A tale of two Adams
To answer an outside the box question like where did we come from we’d have to trace back the source of information to someone who was actually there. There are all types of theories as to the origins of man to be offered here inside the box. But they all fail at giving an account for something other than, except for one.
When God finished the canvas of the box He focused His attention to one design, His desire to create that which He considered worthy of His image and likeness. God created man. We know this man in today’s English as Adam.
Adam has no earthly ancestors; he was formed from mere days old dirt.
I imagine God slapping His hands together clearing the excess dust from His hands and peering through the cloud at what He had just made. And with all the gentleness found within a newborn’s father the Creator cradles Adams lifeless body in His hands. As He draws His chosen to His very lips He is every bit aware of the outcome of man’s potential… and yet He breathes the essence of living into the nostrils of the one that He shall ultimately endure heartbreak over.
What must that first moment of human existence been like? Imagine your first breath, your first sight, your first thought not filtered through the mind of a newborn, but rather with the full abilities of adulthood.
All the questions that would race through our mind today, who am I, where am I, why am I here? These would be needless questions in the first moments of humanity. If you were that first being of our race you would have been face to face in an unbroken union with the Answer to all things.
Yet in all of creation Adam stood alone. Vegetation life and lower life forms had the ability to create life after their own kind, yet man had no equal for this process. God created woman for this very purpose, we know her today as Eve.
Adam and Eve were not two separate species but both are unique members of the same class. There is not found within the creation order an unequal importance or worth between male and female, but rather a co-equal partnership with specific defined roles of operation and responsibility.
When God made covenant with humanity He did so with Adam before Eve’s creation.
The act of breathing life into Adam was the institution of Covenant. Mankind cannot make Covenant with his Creator; we can only enter a Covenant enacted by God.
The conditions of the Covenant are made immediately clear. “Adam obey Me and you will have eternal life and union with Me. Disobey Me and you will have death and separation from Me. Do not eat from this tree, Adam!”
This interaction took place before Eve began. The woman was brought forth out of the man, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. She finds herself the first human created from another human. And while our primal parents shared a singular DNA, it was the man who held the key to the Covenant. Eve was created in this covenant by way of being brought forth from Adam, the one whom the covenant was enacted.
From this dynamic our original ancestor Adam becomes humanity’s representative head. We all come from The Man and through The Man we all live, die, and have our being.
When Eve broke the covenant there is no clear immediate consequences that I see, but when Adam knowingly disobeys there is evidence of irreversible change for both the man and the woman. When God asks what has happened He goes directly to the representative head in the covenant, Adam. Adams perspective and nature has at once changed which is attested to by his response to God.
First, he hid himself from God, this is a response he hadn’t had before. Secondly, his reasoning why he was in hiding is that he was naked and ashamed for being so, humanity is viewing itself from a different perspective than before. Finally, he blamed the woman for their condition, he is reacting in a way which was abnormal for him.
Humanity as they once were have fallen! They are driven from paradise and became separated from the Maker of all things.
The disconnect between God and mankind and humanity’s forced removal from paradise is not to be seen as the actions of an unforgiving mean-spirited God. He is in no way someone to have anything demanded or required of Him, for who shall ascend to equality or superiority to God to charge Him anything? Yet his nature is revealed in His Special Revelation as being one who is long in forgiveness.
Man has only Adam to blame. The consequences enacted upon people are the byproducts of Adams actions. We live, we die, and we have our being in Adams broken covenant.
Every human since the fall of our representative head are Adams children, and coming from a bloodline of the disobedient, we are all born into the same consequences….. Death and Separation. How shall we ever return?
Adam is not the only unique man, there is another. Let us compare a few things between Adam and Jesus.
Adam has no earthly father nor does Jesus.
Adam was created by God from the dust, Jesus was conceived by God from the virgin. Both are creative miracles.
Adam was not born into a broken covenant, nor was Jesus as both have no earthly father and created from virgin soil.
The covenant command for Adam was obedience, as was it for Jesus.
Jesus is unique beyond Adam. He was born fully God and fully man, yet wholly Divine. This means there is no separation in his humanity or His Godhood. Jesus is every bit Divine in his being man as he is in his God nature.
We must make clear to avoid a two Jesus separation. This separation would result in one Jesus being the Jesus man and the other Jesus being the Jesus God.
Some have said things such as, the Jesus Body working with the Jesus Spirit. This is a broken Jesus that would logically beg the question, which Jesus died upon the Cross, the Jesus Body or the Jesus Spirit? Which Jesus rose from the grave? Which Jesus ascended into Heaven? Which Jesus will return? The implications of a broken Jesus are huge, as one would be Divine and one would be mere man. And if merely a man, then he could be born into a broken covenant.
No, the answer is Jesus is fully God, fully man, wholly Divine in His entire being no matter which nature he operates as, whether that be as God or the man.
His very incarnation (God being born in the flesh of a man) is a covenant moment just as Adams creation was. This new covenant moment has as its representative head, Jesus.
Jesus, unlike Adam, fulfilled all the obedience requirements to consummate the covenant. In His temptation He did not fail as Adam had. Even in His weakest moment of temptation, on the Cross being mocked and challenged to prove His deity (Godhood), He continued to obey his Father’s will to the death.
Jesus is the only man who fulfilled life and death in absolute obedience to God’s covenant.
In his death he was forsaken by his Father and he experienced this separation and death not by breaking covenant but by being obedient.
The rewards of the fulfilled covenant are the same as Adams would have been, which we see activated in the resurrection of Jesus from death and separation to Eternal life and Union with his Father. Now He is the representative head of an unbreakable covenant fulfilled completely with no more requirements between the two parties unfinished.
Mankind has two covenants, and two representative heads. One covenant, Adam’s Broken Covenant which we are all born into with Adam as our representative head. The other covenant, Jesus’ Unbroken Covenant with Jesus as our representative head is one we must be born again into.
Jesus is called in the scriptures both the Second and the Last Adam. This means there has been no other representative head between Adam and Jesus and there will be no more after Jesus. There are only two Covenants for you and for me to be in.
Which one are you living under?
turtlegs
