The offices of Christ

Christ the Last Adam

Jesus Christ is called the Last Adam because he is the head of a new humanity, undoing what the first Adam did and giving life where the first Adam brought death. As one man's disobedience made many sinners, so the obedience of one, Jesus, makes many righteous. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. He is the beginning of a renewed human race, restored and raised in him.

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.1 Corinthians 15:22 (KJV)

What it means to call Christ the Last Adam

The title Last Adam, which Paul gives to Jesus, tells us that Jesus is not only a Savior for individuals but the head of a whole new humanity. To understand it we have to see that in Scripture two men stand as representatives of the human race, each acting on behalf of all who belong to him. The first is Adam, the head of the old humanity. The last is Christ, the head of the new.

Paul writes, And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Adam is called the first because with him the human story began, and Jesus is called the last Adam because there will be no other head of humanity after him; the line runs from the first Adam to the last and no further. In these two men the whole race is summed up, and everyone who has ever lived belongs to one or the other.

This is the deepest way of seeing what Jesus came to do. He did not come merely to repair damaged individuals but to begin the human race over again, to be a second founder of humanity who succeeds where the first failed. What Adam lost, the Last Adam recovers, and more, for he brings his people not back to a garden but on to glory. He is the pattern and the source of what redeemed humanity will be.

The first Adam and the fall of humanity

To grasp the Last Adam we must remember the first. God made Adam in his own image, placed him in the garden, and set before him a single command. Adam stood there not only for himself but as the head of all who would come from him, so that his choice would be, in a sense, the choice of the whole race. When he disobeyed, sin and death entered the world, and the whole human family was drawn into his fall.

Paul states the tragedy without flinching: by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men. As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, and by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation. We are not born neutral into a clean world; we are born into a fallen race, sharing Adam's nature and Adam's guilt, and the proof is that we all die, and we all sin.

This is the human condition the whole Bible reckons with. Every effort to reform ourselves runs aground on it, for the trouble is not merely in what we do but in what we are, children of Adam, bearing his likeness. And yet the very fact that one man could act for all held a hidden hope. If humanity could fall through one representative, then perhaps humanity could be redeemed through another. The story of the first Adam was written, Paul says, as the figure of him that was to come.

How Jesus succeeds as the Last Adam

Jesus is the Last Adam who reverses the ruin of the first. Where the first Adam was tested in a garden of plenty and fell, the Last Adam was tested in a wilderness of hunger and stood firm. Where Adam grasped at what was forbidden, Jesus, though he was in the form of God, humbled himself and became obedient unto death. He walked the whole path of human life without a single failure, rendering to God the perfect obedience that Adam and all his children owed but never gave.

So Paul sets the two heads side by side: For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. As Adam's one act of sin brought condemnation on all who are in him, so Christ's one life of obedience, crowned by his death, brings justification and life to all who are in him. What we lost in the first man we regain, more than regain, in the last.

And the Last Adam conquered the death that the first Adam let loose. Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Jesus rose as a quickening, life-giving spirit, the firstfruits of a new creation, and his resurrection is the promise of ours. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. He has become the source of a life that death cannot touch, and everyone joined to him will share it.

So the two heads gather two humanities. All who are born of Adam belong to the old creation, marked by sin and bound for death; all who are born again into Christ belong to the new creation, marked by his righteousness and bound for life. The move from the one to the other is the great passage of the gospel, out of Adam and into Christ, and it happens not by our climbing but by God's gift, received through faith. What Adam did to us without our asking, Christ undoes for all who will have him, and the second founder of humanity proves stronger than the first.

What Christ the Last Adam means for us

Because Jesus is the Last Adam, our deepest problem has a real remedy. We are not merely told to try harder within a fallen nature we cannot escape; we are offered a new humanity in Christ. By faith we are taken out of Adam and put into Jesus, so that his obedience counts as ours and his risen life becomes our own. We are not patched up; we are made new, part of a new creation.

This means our identity is no longer fixed by our past or our failures. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, and all things are become new. We still carry the weakness of Adam's flesh for now, but we belong to the Last Adam, and his life is at work in us, renewing us day by day into his likeness. The trajectory of our lives has been changed at the root.

And it gives us a sure and bodily hope. Because we are joined to the risen Last Adam, death is not the end for us. As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. The grave could not hold our head, and it will not hold his members. In Christ the last Adam, the whole story that began in a garden with a fall ends in glory with a resurrection, and all who are his will be made alive together with him.

This lifts our eyes past our own struggle to something vast and hopeful. The gospel is not only the rescue of a soul here and there but the beginning of a renewed humanity and a renewed world under a new and faithful head. What went wrong in the first man is being set right in the last, and one day the work will be complete, when Christ, having reigned until every enemy is beneath his feet, presents to God a redeemed people bearing his own image. To belong to the Last Adam is to belong to that certain future, and to know that the story of the human race does not end in the dust of the first Adam but in the glory of the last.

A note for all traditions: the threefold office of Christ, Prophet, Priest, and King, is a historic and non-denominational way of understanding Jesus, shared across the Christian church. Every verse above is quoted from the King James Version and can be read in its own context. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and the invitation of this page is simply to know him.

Related: Christ Our Savior · Christ Our King · The offices of Christ · The offices of Christ