LAST ADAM IN THE WILDERNESS

LAST ADAM IN THE WILDERNESS

Then as to THE PLACE OF THE TEMPTATION, again notice the threefold description. Matthew says, "Into the wilder­ness;" (Matt 4:1) Mark, "forth into the wilderness;" (Mark 1:12) Luke says, "In the wilderness." (Luke 4:2) The common thought is that the temptation was experienced in the wilderness. The mean­ing of this in relation to the mission of Christ deserves special attention. Jesus now stands as the second Man, the last Adam. Here let this Scriptural statement be specially noted and remembered. Too often He is spoken of as the second Adam. Scripture does not use the expression. It speaks of the "last Adam." (1 Cor. 15:45) The first Adam was the head of a race. The last Adam is the Head of a race, and He is the last, because there will be no new departure, no other federal headship, and no other race. The last Adam, then, passing into temptation, went to the wilder­ness, into single and lonely combat with the enemy. No foe other than the captain of the hosts of evil is opposed to Him there, and no friend other than the God in Whose hand His breath is, and Whose are all His ways, is with Him. The wilderness is the place of immediate dealing with evil. All secondary things are swept aside.

It is interesting to contrast the circumstances under which the second Man, the last Adam, meets temptation, with those under which the first man and first Adam met them. Jesus stood among circumstances far more disad­vantageous than did Adam. In each case there was a per­fect man,—in Eden a man God-made; in the wilderness a Man God-begotten. The first, however, was in Eden, amid circumstances of beauty and plenty, a place where there was no lack, and all man's God-made nature was satisfied. The second Perfect Man was in the wilderness, in surround­ings of barrenness, and poverty, and hunger for the bread that perishes.

And yet note one graphic touch of Mark, "He was with the wild beasts." (Mark 1:13) There are those who seem to think that the statement reveals the horror of the situation, that the prowling wild beasts in the neighborhood made the situation still more fearful. But the word "with” suggests not that they were in His neighborhood or He in theirs merely, but that there was companionship between them. The fact is that even these wild beasts recognized God's millennial Man, and lost their ferocity, as has been already seen in a previous articles. Thus in the very place of con­flict was a glorious shadowing forth of the day when the—lamb shall lie down with the lion (Isa. 11:6), and when all the won­derful prophecies that foretell man's communion with, and dominion over, the lower forms of creation shall be realized. He made even the wilderness to blossom with millennial glory.