In Romans 5:12-21 Paul talks about Jesus being the second Adam calling Adam “the pattern of the one to come.” Adam brought death and condemnation. Jesus brought grace and justification. In Adam, death reigned. In Christ, life reigns. Jesus truly is the second Adam…the one who came and this time “got it right” through his obedience to the Father. He never sinned like his forefather Adam sinned. In fact, Jesus did the reverse of the Adam move. Paul says it like this in Philippians 2:6-11,
“Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.“
Adam ate the fruit so he could be “like God.” Jesus was God and yet refused to fall into the trap of using his divinity as a “get out of jail free” card or as a trump card during his earthly life. Jesus is the new Adam…the second Adam. But there is another person who comes into the picture and I never picked up on this until reading Nahum Sarna’s JPS commentary on Genesis. There he gives numerous parallels with the creation story, some of them I had noticed before like “be fruitful and fill the earth” (Adam 0 Gen 1:22, Noah – Gen 8:17) but others hadn’t caught my eye. Here are a few of them:
- He says if you do the calculations in Genesis 6 you end up with Noah being the first man to be born after the death of Adam (Sarna, 49-50).
- Adam and Noah have three sons
- Of the three sons, one turns out to be prolematic
- Both had harmony with the animals
- In both stories the wind of God disturbs the waters
- the received similar blessings (as mentioned above)
- Both stories are followed by lists of people.
I find that to be pretty compelling especially when paired with the last post paralleling the flood account as the antithesis of the creation account. I thought you might find that interesting as well! This doesn’t put Noah in any type of Jesus role but it is interesting that God started off with a new man to repopulate the world in a similar fashion as he did the first man.
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Jesus Christ is Jesus who is the Son of God and came here to the earth so that we might have eternal life with Him. Adam, while created in God’s image, didn’t come here to save the world and was not the Son of God. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Jesus is absolutely NOT the second Adam and was never sent to be anything like Adam. Remember the transfiguration? God said, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye Him.” Not Adam, no one else. Him and only Him.
Hey Chip! Check out Romans 5, especially 5:14,
“12 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 (type) 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.
20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Paul says Adam was a pattern for the one to come. That word is Greek is tupos, where we get the word “type” so in a real sense Jesus came as a second Adam. Jesus came as the Adam who finally got it right…who lived obediently to the Father. Just something to consider. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts!
In your opinion Jesus came as the second Adam who “got it right.”. In reality, Jesus came as the Son of God who in John 1 was in the beginning with God. The purpose of Jesus was “that the world through him might be saved”. Although Adam was the first man he decided to sin against God. Jesus didn’t come to earth to be anything like Adam but to save us from what Adam had done to all of mankind. There’s really no comparison between Adam and Jesus except they were both men and both walked the earth. Unless your trying to say that God was the Father and Creator of both Adam and Jesus but isn’t God the Father and Creator of all of us? Other than that I don’t share your opinion and your line of reasoning is a far stretch.
Actually Jesus came very much to be like Adam in his humanity. That is a point to not skip over too quickly.
Just keep in mind that in Romans Paul literally says Jesus was the typos of Adam. That isn’t a stretch as Paul makes the connection himself. That is significant and doesn’t seem to get picked up in your reaction here. Just something to consider. Hope you have a great Christmas.
Hope you’re having a most excellent Christmas as well.
I’m aware of the comparison that Paul make and I’m also well aware of the contrast he points out between Adam and Jesus. Adam, being the first man on earth as God created, was created in God’s own image and was the pattern by for all men who came afterward including us. Yes, in the beginning Adam had a very close relationship with God and probably one like no other man has had except Jesus Himself. But Adam wasn’t created to save the world like Jesus and Adam was hardly the Son of God as Jesus was and is. Adam was the first man but Jesus is the Son of God, not the second Adam.
What you are describing is the definition of type/antitype. They are not exactly the same. For that matter which two people would ever be exactly the same. My post was not about Jesus being a copy of Adam. The have similarities and parallels that are highly significant.
Hey, Matt. Recently I have been reading a book that says that Noah is the second Adam as well. To some extent, I do see why the authors made such claim because of the reasons you listed above. However, I would like some clarifications as I do not understand this completely. I might have missed out on some explanations in the book and maybe your book or yourself will be able to help.
So I’ve been wondering if this comparison has any connection to 1 Corinthians 15:45. I think it’s an interesting comparison to see how similar Adam and Noah were, yet if this comparison is connected to 1 Corinthians (what I mean by this is Noah is an Adam between Adam, the first man, and Jesus, the last Adam.), I think it will not be the most proper. (The book also compared other people such as Abraham with Adam, just to let you know.) Since there is a significant spiritual meaning behind the two “Adams”, I thought it would be best I understand it properly. I hope I have conveyed my thoughts clearly. Please let me know what you think. Thank you!
I don’t see Noah in the Adam parallels because he isn’t a new type of man to identify the whole human race by. Jesus and Adam are. Jesus is new creation’s first fruits crying it is finished on the sixth day, resting in the grave on Sabbath and rising again on a new first day of the week as if God was saying, “Let there be light” all over again…welcome to a whole new world via resurrection and the new spiritual body of Jesus first and is second.
Jesus is the second MAN (created directly by God just like Adam was) and is called the LAST Adam (not the second Adam).
Before the Flood certain evil angels had sex with earthly women. Their children were giants: the Nephilim. God punished these angels so severely no other fallen angel would dare to commit the same act; He then locked them up. God could do this on His own accord, because those angels were not part of the earth which He had given to Adam, and through Adam to mankind.
Other fallen angels and/or humans (inspired by Satan), then turned to genetic modification of animals as well as humans. This is even worse than the earlier sin, because the character of the humans and animals became completely evil, plus it is hereditary (irreversible).
This time God needed permission of man in order to intervene. Whom to ask permission?!? ALL were corrupted by genetic manipulation! And not pure human anymore. …Except Noah and his sons. Noah was the eldest of them, thus a ‘second Adam’ and the (new) head of mankind consisting of himself and his sons.
Probably God waited till ‘ALL’ were corrupted and until only a ‘good guy’ was left whom He could work with, who was NOT corrupted (genetically pure human).
So God asked the correct person – the RIGHTEOUS Noah who still had PURE HUMAN DNA, and who was now HEAD of mankind – for permission to flood the earth. And got it (Noah agreed). God always follows the rules!
(Seven days before the flood) Noah’s sons married women with partly nephilim-DNA. That’s why there were giants also after the flood. But Shem’s bloodline never got a giant as offspring (even though his wife had partly nephilim-DNA, but that is reversible, not necessarily hereditary). From Shem our Lord Jesus descended.
About the animals: God must have sent pairs of NOT genetically manipulated animals to the arc. So He saved the animals with pure DNA, as well as the last pure humans.
All this and so much more God did, because He wanted to give us Jesus, who could represent us as a new “Adam”, the last Adam, who would make it right for us with Him.
Matt, I’ve been meaning to respond to a point in this train, but my work had got in the way. Your assertion that Adam wanted to be “like God” is not scripturally true, and, as we know, the churches of Christ insist that you do not add or detract from Scripture, no matter what opinion you hold with regard to what the scriptures mean. Eve was the one who listened to the Serpent and wanted to be “like God, knowing good and evil”; Adam, not having any authority over his wife, just ate what he was given. The Lord God did not accuse Adam of wishing to be “like God”, but of following his wife’s instructions instead of heeding the warning from God. It was to rectify this who-to-listen-to problem that God compelled Eve to be subject to Adam’s instruction, instead of ‘doing her own thing’ (like listening to animals) and telling him what to do. This ruling from the Lord God does raise the question of what should hold today for humanity, given what can be inferred from Paul’s assertion in 1 Corinthians 11: 3.