Aunty Jane
Well-Known Member
If you hold the view that Christ was “like us, under the weight of generations of damaged humanity”, you have completely missed the reason why he is called our “Redeemer”…and why he is also called “ the last Adam”.
What did the first Adam lose that the “last Adam” reclaimed for his children?
Being born with undamaged human DNA, Jesus Christ was not related genetically to Adam at all.
He had no human Father, and his mother was the vessel used to bring about his birth as a human. But his DNA was not the damaged DNA that Adam’s children inherited….he had to be the equivalent of what Adam was before he sinned and sentenced us all to death. This is how redemption works…..the price to be paid was set in God’s law….”an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life”.
The life Adam lost was sinless perfection, so a perfect sinless life was to be offered to buy back what Adam lost, not for himself, but for all who would descend from him. Jesus was not a descendant.
If a flawed human was all that was needed to redeem mankind, then anyone could have volunteered to pay the ransom and free doomed humanity….but no one born on this earth was sinless. The price of redemption had to come from outside the now flawed human race.
Why else would Jesus need to come from heaven to become a human and offer his life for ours?
Yes, the devil and Adam and his wife were all tempted, but in different ways. Without free will, there could be no temptation.
The devil‘s temptation came from with within himself, following the chain reaction of the steps leading to sin that James speaks about…
James 1:13-15…
”When under trial, let no one say: “I am being tried by God.” For with evil things God cannot be tried, nor does he himself try anyone. 14 But each one is tried by being drawn out and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then the desire, when it has become fertile, gives birth to sin; in turn sin, when it has been carried out, brings forth death.”
This is free will….the ability to choose our actions from within ourselves….for good or bad. We must weigh the outcome before we take the action….this is what being made in God’s image means….our intellect allows us alone, of all God’s creatures, to imagine the future outcome of our actions. We have a concept of past, present and future, something no other earthly creatures have. All others operate by instinct….a programmed response to the events of the here and now.
Jesus was born without sin because he was not from this world. (John 6:62; John 8:23)
Jesus’ faithful course proved that the three rebels at the beginning could have refrained from sin as well….
There was no sin nature to interfere with their choices either.
The devil made a conscious decision to act in direct disobedience to his Creator. He wanted worship and these new creatures could give it to him….but first he had to separate them from their God in order to replace him. He then became “the god of this world”. (2 Cor 4:4) Yahweh would allow them all to see first hand, what their disobedience would lead to. They couldn’t be told…they had to be shown.
Tempting the woman, the devil lied to her about the penalty if she ate the fruit, by simply stating “you surely will not die”….in her ignorance she was deceived, because it sounded like benefits would come from eating the fruit……but Adam wasn’t deceived. (1 Tim 2:14) He ate the fruit for a totally different reason….he had waited a long time for a mate of his own, and now he was forced to choose between obedience to his God and losing her, or disobeying his God and joining her, thereby sentencing themselves, and all their future children to death.
The fate of the entire human race rested with Adam, not the woman. (Rom 5:12) If Adam had made a different decision, he could have changed the whole course of human history.
