THE SECOND ADAM IS A SHEPHERD

THE SECOND ADAM IS A SHEPHERD

And yet this is but the dark background to a picture radiant with the colors of hope. God's rejection of imperfection is the act of Love. His refusal of all human attempts at renewal and reconstruction is the refusal of a great compassion. If the acceptance of Christ was the rejection of man, was also the acceptance of a new and living way through which rejected man might find his way back to God. If in the resurrection God accepted the perfect Man, He also accepted Him in that representative capacity, indicated by the fact of His wounding and His death. He raised in Him all those who commit to Him their whole life, in a deep sense of its direst needs and full confidence in His power to save and perfect. Not in loneliness did He rise, but in the possession of a life to be placed at the disposal of others. On the resurrection side of the grave Jesus stood as the Head of the new race, THE SECOND MAN, THE LAST ADAM. How often is this wording confused in quotation? Men speak of the last Man, and the second Adam. It may be objected that this is a matter of small significance, and yet it is not so. In His perfection He was the second Man. The first man failed, the second Man succeeded. That is the statement of a lonely fact. The first Adam was the head of a race, and in his failure the race was involved. The last Adam created the force of renewal even for the fallen, and became the Head of the new race, to whom that new force should be communicated. Not merely was He the SECOND ADAM, as though there might be a third. He was the last. Beyond Him, and all included in the communication of His life there is to be no new race.

Thus the resurrection is seen to be the Divine announcement of the evangel. According to the words of Jesus, on the Cross He laid down His life for the sheep, that is that they might receive it as their own. When God raised Him from the dead, He ratified that intention and declared it to be an established fact. The life laid down all received in resurrection, and all who receive that life are accepted, received by God. They are accepted in the Beloved (Eph. 1:6). From the resurrection morning now, God has been, and still is, receiving Christ; and the groundwork of the acceptance of any man with God is that there has been communicated to him THE LIFE OF CHRIST. There is no verdict upon fallen man so final in its declaration of his rejection, as is the risen Christ. There is no door of hope so radiant with light for the fallen people as this way into acceptance through the reception of the Christ.

               Oh the wondrous Shepherd of the sheep. The hireling cares not for the sheep, and flees because he is a hireling (John 10:13). The Shepherd came into conflict with the wolf, and by His dying overcame. The scattered frightened sheep, receiving the life liberated through the death of the Shepherd receive all the values and the virtues which God accepts, and thus in Christ are accepted of God.