Luke 3:38. the son of Adam, the son of God.
Adam is more than just a first name. The word Adam means human or mankind. When God created Adam he was creating a new race – the human race. If we look closely in Genesis we see that both the man and the woman were called Adam, or human. Both were in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27). The image and likeness of Jesus.
Jesus is THE eternal image of God (Col. 1:15). He is the eternal Son of God who is eternally begotten (not created) by God. Before the creation of time and space Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God. Before he became the creation, Jesus manifested God to man in the form of the creation. He was in the burning bush and Shekinah Glory cloud. He was worshiped as the Angel of the Lord, and the fourth man in the fiery furnace.
But Jesus being the proto-image of God is not enough to save us. So at his first advent Jesus, the eternal Son of God, became the son of Adam, the son of God. What grace. What humility. Jesus took on the image of the man who was created to image him. He became the likeness of the servant who was created to serve him. He became the son of his son. The one who is the first and the last became the Second Adam. Why? So that he might take our place in living and in dying. Living for mankind in all righteousness, and dying for mankind in all sinfulness. Then gloriously living again, defeating sin and death, and rising to Heaven to reign as the Son of God and Son of Adam forever sharing his life giving spirit with all who would place their trust in him.
1 Corinthians 15:45. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
In becoming us he will save us. In becoming the son of Adam he will become the new Adam, the father of a new eternal, spiritual race. In becoming the son of man, he will make us sons of God, bearing his likeness, and imitating his grace. In becoming flesh, he will become our life giving spirit, placing in us the Spirit of God who can now join with our spirit and cry out “Abba Father.” Sons and daughters of Adam and Eve now brothers and sisters in Christ. Co-heirs of his kingdom. Image bearers of our God.
This is the true meaning of Christmas, not simply the brotherhood of man by our own power, but the brotherhood of Christ and man by his divine power. It is only when we trust our union with Christ that we will experience his peace on Earth. And it is only when we see that “good will to man” is the man Christ Jesus that we will experience the grace of our union with God.
May you find peace and good will in the Last Adam today.
Questions.
Do you see yourself as the image of Jesus? Are you trying to manufacture peace and good will this Christmas, or are you looking to the person of Christ for these things?
To Live is Christ 