What an immense contrast there is between the “first man” in the third chapter of Genesis and the Lord Jesus Christ in the twentieth chapter of John! He is emphatically called “the last Adam” in 1 Corinthians 15. “The first man, Adam, was made a living soul”; the last Adam, “a quickening spirit.” “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” There are only two men — each the head of a race. How simple, yet how great the issue! We cannot belong to both; we must be disconnected with the one in order to be connected with the other.
In Genesis 3 we find the first man involved in and under judgment, as driven out of the presence of God; in John 20 we find the second Man having come out from under judgment, and in resurrection, having abolished death. You cannot conceive of anything greater. We see the man in Genesis bringing in the judgment of God upon his race; in John 20, we see the Son of God, having borne that terrible judgment, rising out of it, and breathing on His disciples as the life-giving Lord!
The Garden of Eden
Adam in the Garden of Eden was put under an interdict. Ought not the creature to be subject to the Creator? It was not a question of its being a great offense or a little offense. Can the righteous God countenance a creature who sets up a will of his own? If Adam only pointed at the tree when God told him not, he would have set up a will of his own, and if God had allowed it, He would have allowed the existence of a will contrary to His own. This was no small offense, and He could not have fixed on a smaller penalty than He has done. If we do not get hold of what God in righteousness requires, we will never know what He has accomplished in His love. The man who understands the terrible nature of the judgment is the man who is practically more distinguished than others in his occupation with Christ.
Death and Life
What is righteousness? It insists upon this — that judgment be executed. How then can we be saved? “God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”! The whole thing must go in judgment. The thief on the cross died as a thief, and God’s own Son dying beside him does not take him out of judgment, but life in the last Adam — Christ, the Son of God — is given him. In Adam he died; in Christ he lived. God’s Son comes down from heaven and meets the whole thing in His death on the cross. He has removed every barrier out of the way that God may express His love to a poor prodigal!
The sinner’s judgment has been borne; the old man has been crucified with Christ. Righteousness and peace cannot kiss each other, if righteousness itself is not perfectly satisfied. The element of disturbance is the thing to be judged, but if it is judged, it is gone forever. Then He breathed on them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” This is a new order of existence, in which there is “no condemnation”; “the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.”
May the Lord lead our souls to remember that “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). Believers can say, even now, “our commonwealth has its existence in the heavens, from which also we await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, who shall transform our body of humiliation into conformity to His body of glory” (Phil. 3:20-2120For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. (Philippians 3:20‑21) JND). Can we be occupied with the Adamic existence? Do we belong to Adam or Christ? Either we are under condemnation as connected with one, or we have obtained eternal life by believing in the other.
J. N. Darby (adapted)