Alan Lewis
Elon, North Carolina
November 2024
For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (I Corinthians 15:21-22 NIV)
45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven.
48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man. (I Corinthians 15:45-49 NIV)
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16
Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:12-19 NIV)
Who is Jesus? According to the Bible, He is our Lord and Savior. He is God. He is the Son of David. He is the Son of God. He is the Messiah. Today, we are going to see two more titles of Jesus.
In I Corinthians 15, Paul calls Jesus “the last Adam” (I Corinthians 15:45). He also calls him “the heavenly man” (I Corinthians 15:49). Paul is the only one who gives Jesus these titles and they are only found in I Corinthians 15.
Today, we are going to look at the tale of two men. We are going to learn about Adam and Jesus. Adam is a type of Jesus. We are going to see the tale of the two Adams. It is the tale of two representatives. It is the tale of two leaders.
It is the tale of two heads. There are two heads of the human race. Adam is the head of one group of people. Jesus is the head of another group of people.
These two Adams sum up the story of the whole human race. They represent the rise and fall of the human race. One Adam destroyed the race, and the other one restored it. One broke it and fixed it.
Paul describes two men, two deeds and two destinies. He describes two men, two actions and two outcomes. They do different things, and it leads to two different results. One leads to death and the other to life.
This topic is fascinating. We are going to look at the story of these two Adams. We are going to look at how we fit into the picture. We are going to look at how this applies to us today and what it means for us.
The First Adam
Who was the first Adam? What do we know about him? This is a basic summary.
1) Adam was a real person
Was Adam a historical person? Was he as real as people in the history books? Was he as real as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln?
Many say that Adam and Eve never existed. They are myths. They are fairy tales. They sound like complete fiction.
The Book of Genesis describes a man and a woman living in a perfect world with a talking snake and some magical trees which confer special knowledge and even immortality.
You have a world with perfect people in it and God walking around in it and talking to people on a daily basis. It is a world with visible angels in it with flaming swords, guarding the entrance to Eden. This world had armed angelic security guards.
Were Adam and Eve real people? Does it matter if they were real people? If Adam and Eve are not real, then the Bible is not true.
If they are not real, then there is no Fall. All of Christianity hinges on a literal Adam and Eve. If there is no Fall, there is no need for a Savior to come.
In fact, the inspiration of the Bible hinges on a historical Adam and Eve. The Bible describes a literal Adam and Eve. How do we know that Adam was real?
Paul believed Adam was real. Paul called him “the first man” (I Corinthians 15:45 NIV). He compared Jesus to Adam. Jesus is the last Adam.
If Jesus was historical, the first Adam must have been as well. Paul is not comparing Jesus to some fairy tale but to a real man.
Paul builds theological arguments in his epistles about the role of women based on a historical Adam. He is not basing a big theological argument on a complete fairy tale.
Jesus also believed in a real Adam. He used the life of Adam and Eve to teach morality. He went back to the marriage of Adam and Eve and compared it to marriages today in Matthew 19 & Mark 10.
In fact, in Luke 3, Jesus’ genealogy goes all the way back to Adam (Luke 3:38). All of the other people in the genealogy were real people. Adam was as well.
The story of Adam and Eve is found in a historical book. The Book of Genesis is historical. It is a book of history.
It describes the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. No one disputes that they were real people. It also describes in the same book the life of Adam and Eve.
2) Adam had a humble origin
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7 NIV)
Paul said that the first Adam came from earth. He was formed from the earth. After he died, he returned to the earth and so do we. Adam was created from dust.
He was created from soil. He was created from dirt. He was created from mud. God had to breathe into his nostrils. It took supernatural breath to bring life into Adam. He was a lifeless corpse.
He was empty and lifeless without the breath of God and so are we.[1] Adam became living, because God breathed on him.
What does that tell us? It tells us that human life did not happen naturally. It happened supernatural. It began with the breath of God. Evolution teaches that life happens naturally.
God is not needed for the process to occur. That is NOT what we see in Genesis. Adam would not have come to life unless God breathed on him supernaturally.
It is also interesting that Adam was formed from the dust of the ground and NOT from an animal. He did not evolve from another animal. He did not evolve from an apelike creature.
He was created from dust or dirt. Dirt is non-living. It is inorganic. That is significant. Adam was real and he was created from dirt. There is a play on words in Hebrew for the name “Adam” and the word for “ground”
The word Adam is ah-DAHM. The word ground is ah-dah-MAH. God made ah-DAHM from the ah-dah-MAH. Ah-dah-MAH is dirt. Ah-DAHM is a dirt person.
3) Adam was the first man
He was the first man. The million question everyone wants to know is, What color was the first man? Was he black? Was he white? The word Adam means red.
That is most likely a reference to the red clay dirt he was made out of. It is the kind of dirt you can find in Southern Iraq. He probably had some color.
The truth is that the Bible doesn’t talk about Adam’s physical appearance. It doesn’t tell us what he looked like. It doesn’t tell us if he was tall or short, black or white.
Most scientists today believe that Africa is the birthplace of humanity and the first people on earth were of African descent and migrated from Africa. It is called The Out of Africa Theory (OOA) but most of those scientists do not believe the Bible.
Genesis tells us where Adam lived. It identifies Eden by four rivers (Genesis 2:10-14). None of them are in Africa. Three of them are known in the Middle East.
A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. (Genesis 2:10-14 NIV)
The Tigris and Euphrates are Middle Eastern rivers. Mesopotamia means the land between the two rivers. They run through Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. They are not in Africa.
The Gihon Spring was a water source in Jerusalem (cf. Psalm 46:4). It was Jerusalem’s source of water. Solomon used this spring when he was crowned king (I Kings 1:33, 38).
Some would say that this is just the white response to the out of Africa Theory? No. Many others say the same thing.
I have many books in my library, and one is a Bible commentary written in Africa by African scholars. It is called The African Bible Commentary. It came out in 2006. It says, “Eden lay somewhere in the vicinity of modern Iraq.”[2]
Adam was not only a real person who was supernaturally created by God; he was the first man. He is the was the head of the human race.
He is the progenitor of the whole race. Everyone who is alive today came from Adam and Eve. Everyone who ever existed came from Adam.
4) Adam brought sin into the world
Our world is full of every form of depravity and wickedness (pornography, sex trafficking, rape, murder, mass murder, genocide, slavery). They all go back to Adam.
There was no sin on earth before Adam. He was the first sinner. Paul said, “sin entered the world THROUGH ONE MAN” (Romans 5:12 NIV).
Notice Paul says, “through one man,” NOT through one woman. He blames the man, not the woman. Adam was the head of the race. God gave him one test and he failed it.
God did not give Adam six hundred rules to follow, like He gave the Jews. He only gave him one command and he disobeyed it. Not only did he become a sinner but so did we.
Paul also said, “by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19 NIV)
Because of Adam, we are all sinners and we all born with a sin nature. We are not born with a cigar in our mouth and a bottle of whiskey in our hands, but we are all born with a sin nature, which expresses itself in different ways. We are all born in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1).
The first Adam is the head of a race of sinners. We are a race of rebels. We act just like our ancestor Adam. We choose to sin, like he did. Like Adam, we disobey clear commands of God. That’s what we do.
5) Adam brought death into the world
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die (I Corinthians 15:21-22 NIV).
God told Adam, “The day you eat from the fruit of the tree, you will die.” Adam didn’t believe Him. He ate. He died and so did everyone else.
Death affects everyone – the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the righteous and the wicked.
He brought physical death into the world. He brought spiritual death into the world. The first Adam brought sin and death.
Paul said, “the many died by the trespass of the one man” (Romans 5:15 NIV). He said, “by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man” (Romans 5:17 NIV). He said, “In Adam ALL die” (Romans 5:12 NIV)
What about animal death? Was there death before the Fall? Evolutionists teach that millions of animals died before the Fall. In fact, entire species became extinct. The dinosaurs died out.
Was there animal death before the Fall? Could Adam have stepped on an ant? Death is a result of sin. It is not just a normal part of nature, but Paul focuses on human death.
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to ALL PEOPLE (Romans 5:12 NIV)
The Last Adam
There is a cult called the Unification Church. They are known as Moonies. The leader of the cult was Sun Myung Moon. He died in 2012. He claimed to be the Messiah. He called himself the Third Adam.[3]
Paul does not call Jesus the Second Adam. He calls him the LAST Adam (I Corinthians 15:45). Both are heads of the human race, but they are very different.
1. Jesus came from heaven, not earth
He was born on earth, but He came from heaven (I Corinthians 15:47). Paul calls him the heavenly man (I Corinthians 15:48). He is the God-Man. Adam was earthly. He came out of the earth. He was formed from dirt. Jesus came from heaven. He is heavenly.
2. Jesus is perfect, not sinful
The first Adam was disobedient. He was the first sinner. He deliberately disobeyed God when he was tempted in the garden by the serpent. He failed his one test God gave him.
Satan also tempted Jesus. He was given a test, but He passed his test. He didn’t sin. He never gave into any of Satan’s temptations, even after going forty days without eating.
Jesus was tempted in every way but without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus was tempted by Satan himself and did not sin. Most of us don’t need Satan to sin. We are dragged away by our own desires and enticed (James 1:14)
Speaking of God the Father, Jesus said, “I ALWAYS do what pleases Him” (John 8:29 NIV). How many of us can say that? None of us can.
3. Jesus leads to life, not death.
Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification AND LIFE for all people. (Romans 5:18 NIV)
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be MADE ALIVE. (I Corinthians 15:21 NIV)
Jesus came to give life. He is the source of life. He is the way, the truth, AND THE LIFE (John 14:6)
He does not just give life, He gives ABUNDANT LIFE (John 10:10). He does not just give ABUNDAN LIFE, He gives ETERNAL LIFE (John 10:28).
Jesus brings joy and peace and fulfillment. He brings abundant life. Adam brings destruction, devastation and misery. He brings death.
Adam’s death gave us death. Jesus’ death gave us life. One brought a curse and the other brought a blessing.
Mark Driscoll has a powerful quote on the difference between the first and the last Adam.
“The first Adam turned from the Father in a garden; the last Adam turned to the Father in a garden.
The first Adam was naked and unashamed; the last Adam was naked and bore our shame.
The first Adam’s sin brought us thorns; the last Adam wore a crown of thorns.
The first Adam substituted himself for God; the last Adam was God substituting himself for sinners.
The first Adam sinned at a tree; the last Adam bore our sin on a tree.
The first Adam died as a sinner; the last Adam died for sinners.”[4]
Applications for Today
What does that have to do with us? There are three takeaways.
1) There are only two types of people
There are over eight billion people on the planet. We divide them up many different ways (old or young, male or female, rich or poor, gay or straight. male or female, black, or white).
God sees ONLY two groups of people. When God looks at people, He sees sheep and goats. He sees saved people and lost people. He sees children of God and children of the Devil.
People are either in Adam or in Christ. Everyone is a member of one of these two families. The question is, which group are you in? Which family are you a part of?
Your eternal destiny depends on it. Those that are in Adam are lost. They are condemned. They are headed to Hell. Those that are in Christ are saved and are going to Heaven.
2) You have a choice to make
You do have to choose to be in Christ. Christ offers the gift of eternal life to everyone, but that gift has to be accepted. It has to be received.
No one is forced to take it. Sadly, many today reject it. The Hezbollah terrorist Nasrallah said, “We love death.”[5] Some love death. They choose death. God says to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19)
3) You resemble the one you choose
We can either identify with Adam or with Jesus. We look like the one we identify with.
Because of our connection to Adam, we are born as sinners in a fallen world with a mortal body. We look like Adam. We act like Adam. We have his nature.
Because of Jesus, we have eternal life. We get a new nature. We can live godly lives and one day we will get a resurrection body and will look like Jesus in the future.
49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man (I Corinthians 15:49 NIV). Next time, we will see why we will need these special bodies.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=409738873115602
[2] The African Bible Commentary, p. 13.
[3] https://www.tparents.org/Tp-WhoAre.htm
[4] https://realfaith.com/what-christians-believe/adam-christ/
[5] https://emetonline.org/our-response-to-hezbollahs-grip-on-lebanon/
