The Last Adam and the Second Man

I don’t believe in evolution. One reason is that I can do math. Another is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A third is that evolution requires more faith than Christianity does, based on far less evidence. I have plenty more reasons besides those. Evolution is not my subject today, but its lack of substance is always worth mentioning when the younger generation may be lurking around.

Yet another reason I don’t believe in evolution is that my theology excludes it. You cannot reconcile the teaching of Christ and his apostles with the teaching of Darwin and his acolytes. Not coherently.

A Historical Federal Head

Jesus spoke and Paul wrote about a fellow named Adam as if he were a real, historical person, not some mythological character. The Lord Jesus did not mention Adam by name, but he did explicitly teach that our race came from a pair of created beings. “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” Paul referenced Adam by name repeatedly, and he based some major teaching concerning one of the names of Christ on a comparison he drew between Adam and the Lord Jesus. Jesus and Paul both treated Genesis as history, and so Christians cannot have our cake and eat it too. Either they were wrong or Darwin was, and a Christian faith that attempts to accommodate the current theories of the unsaved world will find itself on a very shaky foundation.

I’m going to treat Adam as a real, historical person. The story of the fall of man in Genesis goes by very quickly and we don’t learn much about Adam as an individual, other than that he failed to resist temptation and blamed his wife for it. However, we do learn a fair bit in Genesis, if we read between the lines, about what Adam represented. He was the first example of what some call a federal head of the human race, the head of our race in the old creation. “Federal head”, I think, is as good a term as any, even though we don’t find it in the Bible.

From Corinth to Rome

Paul wrote his first letter to Corinth and his only letter to Rome a couple of years apart between twenty and twenty-five years after the death of our Lord. In both letters, he contrasts the Lord Jesus — the new federal head of humanity — with Adam, its original federal head.

He wrote his letter to Corinth first, but it’s almost a sure bet that the Roman Christians had read it by the time they got their own letter from Paul. There was the Aquila/Priscilla connection. You remember from Acts 18 that Paul first met the couple in Corinth, where they had just arrived from Rome, Claudius having booted all the Jews out of the city. Next, he mentions them in 1 Corinthians 16, sending their greetings back to Corinth. Like Paul, they had moved on. Finally, Paul sends his greetings to them in the last chapter of his letter to Rome. Is it likely they took either a copy of the letter to Corinth or, at very least, the substance of Paul’s teaching on federal headship back to the church in Rome? I think there’s a very good chance of that.

It would certainly explain the fact there’s a lot more detail in the Corinthians passage than in Romans 5, so let’s deal with Corinthians first. Chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians is all about resurrection: first the Lord’s resurrection, then our own.

In Adam All Die

Here’s what Paul has to say about the Lord Jesus and Adam, beginning with verse 19:

“If in Christ we [Christians] have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”

We have there both a comparison and a contrast. The comparison is that Adam and Christ were both real men. They both possessed genuine humanity. “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.” Adam’s humanity was genuine, and because it was genuine, he passed on who he was to you and me. Likewise, the Lord’s humanity is genuine. It’s absolutely legitimate. It’s why he had to be born of a virgin, the son of David and the son of Adam. Two fellow human beings, like us in every way — except, in the Lord’s case, with respect to sin, in which he had no part.

Then there’s the second point of comparison. Both Adam and Christ passed on something to you and me and every single human being that ever lived. They gave something to “all”, potentially at least. Adam brought us all something we would rather he hadn’t, and that something was death. In Adam all die. That process begins the moment we come into existence. The Second Law takes over, entropy does its work, and day by day we all move one step closer to the grave. Thank you very much, Adam.

In Christ All Live

But that’s not the end of the story, and we’re very happy it isn’t. The good news for humanity is that in Christ all will be made alive. What Adam did, the Lord Jesus undid. That’s the contrast. We’ll skip down to verse 45:

“Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.”

Where is it written that Adam became a living being? That’s Paul’s summary of Genesis 2:7, which says, “The man became a living creature.” Adam possessed life, but it was derived life, second-hand life. He did not have life in himself, and he could not give us what he did not himself possess. The last Adam [Christ], Paul says, became a life-giving spirit. Our Lord does have life in himself. In his resurrection, he bestows that glorious life on the entire new creation, transforming us even now. “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” That’s what the Last Adam did.

Look at the way Paul contrasts the two different orders of humanity, the two creations. The Adamic order is perishable (v42); Christ’s order is imperishable (v52). The Adamic order is dishonorable; Christ’s order is glorious (v43). The Adamic order is weak; Christ’s order is powerful (v43). The Adamic order is merely natural; Christ’s order is spiritual (v44). The Adamic order is earth-bound, dusty; Christ’s order is heavenly (v47). The Adamic order does nothing but take away, peter out, falter and die. Christ’s order does nothing but give, and give that which will never perish.

Death Reigned

That’s what it means that Christ is the Last Adam. When we move over to Romans 5, here’s what Paul has to say about Adam and Christ:

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned — for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”

There’s more. As he does in Corinthians, he continues from verses 15 through 21 comparing and contrasting Adam’s role in spreading death throughout the human race with Christ’s role in giving life. He does not use the names “Last Adam” or “Second Man” in Romans, as he does in Corinthians, but it’s the same theme we find there: the role of the first federal head vs. the role of the last federal head of our race.

Comparing and Contrasting

Again, Paul is setting up a series of comparisons and contrasts, and they are different points than he makes in the letter to Corinth. To Corinth, he’s contrasting the physical and the spiritual, the earthly and the heavenly. Here, the emphasis in his contrast is moral. We might say that what he’s describing in Romans is the cause, and that what he’s describing in Corinthians is the effect. Corinthians is about death and life. Romans is about the sin that leads to death and the justification that leads to life.

First the comparisons. Both effects came through one man and many men (and women) experienced the consequences. Many died through one man’s trespass, and the free gift abounded for many (v15). In verse 17, death reigned through Adam, righteousness reigns through Christ. In verse 20, we have the trespass increasing and we also have grace abounding. In verse 21, we have sin reigning in death and grace reigning through righteousness. All these are intentional parallels between the two men.

Then come the contrasts. We have Adam’s trespass contrasted with Christ’s free gift (v15). There’s condemnation contrasted with justification (v16). Verse 18 contrasts one man’s disobedience with one man’s obedience.

Last, Not Just Latest

That “last” in “Last Adam”, by the way, is chronological, of course. Adam came first. The natural comes first, then the spiritual. But it’s not just about chronology. The word “last” there is eschatos, as in eschatology. He’s not just the Last Adam because he came later on. He’s the Last Adam because he is the final expression of everything God wants to say through humanity. He’s the Ultimate Man, the New Man, the Perfect Man, the Definitive Man, the Final Word on the human race.

He’s not just the Latest Adam, he’s the Last Adam. After Christ, we need nothing more.