"So also
it is written, 'The first man,
Adam, became a living soul.' The last Adam became a
life-giving spirit... The
first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is from
heaven" (1 Cor. 15:45,47).
With these
words before us we now turn to
the other side of this whole matter of the place and meaning
of Jesus Christ as
the second Man, the last Adam.
We have
taken a lot of time to see the
divine necessity for a second Man, a last Adam. And out of
that consideration
of God's demonstrating to all the generations of history the
terrible entail of
one basic and inclusive choice in the wrong use of a great
trust, that of free
will, demonstrating how deep and terrible a thing it is to
move out of the will
of God into self-will, we are led to this one quite clear
conclusion: that God,
when He does anything, has very good reason for doing it,
whatever it is. God
never acts on any flimsy and unsubstantial ground. In this
matter God has given
us this terrible story, which is not all told yet, to let us
know that when He
did act in answer to Adam's rebellion and disobedience, He
acted with a full
knowledge of what was involved in that act. He has shown by
history, and is
continuing to show by history, what He knew was to be involved
in that single
act of disobedience. As Paul says, "Through the one man's
disobedience...
through one trespass" (Rom. 5:19,18). What a story!
But there
is another thing to which all
this brings us. When God sends His Son into the world as the
second Man, the
last Adam, there is an unspeakably great thing bound up with
that.
We have
just passed through a season of a
vast amount of sentimentality, pettiness and a good deal of
childishness. That
is all right - but, dear friends, in the coming into this
world of God's Son,
no less and no smaller thing was involved than the
overwhelming reality of the
consequences of the first Adam's one act of disobedience!
Some of you
may have wondered why we took
all that time on that sorry and sordid story, that dark side
of history.
Perhaps you saw little point in it. Certainly you felt little
comfort in it!
But, you know, you can never understand or recognise the
greatness of Christ
unless you see the immensity of the background against which
He stands. And
that is not our conclusion, and that is not the conclusion of
this platform.
That is what God has done. He has, in effect, said: 'Do you
want to know how
great My Son is? Then I will show you by at least ten thousand
years of history
which He has to clear up.' If you can comprehend that, then
you will get near
to an appreciation of how great He and His work really are.
Our object is not
to tell the miserable story of human failure. That is only a
means to an end.
Christ Replaces the First Adam
So we turn
over now to this other side of
the coming of the second Man, the last Adam, into humanity to
supplant the
first, the original. We have seen that certain phrases
describe the state into
which the first man, the first Adam, brought the race. There
is the utter loss
of human peace; the strivings for peace. Everything is being
done that man can
conceive of to bring about a reign of peace and the older the
world becomes and
the longer the shadow of human life, the less peace there is!
There is less
peace in human life today than at any time in human history.
Man has
been striving, and is striving
with all his resource (which is not small, as we have seen)
for rest, for
relief from tensions and stresses, for leisure. And the longer
history draws
out, so the more dissatisfied, discontented and restless man
is!
Man has
striven for security. Today the
human race is shot through with fear born of a sense of
insecurity and the
defeat of every effort to bring about a state of security.
Man has
striven for ascendancy, for
victory, and today, more than ever in his history, he is
conscious of the
defeat of all his efforts. Indeed, only within these past few
days the question
has arisen, out of this sense of frustration and inability to
cope with the
world situation, as to whether, after all, the United Nations
organisation is
worth retaining!
Man has
striven, and is striving, for
liberty, and his greatest inventions are his prison, in a
figurative sense.
Peace
What about the second Man, the
last Adam? Are these not the very
words that come in with Him? Yes! Of a different kind, it is
true. Of a
quality, and of a nature, and in a realm that is altogether
different: "Peace I
leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world
gives" (John 14:27).
Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ... and when you
have said that,
have you not gone right back behind the first man, the
original Adam, who broke
that peace with God? You have got right back behind and
undercut all that Adam
Number 1 let in. It is of a different kind, a different realm. It
is in the heart,
but isn't that the place to have it? What you can stand up to
in the world if
you have the peace of God in your heart! And how much can you
stand up to if
you haven't?
Jesus said,
"Come... I will give you rest"
(Matt. 11:28). We know what that means! No, it is not what the
world sees -
release from responsibility, escape from labour, from work -
but there is a rest
that "remains... for the people of God" (Heb. 4:9), into which
we are brought in
Christ Jesus. This is a rest which can be rest in labour and
even in conflict.
It is something spiritual, inward.
Security
What about security? This apostle
gives us a long list of the
things which, to the world, speak of insecurity: "Death... life...
things present... things to come... height... depth...
principalities" (Rom.
8:38,39), and all the
rest. Then, finding his stock exhausted, he has to lump all
the rest together
in this: "nor any other created thing" (Rom. 8:39). He is
persuaded that none
of these things will "be able to separate us from the love of
God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:39). Is not that security? Life
can be a
formidable thing, and death can be a formidable thing. And all
these other
things may be very disconcerting things, 'But', says the
apostle, 'the whole
lot put together, and anything else you like to mention and
add, cannot
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.' Is that not
security? And so
we could go on with all that which comes in with the last
Adam, as He is. But
what a difference!
Dominion
You see, with the Lord Jesus is
undercut that thing of which we
have said much, which pursues every effort of man to realise
his destiny. For
it is stated that man was made to have dominion, but he was
made to have it in
relation to God, but he decided to have it without that
relationship. He lost
it, and history is one long story of man's efforts to get it
without God. And
there is running alongside of every effort of man a pursuing
thing. He takes a
step forward and something comes up either to make him take
two steps back, or
to frustrate the full realisation of his efforts so that his
most advanced
step, as we are seeing it today, has running alongside of it
the most terrible
threat which takes the very heart out of it and makes it,
after all, a very
doubtful thing. We think it would be better if we had never
found that out, if
we had never discovered that. That is what is meant by the
curse, which pursues
man's steps and runs alongside until the end is what we can
so clearly
visualise now - a wonderful development ending in the most
ghastly tragedy! But
for the intervention of Another, where would this world end?
Well, we know.
The curse
is taken hold of, like a sting
in the tail, and is plucked out by the last Adam. The curse
is taken out and that element of
neutralisation is destroyed in the cross of the Lord Jesus. He
undercuts all
the nature and history produced by the defection of the first
Adam. Now, how
does He do this? What is the strength of this, the law of
this, the secret of
this that He does? For He does it - there is no doubt about
that. Well, He does
it by completely reversing and contradicting the way that the
first Adam took
which led to all this disaster. What was the motive by which
the first Adam
acted and opened the door to this history? The motive was, 'My
will'. The
motive of the last Adam was, "Not my will, but Yours" (Luke
22:42). That sounds
a very simple way of putting it. It does not take many words,
but there is an
infinitude of meaning in that. The law and the watchword of
the last Adam was
from the inception to the last breath: "Yet not my will, but
Yours be done."
And on that basis see whether He as man, representative man,
is great! See the
greatness, His greatness; a greatness that man today, at his
best, just covets
with all his might.
See His
greatness in the physical realm!
He comes into this world, into this physical consequence of
the first Adam's
act, and finds a state of physical defeat, sickness,
infirmity. It is a
terrible physical state! Now be patient with me. You can spend
your whole
lifetime training (and many generations have spent all their
strength and all
their energies and thank God for them and for what they have
done to help!) in
order to do what He did in a moment! In a moment, by a word...
and a lifelong
disease yielded in an instant. All the entail of sin in the
physical body was
cancelled out with a word from His lips. Don't you doctors
wish that you had
that greatness? This is the last Adam.
Men strive
and struggle to get the
mastery of the natural forces, the forces of nature, and they
think they have
gone a long way in doing that and then something happens.
There is some
disruption, some disturbance in the heavenly bodies, some
terrific storm, a
hurricane or something in the realm of nature where man is
rendered utterly
helpless and impotent. He can do nothing about it. There is a
mighty,
threatening storm of wind and sea; a word from His mouth and
the whole thing
subsides. "Be still", said He, "and it became perfectly calm"
(Mark 4:39).
Natural forces yield to Him. How great He is!
Men... women... torn, distracted,
bewildered by evil forces. You read of one woman out of whom
He had cast seven
demons. There was a man tortured by evil powers and the
people, trying to tame
them, put the poor fellow in chains, but he plucked the chains
off. No one, it
says, could tame him. These evil forces... and with a word out
they
go! The poor victim sits "at the
feet of Jesus, clothed and in his
right mind" (Luke 8:35).
And what
shall we say about sin? Vice?
The grip of evil habits? Sin! That awful thing, soul distress.
"I did not come
to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matt. 9:13) - and here
they are, plenty of
them about Him: the distressed of soul, the harassed of soul,
mastered by evil
habits and an evil nature. And with a word: "Son, your sins
are forgiven"
(Matt. 9:2), and it is not only a word; something happens, and
he goes away
with heart rest, forgiven and delivered.
Reconciliation
We know something today about
social or family disruptions,
factions and broken homes. All the efforts of social
institutions utterly fail,
but when He comes onto the scene there is reconciliation and
there are mended
relationships. How great He is, this last Adam! Without any of
the
organisation, the institution, the paraphernalia, the effort,
the expenditure,
He is great enough with just a word to undercut the whole
entail of the first
Adam's sin.
Sense
of purpose
One of the greatest things that
the last Adam recovers and
restores is that vital factor of a sense of purpose in life,
in being. If you
think of that, that goes to the heart of a great deal. A
well-known
psychiatrist and psychologist has put it on record that a
third of the people
who go to consult him are plagued and distraught by the malady
of having no
sense of purpose in life. Frustrated is only another way of
saying 'No purpose
for living'. And what a door that opens, doesn't it? How much
rushes in through
that door if you are robbed of a sense of purpose in life. And
do you not see
that this is a growing malady today? It is spreading like a
disease. Everywhere
men are asking, 'What is the purpose of it all? What is the
meaning of life?'
There is a lost sense of a great purpose in existing.
And I
repeat that it is just there, this
root thing in human life and history, that the last Adam comes
in. When a
person really comes to surrender to God in Jesus Christ and
accepts the Lord
Jesus Christ as his or her own Saviour, the very first thing
in their
consciousness is: 'I have something to live for that I did not
have before.'
They may not be able to explain what that is. They could not
tell you now what
this great purpose is, but there has been born,
like a newborn
child, a sense within their consciousness that life was meant
for something;
they have a being for something. There is a purpose for which
to live. That
grows, if there is a normal spiritual growth, and becomes
stronger and deeper,
and becomes clarified. But, you know, the last Adam brings
that. There was a
great purpose, but only in relation to God, and it was lost
when that
relationship was broken. The Lord Jesus recovers it and gives
the sense of
purpose.
Spiritual
experience
Earlier I said that among those
things which every person who
takes life seriously - and that means especially every
Christian - wants to
know, must know, and seeks to know, is the meaning of
spiritual experience.
Well, if you can read your own spiritual experience, can you
not read these
parallel columns? On the one side the Holy Spirit has got hold
of you and is
making you know what you are in yourself, in the old Adam. No
one knows what
the old Adam really is like except a true Christian. Does that
sound terrible? Yes,
but that is just it, because a true Christian is one who is
really going to
appreciate the grace of God, and you never appreciate the
grace of God unless
you see the necessity for it. So spiritual history along one
line is the
discovery of our own utter worthlessness. A stronger word is
'our rottenness'.
If you feel you are a very respectable, nice person - forgive
me. I don't want
to insult you, but I don't think that is too strong a word.
The depravity of
this old Adam life! It is unfathomable. And it has got to be
shown in order
that God's Son may be really understood and appreciated. He
must be set over
against that background.
But, thank God, spiritual history
runs along another line although it is all too slow.
Nevertheless, by the grace
of God, by the work of the Holy Spirit, there is the
inculcation of the Life
and Nature of the second Man, the last Adam. We have nothing
to boast about. We
can never say anything about our attainment in that matter;
God only knows
where we would be but for Jesus Christ! Where would I be today
if it had not
been for Jesus Christ, knowing now what I did not know
formerly of the depths
of this nature and the awful possibilities that are in it? But
the Holy Spirit
gets hold of a Christian life, a truly committed Christian,
and He works into
that life this disposition of the last Adam - and what is that
disposition? Ah,
it may be your battlefield! Thank God for the measure of
victory, but is it not
here: "Yet not my will, but Yours be done"? Is it not that?
Are we not being
brought more and more by the Spirit of Jesus Christ to that
place where this
will of ours becomes subject to the will of God, where we are
discovering the
need for - and, thank God, being more and more enabled to
accept - absolute
dependence upon God for everything? Where all that resource in
ourselves, that
self-resource, is being undercut and removed, and our resource
is found to be
in God - truly in God, but only in God? And then we are put on
to a very
wonderful basis. Oh, dear friends, if you are a truly
born-again child of God,
you are put on to a marvellous basis!
I have
spoken of this last Adam's
greatness. What is the word that sums all that up?
'Supernatural', is it not?
It is not natural! Do you not realise that your very new birth
itself is a supernatural
thing? That is the truth, isn't it? Do you not realise that
your continuance
and endurance is a supernatural thing? If you don't, well, I
don't know what is
the matter with you. We are put into those positions where for
endurance, going
on, there is no possible hope, or ground, or way but for God
Himself to carry us
on. That is supernatural history; that is not natural.
So, you
see, what was true of Him, in a
spiritual way mark you, is being made true in us. I say
again, it happens all
too slowly, all too meagrely, and yet it is happening. We are
put on to a
supernatural basis.
I believe
that there is a very much
larger need for us to prove this, to know this. If I might
carry this into the
Body of Christ, the church - wherever it may be represented in
local companies
- you know, the supernatural elements ought to be far more in
evidence. I
believe that a great deal of our physical troubles ought to
yield to prayer.
And our family disturbances and upheavals ought to yield to
prayer, and these
other things, they ought to yield supernaturally. We are
brought into much of
this in Christ, to be known now. What a helpless, weak thing
the church is!
Ought it to be like that with the last Adam resident within
with all this
meaning?
Well, here
is this second Man, this last
Adam, who has come in on the one side to expose the old, to
condemn the old,
and to put away the old by His Cross, in which the whole of
that old Adam was
crucified. And on the other side, to bring in, establish, and
extend a race of men
and women who are partaking of His own potentialities. These
are given His own
gifts, spiritually and morally. They learn by His working and
His grace, in the
mighty power of the Holy Spirit that, after all, there is a
dominion which God
meant for man, and that dominion, that ascendancy, that
victory, is found in
Christ, in real measure, now. The end is that race of which He
is the first and
the last, reigning and glorified. It is the complete reversal
of all that came
in with the first man. When you read at the end, "There will
no longer be any
mourning, or crying, or pain" (Rev. 21:4), but everything to
the contrary, you
see the triumph in the second Man, the last Adam, and that is
what remains when
all the other is no more.