“Paul is teaching us to think about the story of the human race as a tale of two unions—with Adam and with Christ. All of us belong to one union or the other.
We are all by nature in Adam. Those who have been born again by God’s Spirit and have come to believe into union and communion with Jesus Christ are brought into this new family of which He is the Father and Head. They are “in Christ,” the “second man” (1 Cor. 15:47) and the “last Adam” (v. 45).
Paul also focuses on the way that these two representative men, Adam and Christ, engaged in two radically different acts. There is a similarity between them: both are representative historical figures.
But there is also a contrast and a comparison. Yes, in one respect Adam and Christ are like each other. But in another critical respect they are different. Their acts are radically different— indeed, antithetical.
Paul wants us to sense that the work of Jesus Christ takes on the luster of amazing grace when we see it against the dark backcloth of the work of Adam.
Perhaps you have gone into a jeweler’s shop, thinking about buying a ring. The jeweler shows you a selection. You hardly notice how quickly he slips a black cloth onto the countertop. Why is that? Because that black backcloth highlights the beauty of the ring and the sparkle of the diamonds set into it.
Whether it is an expensive ring or not, it certainly looks expensive against the black cloth.
Paul is doing something like that here— not by sleight of hand, but to help us see that the work of Jesus Christ is seen to its truest and best advantage against the background of the catastrophe that our first father, Adam, bequeathed to us.
What did Adam do? In answer, Paul ransacks biblical vocabulary to summarize the fall. He speaks about Adam’s sin, about his breach of the commandment, about his trespass, and about his disobedience.
In various ways, he is making the same point: when Adam sinned and fell, his act was our act because we are all “in Adam.” This is the tragedy of the human condition.
We come into a sick and fallen world as sick and fallen people. What our first father did had consequences not only for him but for the whole of humanity. He ruined us. As the couplet for the letter A in the famous New-England Primer, published by Benjamin Harris in 1688, put it:
In Adam’s fall
We sinned all.
There is a genre in English literature in which the hero, whose father has ruined the finances and the reputation of his whole family, manages to rise to a position of prominence and regain the family’s former glory. As the son, he undertakes to clear all debts and to reestablish his family.
He has to take the consequences of and undo his father’s failure; he then has to re-earn what his father squandered. Something about such a story touches us at very deep levels. Perhaps that is because the story echoes our own situation.
And it also echoes the gospel and the story of contrasts that it tells between Adam and Christ. Adam sinned, disobeyed God, and broke the commandment. His one great act of disobedience brought sin and death into the world.
But on the other side of the contrast stands Christ’s act of righteousness. Adam’s disobedience lasted for only a few seconds and then had lasting implications for his whole life and for ours.
But it took an entire lifetime of perfect obedience and the bearing of the judgment of God against Adam’s and our sin for the last Adam to redeem us and restore us to fellowship with God.
New Testament scholars debate whether Paul has Adam in the back of his mind when he describes the work of Christ in Philippians 2:5-11 because he does not draw on the specific vocabulary of Genesis 3.
But a theological contrast is clear enough. Adam was disobedient. Jesus’ whole life was marked by complete obedience to the heavenly Father, even to the point of being willing to die rather than be disobedient-and even if that meant the cruel death of the cross.
The obedience of the second man was a reversal of the disobedience of the first man. He accomplished on behalf of those who are “in Christ” (that is, those who trust in Him) what Adam failed to accomplish for those who were “in Adam” (that is, all of us).
But not only was our Lord’s life of obedience representative and substitutionary, His death was also. By it He paid the penalty for our sin, enduring the wrath due to us who have become sinners in and through Adam.
Where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded. Where Adam brought himself and us under condemnation, Jesus not only did what Adam failed to do but also took that condemnation on our behalf and paid the penalty for Adam’s failure and ours too.
Thus, what was lost in Adam has been regained in Christ. Everything that Adam did to turn away from God, Jesus reversed.
There is still more to Christ’s work, and the New Testament writers reflect on it elsewhere.
Whereas Adam succumbed to the temptation that Satan had initiated through Eve, Christ conquered.
Whereas Adam succumbed although he was in a garden surrounded by an animal kingdom over which he ruled, Christ triumphed over Satan although He was in a bleak wilderness surrounded by wild beasts.
Whereas Adam succumbed to the voice that said, ‘Take, eat,’ our Lord Jesus was obedient to His Father when He offered Him the cup of desolation in Gethsemane and said to Him, ‘Take, drink.’“
–Sinclair B. Ferguson, Union with Christ: The Blessings of Being in Him (Sanford, FL: Ligonier, 2025), 41-44.
Leave a Reply