First and Last Adam

 

Roger writes:

 New Life in Christ    (versions quoted, KJV,  ESV)

Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.   KJV

To extrapolate some meaning out of this verse, we need to build a foundation from which to launch from.   That foundation is the finished work of Christ on His cross.  Why is the cross such a stumbling block?  It is because it calls each of us to consider our fallen sinful ways on the one hand, ‘which severed our relationship with Heavenly Father’, and on the other hand, it reveals what Heavenly Father has done through Christ to fix that issue for us, resulting in our ‘restored relationship’ with Him.  Through the ‘finished work of the cross’ God has removed all impediments that separated us relationally. 

2Cor 5:19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.   ESV

When we speak of the ‘finished’ work of the cross what are we saying?  We are responding to the final words that the Lord Jesus spoke as He gave up His spirit to Heavenly Father.

John 19:30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

So, now we ask ourselves, what is finished, and what impediments has Christ’s death on the cross removed, in order for us to have a restored relationship with God?  

First, His death was that we might have the forgiveness of sins, (past – present – future). The Apostle Paul writes……….

1Cor 15:3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,

Gal 1:4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,

In order for humanity to fellowship with God we need to be on the same page righteously.  That is, because God who is perfect in every way, sinful fallen humanity isn’t able to relate relationally with Him.  Something had to be done to deal to that issue, to reconcile God with this world.  He did in Christ.  So the impediment of sin has been removed.

1Pet 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

Second, the cross deals to the requirements of God’s law.  God’s law is perfect and reveals His nature and righteousness.  And in regards to having a relationship with God one must keep the law perfectly, not one error.  One must keep the whole law, but here is the difficulty.  No-one has or can keep the law.  Only the Lord Jesus Himself could and did.  The cross deals to the requirements of the law in order to have right standing with Heavenly Father.  What we couldn’t do He has done on our behalf.

Christ lived a perfect life keeping all the law on our behalf, and therefore He alone qualified through the cross to meet God’s righteous and holy demands.  It is faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross, not our efforts at keeping the law, that puts us in right standing with God.

The following verses from the Apostle Paul shed a lot of light on the law issue.

Rom 10:5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

Gal 3:10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.”

Gal 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—

Gal 4:4-5 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,  to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Rom 10:4  For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Gal 2:16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

Third, Christ in His finished work on the cross destroyed the power of death and the devil.

Heb 2:14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,

To summarize thus far, Jesus Christ’s death on the cross dealt to all the impediments that separated us relationally from God.  He paid the price for our sins, meet the requirements of God’s law and destroyed the power of death and the devil.  We are reconciled.  It is faith in that finished work on the cross of Jesus that redeems us and gives us a new identity, ‘adopted sons’. Gal 2:16, Gal 4:4-5 (see above)

Considering all the above, how are you now viewed by Heavenly Father?

Col 1:22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

Now that is amazing…….  That’s God’s view of you, your new identity. 

Lets go back to the original text we started with and seek to see how we should now live and what might be the challenging issues we might face.

Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.   KJV

You see there is one further result of Christ’s death on the cross.  According to this verse, I have been crucified with Christ.  In a moment we will answer who is the “I” that was crucified, and who is the “I” that now lives in this verse?  But first, the Apostle Paul elsewhere in his writings makes mention of our union (co death) in Christ’s death.

Rom 6:6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

Col 2:12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Eph 2:6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

According to these verses my old self, that is my old fallen Adamic nature has been put to death (crucified) in my union with Christ.  I was also buried with Him, raised with Him and seated with Him in heavenly places, at the right hand of God.  Hence I am a new creation, a never before existing being.  A son of God!  I’m born again!

2Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Paul says I’m crucified and yet he lives!   He that now lives is the raised new creation, the union of your new spirit and Christ.  It is Christ who lives in us.  He is our life now.

1Cor 6:17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

But here is the challenge as we begin to live out that new life in our present reality, moment by moment, day by day.

To move into this new reality of the finished work of Christ’s cross, we must first agree with what God says in His word about Christ, the finished work of the cross and us the new creation, with our new identity.

If we don’t take on board what God has done on our behalf through Christ, and agree to what He’s revealing in Scripture because of Christ’s finished work, the temptation is to attempt to live by our own efforts the new life which Paul quite clearly condemns.

Gal 3:1-3 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

As we have seen, by ‘the works of the law’ no-one can be justified, (Christ’s Cross) has done that, and by the works of the law by our self effort we can’t live for God either.  Paul says, Christ IS his life now.

All that the law does now is shine a light on our sin.  

1Cor 15:56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

The good news is that God knows that we can’t keep the law, and has therefore removed all impediments that separated us relationally with Him, and provided Christ by His Spirit to be our life, who alone CAN enable us to live in union with Father and produce Spirit fruit.  It’s the fruit of the Spirit, not my fruit that I produce through self effort.  For I was crucified, buried, raised and Christ is my life NOW.

Gal 5:22-25 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

The More we Drink, the More we Thirst

What does your heart hunger for? What does your spirit thirst for? What is that thing that if you had it, that dream that if you achieved it, that reward that if you gained it, you’re sure you would now be satisfied, you’re sure your restless heart would finally be at peace?

There are many things we hunger for, but only one so very good that Jesus promises to satisfy it: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” he says, “for they shall be satisfied.” Here is a hunger so good that it should take preeminence above all others; here is a hunger so right that it should subsume all others; here is the one hunger that is so close to the heart of God that he promises it will be satisfied.

But what is this “righteousness” that we are to long for? The root word is used about 600 times in the Bible so it’s obviously quite important. Like so many other words, it can be translated in different ways—sometimes as “righteous” or “righteousness,” and other times as “justice” or “justified.”

The word is associated with salvation so that in God’s sight we are either righteous or unrighteous—either saved or unsaved. It’s associated with sanctification so that behavior can be righteous or unrighteous—either consistent or inconsistent with God’s will. It’s associated with justice so that society itself can be righteous or unrighteous—either promoting peace and equality or partiality and favoritism. And it’s associated with the future, the fullness of the kingdom of heaven when righteousness will permanently conquer unrighteousness.

So the question is, when Jesus says “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” what kind of righteousness does he mean? I think it’s best to see him as including all of these dimensions because they are so closely linked to one another. While personal holiness may have been foremost in his mind, surely he would not wish for us to disentangle that dimension from the others. After all, it’s impossible to long to be saved but not sanctified; it’s unnatural to long for holiness but not heaven. And so there is a hunger within the Christian soul that is very deep and very wide: A hunger for righteousness expressed in salvation, in holiness, in justice, and in heaven.

And what is God’s promise toward those who have such a hunger? “They shall be satisfied.” The hungry shall be made full. The thirsty shall be quenched. But here’s the thing: Of these four hungers, only the hunger for salvation is completely satisfied here and now. In the moment we are saved, we are fully justified. We can never be more righteous in God’s eyes than we are right now, and never less righteous. And that’s because when God looks at us, he sees the perfect righteousness of his perfectly righteous Son.

But we can be more holy than we are right now; we can see more justice than we do right now; we can have a deeper longing for heaven than we have right now. And so we need to observe something interesting about these appetites. As God begins to meet them, he also increases them. The fuller we get, the hungrier we get. The more we drink, the more we thirst. Our longing for righteousness doesn’t diminish over the course of our Christian lives, but grows all the more! Our growth in holiness makes us crave even more holiness. We are glad to see advances in justice, but it increases our longing for perfect justice. We have a deep longing for heaven, but the closer we get the more we yearn for it.

We will long and yearn and hunger and thirst until the day God finally fulfills the great promise he makes in the book of Revelation. In that day…

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.

All those tears we’ve shed over the sins that made our salvation necessary, God will wipe them away. All the hunger we have to be holy even as God himself is holy: God will satisfy it. All the thirst we have to see justice extend from sea to sea, from pole to pole: God will quench it. All the craving we have to live in a world where there is only ever righteousness forever: God will grant this most precious desire. We will eat, we will drink, we will feast, and our hearts will be at perfect peace. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.