1 Corinthians 15:47

1 Corinthians 15:47

God always looks upon men as placed under some federal or representative head. There is no doubt it is so in a degree now in every family: God deals with the family through the father, and according to the character of the father. But the principle is true on a much larger scale. Adam was not a mere man; he was the representative head of the whole human race. Had he stood, all would have stood; when he fell, all fell.

I. It surely ought to take away every fear that any child of God may have about the Second Advent, to know that He who shall sit upon the throne of glory will be the second Man. There, though perfect and glorified, He will still be in all things just like unto us; only not like what we now are, like we shall become at that moment. As He stooped to man when He was upon earth, He will stoop then; the look with which He looked on John, the accent with which He spoke to many, will be the look and the accent of the King of kings. The body will be distinguishable, but perfect; though with some process that we cannot follow, it will be all spiritual; and there will be seen there, just as when Thomas saw, the very marks of His wounds. To these wounds every sinner shall turn and say, "I plead those wounds"; and with the light which encircles that head with many crowns He will look and say, "For me Thou didst thus rise; for me Thou didst put on this glory; for me Thou art radiant with that dignity."

II. The humanity of the second Man is ours. We are in it, we shall be like it; just as the first man was of the earth, earthy, that we might be earthy, the second Man is the Lord from heaven, that we may be heavenly.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,4th series, p. 263.

We are tempted to ask in what sense our Lord could be called the secondMan, whereas there were so many millions of men intervening between Him and the common ancestor Adam. The answer is, in brief, that the others were mere copies of the first differing, indeed, in detail of character and nature, but fundamentally the same, and presenting the same radical defects; whereas Christ introduced a new kind of man, not after the pattern of Adam, and became the head of a new family of man. Thus Adam and Christ, dividing all human life between them, are rightly called the first and second man respectively. Let us look into this more closely, and first inquire into the differences between Adam and Christ. Now, these differences are two difference of origin and difference of nature.

I. Of origin. "The first man is of the earth, earthy." Whatever may be said, and truly said, of the Divine and unearthly parentage of Adam, it is nevertheless true that, according to his physical nature, he and his belong essentially to this earth. The second man was the Lord from heaven. His origin was as distinctly Divine and heavenly as Adam's origin was earthy. He stepped down into the ranks of created life; He assumed that humanity which was perhaps on its physical side developed from the very lowest form of existence; but He Himself, in His true, unaltered personality, was the Lord and ruler of the universe, whose dwelling-place is in heaven.

II. This was the difference of origin, and there was a second of nature and character. Not only does every single child that grows up afford a fresh example of the tendency to do wrong, but it is more and more a principle of science to assert the hereditary character of all such tendencies. If the instinct by which the young bird feeds itself be the experience of its remote ancestors, transmitted to it by hereditary descent, how much more readily shall we believe that the moral evil which began in Adam has become an inseparable characteristic of his race! But Christ was not sinful, and the consequence of His holiness, so peculiar to Himself among the children of men, was that death and the grave had no claim upon Him. He tasted death for every man else, but not for Himself. Adam and Christ divide mankind between them, not only as the two types, but as the two authors of all human life. We have life from God by both of these indirectly, through Adam, and from him polluted and mortal; directly, through Christ, and from Him pure and immortal; both live on in us, the first man and the second Man.

R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions,p. 306.

References: 1 Corinthians 15:48. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 341. 1 Corinthians 15:49. E. L. Hull, Sermons,3rd series, p. 12; M. Dix, Sermons Doctrinal and Practical,p. 298; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 188. 1 Corinthians 15:50. Homilist,3rd series, vol. ix., p. 334.