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p360 [Mr Humphrey] MY DEAR BROTHER, - We ought not to confound the last Adam and last Man (1 Cor. 15), though, from never having got it straight in my memory, perhaps more, I am always doing so, the thought being vague.* Last and second, moreover, are both important. He was second as contrasted with the first, last as no other will come after Him as a head of race. Adam is the Hebrew for man, but then looked at as a race, and personally the head of a race. Man is generic in the sense of character, what he was. But I get both brought together in verse 45. "The first man, Adam" - and here Adam becomes a name, but intimating still, I believe, the representant of a race, though what that man was is in question, and that was a living soul, "the last Adam" (last man would not do, it would be the last born into the world), hence I have simply the last Adam; there is no other race of men after this. I have found both terms needed for the Continent, when they would confound Him with the first, and say, too, He summed up the perfection of His day, but we shall have a pure, perfect representation of the race yet. In verse 47 I have it characteristically - the first man was earthy, the second heavenly - because here it is characteristically in contrast with the first. So that "Adam" is the head of the race: "man" first and second, the two characters of man.

Next, was He the second Adam here on earth? Personally no doubt He was, but not properly. As the first Adam was not actually head of a race before his fall, and hence, not in this special sense first man Adam, though personally he clearly was so - though not as head of a race; so Christ was not the head of a race till He had accomplished the work of redemption and began a new position for us as risen. But personally He had life in Himself, and could quicken, and did; but He had not taken the place of second Adam to be the head of a race till He was risen. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone." And it is the risen Man that will have all men subject to Him in the millennium - nay, He is glorified (Eph. 1): He died too, rose and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. Personally He had a title, for all things were created by Him and for Him. But consistently with God's character and His glory, He could only take it consequent on redemption. He is thus as man made Lord and Christ. As Son of God He quickens whom He will, but this is not head of a race as last Adam. There He is man, according to God's counsels, in a new position. Hence the "sure mercies of David" are based on and cited as a proof of His resurrection. The Lord will be for ever the man, head of all others, in glory; only that second and last refer to time circumstances. Last Adam is as none coming after Him, not as closing the Adamic race, unless, indeed, that is what you mean. But the Adamic race is not closed actually save for faith. God since the cross holds it for lost and condemned, while dealing in infinite grace with it as such. Faith sees it is all over with it, since it has rejected Christ; its moral history is closed. The ends of the world have come upon us, and the judgment of the world (morally, not its execution, of course) took place in the cross.

As to Adamic, it is a mere human word, and if understood it is all that is needed. Our first business is to get at what God means in scripture in His own account of it, and then at our own language, which is often right in our meaning, but partially so, and can be taken otherwise. Thus man's moral history is closed in Christ, but not his actual till judgment. Just as we are dead (Col. 3), but not actually so. Scripture is always right, we partially and imperfectly.

Your affectionate brother in Christ.

Often, too, when we get hold of a truth we are engrossed by the new and important side of it, and for exact truth have to modify what we say in expressing what we have got hold of

[Date uncertain.]

{*Queries: -

"Is it right to use 'Adamic,' in contrast to Christ?

Is it correct to look at the Lord Jesus as the 'last Adam' in the sense of His closing the Adamic race?

Do the second Adam and the last Adam convey the same thought?

And, is it correct to say that the Lord Jesus was not the second Adam when He was Man here on earth, and only became the second Adam in resurrection?"}

[51217E]

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