
entirely at first in its fleshly wrappings. By degrees it emerges, with slow
and painful labour freeing itself from the bonds of the material, the humbling
discipline which God has ordained for it, but still "seeing as through a glass,
in a riddle" (1 Cor. xiii. 12). In the future only is to be its "face to face"
knowledge.
This is what it means, as I take it - or at least it is
part of what it means - for man to be a "living soul." It implies a life of
sense, which may be yet, and should be, even on that account, a life of faith;
of struggle which may be defeat or victory. Out of which we do not pass until
the body is left behind, or fashioned by the last Adam into a "spiritual body,"
fit instrument for and no clog upon the enfranchised spirit. Only with this
redemption of the body will the "sons of God" be fully manifested (Rom. viii.
19, 23).
As "Last Adam," the Lord is revealed as in connection with
that "new creation" which God is perfecting for Himself out of the ruins of the
old. Such a thought as this is not unrepresented in nature. The present world
is thus built up out of the ruins of a previous one, which in all features of
highest worth it surpasses; according to that law of progress which we have
seen written on its grades of life-development, and to which its life-history
also, on the whole, conforms. But the new creation connected with the Last Adam
arises out of a deeper collapse than any that preceded it - thank God, to
assume now a permanence which shall suffer no collapse again. With the first
Adam, its head, the old creation fell. With the.last Adam, the new creation
abides in indefectible blessing.
While the title of "last Adam" is
found only in the passage we have been considering, the epistle to the Romans
(v. 14) fully declares Him to be the Antitype of the first. His relation to the
new creation is what Adams was to the old. The results are in contrastive
parallel: "as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor.
xv. 22). But here, because the new creation is brought out of the old, it is
not enough to say, "shall live," but "shall be made alive." * He who is to be
the new Adam of a new creation brought out of the old must for this accomplish
redemption.
* That the apostle is here speaking only of those "in Christ,"
and not, as generally believed, of all mankind, will be evident on due
consideration. For the resurrection of the wicked is not an effect of
Christs redemption, but a "resurrection of judgment" simply (John v. 29);
and throughout the chapter it is only of the resurrection of the saints - of
those of whom Christ is first-fruits (ver. 20) - that he is speaking. The "all"
on both sides (whether "in Adam," primarily, or "in Christ," eventually) are
only the redeemed. It is from error as to this that some forms of
restorationism have originated.
Thus it is as risen from the dead that
the Lord breathes upon His disciples, and the antithesis to "in Adam, is in
Christ;" this being the official title with which His priestly sacrificial work
connects itself. eternal life for us is "in Christ:" that is, in the Last Adam,
with His sacrificial work accomplished, and gone up as our Representative Head
to God.
The first man was also in a very real way the representative
of his race; not, however, by any formal covenant for his posterity, of which
Scripture has no trace; but by his being the divinely constituted head of it.
His representative-character was grounded in what men call "natural law," and
which is nothing but divine law. This is asserted in the plainest possible way
in Scripture. "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" - thus, the law.
"What is man that he should be clean, or he that is born of a woman that he
should be righteous?" "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my
mother conceive me." And the Lord affirms the principle in the most emphatic
way: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." What men now call the
principle of "heredity" is thus affirmed by Him, and it is the whole scriptural
account of the matter.
Sin came in through Adam. The nature of man was
corrupted; by the disobedience of one the many were made sinners; and death
introducing to judgment was the stamp of God upon the fallen condition, So, as
the apostle says, "in Adam all die." "In Adam" thus speaks of representation,
as the apostle argues as to Levi and Abraham (Heb. vii. 9, 10): "And, as I may
so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham; for he was yet
in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him." Similarly we were in the
loins of Adam when he fell and sentence of death was passed upon him. Thank
God, we have heard the voice of Another - Head and Representative too of His
race, which says, "Because I live, ye shall live also" (John xiv. 19).
The last Adam is the head of a new race. And so, "if any man be in Christ"-
set over against "in Adam" in the verse already looked at - "he is a new
creature" (or "it is new creation" 2 Cor. v. 17). To be "in Christ" is to
belong to the new creation and the new Head. The last Adam becomes Head of the
race after His work of obedience is accomplished; and that wondrous "obedience
unto death" becomes the heritage of the new race. The connection of the Head
and race is necessarily by life and nature. A corrupt nature was transmitted
from the fallen head. A divine life and nature, free from and incapable of
taint, is ours in the new Head, Christ Jesus. Death and judgment lay hold upon
the fallen creature: righteousness belongs to the possessor of eternal life.
The life and the place go together, and are never disjoined. "He that
believeth on the Son hath eternal life; and he that believeth not on the Son
shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him" (John iii. 36).
Eternal life or the wrath of God: these are the alternatives. Solemn and
wonderful alternatives they are!
Go To Chapter
Eight
Home | Links | Literature