Two Men, Two Humanities

The Creation Account, Adam, and the Doctrine of Salvation

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles, turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. And we're going to be looking at verse 45 to 49 title today is two men, two humanities beginning at verse 45 it says, thus it is written.

The first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust.

The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust. So also are those who are of the dust and as is the man of heaven. So also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust.

We shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. And Lord, now, as I seek to give an exposition of it, Lord, I pray that it would not just be an exercise in the intellect, though I do pray that it would challenge the intellect.

I pray, Lord, that it would also go through the ear into the mind and that it would reach down into the heart. And Lord, that it would challenge us at the very center of our very being, that it would challenge us and how we understand you and how we understand your salvation and how we understand where we stand as being either still fallen sons and daughters of Adam or Lord, that we have moved from death to life as those who have been reborn in the image of your son.

So, Father, I pray that you would keep me from error as I preach, as I certainly am a fallible man and capable of error. And for the sake of your name and for the sake of your people and for the sake of my own conscience, I pray that you would keep me from error.

I pray also, Lord, that the word of God would go forth to the ears of everyone and Lord, to the believer, that they would be challenged, that they would be convicted, that they might even be drawn to a point of repentance if needed.

But Lord, for the one who has come today, maybe many who have come today who do not know you, Lord, maybe it is because they have simply not bowed the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. They know who he is, they know his claims, and yet they have not yet recognized him as their own Lord and Savior.

Lord, today, let it be the day, a day of reckoning for the soul, that we might see your miracle of regeneration in the hearts of people. Lord, this is our prayer in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated.

One of the most intriguing sections of the Bible is the account of man's creation. This account has inspired beautiful works of art, endless speculation and much heated debate. Some see it as nothing more than primitive man's attempt at explaining the world around him.

Others see it as an allegorical expression of a more natural set of circumstances. And yet in our text today, Paul makes it obvious that he understands the creation account as given in the book of Genesis to be absolutely literal and absolutely vital to his understanding of the doctrine of salvation, for he talks of Adam as a real person and as being the first man.

And then he talks of Christ as being a new and better Adam. So this is our text for today, and this section, of course, is not without a context. For those of you who are welcome new folks with us today, we preach verse by verse through the Bible.

And so we are here at this text because this is where we left off last week. And to ensure that you understand the context of where we are, I just want to remind you that this section comes on the heels of a question and the question is on the nature of the resurrection.

And the question is essentially this. How does the resurrection work? Look back with me at verse 35. Paul says, but someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? That's the question that starts this section.

What is this resurrection? Paul has already proven beginning back at verse 12 that the resurrection is necessary for Christian belief. It is a necessary belief. If you do not believe in the resurrection of Christ, you're not a Christian because the resurrection of Christ is the very foundational stone upon which everything else is built.

He said, if you do not believe in the resurrection, you are of most men to be pitied because you're believing in something that has no value if there is no resurrection. And then he comes to this verse 35 and he says, but what of the resurrection?

How does it work with what kind of body will we be raised? How does this function? And as we talked about last week, Paul gives the principle of continuity versus discontinuity, continuity and that it's the same body that goes into the ground that will be raised, but it's a discontinuity and that that same body does not stay the same.

But that same body that's put into the ground is raised a new body. A glorious body. In fact, that's the term that the Bible uses. It uses the term glorified. He who has been predestined will be or whom he predestined.

He called whom he called. He justified whom he justified. He glorified Romans chapter eight says glorification is the goal. That's what we look forward to. This body will be glorified. Well, our passage today, verse 45 to 48, comes at the end of this explanation and it functions somewhat as an illustration.

Paul says there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body, the natural body goes into the ground, the spiritual body comes out of the ground. This is what we see in verse 44. It is sown a natural body.

It is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is a spiritual body. That's verse 44. Then he goes on to talk about the illustration of this. He says we have a prototype for the natural.

The prototype for the natural is Adam. He says we have a prototype for the spiritual body, the prototype for the spiritual body is the resurrected Christ. So we have the prototype one, Adam. We have the prototype to Christ.

And this is the illustration of the promise that we have a natural body and we will have a spiritual body. So now that we understand the context, I want to dig in a little further into how Paul enunciates this truth.

And I broke it into two parts. I didn't put the notes in your bulletin today. I'm sorry I didn't have them completed, completed completely. I didn't have them completed by the time the bulletin was printed.

But I have got them on the screen. And so if you would like to look in just a moment, we'll put them up for you. But essentially, the sermon is two parts. We're going to first look at two men and then we're going to look at two humanities.

So let's look first at the two men. This begins in verse 45. We're going to see their identity, their quality, their chronology and their source. The two men. Look with me again at verse 45. Thus it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being.

The last, Adam, became a life giving spirit, but is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven.

There we have two men, but they're not identified. Adam is identified, but Christ is not. So we have to identify them. And first we look at Adam. It says the first man, Adam. Actually, it says thus it is written.

Where is it? Anytime you see in the New Testament, thus it is written, we should know what passage that's pointing back to. And the passage this is pointing back to is Genesis chapter two and verse seven.

What happened in Genesis chapter two? The creation of man. If you walk through the creation days of Genesis chapter one, it tells us about what happened on the first day, the second day, the third day, all the way down to the sixth day.

And it doesn't tell us how it happened. It simply says that God created the animals of the earth and he created man and woman on the sixth day. But then in chapter two, we get a elongated version of that same story, the longer retelling of the creation of man, where he talks about the fact that he formed man out of the dust of the ground.

And in Genesis chapter two and verse seven, it tells us the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became, and it depends on your translation, the ESV says the man became a living creature.

But in the King James Bible, it says man became a living soul. It says a man became a living soul. Now, I want to just before we get to that word soul, I want to point something out in this passage in first Corinthians 15.

Notice it says the first man, Adam. That's interesting because the word there, Protos Anthropos, first man, reminds us of an important truth. And again, nothing in the Bible is here by accident. Nothing is here useless.

There are no flippant words or just things that don't have value. So when, by the way, the word man in Hebrew is the word Adam. Hadam is man, so we call Adam, Adam, he's man, right? But in this sense, Paul says it a little differently.

He doesn't say the first Adam. He says the first man, Adam. To indicate to us a very important truth, there were no men before Adam. There was no one who preceded Adam. In fact, Dr. Henry Morris, in his sermon on this particular text, he said there were no pre-Adamic men.

The human race had one single starting point. There's a belief called theistic evolution. Theistic evolution tries to marry the evolutionary model that is taken by most naturalists to the biblical model of spontaneous creation.

The biblical model is what we would call immediate spontaneous creation. And they tried to marry those two together and create a longer creative process where God used the process of evolution to create man over a very long period of time.

In fact, I'll quote to you from Biologos. Biologos is a creation or an evolutionary theistic site. They believe in evolution and yet they claim to believe the Bible. This is what they say. Evolutionary creation accepts that humans share ancestry with all other forms of life and that our species arose as a population, not through a single primal pair.

Hear it again. Our species arose as a population, not as a single primal pair. What does that mean? Well, we're not all sons of Adam. We could be sons of someone else. We could be sons of another pair.

We could be sons of another ancestor. And yet Paul is very clear in this passage that Adam is the first man. In fact, if you go back to Genesis, you don't have to. But if you want to just make a note of this in Genesis chapter three, verse 20.

It says the man called his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living. So not only does Paul tell us in first Corinthians 15 that Adam is the first man. Genesis tells us Eve is the mother of all people.

We have no biblical warrant to believe in any type of evolutionary theistic view that would make man the product of some type of overflow of long distance time and change of the species. Man was created as man in the image of God, in the hands of God.

And God breathed into him the breath of life. This is the view we have in scripture. There is the first man, Adam. And we, as a result, bear a very special relationship to that man. That man, Adam, is the father of the whole human race.

Adam is our ancestor. We're all to us, we're all of us to grab hold of the hand of our most nearest ancestor. And that person grabbed hold of the hand of his nearest ancestor. And we were able to walk back in time.

The evolutionists would say eventually we'd be holding hands with a monkey. But the Bible says if you were to grab the hand of your ancestor and he were to grab the hand of his nearest ancestor and on and on and on, eventually you'd be holding hands with Adam.

That's the difference in the biblical model. Are we holding hands with Adam or are we holding hands with some type of primeval ape like ancestor? The biblical answer is it is Adam. He is the father of the human race.

And as a result of that, he is also the federal head of the human race. What does that mean? Well, I explained this a few weeks ago. I don't want to spend all the time on it today. But federal headship from a biblical perspective simply means this.

He represented us in his action, much like we have a federal government now. And when our president does something, whether it be good or bad, he is doing it on our behalf. If the president makes an action that causes us to go to war, we all go to war.

If the president does something that benefits us financially, it benefits everyone. He's an actor who's acting on behalf of his people. Adam had a people. In fact, the Bible says we were present in him when he acted.

We are his people. We were present, not physically, but in the sense that we were his progeny. We were all of the DNA that makes up all of us was there in Adam. All of the generous diversity of humanity is found in the DNA of Adam.

And it spread out over the whole earth. And he became our representative. This is why 1 Corinthians 15, 22 earlier said, for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. Why do we die in Adam?

Because Adam sinned. And when Adam sinned, he sinned on our behalf. When Adam sinned, he took the whole human race. In fact, he took the whole world into sin with him. He acted not only as our father, but as our representative.

Adam was the first man acting on behalf of his children. But now we see in the text, the second part of the text, it says the first man, Adam, but it also says in a few words down, it says the last Adam.

The last Adam refers to Jesus Christ. It doesn't say his name, but we don't have to wonder who he is, because Paul has in other places made it very clear that when he talks about the first Adam, he's talking about the original man.

But when he talks about the last Adam, he's talking about Christ. And this is actually a rabbinic term. It was a term the rabbis used for the Messiah. When they talked about the Messiah, they would they would call him the last Adam.

And what was what was Paul before he became the apostle Paul? He was a Pharisee, he was a rabbi, he was a teacher. He would have been very familiar with the language of the Jewish people. He would have been familiar with this term last Adam.

But that rises a question. Why is he called Adam and why the last Adam? Why those terms? Well, the answer is this. There is a direct link between Adam and Christ in their relationship to mankind. Adam had the role of humanity's representative.

Jesus also has the role of humanity's representative. Adam represents everyone that is in him. And by the way, that's everyone. Because if you've been born, you bear the you're part of his family. Jesus represents everyone who is in him.

But here's the kick. You don't get to be in Jesus just because you're born. You have to be born again. See, your first birth gets you into the first family. Your second birth gets you into the second family.

That's the difference. So while we could say all men are in Adam by nature, not all men are in Christ by nature. Jesus represents all that are in him. And by the way, this is why the designation last is given.

He's the last Adam, because there's not going to be another one. There's not going to be a third option. There's not going to be another Adam who comes along one day and says, OK, you can come be in me and be safe.

You can come be in me and be saved. No, there was the first Adam who brought death. There was the second Adam, the last Adam who brought life. And by the way, the word second is used later in the text.

And I think the reason why second is used and last is the reason why it's called the last Adam is to prove there's not going to be more. And the reason why it's called second is to prove there wasn't any before.

There's only one step between the first Adam and the second Adam. And the second Adam is the last Adam. Am I getting that not real hard? But you understand that's why it's not like there was there was one and then a whole bunch more and then the last.

No, there was one and two and two is the last. So we have two men. And their identity is two representatives. Adam represents everyone in him. Christ represents everyone in him. Now let's look at their quality.

We've seen their identity. Let's look now at their quality. It says the first man, Adam, became a living soul. But the last man, Adam, became a life giving spirit. I want to tell you, this is the part of the passage that I spent the most time with really trying to flesh out.

You know, my job is to teach and preach the word of God and to seek an understanding. And I only tell you that because I think to rightly understand this section takes a little bit of understanding of the original language.

And I don't throw out original language words just to make myself sound erudite or anything like that. It's simply important to understand that there are there are words that are being used here that in English to us, oftentimes people equate the soul and the spirit is the same thing.

And in the Bible, there are times where soul and spirit are equated as the same thing in Luke one forty six. Mary, she says, my soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit exalts in Christ and in the Lord. You know, she's she's equating soul and spirit there.

And in Isaiah 26, he says, my soul yearns in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks. That's a time when we see a connection between soul and spirit. And yet there are times where we see a disconnect between soul and spirit.

We see in Luke one or rather in First Thessalonians five. It says, may the Lord of peace himself sanctify you completely. And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless. And then Hebrews, it talks about the word of God being able to separate what soul and spirit.

Right. So so there are times where it seems like there's a disconnect. Sometimes it seems like they're connected. And so it's a little difficult. And like I said, I don't want to get bogged down in this, but I want to share with you when when interpretive challenges come up, because what does it mean when it says Adam was a soul and Christ was a spirit?

And Adam was a living soul, but Christ was a life giving spirit. And see, the ESV kind of solves the issue because the ESV took out the word soul. And the ESV, it says this, it says he became a living being.

And if you don't see the word soul, maybe it doesn't cause any problems. But it's still there. The word in Greek is psuche. It's where we get the word psyche. But in Greek for spirit, the word is panuma or the spirit.

It's where we get the word air. The word pneumatic comes from that pneumatic tools, pneumatic tires, right? Air filled things. So what's the difference? Don't don't check out on me, please. It's important.

What Paul is distinguishing, at least this is where I've arrived in my understanding, what Paul is distinguishing here is the fact that when Adam was created, Adam was created as a living creature, he was created as a living being.

But when Christ arose, he was a spiritual being. And so the difference is the difference between the natural and the spiritual. The word that is used here in the Hebrew, nefesh, when it says in Genesis 2, 7, he was breathed into his breath and he became a living being.

Nefesh means living. That same word is used of the animals. They were living creatures and they were called the nefesh or the living creatures. Adam had one thing that distinguished him from the animals.

What was the image of God? I would say is the image of God. That's the distinction, right? Because the animals, they live, but they don't have the image of God and they don't have the same type of soul.

I would say that, yeah, they don't have the same type of soul. Adam has a has an ability to have a connection with God that animals don't have. You agree? I've said this before. You all heard a little joke.

Nobody ever sees cows worshiping. You don't walk out to the farm and see moo. You don't see that. You don't see elephants gathering around each other around a temple celebrating the God of the elephants.

We're the only animal. And when I say animal, you be careful because I'm not saying man or animal in the same way. But what I am saying is this, the nefesh, the living being, the animals are living beings, but we're different.

We have the image of God stamped upon us. It makes us different. We have a relationship with God that's different. What happened when Adam sinned? He died spiritually. He died spiritually. So here we have a natural man.

Christ is the spiritual man. Here we have the natural. Every one of us is born natural. You realize you're born dead? I don't mean that in a crass way. I mean that in a spiritual way. You were born dead and trespasses and sin.

You're born D .O .A., dead on arrival. It is only when the Spirit of God quickens your soul that you become alive to Christ. You're not born that way. You're born again that way. So what does Adam represent?

He represents that naturalness. Christ represents the supernatural. Adam represents the animalistic. Christ represents the angelic. Now, you might not like that term. Let me just explain what I mean. The natural versus the spiritual.

Adam represents natural life. Christ represents spiritual life. That's the picture, which is why it says he became a living soul. Yes, he was a living soul. But Christ became much more than that. He became a life giving spirit and he gives spiritual life to those whom he chooses.

The Holy Spirit of God comes down from heaven and makes his abode in your heart. That's the life giving part. Christ is spiritual man and he gives spiritual life to you. God can give you his death because he's natural man.

Christ can give you life because he is spiritual man. You see the difference? That's the distinction. What's interesting is the word became here. It says Adam became a living soul. When did he become a living soul?

When God breathed into him. But it also says Christ became a life giving spirit. When did that happen? Well, in keeping with the context, I would argue that it happened at the resurrection. Was Christ always a life giving spirit?

Yes, he's always been God. He's God in the flesh. But what happened at the resurrection? Change. He went from a body like Adam's to a spiritual body. Did Christ have a body like Adam's? Well, in the sense that he was human, right?

He was human. He wasn't the offspring of Adam. He was offspring of the Holy Spirit. But he had a human body, a real human body. But when he came out of the grave, he had a glorified spiritual body. And that glorified spiritual body was different.

And that's when I think it says when he became a life giving spirit. I think that's what because we know Christ never became in the sense that he was never created. Christ has always been. We have to be careful with our Trinitarian theology there.

If we believe Christ was created at some point in time, we're no longer Trinitarians, right? But he did become the life giving spirit at the resurrection, the spiritual man, the spiritual man. And so this is what I think the passage is saying when it says the first Adam became a living soul.

The last Adam became a life giving spirit. And then we see their chronology. This is the third thing I want to show you. The chronology. Not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, then the spiritual.

Now, this is simply an argument for time. Who came first, Adam or Jesus? Well, Jesus came first spiritually, but who came first physically? Adam was the first physical man. He was the natural man. And that's the argument.

The natural comes first. Then the spiritual. And you say, well, what does that matter? Pastor, why would you even bring up that? Well, one, it's in the Bible, so it matters. But also it matters in this sense.

This chronology of natural to spiritual is giving us a picture of our chronology because we begin in the natural. Then we become spiritual, not the other way around. Nobody's born spiritual. The only person who ever had a shot at being born saved was John the Baptist.

If he was saved in the womb. And that's possible because he leapt at the at the hearing of the coming of Jesus. Some people believe he was regenerated in the womb. And I'm not going to argue that point right now.

But that's the closest I can get. Everybody else is born. They're dead in sin and only they're natural until the time that they become born again. And here's the neat thing about that, even when you're born again, you're still in a natural body.

You know what you have? You have a living heart inside of a dead body. That's why you have fight. That's why you fight with the flesh. Because you got a you got a body that's flesh, but you got a heart that lives for Christ.

The Bible says God took out your heart of stone and he gave you a heart of flesh. But you still got this body that you battle with. All right. One day you won't. One day the new heart is going to get a new body.

Amen. That's that's exciting. That's the that's the good part. Because right now you got Adam's body and you got the spirit living in Adam's body. I want to look quickly at the source. It's the last part of this.

Then we'll move to the second point. First man was from the earth. The second man was from heaven. Notice it says he was from dust and the ESV, it says from the dust. He was a man of dust. Adam was made of the dust.

What made him special? God's image. And apart from the image of God, he wouldn't have been any more different than the animals. But he was made in the image of God. He was made different. But Jesus is not from the dust.

Jesus is not from the dust. He is not the fallen son of Adam. He is the glorious son of God. Jesus said many times he came down from heaven. Remember Jesus saying that I have come down from heaven. Jesus did not wonder where he was from.

Jesus knew he was from the father. He called God his father and he knew where he was from. And he said, I have come down from heaven. And that's a reference to his virgin birth. Jesus came down from heaven.

He was born of a virgin. He was the eternal son of God incarnate. So you have two Adams now. You have the first Adam made by the hand of God, created from the dust, breathed into him. So he became a man.

The second Adam, the Holy Spirit of God, reached into the womb of a virgin and produced the seed necessary to produce a child. That wouldn't bear the sin of Adam, but would have now his own nature, sinless from birth.

Not carrying the sin of his father, Adam, because Adam was not his father, God was his father. And now he's born the new Adam. He is from heaven, not from the earth. Adam is collected from the dust of the ground.

Jesus comes from the clouds of heaven into the womb of the virgin. That's the source. That's the difference in the two men. So now we've seen the two men, Adam and Jesus. They are prototypes of two humanities.

I mentioned Adam was a representative. So was Jesus. Adam represents all humanity in their death. Jesus represents believers in their salvation. Now let's look at those two humanities. Verse 48. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust.

As is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, so we also shall bear the image of the man of heaven. I don't have four points this time.

I only have two. Don't get too nervous. They're shorter than the last one. I want to look at their quality in their image, because that's what he says here. First, their quality. He says, as was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust.

As was the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Every person born of Adam bears the marks of being born of Adam. Every natural man bears the marks of being natural. You have natural limitations, do you not?

You have natural instincts, don't you? They're not always godly, but they're there. You have natural needs, urges. That's bearing the marks of being the natural man. Likewise, everyone born again, literally, in John 3 where Jesus said, unless a man be born again, literally could be translated born from above.

Everyone born from above bears the marks of being born from above. And this is an important point, because let me ask you this. Do you have heavenly affections? Do you have heavenly desires? Do you have heavenly needs?

Because that's the marks of being born of the man from heaven. See, if all we have are the natural, natural desires and natural wants and natural lusts, but we don't have heavenly affections, heavenly desires and heavenly needs.

I would say, why not? The new heart has new needs. There is, listen to this, there is a qualitative difference between those who have been born once and those who have been born twice. There is a qualitative difference between those who've been born and those who've been born again.

You say, Pastor, are you saying people who are born again are better than unbelievers? Let me say this, we are being made better because we are being conformed to the image of Christ. That doesn't mean we don't struggle, we don't battle and we don't fail.

But if you don't see a change in your life from when you were natural to when you're spiritual, if you don't see a change in your life from the time that you weren't in Christ to the time that you are in Christ.

I would have to ask you, why do you think you're in Christ? I mean, why would you imagine yourself to be in Him if Him being in you hasn't changed you? There is a qualitative difference between being born once and born twice.

Now again, if you are seeing that difference, it's God working in you. You know, the Bible says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure.

It's not you, so you can't be prideful, you can't boast about it, you can't go around saying, look what I did, it's God working in you. But if God's not working in you, you got to ask yourself, why? So that's the qualitative difference.

But now let's look at the difference in the image. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, so we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. Now that word bearing image, we're familiar with it, right?

I already talked about it, Genesis chapter 2, or actually Genesis 1, 26 and 27. It says, He created them in the image of God. Man and woman were created in the image of God. But you also bear another image.

You bear the image of God because you were created by God, but you bear another image. You bear the image of your father. Either you bear the image of Adam. Or you bear the image of Christ. Let me say that different, the image of your representative.

Let me tell you the difference. The image of Adam is fallen and corrupt. The image of Christ is exalted and incorruptible. The image of Adam is natural and bound. The image of Christ is spiritual and free.

The image of Adam is burdened and broken. The image of Christ is loosened and whole. The image of Adam is mortal and frail. The image of Christ is immortal and strong. When we were in Adam, and in a sense, we are in this flesh, still in Adam's flesh.

But when we were born in Adam, we had the heart of stone. God gave us a heart of flesh when we came to know Christ. And now we look forward to waiting for that new body. And that's when we shall fully bear the image of Christ.

In fact, I'm going to read a scripture to you. 1 John 3, verse 2. Beloved, we are God's children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him. So right now we have a new heart and old flesh.

But one day, one day, we will have a new body. New heart, spiritual heart, new body, spiritual body. As we have borne the image of the man of dust, so shall we also bear the image of the man of heaven.

That's the promise to all who have Christ. This concept of two humanities is a vital truth to comprehend. You have to get this because this concept really draws the line that matters in this world. So many people find foolish things over which to separate.

We draw lines all the time. We draw racial lines. We draw geographical lines. We draw social lines, economic lines. We're constantly encouraged to find ways to categorize and to separate people. But I want to tell you this morning, the only divide that's going to matter is not what you look like.

Not how much money you have. Not whether you lived in a penthouse or a house with an outhouse. The only divide that's going to matter is are you an Adam or are you in Christ? The whole world was born into one humanity.