There was the first Adam, who sinned, and through whom the Adam race was ruined forever. But Jesus became The Last Adam. (I Cor. 15:45) The meaning of Jesus as The Last Adam is two-fold. First, through His sinless life, He became the LAST Adam in the sense of being the fullness of God’s mind and intent for humanity — He fully glorified God as a man. Thus, after Him, there needed to be no other. But secondly, Jesus was The Last Adam through His death — on the Cross He brought the Adam race to an end through death — exactly as God said it had to be if the first Adam ate of the forbidden tree. He was thus LAST — He brought the Adam race to an end in the plan of God.
The Word, Jesus Christ, became man for a reason that went beyond simply dying on the Cross. If all that was needed was His death, He could have materialized as a fully grown man, died, and that would have been it. Or God could have let him be killed as a baby. But no. Jesus had to die on the Cross as the sinless man — the Lamb without blemish — and this required a human being who had faced and conquered every challenge to faith and obedience through EXPERIENCE.
When The Last Adam — Jesus Christ — died on the Cross, He was bearing, yes, our sin, but in a real sense, He was bearing US. The Last Adam, if you will, was carrying the entire Adam race in Himself down into His death. At that point, the Adam race — in the plan of God — is ended. But through His resurrection, there came — not a fixed up Adam race, or an Adam race that was merely forgiven — what came through His resurrection was a NEW race altogether — a new creation in Christ Jesus.
The birth of Jesus Christ was God become man in Christ Jesus. But it was merely the beginning. There was His birth, His sinless life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, His coming to dwell in us by His Spirit, His reigning and ruling from the right hand of God in heavenly places, His future return to this earth, and finally, the full restoration of all things under Jesus Christ the Lord, under the Father. And He offers to us all that He is, and has done, and will do, freely by His grace. This is really what we celebrate with Christmas.
David De Pra
What Child is This – Lindsey Stirling
