Adam and Christ

If you don't know who you are, if you don't have a bigger narrative than your own decisions, then it is inevitable that you live a destabilized life. And we're now living in a time in the Western world when our younger people are all at sea where governments are spending vast amounts of money trying to help young people to decide who they are. And the background to that is because we've actually rejected who the Scriptures say we are. We're living in a time when many people, especially the up-and-coming generation, have lost the sense of personal identity.

We just don't know who we are, so we cling to labels, to identities, and what we really need to do is look to the Bible. I'm Nathan W Bingham and I'm glad you're joining us for the Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Sinclair Ferguson has been helping us see what the Bible teaches on our union with Christ, and this is an immensely practical topic because it deals with our identities and even who we are if we're not a Christian.

So listen today as Dr. Ferguson unfolds what he calls the grand narrative of human history, the story of two men, two actions, and two results. Well now, in our previous sessions, we've begun to explore this great theme of union with Christ. And we've been a little like the folks in Joshua's time marching around Jericho until the penny drops that this is such a significant truth that's taught in Scripture. So what we've been doing is we've been looking at some passages that give us different angles on the central idea of union with Christ.

And we're coming now to think about Adam and Christ, union with Adam and union with Christ. And of course, the great passage that gives us a foundation for our thinking is in Romans chapter 5 and verses 12 through 21. This is by any measure an exceedingly complex passage.

And for that reason, I want to read it so that we can feel something of the complexity and depth in it. And then what I want to do is to try to unfold it in its basic simplicities so that we can catch some sense of how marvelous a vision this is of what it means to have become a Christian. So says Paul, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned, for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass, for if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. We said last time that becoming a Christian is a much bigger thing than most of us, indeed any of us, anticipated when we first of all came to faith in Jesus Christ. We were at that moment by the Holy Spirit through faith united to Christ. We actually not only believed on the Lord Jesus, we believed into the Lord Jesus, into fellowship with Him, into union and communion with Him. And this opens up for us, Paul is teaching us in various places, a whole world of blessing.

Every spiritual blessing is ours in our Lord Jesus Christ. And we might say that this is teaching that undergirds the chapters in Romans with which most of us are most familiar, chapter 5 and 6 and 7 and 8. But these verses we've just read, chapter 5 verses 12 to 21, have puzzled many Christians, still puzzle many Christian scholars. What on earth are they doing here?

They are so complicated. Why does Paul at this point introduce Adam? What is the logic of his mind that he thinks about the gospel in this way? I personally think the answer to that question is as follows, that in many ways this is the center point of everything he's saying in the first eight chapters. Everything he has said so far leads us down into this foundation.

Everything that he says from this point onwards leads us upwards from this foundation. You remember how he reasons in Romans. He tells us that God has revealed Himself clearly, that we have rejected His glory, that we have worshiped the creature rather than the Creator. The consequence has been our sinfulness. He argues in chapter 2 that no one is possibly able to justify himself before God, even as a religious person. All have sinned, fallen short of the glory of God.

Every mouth is shut. The whole world is held guilty before God and only because of the propitiation that Christ has made, the redemption that is in Christ. Is it possible for anyone to be saved? And they will be saved by faith in the Lord Jesus. And then he defends that by saying, this has always been the way of salvation. Abraham was not saved by his own righteousness.

David was not saved by his own righteousness. Only through the grace of God in Jesus Christ are we justified. And then in chapter 5 verses 1 through 11, he has spoken about the privileges that become ours in Jesus Christ. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. We are able to rejoice even in our sufferings.

We rejoice in God Himself. And now it's as though he's taking a step back and saying to us, do you see how all of this, our sinful condition and our justified condition, are actually rooted in the lives of two men, Adam and the Lord Jesus Christ? Remember how in 1 Corinthians 15 he uses similar language, but he calls Adam the first man, and he calls the Lord Jesus the second man and the last Adam. And you can sense there that he's asking us to stand back from the whole of history and to see the whole of history and to place our own lives within the context of the significance of these two men. It is as though God's plan for the whole of history is tied up on the one hand with Adam and on the other hand with Jesus Christ. And he's saying really, isn't he, if you do not understand the significance of these two individuals, you will neither be able to understand the significance of history, nor will you be able to understand the significance of your own Christian life. It's as though he's saying, Christian, don't you realize you have been brought into something that is far bigger than you ever imagined, far bigger than simply your own coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You have been caught up into the biggest narrative of all.

Now, of course, Paul wrote these words almost two thousand years ago, but isn't it interesting that in our own time, and you hear this at every level, you hear this in the academic level, you hear this in the theological world, you hear it in the general world of political speech, what do people want to know? They're always talking about the narrative, aren't they? Here is the narrative, but they don't often get the narrative right because they don't usually have a big enough narrative. And we're living in a time, of course, when we've lost all sense of personal identity, and so our children at school in many places are being encouraged to state their own identity. In other words, you make yourself up. Now, why would you need to make yourself up? Answer, because you don't know who you are.

If you know who you are, you don't need to make yourself up. If you don't know who you are, if you don't have a bigger narrative than your own decisions, if you don't have a narrative that spans the whole of history, then it is inevitable that you live a destabilized life. And we're now living in a time in the Western world when our younger people are all at sea where governments are spending vast amounts of money, almost incalculable amounts of money, trying to help young people to decide who they are. And the background to that is because we've actually rejected who the Scriptures say we are. Now, this is why it makes such a big difference to be a Christian. And this is also why it's so important for us as Christians not to think of ourselves as isolated individuals, but to see ourselves in the big picture.

And for that reason, it shouldn't really surprise us that Romans 5 verses 12 to 21 is a very dense and complicated passage because Paul is teaching us realities that we're not accustomed to thinking about. And his basic reality is this, the whole of the history of the human race depends on what two men have done, Adam the first man and our Lord Jesus Christ the second man, Adam the first and Adam the last. And you'll see how that's the basic principle that runs through this passage. I think I can, if this is a tapestry of the whole of human history, I think I can put my fingers into the tapestry and do what you should never do with an expensive tapestry. I can pull on three strands and the whole tapestry unravels before us. It's a story about two men, two actions, and two results.

It's as simple as that. Two men, two actions, two results. The two men, well, he introduces them to us. There is the first Adam and there is the last Adam. And the central point of what Paul says here about Adam is he was not just an individual. He was not just an isolated person. He was the first man and he was the head of the whole human race. One could put it this way, he was the father of the whole humanity.

And because he was the father of the whole humanity, he was the representative of the whole of humanity so that whatever he did would have consequences and implications for all of those who belonged to his family. Actually, we're quite accustomed to that thought. Sometimes people say to me, but that's unfair that that should happen. I've never actually met anyone who has inherited a million dollars from their father who said, you know, this whole business about inheritance, it's quite unfair. We shouldn't be doing things like that.

We should be into the business of redistributing wealth. But we all recognize intuitively and instinctively there is something about the way we have been created that involves us in the lives of our parents and involves them in our lives. And Paul is simply setting this before us on a massive scale. He says, there are implications of what our first father did because he was our father.

He was our representative. We belong to him. And therefore, there is an end tale of what Adam did that comes down to us.

But here is the good news. The same is true of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world not simply as another isolated individual, but to be the head, to be the father, we might say, of a completely new humanity. Have you ever wondered about that wonderful prophecy of the Lord Jesus that we read at Christmas time so often? He was the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father. Isn't that a confusion of the persons of the Trinity?

No, it's really an insight into who Jesus was going to be. He was going to be the father of a new humanity, those who would be born again into His kingdom. And because God had so constituted the human race that one man might represent all men, so it was possible in order to recover us from our sinful condition that He would undo what the first man had done by sending a second man and the last Adam, who would be able to represent His people so that everything that He accomplished would not only be His, but because He did not need to do it for Himself, could also be theirs. So, Paul is teaching us, think about the whole story of the human race as a story of two unions. And all of us belong to one union or to the other union.

We're all by nature in Adam. Those who have been born again by God's Spirit have been born again into this new family of which the Father and the Head is the Lord Jesus Christ. So, first of all, there are these two men. Second, he goes on to underscore for us that these two men engaged in two radically different acts. So, on the one hand, he's drawing a comparison. There is a sense in which Adam and Christ are like each other. They are both the father figures of entire races. But he says there is a sense also, an important sense, in which they're radically different from one another.

Their acts are so different. And he wants us to sense that the work of Jesus Christ takes on a luster, especially when you see it against the background of the work of Adam. You men, you remember you're going to the jeweler's shop and what you're thinking about is the ring you're going to buy, and the jeweler comes out with the rings. Did you notice how quickly he slipped a black cloth onto the table?

Why was that? Because when he set the jewel there, whether it was expensive or not so expensive, it looked a lot more expensive against the black cloth. It was like a, wow, you saw the luster of the jewel more clearly against the dark background. And Paul is doing something like that, not by some slight of hand, but by helping us to see that the luster of the work of Jesus Christ shines so brightly when we realize the catastrophe that our first father, Adam, created for all men. And so he says, what did Adam do? And he ransacks the vocabulary of sin. He speaks about Adam's sin. He speaks about his breach of the commandment. He speaks about his trespass.

He speaks about his disobedience. And he says, what you need to grasp is that when he sinned and fell, because he was our father and representative, in him all of us sinned and fell. That is the tragedy of the human condition. This is why we are born into this sick and fallen world as sick and fallen people, because what our first father did had consequences not just for him, but for the whole of humanity. He ruined the family.

I read a fair amount in the history of the 19th century, and every second person who seems to rise up to a position of prominence had a father who virtually ruined the family. And so the son had to get under that ruin and not only live his own successful life, he had to undo the failure, the ruin that his father had caused. And this is what has happened on the other side, says Paul, whereas Adam sinned and disobeyed and broke the command. By contrast, he calls it the one act of righteousness of the one man. But whereas Adam's disobedience lasted for a few seconds and then for the whole course of his life, the obedience of the Lord Jesus that is contrasted with that is an obedience of thirty-three years. Remember how Paul puts it in Philippians 2, how he became obedient, even obedient to death, even obedient to death on the cross. And the whole of his life was heading there, one perfect life lived in perfect obedience to the heavenly Father, to begin to undo the disobedience of our first father, Adam. And he atoned for us, of course, by his death upon the cross. Put simply, where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded. Put simply, where Adam came under condemnation, Jesus went under that condemnation and took it on our behalf and paid the penalty for Adam's failure so that everything we have lost in Adam has been regained for us. Everything that Adam did to turn away from God, Jesus reversed by living this perfect life of obedience and faithfulness. There's a wonderful expression of this in Elgar's oratorio, The Dream of Gerontius, where he uses a poem, a hymn actually, by John Henry Newman.

Some of the verses you don't want to sing, but some of the verses you do want to sing. Praise to the holiest in the height, the hymn is called, and in the depth be praise, and all his works most wonderful, most sure in all his ways. O loving wisdom of our God, when all was sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight, and to the rescue came. All wisest love that flesh and blood that did in Adam fail should strive afresh against the fall, should strive and should prevail.

Two men, two radically different acts and two gloriously different effects. Through Adam's sin entered, and in that sin all sinned. Through Adam's sin reigned, because of Adam all died. But in Jesus Christ, through Jesus Christ, grace entered. Through Jesus Christ, obedience was offered. Through Jesus Christ, atonement was made. Through Jesus Christ, life and grace comes to those who belong to Him. And so says Paul, the wonderful reality is this, that there is a new reign takes place in the lives of those who belong to Jesus Christ, the reign of righteousness, the reign of life, and indeed, the reign of grace.

I think it was Ter Stegen, the hymn writer, who captured what Paul says most perfectly, O Jesus, full of pardoning grace, more full of grace than I have sinned. That is what you discover when you are united to this new head of the new humanity, that there is grace to cover all your sin without exception. That is why such a wonderful thing to be united to Christ.

Amen. It is a wonderful thing to be united to Christ. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and that was Ligonier teaching fellow Sinclair Ferguson from his series, Union with Christ. Each day, Dr. Ferguson has brought a greater depth and level of understanding as he's taught on Union with Christ. Every message has caused me to reflect and refocus my thinking.

And you'll find that in all 12 messages of this series. So I recommend you request your copy of United with Christ at renewingyourmind.org. For your donation of any amount, you'll receive the DVD set plus digital access to the messages and the study guide.

After logging in, you'll be able to easily stream the series in the free Ligonier app or on ligonier.org. So donate today at renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800 435 4343 and discover more about what it means to be united to Christ. Many Christians have memorized 2 Corinthians 517, where Paul tells us that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Dr. Ferguson has already mentioned this verse this week, but he's about to take us on a deep dive about what that means. That's tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind.