THE LAST ADAM A QUICKENING SPIRIT
W. McKiIlop
1 Corinthians 15: 45; Romans 8: 9 (last clause); John 20: 20 (last sentence)—23; 2 Corinthians 3: 17, 18
What I would like to speak about, beloved brethren, with the Lord’s help, is how the Lord is presented as the “last Adam”. It is not a title of the Lord that we hear spoken much among us, but from one point of view you could hardly think of anything more important to us as bearing on the question of life among us. The apostle says, “the last Adam a quickening spirit”, or as the note says, a ‘making alive’ spirit. We are more familiar generally with such titles of Christ as the Lord Jesus and Jesus Christ, the Son of God, but here the apostle deliberately selects this title of Christ, the last Adam. The contrast with the first man Adam is apparent. It really needs no comment. The first man Adam became a living soul, that was by the breath of God creationally. We should be able to understand that, because it is on that principle that we have received our physical being, but something of far greater glory and excellence is the spiritual order of things in which we are to have part. We are very accustomed to the physical world, and as we see it we can take account of it, but that is not the final order of things. God has brought it in, in His wisdom, in order to work out His eternal thoughts, but finally the whole universe will be spiritual, and it must be so because God is a Spirit. Indeed the very fact that our natural bodies are not in view for eternal conditions is clear in this chapter. The apostle says, “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body—if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one”. Ultimately we shall have spiritual bodies. In the meantime what is spiritual is being worked out in these natural bodies and being worked out by the last Adam a quickening spirit.
You will notice how careful the apostle is in his use of language, “Thus also it is written, The first man Adam became a living soul”. He was not that until after God formed him; He breathed into him. But there is no suggestion that the last Adam became anything; it says, “the last Adam a quickening spirit”. As John presents Him in chapter one of his gospel, he says “In him was life”. But then, the communication of life through quickening required the accomplishment of redemption and especially as this chapter shows, the great thought of resurrection. That the Lord was the last Adam when He was here is undoubtedly true, but He was not acting in the communication of life out of death because redemption had to be accomplished. The natural order had to be finished for God—and is finished for faith—in the death and burial of Christ and the spiritual order of things had to come into view in His resurrection. It is a very great matter to contrast the first man Adam with the last Adam. It is not, you will notice, as we sometimes say, the second Adam. There is no second Adam. There was a first man Adam, but the last Adam a quickening spirit.
A good many years ago on this continent, the Lord’s servant, Mr Taylor Snr., gave a remarkable address (J.T. N.S. Vol. 48, pp.182, 183) in which he spoke about the Lord becoming His own Spirit as coming into manhood; that points to the fact that He existed previously. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”, John 1: 1. You and I had no prior existence and we have received our spirits from God, but something additional is needed, and especially what is needed is that we should apprehend by faith the last Adam a quickening spirit, or as the note says a ‘making alive’ spirit. We were all morally dead toward God, the death of Christ proved that. His death showed that everyone else was morally dead, “that one died for all, then all have died”. And so all that is intended to help us distinguish in our minds between the natural and the spiritual and to look away more and more from the natural to the spiritual. The apostle speaks about actual facts as to our history. He says “that which is spiritual was not first, but that which is natural”. The question is whether we have come to what he goes on to say, “then that which is spiritual”. Have we had to do with the last Adam consciously and truly so that we are living in what is spiritual increasingly?
I do not want you to think that I am being unrealistic in saying that, because the best husband and father is a spiritual man, the best wife and mother is a spiritual woman. Those who have the least spiritual influence in their households are those who live principally in what is natural. You need to think about this. I would say to the young people here who are unmarried: in due course the question will come up in your history as to marriage in the Lord and it will be an important matter for you to conclude that your marriage should be truly in the Lord and should be on this principle of moving from what is just natural to what is spiritual. The same thing needs to be true of us at any stage of life. I think it would be shameful if the things which might appeal naturally to the younger men here were to have a great appeal to me. It would be no credit to me as a subject of the work of God, no credit as a person who has come under the hand of the last Adam. There is a great deal that could be said about the Lord as the last Adam, but you can search it out in the ministry for yourself. God really intends that the last Adam should be the source of life in the spiritual universe—“the last Adam a quickening spirit”. The Lord showed that He was, in the sense of power, when He raised Lazarus and others, but for us everything now is related to Him as out of death. The last Adam means there is no other to come. That is a great thing to reach in my history, that I have come to the one Man that God has ordained, and for me there will be no other!
I referred to the verse in Romans 8 because I think it is related to this passage. The apostle is speaking about the change of the body, but then he introduces,
you might say almost abruptly, this thought that “if any one has not the Spirit of Christ he is not of him”. If you have not the Spirit of Christ it would mean that you have not had to do with the last Adam, you have not come under His hand. The Spirit of Christ is a great subjective thought involving the life and character of that blessed Man coming out in us. It is very solemn that “if any one has not the Spirit of Christ he is not of him”. Regardless of what profession anyone might make, if he has not the Spirit of Christ he has not come under the hand of the last Adam and he has not been quickened by the last Adam a quickening spirit. The evidence of quickening is that subjectively the Spirit of Christ is seen in the believer.
Now a lot more could be said about the Spirit in this chapter; as we know, it has often been called the Spirit’s chapter and there are probably seventeen references to the Spirit in various connections in it. But the one that I want to have you focus on is this, “if any one has not the Spirit of Christ he is not of him”. Of course, the converse would be true, if anyone has the Spirit of Christ he is of Him. That would be, I should think, the ground that through grace we would take, that we have the Spirit of Christ and therefore we are of Him. The last Adam has quickened us into life toward God and the spiritual life that we enjoy among the brethren is the evidence that we have come under the hand of the last Adam.
John 20 is clearly presenting the Lord to us as the last Adam although the title is not used in the chapter. But He comes in after His resurrection, as He is about to ascend to His Father and our Father and to His God and our God, and He speaks about peace to them twice, “And having said this; he shewed to them his hands and his side”. We can think of the Lord’s hands entering into what we read in chapter 9 of John’s gospel, that He made mud of the spittle—that would be with His hands—and then He applied it as ointment to the man’s eyes. But then the reference to His side would allude to the fact that there is a vessel, the assembly, that is wholly spiritual because it is out of Christ. We often say, and it is not wrong, that the assembly can trace its origin to the death of Christ, but I think it is more accurate to say that the assembly’s origin can be traced to the side of the heavenly Man. That is really what Paul has to say in Ephesians, “we are of his flesh, and of his bones”, and then he says, “This mystery is great, but I speak as to Christ, and as to the assembly”, Ephesians 5: 32. To refer also just in passing, because we need to become more refined in our thoughts about how scripture presents matters, when it says, “He shall see of the fruit of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied” (Isaiah 53: 11), that is not exactly the thought of the assembly. That is more what we are severally as persons who have come out of His sufferings and His death. The grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying and bearing much fruit is not exactly the thought of the assembly, it is what we are severally as coming out of the death of Christ and living in His life out of death. But the true heavenly thought of the assembly is that she is out of the ascended Man and so the assembly is set to be His fulness; “the fulness of him who fills all in all”, Ephesians 1: 23. In John 20 the Lord was thinking about His own. It is not the assembly as such but persons like ourselves, we are so many persons here, and as the Lord came to them and spoke to them, then it says that, “having said this, he breathed into them”.
Now to interest the younger brethren in this matter so that they will look into it, the thought of breath in John’s gospel is a higher thought than water flowing out of your belly. You get in chapter 7 that the person who believes on Christ, “out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7: 38). But breath is a higher thought, especially bearing on assembly function and particularly having in mind service Godward, that the service is proceeding in the life and power towards God of the last Adam. As the last Adam, the Lord really stands alone because of no one else could it be said, “the last Adam a quickening spirit”. We have part in sonship with the
Lord Jesus, but it could not be said of us, a quickening spirit; He is unique in that respect. He is enabling them to act in His grace and power during the time of His absence. I am sure the absence has been long for the Lord as well as for us, going on nearly two thousand years.
What He had in mind, as this passage would indicate, is that the power and grace of His life should govern persons in all their functions whether man-ward or God-ward. He says,
“Receive the Holy Spirit”. That would be anticipative. The Holy Spirit did not actually come until Acts 2, but it is the spirit and life of the ascending Man that is breathed into them. But now the Spirit has come and the spirit and power and life of the ascended Man is to come out in us in the way we function. I am not thinking of going into the detail. We all know what it is to have to function in our localities, but I would just say, as has often been said, remitting comes before retention, showing that if it is at all possible the Lord would say, ‘if you remit, that is what I would do’.
I touch on the passage in 2 Corinthians 3, which is well known to us. What I would like to suggest to the brethren for consideration is that the Lord is presented in this passage, as I have been speaking of Him, that is, as bearing on the service of God. In verse 17 Paul says “now the Lord is the Spirit”. I see a connection between that remark and what is in 1 Corinthians 15, “the last Adam a quickening spirit”. As we go on in this passage, we find that “the Spirit of the Lord” is mentioned, and “the Lord the Spirit” which would clearly be the Holy Spirit, but the apostle would remind us that in the working out of things spiritually in the assembly, and particularly in the service of God, “the Lord is the Spirit”; that is, He is the source of things subjectively. The Spirit Himself is the power of reception and the power of formation, but the Lord is really the source of things in the assembly as He will be in the whole universe of God. The whole universe will derive its life from Christ. The last Adam will cause the whole universe to live eternally in its affections Godward; that is clearly in view in what is said here, “the Lord is the Spirit”. Then “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” indicates a realm in which things cannot be too sharply divided, and that is good because it helps us to rely on spirituality and not on acuity of mind naturally. The most intelligent natural man could not distinguish for you between “the Lord is the Spirit” and “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”. But the Spirit-taught believer who has come under the hand of the last Adam can intelligently follow what the apostle is saying. He can understand that on Lord’s day in the service of God the last Adam is the source of things in us but that all proceeds in the liberty and power of the Spirit of God.
That is what I had to say, beloved brethren, and I commend it to you because it is an immensely interesting matter, one that is well worth following up. This title or name of Christ, which only appears once, conveys what is almost immeasurable when you begin to think of it, “the last Adam a quickening spirit”. May the Spirit of God help us to lay hold of these things and follow them up so that we come under the hand of the Lord Jesus increasingly as the last Adam. As we do, we shall find we are being formed by His grace and power to have part in what is entirely spiritual and heavenly. That is really what is in view.
When the Lord comes in at the breaking of bread He has in mind what is spiritual and heavenly and final, because we really touch not only what is heavenly but also what is final.
We can say worshipfully too that as we go on in the service of God, having to do with divine Persons, we touch the fulness of the revelation of God, the way God has come out. May the Lord bless the word to us.
Address at Adelaide
21 April 2000