From Garden to Glory: 10 Days Through the Bible's Grand StoryНамуна

Day 7: The Hero Arrives

JESUS THE SECOND ADAM

We live with brokenness every day. It’s always around us and in us. In fact, we’ve never known a time when it wasn’t this way. We have become so used to brokenness we forget it’s there. We think this is normal. Until something happens that strikes the core of our soul, and we are reminded this isn’t the way life is supposed to be. We are surrounded by brokenness but have been created for wholeness.

We don’t like living with broken things—marriages, friendships, equipment, policies, people. Brokenness makes us long for things to be unbroken, and that time of longing and waiting can be hard.

The people of Israel had been waiting. And waiting. And waiting. But it wasn’t just the people of Israel, and it wasn’t just for 400 years. Ever since Eve’s teeth sank into that piece of fruit, all of creation has been waiting for the brokenness that followed that one act of disobedience to be fixed. Ever since God spoke the words in Genesis 3:15, all of creation has been watching and waiting to see when, and where, and how that promise would be fulfilled. When would a seed of the woman crush the head of their enemy? When would a man be sent who would (and could ) be the champion they needed? When would God make all things right again?

In his perfect timing, God sent one to do what Adam and Eve should have done—obey God perfectly—and by doing so, undo the results of the curse. Where every other person failed, Jesus succeeded; where every other disobeyed, Jesus obeyed; where every other fell short, Jesus overcame. Jesus was sent to fix the brokenness.

In Luke’s Gospel, the genealogy of Jesus is carefully presented in chapter 3. It ends with Jesus, “the son of Adam, the son of God” (verse 38). Immediately afterward, in Luke 4, Jesus is sent into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Luke was showing his reader that Jesus, the son of God and the son of Adam, is not only the offspring promised in Genesis 3, he is the second Adam. Where Adam was disobedient, Jesus was obedient. Where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded.

Philippians 2:8 tells us that Jesus, “being found in human form...humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (emphasis added). Our salvation is accomplished through the obedience of Christ. Not only are his perfect obedience and righteousness imputed (credited) to us, but it was also Jesus’s obedience that led him to the cross, where he died the death that we should have died. Adam’s disobedience brought us death; Christ’s obedience brings us life.

This is great news! But the question we should all be asking is, How do I receive the grace, the life, and the justification the second Adam accomplished?

First Corinthians 15:21-22 tells us: “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” (emphasis added).

That’s the answer: We must be in Christ. But how? This is the single most important question a person will ever ask. Literally, it is a question of life and death—life for those who are in Christ, and death for those who remain in Adam. How can I find myself “in Christ”?

According to Jesus, we must be born again: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God…I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again’” (John 3:1-7). And in verse 15, Jesus says “Whoever believes in [the Son of Man] may have eternal life.”

We are all born physically as sons and daughters of the first Adam. We must be born again, spiritually, as a son or daughter of God. That new birth takes place when you look to Jesus and “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). At that point, a person is born again spiritually. And that new birth happens only through Jesus, the second Adam. We are then united to him for all eternity. This is what Scripture calls being in Christ.

The reason I said this is the single most important question any person will ever answer is because, like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:22, “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” Are you still in Adam, or have you been born again through the works of the second Adam? Our eternal destiny is determined by which Adam we are in.