Christ The Second Man
I. The Bible is a book of pictures - From Genesis to Revelation, we have a series of portraits of Christ. The first pictures are often faint and can only be recognized by later ones, which increase in clarity and detail as the light of illumination progresses.
A. In our first lesson, we saw the outline in the first verse of the Bible:
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
B. In the light of the New Testament, we know this Creator was Jesus the Christ. God the Father through His Son, The Word of God, created all things for His glory.
C. Then Adam as a picture of the Lord - "Second Man", "Last Adam"
1. While Adam slept, God was building a bride for him from a rib taken from his side.
2. We know this is a picture of the Lord from the Apostle Paul informing us in Ephesians 5, that as Eve was a member of the body of Adam, so are we members of His body. He says in Ephesians:
5:30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
II. The Protevangelium - Another unmistakable portrait of the coming Redeemer in our album of word pictures.
A. God had given Adam full and complete enjoyment of the garden of Eden with just one exception: "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil". The Lord plainly made His will known when He said in the book of Genesis:
2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
B. God had spoken these words to Adam before Eve was created.Eve did not hear them directly from God. - by hearsay only. This is probably the reason that Satan did not direct his attack on Adam, but through his wife
C. This is a picture of Christ and His love for His fallen Bride. Let's follow carefully the revelation of this mystery as reveled in the New Testament. Paul is speaking about the relationship between husband and wife, as he speaks in the book of Ephesians:
5:31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
This is an almost word for word quote from the book of Genesis:
2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Here is the important verse, the next verse in the context of Ephesians 5:31 above:
5:32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
What is the mystery? That Jesus Christ, the spotless Son of God, should be willing to leave His Father's house, and come into the world to save a filthy, fallen, unfaithful "wife", even by dying on the cross for her. Adam, then, becomes a type of Christ in His relation to His beloved Bride. Remember, according to Paul, Adam is a type, a picture of Christ in his love for his Bride, the Church.
III. Love caused Adam's sin. Adam's love for Eve is a faint, but unmistakable picture of the love of our Lord Jesus for His chosen own.
A. Adam was the head of Eve, because he was created first, and Eve was to be an "help meet". - If Adam fell, it would naturally have included Eve.
B. When Eve fell, she fell as an individual - not as the federal head.
C. Eve never heard God's word's first hand. This may be one reason why Satan came unto the woman instead of Adam, who had head God first hand.
D. The real reason went much deeper.
1. Satan must have known the intense love of Adam for Eve. (A love that was much purer and stronger than any since between husband and wife.
2. Satan hoped to make this love of Adam for his wife the cause of him to fall to her level.
3. Adam knew God in a perfect way as no human since has known Him - he knew God was a holy God. He understood what the penalty of sin was, because he understood God when He said:
2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
4. Now his wife had transgressed God's command and must die. He had lost his bride. Eve was a lost sinner, and Adam still a son of God. (Luke 3:38)
5. Adam must have known that for Eve to be redeemed, it must be by a human redeemer - later referred to as The Seed of the Woman (Genesis 3:15).Eve needed a redeemer a savior, and this savior must be of her seed. None else but a human can completely atone for human sin. But, how could Eve bring forth seed without a husband? A gulf of in separated them, the moment that Eve ate of the tree. In Adam's perfect state, he couldn't have communion with the fallen Eve. (II Corinthians 6:12-16)
6. How could this gulf be bridged? Eve couldn't be raised to Adam's level of innocence, without a redeemer, and that redeemer must be of the seed of the woman. Since Adam couldn't lift her up to his level without the redeemer seed, he must lower himself to her's, assume her guilt, become partaker of her being removed from God's communion - he could now be father of her seed. He had stooped to her level in order to save her by becoming the only one who could bring forth the seed of the woman - the Redeemer.
IV. Adam was not deceived. Adam had now made Eve's sin his responsibility, and makes himself subject to death, by becoming partaker of the curse of death upon Eve.
A. Before you think that I have gone completely mad, and doubt this interpretation, let me point out other Scriptures on this subject that will fully confirm this interpretation.
Paul, in writing to Timothy, emphasizes the subordinate place of the wife to the husband, and gives as his reason the fact that Eve, the first wife, owed her salvation to her husband, in the book of I Timothy:
2:12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
2:13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
Then Paul gives the reason in the next verse:
2:14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
Notice those words - Adam was not deceived? He knew the full consequences of his act. He knew it meant his death, but it was the only way to save his bride - and this salvation will be by bearing a child. Eve must be the mother of the baby, the seed, to be saved. Adam was the only one that could bring this about.
The Apostle continues in I Timothy:
2:15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
V. Adam, a type of Christ - This is established beyond possible contradiction, and in the book of Romans, we read:
5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
Adam's transgression was different from any other. We sin because we are sinners. Adam became a sinner because he deliberately choose to share in the sin of Eve.
In this he was a figure of Jesus Christ. Now of course, the type can never rise to the same level as the antitype.
Jesus also loved the Church, His Bride, and gave Himself for it.
His Bride too, had deceived by the enemy and alienated from God. But see the great love which Jesus had for his fallen bride: He left His Father's house, and came down to the level of fallen man, made man's sin His responsibility, and stooped even to death. To save Eve Adam became a sinner.
This, of course, is not true of Jesus, because He knew no sin. Yet He identified Himself with our sin, and did much more than Adam.
We read in II Corinthians:
5:21 For he hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
Jesus took our sin upon Himself. It meant His death, but His love knew no bounds. He bore our sins in His own body on the cross. This is the great mystery the Apostle Paul refers to in the book of Ephesians:
5:31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
5:32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.