Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
When we think about what Jesus Christ accomplished in His incarnation, and by His sacrifice on His cross, we must take a serious look at the idea of His being the second or “last Adam.”
When God created man in Eden, He did not create billions of individuals such as we today: He created one man, and one woman to be his “help meet.”
They were to be “fruitful” and “multiply,” and fill the earth with people—through the exercise of love and sex.
But they rebelled against their Creator, and imposed upon their progeny a “judicial ... verdict of condemnation”(Rom. 5:16, NEB).
When God so loved the world that He gave His Son to be our Savior, Christ had to dismiss Adam as head of the human race and take His place as the new or “last Adam” (see 1 Cor. 15:45).
And Christ has also dismissed or has reversed that “judicial ... verdict of condemnation” that Adam fixed on all of us, and has given all of us instead His “judicial ... verdict of acquittal” in Himself (Rom. 5:16, NEB).
This does not mean that now we are all forced to go to heaven, against our will; but for sure He has opened the gates of the New Jerusalem for all to enter if they choose. But it does mean that even those who come up in the second resurrection do so “in Christ,” for “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22).
Amazing, but there it is: the hopelessly wicked who come up in the second resurrection (cf. Rev. 20:5ff) do so “in Christ.” They will at last realize, when it is too late, that every breath they ever took was by the grace of Christ as their “last Adam,” and that the cross of Christ was stamped on every loaf of bread they ate. They will at last realize that their true name is Esau—they HAD the most precious “birthright” “in Christ” but wickedly “despised” it and “sold” it for “a mess of pottage” (comparatively speaking), as Esau treated his birthright (Gen. 25:34).
How happy we will be if we can come to see all this glorious truth now, today! Then we will thank the Lord for every breath we have, for every morsel of bread; and we will gladly yield Him our life in return and sing forever after.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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