The Spirit of Adam

The first man [ was ] of the earth, [ made ] of dust; the second Man [ is ] the Lord from heaven.

I Corinthians 15:47 

To quote a good friend of mine, 'If you don't get Adam right, you can't get the Last Adam right.' Not sure if I would totally agree with this statement, because some who seem to have gotten Adam wrong seem to have gotten Jesus just fine! But seriously, there may be something to what my friend stated. If one doesn't acknowledge that the first Adam was simply a covenant head ( the first man with whom the Creator God made covenant ), then is it possible that they have truly missed the import of Covenantal Aspect of the Headship of Jesus?!

On the other hand, if the Adam we read about in Scripture really was the progenitor of the human race, as Creation Science would have us believe, wouldn't that explain the evil that men do? If the fallen spirit of Adam still pervades the hearts & minds of men & women the world over, then the fact that these are still in rebellion against their Creator makes all kinds of sense, right? Wait, no; that doesn't work: if Jesus the Christ, as the Last Adam, brought an end to the tyranny of Sin & Death ( Romans 5:12-21 ), then this spirit of Adam cannot exist anymore! Since Jesus took over the Headship from Adam, then Jesus, as the Last Adam, has become the Father of ALL men, right?

When asserting that the Creator God is the Father of all ( the ) living, we must be very careful, for as a dear brother once zealously ejaculated, 'my homosexual neighbor is NOT my brother!' To many Christians, it is difficult, nay impossible, to view those that Christianity has viewed as outsiders for so long as children of our Heavenly Father! Albeit rebellious children, they are children nonetheless & desperately seeking love & acceptance, though most would say, 'you're doing it wrong!'

The Spirit of Adam seems to be alive & well on Planet Earth, there is no doubt about that! Sometimes you almost can't blame all the doomsday prophets & false prognosticators; much of the crap going on in the world today, in particular the Dark Continent & the Middle East seems to leap straight from the pages of Scripture! The Rebellion of Man & the evil that men do seems to have no end or limits! It's no wonder that a vast majority ( of Christians ) think that this is the terminal generation!

Is this spirit, though, really the Spirit of Adam, or is it simply the rebellious spirit that dwells in the hearts & minds of all men & women who have not experienced The Change of Life? Though it could be argued that they are one & the same, the spirit of Adam, as the first covenant man, experienced death when he partook of the forbidden fruit. When Jesus, as the Last Adam, the Head of the New Covenant came, He took up the reins that the first man ( Adam ) had lost & resurrected in Himself the Body of Israel, He who Reigns with God!

The Scriptural Adam was unarguably the head, or father of the family of man ( Scripturally, 'the children of the devil' - John 8:44 ), whether one believes he was the first human being on planet earth or that he was the first man that the Creator God introduced Himself to! If we would posit that this same fallen nature, this same Spirit of Adam exists in certain men & women today, then we must acknowledge one of two things; either Jesus did not finish His Work ( as when He cried, 'it is finished', or the Spirit of Adam ( Man ) is stronger than the Spirit of Christ! If Adam as the first man & the federal head of humanity passed his fallen nature & the Spirit of Rebellion on to countless generations, then we would have someone besides ourselves to blame for our faults, even as those who have the Spirit of Christ, but if the first man Adam was simply the head of a nation of priests, those with whom the Creator God had made covenant in the beginning, then we can see that in the same way, Jesus became the Covenant Head of all those who have Faith in Him!

Charles Haddon Shank