Our family often vacations on the shores of Lake Superior and one of the activities we commonly engage in is skipping rocks. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan has amazingly flat and smooth sandstone rocks that will skip for a hundred yards or more when the lake is glassy and the person throwing the rocks has a good technique.
Imagine the Gospel narrative (the story of Jesus) as a smooth stone skipping across the sea of scripture and it might look something like this:
Genesis 3:15 (ESV) “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Genesis 3:24 (ESV) “He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Exodus 26:1 (ESV) “Moreover, you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple scarlet yarns; you shall make them with cherubim skillfully worked into them.”
Isaiah 53:11 (ESV) “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see [light] and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”
John 19:30 (ESV) “When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished’, and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”
Matthew 27:50-51 (ESV) "And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from the top to bottom….”
Romans 5:14 (ESV) “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.”
1 Corinthians 15:45&47 (ESV) “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.”
2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV) “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Revelation 7:13–14 (ESV) “Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?’ I said to him, ‘Sir, you know.' And he said to me, ‘These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’”
Revelation 7:15-17 (ESV) “Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
The entire Bible connects through covenants made by God to man, and those covenants all began with Adam.
In The Beginning
As Beeke and Smalley point out, there is a unity that binds all the covenants taught in scripture into one covenant of grace. This means that each covenant builds upon previous covenants and paves the way for a greater fulfillment in Christ. "The word translated as 'covenant' occurs 284 times in the Old Testament and thirty-three times in the New Testament.” “The promises of the covenant are rooted in an arrangement or compact made by God before time began, when no one existed to give or receive promises except the three persons of the Trinity (Titus 1:2).” (Beeke& Smalley, 111)
When we speak of covenants, from a hermeneutical perspective we are also looking for connected narratives, or Meta-narratives that connect all of scripture through each respective covenant. When we talk about Adam in theology, we are talking about a convent made with Adam, but we are also talking about the story or narrative of Adam in all humanity that connects us to Jesus Christ, whom the Bible calls “the second Adam” or “the greater Adam”. From the very beginning, God had a different plan for Adam from all the rest of creation. Genesis 1:26–28 says,
"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'"
Notice the Trinitarian language in the pluralized use of “us” as God speaks. This means that Jesus was involved with God’s plan for mankind from the very beginning. Jesus was involved in creating the very flesh that He would one day be wrapped in as a baby. This is what John the Apostle was speaking about when he wrote these words in John 1:1–5--
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."
The Adam Narrative
What is the Adam Narrative? We are descendants of the original Adam who have been redeemed by the second and greater Adam to save us from the death and destruction of the original Adam. We have to recognize the frailty of the first Adam that resides in us through sin. The first Adam is the original nature of sin that resides in us. This is the part of us that fights the sanctification process. If you are sick of the sin inside you, you are in good company. Paul talked about his own frustration with his Adamic nature in Romans 7 when he talked about the struggle to do right and not to do wrong. We have to recognize that through faith, the power of the second Adam that resides in us through salvation. The process of living for God is really about modeling our life after the second Adam, and not the first Adam. Sanctification is about allowing our Spiritual DNA to affect and change our physical DNA.
Through faith, the power of the second Adam resides in us through salvation.
Philippians 2:1–2 says,
"So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind."
What is this “mind” we are to share? It is the mind of our new nature (2nd Adam nature) rooted in the Holy Spirit. When we do function from the DNA of the second Adam, what does that look like in our day to day lives? Again, it looks like having the mind of Christ; look at the next verses in Philippians 2:
"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men."
Active & Passive Obedience
These verses articulate for us very clearly Christ’s active obedience in surrendering to and executing God’s command to become a human and keep the law obediently. These verses allude to what theologians call the “hypostatic union” of Christ, in that Jesus was fully divine as part of the Trinity, but also fully human through his birth into humanity. In theological terms: “The hypostatic union of the incarnation is not a union of essence, such as the oneness of the Trinity, in which all three persons share one divine nature; a union of grace, such as the oneness of Christ and his people; a union of relationship, such as the union between two friends; or a temporary, instrumental union, such as a man wearing clothing or angels assuming temporary physical form. The hypostatic union is a personal union, such that two natures are joined in one person without change, separation, or confusion” (Perkins, 91). William Ames stated: “We may understand that this union exists in Christ, but we cannot fully comprehend it or explain it" (Ames, 35). When people try to explain the Trinity, every illustration falls short. To explain that Jesus was fully divine and human, all-powerful and yet emptied of that power in moments of frailty, we cannot explain it. Jesus, as fully God, was omniscient, and yet he admits in Matthew 24 that he doesn’t know the specific dates of his return! How? In answer to this question I once again offer you Elisabeth Elliot's wonderful wisdom: “A God small enough to be understood is not big enough to be worshiped" (Elliot, 91).
Philippians 2:8-11 continues,
"And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
This verse reminds us of Christ’s passive obedience. Jesus, who made man in His own image, took on the image of the very man He created so that He might redeem the image of man and restore it fully back to God’s image. Don’t forget that Jesus exercised both an active obedience in following God’s plan, and a passive obedience in surrendering to the sacrificial death the plan required. Christ’s active obedience kept the law, and Christ’s passive obedience settled the debt of the law we have already broken! So what do we do with this knowledge? That is the question Paul is leading us toward in this Christology lesson.
Philippians 2:12-13 says,
"Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure."
Our goal with the knowledge of the Gospel is to continue to see evidence of the second Adam in us through the changes that occur in how we use the DNA of the first Adam that we have inherited. This process of sanctification is seen in how we exercise our faith. Faith is a process in that it is being strengthened; faith is a finality in that it is the essence and evidence of hope and heaven. Preaching the Gospel to myself daily captures the finality and infuses it into the process.
Jesus exercised both an active obedience in following God’s plan, and a passive obedience in surrendering to the sacrificial death the plan required.
A Process And A Finality
Faith is a process: I’m becoming less and less like the first Adam, and more and more like the second Adam. We call this sanctification. Faith is also a finality in that I have been promised, through the victory of Jesus (the Yes and Amen) that I will reach heaven and my sin will be finally eradicated. (This is what theologians call “inaugurated eschatology”, from whence we get the idea of our “already, not-yet” status as sanctified believers.) Preaching the Gospel looks like informing my first Adam DNA about the victory of the Second Adam DNA that has been granted to me through salvation.
References
Ames, The Marrow of Theology, 1.18.18, 20 (130); and A Sketch of the Christian’s Catechism, 35. Quoted from Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology Vol. 2, 795
Joel R. Beeke, Paul M. Smalley. Reformed Systematic Theology, Vol. 1 (Crossway, Wheaton, Ill. 2019)
Perkins, An Exposition of the Symbol, in Works, 5:127; Wollebius, Copmpendium, 1.16.(4).iii (91); and Turretin, Institutes, 13.6.3 (2:311). Quoted from Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology Vol. 2, (Crossway. Wheaton, Ill. 2020)
Elisabeth Elliot, Secure in the Everlasting Arms, (Revell, 2002) 91. Sourced from https://gracequotes.org/
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