Sabbath: Adam and Jesus
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Read for This Week’s Study: Romans 5
Memory Text: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1-2).
Paul has established the point that justification, or acceptance with God, comes only through faith in Jesus
Christ, for His righteousness alone is enough to give us the right standing with our Lord. Building on that great truth, Paul now expounds more on this theme. Showing that salvation has to be by faith and not by works, not even for someone as “righteous” as Abraham, Paul steps back to look at the big picture-at what caused sin and suffering and death, and how the solution is found in Christ and what He’s done for the human race.
Through the fall of one man, Adam, all humanity faced condemnation, alienation, and death; through the victory of one man, Jesus, all the world was placed on a new footing before God. By faith in Jesus, the record of their sins and the punishment due those sins could be remitted, could be forgiven and forever pardoned.
Paul contrasts Adam and Jesus, showing how Christ came to undo what Adam did, and showing that by faith the victims of Adam’s sin could be rescued by Jesus, the Savior. The foundation of it all is the cross of Christ and His substitutionary death there-which opens the way for every human being, Jew or Gentile, to be saved by Jesus, who, with His blood, brought justification to all who accept Him.
Surely this is a theme worth expounding upon, for it’s the foundation of all our hope.
Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, November 11.
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We are told that Jesus was the "second Adam." While it is true that He had the Holy Spirit to bring the things of God into His Mind from conception throughout life (as did Adam in the beginning), it is also true that His physical body was ravaged by sin genetically as ours is.
This would seem a great disadvantage, but His choice to allow the Holy Spirit to be His motivation was key to His success as God's favored, only begotten Son and His worthiness to be our atoning sacrifice and our example for living a sinless life. This Spirit was also Adams' strength until he gave it up to embrace selfishness as his motivation.
Jesus had a handicap in His genetics, but His motivating Spirit was able to help Him to overcome the flesh, and this same Spirit can give us that same motivation that Jesus had.
I think it is important to realize that the Holy Spirit is the key to righteousness in this genetic body that is prone to sin on its own. This is the common factor in the new life and victory even to one who has been dead in trespasses and sin.
Even though Jesus didn't sin. He still had the genetics of David and all the bad men in His lineage, but it was His Spirit that brought the thoughts and feelings of the Father into Him that produced the righteousness of the Father in Him and not the sin that is common to the flesh He was given.
Jesus was fully human and of the lineage of David. He was also God in human flesh. I think this means that He had only the thoughts and feelings of God, the Great I AM in His human mind. He said of Himself that He was the I AM and that He did nothing of His human self, but that the Father taught Him everything that He said. In this He owned human flesh and the mind of the Father.
He was also our example of how to live in our human flesh. We are told to have the Mind that also was in Christ Jesus which He said was also the Mind of the Father who owned Him as His Son in whom He was well pleased.
He and we can do this with the Holy Spirit in us in charge of our thoughts and feelings. I think that we can have a sinless life when we die and are born again of the Holy Spirit as Jesus was originally--even in human flesh with degenerative genes.
Now, we get the propensity to sin through our physicogenetic relationship with Adam. Jesus too was part of this relationship by his Davidic descent. So,if this sin issue is a genetic one where did Adam get it from, since as far as I know, the only descent he has is the soil,which was good when God created it?
"Even though Jesus didn't sin. He still had the genetics of David" I do believe Christ could have sinned but He choose not the sin. I believe that Christ was not God in the respect that He could't sin because He was God.
That i understand but my question was about Adam, form who or where did he inherit the propensity to sin?
Brother Pascal that's a very good question.
It all started in heaven and escalated to earth after Lucifer disobeyed God and became a rebel. Revelation 12 explains it all to an extent God cautioning humanity against Satan who is Lucifer. Verse 12 of the same chapter, God empathizes with all creation on earth as satan is being hauled down to earth.
Great caution is needed as we are told to remain focused to Jesus and believe that all that He did on the cross was meant to bring us closer to God the father as we deny satan and his powers.
John, it appears to me that Jesus was 100% human as we are. Christ, however, was 100% God, the self existant I AM. Jesus was the carnal embodiment of God on this Earth. He could truthfully say that He was the eternal, self-existant One of Himself as Christ even though His human body was vulnerable to die for our sins.
He could also have sinned like Adam in His human form. He would have had to make a choice to give up His motivating Holy Spirit to accept another motivating force as Adam did. If so He could not have been the perfect sacrifice for our sins. God would have failed in this mission and Satan would have prevailed. Only imagination could look into the result of such a senario.
Since He was also God in that The Mind and Spirit of His Father lived in and through Him among us on this Earth. He thought and felt like His Father continually, He experienced our evil treatment and death in His human body as God was clothed with and functioned in our humanity.
It might save confusion if we did not use the scientific term "genetics" in regard to our propensity to sin. It may be best to admit that there is much we do not understand and just accept what the Bible says about our sinful nature - that we are hopelessly enslaved to our own selfishness (sinfulness) and that there's no way out except through Christ.
It may be that our sin has nothing to do with genetics but has everything to do with the Spirit which motivates our basic thoughts and feelings which motivate our decision to act sinfully. Being dead in our trespasses and sin we are hopeless unless we choose a different Spirit of basic motivation of our thoughts and feelings which motivate decisions to do righteous acts.
Amen! Well said! It is the Holy Spirit working in us that gives us the victory over sin just as it did in the life of Christ which allowed Him to be our substitutionary and acceptable sacrifice. God be praised!
Through Adam, sin entered the world and condemnation was meted out to man. By Jesus, the condemnation is cancelled and man is reconciled back to God, an act that saw Him meet the full demand of the law to show that justice is done. Is sin so much a powerful genetical force so that God would not deal with it before it could escalate to the whole humanity to cause this terrible harm? Does God uphold generational curse?
Simeon, I think that selfishness is the power of sin. Selfishness is the motivation of sin in our lives. This has been passed to us through habit patterns that have become natural to human-kind.
Love is the opposite motivation to selfishness and is only natural to God and those who are motivated by His Holy Spirit. When we are conceived selfishness is the default motivation of human-kind. When we are "born again", as Jesus taught, we are born of the Holy Spirit of Love which motivates us as long as we give our hearts to be the temple of God.
We always have a choice as to who will rule--the Spirit of God or selfishness. As we allow God's Love to be our motivation we develop habit patterns of thoughts and feelings. This is what character is made of. If we are alert and watchful we can tell which motivation is in charge of our will and we have a choice who will motivate us through the battles of temptation.
Victory depends on giving the Spirit of God the preference in our motivation. The Love He gives us is powerful for victory over selfishness and in solving our problems (some caused by our wrong choice or no choice of motivation in the past).
Bro Don Litchfield , what a beautiful thought. let me then ask you this Question: is it possible for one( after conversion), to go through his/she life ,through the power of the Holy Spirit without sinning?
I think Enoch and the LIFE of Christ both are examples that when man COMPLETELY puts his/her faith (or trust) in God (God's decisions) for our lives, then yes; one can live w/o sinning.
Yes, Freddie. If it were not possible to stop sinning no one could be sealed before Jesus comes as is fortold in Revelation. It can only be done through continually watching and praying, as Jesus said lest we fall into temptation. We must watch our thoughts and feelings and pray that our thoughts and feelings be motivated by the Holy Spirit at all times. If we fall we have an advocate in Jesus.