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The Last Adam - A Sequel
By Alyson Pamer
April 16, 2001
The
story of mankind began with the simple words “In
the beginning” (Genesis 1:1). In the beginning God created a planet unsurpassed in beauty
and purity, but God wanted more than that.
He wanted communion, so He breathed Himself into a human form and called
His creation Adam, which means “from the earth.” Nothing could be more descriptive of the only man who ever
lived without being born. His life
was given to him by God’s own hand and sustained by God’s perfect habitation¾the Garden of Eden. Not only did Adam live in a physical utopia, but his
emotional world was just as perfect. This
first person did not have to deal with the sadness, anxiety, stress or guilt
that became synonymous with the human experience.
All of these things were unknown to him in Eden.
He communed with God freely, as Creator and creation.
Though
this picturesque world did exist, it did not end happily ever after. When he chose to eat of the tree that God had forbidden, Adam
changed the destiny of mankind in two profound ways:
·
When
Adam sinned, he gained eternal death. When
God placed Adam in Eden, there was no indication that Adam would ever cease to
exist; rather, he would live as the angels lived¾ without any thought of death or dying.
Adam’s sin changed that. God
gave this sentence to Adam and all of his kind:
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the
ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt
thou return” (Genesis
3:19). The reward of Adam’s
sweat and toil here on Earth would be nothing more than a promise of dust.
Adam would die eternally, as would all those who followed him.
·
Adam
also lost all knowledge of God on that day.
When Adam was banned from the garden, he no longer had the chance to
walk and talk with God. Though
Adam must have remembered what it was like to know God, God was a complete
mystery only one generation after Adam’s fall.
Surely it must have pained Adam to see his children trying to exist
without ever really knowing what God was or what should be done to please Him.
The apostle Paul describes this loss of knowledge as trying to see
through a glass darkly. Even
generations later, that sense of relationship with God could not be
re-established.
Adam’s
fall from paradise paints a bleak picture for mankind, but the sequel to
Adam’s sin gives us eternal hope. Paul’s
letter to the Corinthians tells us about the last Adam.
“And so it is written, The first
man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural;
and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy:
the second man is the Lord from heaven” (I Corinthians 15:45-47).
When He paid the price for sin with His own death, Jesus Christ became
the last person ever who would have to die because of the first Adam’s sin.
The failures of the first Adam were reconciled by the last Adam, Jesus
Christ!
When
that blessed three-day sequel occurred, a new story with a completely different
beginning, plot, and ending began. The
dispensation of grace has given us the opportunity to gain back what we lost in
Eden. Not only did we regain
eternal life, but we also gained the promise of living that eternal life with
God. Jesus promises us that “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you”
(John 14:2). We will live
our eternity not on earth, but in heaven. This
new story gives hope not only to know God, but, as found in I Corinthians 2:16,
to have the mind of Christ. Mankind
no longer must view God as a distant and silent observer, but as an intricate
part of our thoughts, emotions, and being.
The last Adam has given believers every tool needed to become like Him.
The
reality of the last Adam can only come to being when Christians choose to
identify with Jesus Christ instead of the first Adam.
We cannot be in Christ until we are willing to put off the defeat and
failures of the first Adam. Only
when we fully think, believe and behave in our new identity can the promise of
the last Adam be ours.
ninetyandnine.com
©
2001, Alyson Pamer
---------
Alyson Pamer is planning to graduate this August after four laborious years of
part-time graduate school. As always, she is excited for the opportunity to
write something besides a research paper.
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