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Transcript 034A — How is Christ the "Second Adam"? [1 Cor 15:47]
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: For the past couple of weeks I've heard a term used relating to Christ, and I was wondering if you could explain to me where it comes from. And the term is referring to Christ as the second Adam. Where does that come from?
HC: In Romans 5, we find in verse 14: "Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who is to come." That isn't the verse. It's either in Romans 5 or 6, or perhaps in I Corinthians 15.
Yes, I think this is the reference. In I Corinthians 15:45 we read: "The first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life giving spirit. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from Heaven." I think that is the reference.
CALLER: I was just wondering because I hadn't heard it too often.
HC: Yes. You see, the reason it's used this way is that Adam came as the head of the human race, to begin the human race. And in order to establish and prove his right to rule, he had to be completely obedient to God and be sure that he would not disobey if he were threatened in any way. And of course Satan came to threaten him, as the angel Lucifer back there in the Garden of Eden, and Adam fell. And the whole human race and the world was plunged under the curse of sin.
Now Christ came as the last Adam, to establish a race, to wrench the kingdom of this world from Satan. And He also had to walk the same path. He had to be completely obedient. He also was to be tempted, just like the first Adam was. And the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness to be tempted.
Of course His task was infinitely greater than that of the first Adam, because He also had to redeem this world from the curse of sin. The world of Adam's day was not under the curse of sin. But He had to make atonement for all of the sins that had taken place during the intervening 11,000 years and going all the way to the present time.
And so Christ as the last Adam had a far more formidable task. But in a real sense His mission was very much akin to that of Adam in the Garden of Eden – to prove His right to rule by His perfect obedience – and to do this in the face of the most difficult kind of temptation.