War In Your Heart # 53

Victory Through the Second Man At Calvary

Christ Our Provision

Before reading this chapter, would you make a careful and prayerful study of Romans 5:12-21? It may seem like a very difficult and incomprehensible passage of Scripture. So it is until one gets the key which opens the door of the understanding, and then the Spirit's enlightenment floods the passage with light.

By One Man

The key is three words: "By one man," or its shortened equivalent "By one."  

Two Men - Two Adams - Two Acts - Two Races - Two Headships

Two Men: The First and Second Man

1 Corinthians 15:47: The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.

A distinct contrast between these two men both in origin and in nature is revealed. The first man is "of the earth" and is therefore "earthy" in nature. The second Man is "from heaven" and is therefore heavenly in nature. While both were men, they bore distinctive and contrasting marks. The first man, due to his origin and nature, was human, earthly, and natural. The second Man, due to His origin and nature, was divine, heavenly and supernatural. Both men were sinless as the entered into humanity.

Two Adams: The First and the Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45).

Here again we see a vivid contrast between the first and the last Adam. The first Adam is created; he derives his life from another. The last Adam is the Creator; He bestows His life upon others. There is the plain contradistinction between the receiver of life and the Giver of life.

Two Acts - Two Races (Romans 5:19).

The first Adam disobeyed God's clearly declared Word. Adam definitely and deliberately transgressed God's law. In doing so he had become a sinner, for "sin" is the transgression of  the law" (1 John 3:4). The chief characteristic of Adam's sin was disobedience to the expressed will of God. This one act of disobedience had most terrible consequences, not only to himself, but to others. "The many were made sinners": it gave birth to a race of sinners.

The last Adam was the altogether righteous One, who in every detail of His life as man obeyed the law of God. He lived to do the will of God as revealed in the Word of God. In the doing of that will, He was "obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross" (Phil. 2:8). This one act of obedience had most far-reaching and beneficent consequences: "many shall be made righteous"; it gave birth to a race of the righteous.

Two Headships - Adam and Christ (1 Corinthians 15:21, 22).

God deals with the whole human race through two men. Every human being is either "in Adam" or "in Christ." There is no middle ground. There is no such thing as a "No man's land" in spiritual relationships. There are two distinct headships and every member of the human race is in union with either one or the other since the Lord from heaven entered into human life, that He might lay that life down in death upon the Cross and so make provision for a new race of the redeemed. It cannot now be Adam and Christ; it must be either Adam or Christ.

In Adam - the Ruin of the Race

Adam - The Representative Man

Adam was not merely a man, but he was a representative man. He was the father of the human race in creation which was latent in him. What he was, the race was to be in the natural. As a representative man, he stood for the human race in creation.

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 54)