Day 34: Jesus is the Last Adam

So it is written, The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual.

The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. Like the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; like the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. 1 CORINTHIANS 15:45–49

I’VE BEEN MISTAKEN FOR three different country music artists over the years here in Nashville. One time this experience took place when I was wearing a cowboy hat on a bad hair day and a woman followed me around Pier One, determined to get a picture with me because she thought I was Terri Clark. That was the most flattering encounter—for me, not Terri’s fan, who stalked off quite disappointed when I took my hat off and said, “Ma’am, I promise I’m not her.” The least flattering encounter was when a man chased me down in a parking garage yelling excitedly, “Ronnie . . . hey, Ronnie!” When he breathlessly caught up to me, he sputtered, “Well shoot, you’re not Ronnie Milsap!” Neither one of us knew quite what to say for a few seconds. He was disappointed that I wasn’t his favorite singer, and I was even more disappointed that he’d gotten me confused with his favorite male singer.

But by far the most awkward mistaken identity case happened years ago when I helped lead a business leader’s Bible study. Because the gathering took place in the middle of Nashville’s busy downtown area, it was always tricky to find a parking spot every week. I was thrilled when a new pay lot opened up right across the street from where we met at noon on Wednesdays. Although I was a little confused when I stopped to pay the attendant and he saluted me with an enthusiastic, “Hey ho, Miss O!”

It wasn’t until the following week when he winked with friendly familiarity and said something along the lines of, “I’ve been listening to your music a lot since I saw you last Wednesday!” that it registered to me he thought I was a musician. The third week, when I tried to politely explain that he had me confused with another person, he winked and said, “You can trust me, Miss K. T., I won’t tell anyone else you’re parking here!” and waved me off jauntily so he could process the payment of the person behind me. Finally, on the fourth week, I pulled out my driver’s license to prove that I really wasn’t K. T. Oslin—the extremely gifted, three-time Grammy winner with the huge “80’s Ladies” hit song, who just so happened to be twenty years older than me!

If I could choose to be someone’s doppelgänger, it would be a woman closer to my age. And I’m sure if those incredible artists got to choose their own doppelgängers, they wouldn’t have chosen me because I can’t carry a tune in a bucket!

When we hear or read the descriptive theological phrase, “Jesus is the Last Adam,” (some passages and Bible translations also use the term “Second Adam”), it’s easy to assume that awkward vernacular is suggesting our Savior was like Adam—perhaps a better look-alike than I was for Ronnie—but nonetheless, it sounds like the King of all kings has been confused for Eve’s husband, the first human of the entire human race. But it’s so much better than a case of mistaken identity, y’all!

Remember the guy who was a mean-spirited attorney who hated Christians until the Messiah zapped him blind on the road to Damascus and had a literal “come to Jesus” convo with him, after which he became a devout Christ-follower and used his brilliant intellect and transformed heart to write a big chunk of the New Testament, and in so doing to lay the foundation of Christian doctrine (Acts 9)? That’s Paul, and he is the one who came up with the “Last Adam” concept. The basic summation of Paul’s logic is that while “Adam was the representative head of old creation, through whom came death, Christ is the representative man of new creation, through whom comes the resurrection of the dead.”26 Or, said another way, because first Adam led the human race into sin, we are now inheritors of death—meaning our bodies are now all inherited from Adam in perishable form. Our fallen state and decaying bodies are inherited because we belong to Adam. But Jesus came on the scene to undo all that as a new head of humanity, and once we belong to Him, we get the opposite—we inherit life (supernatural, resurrected bodies that are freed from all the fallenness Adam cursed us with).27 Paul’s contrast of the first Adam (who started that whole fig-leaf-pants trend in the garden of Eden) with the Last Adam/King Jesus, goes something like this:

Jesus is not a divine doppelgänger or a new and improved version of the first human. And He’s not some proverbial Hail Mary pass by a team who’s down by six with only seconds left on the clock either. Instead, Jesus was God’s perfect game plan from the very beginning. He is “the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1:15 esv, emphasis mine) through whom redemption happens. Which means He has always been and always will be humanity’s only hope for salvation, resurrection, and immortality forevermore!

• WHAT ASPECT of that first, fig-leaf-wearing Adam’s rebellion can you empathize with? When have you attempted to “hide” from God because you were so ashamed of your bad choices?
• LOOK UP THE word primogeniture. Since most of the ancient world practiced the law of primogeniture, what do you think Paul was trying to illustrate when he described Jesus as “the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1:15 esv)?
• READ ROMANS 8:16–17 and Galatians 3:29. Since Scripture defines those who’ve put their hope in Jesus as “coheirs” with Him, what does that entitle us to?