06.1.0. Adam, or Human Nature
PART 1 ADAM, OR HUMAN NATURE
Genesis 3:1-24 "The first man is of the earth, earthy." -- 1 Corinthians 15:47.
"The old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts." -- Ephesians 4:22.
GENESIS opens wondrously; first announcing a creation; then shewing it marred; then a restoration. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." As for God, His work is perfect. If He created, His work must have been good. And yet the next thing is a darkened world. For "the earth was dark and without form and void." In some way, not revealed, God’s work had been destroyed. God, then, in the six days, restores that earth, not made dark by Him, yet now in darkness; and on this ruined earth His work proceeds till His image is seen, and He can rest there. This wonder, of a work of God soon self-destroyed, meets us again in the beginning. Scarcely is God’s image seen in man, before that spiritual work is marred in Adam. The creature formed to bear God’s image falls, and thus becomes a platform for another work. In each case mystery shrouds the fall. How the earth became "without form and void and dark," is not told us. And how the man, God’s image, falls, is a great deep: for great is the mystery of godliness, and not less the mystery of iniquity. But the fact is here. We see man made by the Divine Word; and then man, as he makes himself by disobedience. In this way the fall is shewn not to be man’s normal state. Man, like Adam, may be far off from God, yet in his heart, as in Scripture, a witness will be heard, saying that this distance is through self-will. He may live in sin; but he knows that such a life is opposition to the will and purpose of his Maker. Sin is not the law of our being, but a struggle against it, as conscience tells every man. Therefore is God’s work shewn before the fall, to confirm the voice which speaks in every heart, and which declares that though all men walk as Adam, sin is no part of God’s work, but its opposite. Man’s proper place is seen in Christ. Out of Christ we are not lost only, but rebellious. Man, through self, may be all that we see in disobedient Adam, debased and sunk from God and heaven into self, from joy and glory into misery; and yet in Christ man has been, and is, set in all that glory which God’s work and rest typify; so that Paul can say, "God hath raised us up, and blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ" (Ephesians 1:3). Adam, ruling all creatures, is the type of man in Christ, as God makes him; fallen Adam, of man in self, as he makes or unmakes his own nature. The one, with glories more than eye can see, figured in the blessings bestowed in Paradise on the creature; the other, losing all through sin, with mind and will subject to, instead of ruling, lower creatures. This latter sight, what man is in self, -- how he falls and departs from his Creator, -- how the understanding errs, -- how the will is seduced, -- how these highest powers yield to lower ones, -- how the end is shame and distance from God, -- how the Lover of men in grace meets and conquers this, -- all this is shewn as in a glass, man’s self being here presented to us. As Adam fell, we fall each one; for Adam lives yet in his progeny. And, fallen in him, we prove he is in us, by walking just as he walked. Adam yet re-lives old Adam’s life, as Christ in us yet lives Christ’s life. And just as things are true for us in Christ, which, if we are in Him, must in due time be true in us also, as death and resurrection; so, being fallen in Adam, we shall find his fall to be true also in our experience. Adam in us still lives old Adam’s life. His life is the figure of our life when "we walk as men" (1 Corinthians 3:3).
I proceed, then, to trace his course; first within, then in its more outward application. We shall see how, in spite of every gift, man as man is prone to ruin all.