Maybe you have experienced one of those dissatisfying encounters where you asked a Christian, perhaps even a pastor or priest, a question concerning the Christian faith only to be frustrated by an unsatisfactory response to what you considered to be a perfectly straightforward question. Time and again I have seen sincere enquirers (believers and non-believers alike) palmed off in this manner with short-shrift answers or casually dismissed under the portmanteau pretext that some things are simply a mystery which nobody can fathom. And often as a young believer that sincere enquirer was me. In forty years of studying God’s Word, asking for his wisdom and insight, and listening to, weighing and evaluating the teachings of others I have found no better advice than that of Proverbs 18:13:

He that answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame unto him.

We avoid the folly whenever we adhere to the principle and hear a matter out. In my view it is the root to success in most areas of life, whereas ignoring it is results in much error and heartache. It especially guards against going off half-cocked with some half-baked theology based a handful cherry-picked scriptures plucked out-of-context in support of some pre-existing doctrine or belief, something theologians call eisegesis, which interpolates our ideas ‘into’ scripture, as opposed to exegesis, which determines the truth by ‘interpreting from’ scripture. Jesus himself described the first approach as:

Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which you have delivered: and many such like things you do. (Mark 7:8-13)

Pretty blunt words from the Son of God, and it occurs to me that not much has changed in the two thousand years since he spoke them: Religion remains a master at usurping God’s Word to serve its own agenda. And that, by and large, is why so much of the Bible appears such a mystery to so many. Steeped in their own tradition, whatever they find in Scripture that runs contrary to what they already believe and therefore hard to fathom, they prefer to reject the Bible’s clarity in favour of the obscurity of whatever their tradition dictates. That being said, let’s apply the principle to one of those questions has puzzled many believers and sceptics alike: ‘How can the life of one man pay for the sins of the whole human race?’ I’d be surprised if you’d never heard it before: indeed, you may have been one of those who asked it and maybe the answer you were given went something like this:

Jesus Christ died for our sins. And because he lived a perfect life and died without sin himself, he was able to be my substitute on the Cross: whereby he received my sins and I received his righteousness.

So far, so good: Indeed, it pretty succinctly encapsulates the essence of the Gospel message of justification by grace. But it hasn’t answered the initial question of how the death of one man paid for all of us. Usually the explanation continues like this:

Jesus was the Son of God, God incarnate, and as our Creator his life was worth more than all of mankind put together, so his death on the Cross was able to pay for the sins of everyone.

That sounds pretty good. It’s certainly pious enough, respectful of Jesus and protective of his divinity, but is it the right explanation? Is it what the Bible actually teaches? You might be astonished to discover that the answer on both counts is No. It contradicts what the Bible actually explains about how Jesus’ sole sacrifice was infinitely efficacious. Instead, the truth is seldom taught. Let me say, though, that Jesus’ divinity is not in question and does play a vital role in our salvation, but not necessarily the role that most believers commonly suppose. To begin to understand how it all comes together requires that we take a whistle stop tour of Genesis to examine how the Fall occurred.

Then the Yahweh Elohim formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And Yahweh Elohim planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground Yahweh Elohim made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…Yahweh Elohim took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And Yahweh Elohim commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it in dying you shall die."

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that Yahweh Elohim had made. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but Elohim said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For Elohim knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like Elohim, knowing good and evil."

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (Genesis 2:7-9; 15-17 & 3:1-7)

It’s an extremely familiar account that I have written on many times which I don’t intend to rehearse now in its entirety, but what actually occurred here? In summary: God created and furnished the entire universe with the specific intention of giving it to Adam, placing him in a garden paradise called Eden with everything was provided for his comfort and delight and everything open to him to freely enjoy, save one solitary prohibition:

"You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it in dying you shall die."

This instruction applied equally to both the man (ish) and the woman (ishshah) who shared the name ‘Adam’ until after the Fall, when Adam changed her name to Chavvah or Eve (Life-giver). It was she whom the serpent tempted to eat the forbidden fruit before giving some to her husband who had been present with her all along, but as head as head of the family, it was he who was principally responsible. In that fatal instant the whole universe changed as Adam released into the world something Paul refers to in Romans 8:2 as ‘the law of sin and death’, also explaining in 1 Corinthians 15:56 that ‘the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the Law.’

The serpent’s physical form concealed the spirit who possessed it: Lucifer, a mighty angelic cherub who God had installed in Eden as a ministering spirit to serve mankind. Lucifer perceived man’s vulnerability to sin precisely because God had created him in his on image and likeness. This entailed an inbuilt majesty in man that Lucifer was able to exploit because in his immaturity Adam was resistant to being told what to do. The Bible is very clear about this, and is what Paul referred to when he said that ‘the strength of sin is the Law’. Think about it: What’s often your first reaction to being told what to do or not to do by someone else? – Whether consciously or unconsciously, we generally tend to question the authority of the one demanding our obedience. For example, were some drunk to wander onto the road and signal us to stop our car we would more likely swerve past than comply. But if a policeman signalled us to do the same we would obey. Even then there are many who resent the policeman’s authority. Hitherto, Adam and his wife were apt to obey God until Lucifer subtly undermined God’s authority in their eyes with the insinuation that God was holding out on them, whereupon they reasoned for themselves and disobeyed. This imperious propensity towards self-rule cannot be lightly dismissed as a consequence of the Fall because it manifested before the Fall occurred. But why? By God’s own proclamation in Genesis 1:26 it is part of man’s nature to be kingly, and kings don’t take kindly to being given orders. Remember who Adam was. But if you need reminding let Luke give you a clue at the end of Jesus’ genealogy in Luke 3:38:

…the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

That’s right. The Bible unequivocally calls Adam ‘the son of God’. Which brings us to Jesus who in 1 Corinthians 15:45 Paul calls ‘the last Adam’. This is more than just another analogy; it is a statement of fact that even the Old Testament recognises, because as the progenitor of all mankind Adam is the ultimate Patriarch – the father of all human beings born on this planet. That may sound irrelevant in this day and age where the idea of family has been devalued and fathers in particular are often regarded as figures of ridicule and worthy of scant respect (what I like to call the ‘Homer Simpson Syndrome’), but such was not so from the beginning and fathers were once held in a position of enormous reverence and respect. Even in Jesus’ day the Jews jealously regarded themselves as sons of their father Abraham, even though they were many generations removed. In their minds, not only was their father their father but their grandfather was their father, their great-grandfather was their father, as was their great-great-grandfather and so on, ad infinitum. Hence, Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, back as far as Abraham, and Luke’s genealogy, right back to God.

As we can see, to our ancestors at least, the concept that we are all born the sons and daughters of Adam is conceptually and theologically sound. It is also responsible for what many sceptics consider one of the most offensive doctrines in the whole Bible: Original Sin. The ironic thing about Original Sin is that it is neither a sin nor original, but is actually a term devised to explain something theologians refer to as the ‘depravity of man’, the fact that we are all born sinners. Contrary to what much of religion likes to teach, we are not sinners because we commit sin but rather we commit sin because we are sinners. In other words when we sin we merely enact our innate propensity to do evil: it is simply our nature. Why? – Because Adam sinned and you and I inherited his fallen nature. And that is what so many critics of Judaeo-Christian theology find so offensive. We are all born guilty, even before we actually do anything wrong. But the detractors’ offence fails to recognise the principle of paternal authority, inheritance and our role as heirs to our forefathers’ proclivities. And what critics thereby miss is how cleverly God exploits this very principle to affect our salvation. And how is that done? – By Jesus taking Adam’s place as our Patriarch. It’s a process identified by several names in Scripture: being Born Again (John 3:3 & 7), made a New Creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), as well as Saved, Justified, Redeemed, Delivered, Adopted as sons, made Heirs, and so on. But these are more than mere synonyms and tautologies; each term actually carries its own special subtlety and nuance describing some unique facet of the magnificent finished work of Jesus’ crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. The very fact the Bible calls Jesus the Last Adam explains a peculiarity we find in Isaiah 9:6.

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be on His shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Those familiar with Handel’s Messiah know how famous this verse is: A Messianic prophecy which incorporates just some of the names of the King of Glory, Jesus Christ, among them the counterintuitive ‘everlasting Father’. In other words, what we have here is an astonishing instance of the title Father being applied to the Second Person of the Trinity rather than the First Person with whom we normally associate it. But here it is used in a different way from how it is normally applied to the First Person of the Trinity whom we usually refer to as God the Father. In this case, Jesus’ fatherhood refers to his status as Adam’s replacement as our Patriarch. And this is how God affects our salvation, as Paul explains in Romans 5:12-19 (parentheses mine):

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man (Adam), and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned – for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come (Jesus).

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's (Adam’s) trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's (Adam’s) sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man's (Adam’s) trespass, death reigned through that one man (Adam), much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's (Adam’s) disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's (Jesus’) obedience the many will be made righteous.

This is the wholly astonishing doctrine of salvation by grace comprehensively elucidated by Paul, although the full impact of what it says is seldom taught and widely misunderstood, namely that once we are saved we are no longer sinners for precisely the same reason that we once were – vicariously by inheritance from our father Adam or our Father Jesus. If you like, it might be called the doctrine of Original Grace because as Paul explains, just as we were once sinners through no act of sin on our part, we are now recipients of God’s righteousness in the same manner. It’s rather like the old temporal paradox so beloved of science fiction writers: ‘What would happen if we travelled back in time and killed our own grandfather as a child?’

Clearly, killing our grandfather in such circumstances would create a contradiction inasmuch as he could not then sire our father, whereupon we could not exist to travel back in time to kill him. It’s a logical absurdity which nevertheless demonstrates a logical consequence of tampering with history.

This is analogous to what God did through Jesus except that, instead of killing our Patriarch Adam, Jesus established a wholly new dynasty free of Adam’s blood taint of Original Sin, imbued instead with his own purity. Let me illustrate this graphically for simplicity, with a brief explanation beforehand.

Two genealogies of Jesus appear in the New Testament: Matthew’s, descending through his step-father Joseph, from whom Jesus derived his Jewish nationality, and Luke’s genealogy descending through Mary, through whom Jesus derived his Jewish faith and humanity. You can check out both in Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38. Although sequential, the following genealogy is stylised and skips countless generations to illustrate the principle of descent only, and not detailed lineage.

God

\/

Adam

\/

[ten generations]

\/

Noah

\/

[n-generations]

\/

Me

 

‘n’ may be as many as 200 generations or so, which is some lineage from Adam. Now look at the lineage of the Born Again believer.

God

\/

Jesus

\/

Me

 

You see, when a sinner repents, he becomes a new creation and is instantly adopted into the family of God (Galatians 4:5) becoming an heir of righteousness (Titus 3:7) with Jesus as his Patriarch instead of Adam, when he simultaneously becomes a Beloved son in whom God the Father is well pleased.

As the only Begotten of the Father, Jesus’ pre-eminence and transcendence remain uncompromised but the Bible does not say that Jesus is God’s only son, rather that he is ‘the firstborn among many brethren’ (Romans 8:29). Remember, while Jacob could rightly be described as Abraham’s genealogical grandson, in terms of inheritance he is simply a son of Abraham. Likewise, you and I are not grandson’s of God the Father but his sons (‘son’ being a title in this instance common to either gender and applying equally to ladies).

So, God regards all unregenerate mankind as sinners by descent from one man – Adam. His sin is our sin and our sin originates from him like the tendrils of some enormous organism stretching down through history. The resulting contamination of mankind by sin was total, as was our need for a Saviour, as Jesus explained to Nicodemus in John 3:17-19.

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

This is what we mean when we say that ‘God has no grandchildren’, because Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross was effectual for each of us individually, as by faith we each die to our old genealogy to be reborn into Jesus’ lineage: I can’t cross the divide for you, nor you for me. It’s an individual journey every time. The part that Jesus’ divinity played in his being able to die for our sins was crucial but indirect, an incidental point because no son of Adam was able to live a sinless life required of a Saviour. Jesus achieved it by two means, thereby qualifying him to replace the first Adam. Both his humanity and divinity were essential to Jesus’ task of being the Saviour of mankind. Humanly, Jesus lived a perfect life without committing any sin, as Hebrews 4:15 describes:

‘For we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted just as we are, yet without sin.’

However, the idea that the human life of the Son of God was worth more than all humanity is theologically plausible but not the principle upon which God himself effected our salvation. If that sounds presumptuous, then consider what the Word of God has to say about it in Philippians 2:5-8.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

The Greek verb for ‘made of no reputation’ is keno, literally meaning to empty. So Jesus did not arrive on planet earth as some kind of super being but as an ordinary human being emptied of all divine powers, privileges and prerogatives. He said as much himself in John 5:19.

Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, The Son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do. For whatever things he does, these also the Son does likewise.”

Indeed, the New Testament is emphatic that Jesus performed not one single miracle until the age of 30, when following his baptism by John he received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, shortly after which he turned water into wine at the wedding in Cana (John 2:11).

There is also an Old Testament principle that many Christians miss; namely, the half-shekel or atonement money paid by every man counted in a military census, as first mentioned in Exodus 30:11-16.

And Yahweh spoke to Moses saying, “When you count the sons of Israel, of those who are to be counted, then they shall each man give a ransom for his soul to Yahweh when you number them, so that there may be no plague among them when you number them. They shall give this, every one that passes among those who are counted, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary (a shekel is twenty gerahs); a half shekel shall be the offering of Yahweh. Everyone that passes among those who are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering to Yahweh. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than half a shekel, when they give an offering to Yahweh to make an atonement for your souls. And you shall take the atonement silver of the sons of Israel, and shall appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation, so that it may be a memorial to the sons of Israel before Yahweh, to make an atonement for your souls.”

What is frequently overlooked here is this principle of enormous importance to God: namely, that the life of every human being is of equal worth, which is why the rich man was required to pay no more nor less than the poor man. In Hebrew the words for ransom and atonement are almost identical and basically mean to cover. And the behind the idea of a ransom price being paid in a census was that such tallies were taken to ascertain Israel’s military strength, requiring that atonement money be taken to cover the blood that each soldier might spill in battle (whether by losing his own or taking another) and is one reason why in the Bible silver represents redemption. Much later, the silver half-shekel became the Temple tax which Jesus paid by sending Peter to collect it from a fish’s mouth in Matthew 17:27. But Jesus’ most famous allusion to it is in Matthew 20:28 and Mark 10:45, where he says:

…the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

By analogy, even Jesus’ human life was reckoned by God as worth the same half-shekel as any other man’s. The fact that he was able to give it as a ransom for many was not because he is our Creator but because he was perfect. God only required one perfect human life to ransom the sins of the First Adam through whom every human being is vicariously born a sinner, because perfection is an absolute – something of unqualified and infinite value.

Where Jesus’ divinity is crucial is in the unique circumstance of his mother’s conception by the agency of the Holy Spirit which enabled him to be born without Original Sin which is inherited from Adam. Those who argue, therefore, that the Virgin Birth is a pointless doctrine merely demonstrate their own ignorance of its indispensable place in the Gospel. Once we recognise the roles that Jesus’ humanity and divinity played in saving mankind from sin, we can better appreciate Jesus’ role as the Last Adam. We see how we enter by faith into a totally different dispensation from the Law of sin and death introduced by the First Adam; that of salvation by grace. The two systems are morally immiscible: law and grace simply do not mix. You can live under one or the other but never both. Paul made this abundantly clear when he explained in Galatians 2:21,

I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness comes by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.

Or, as the Contemporary English Version puts it:

I don't turn my back on God's undeserved kindness. If we can be acceptable to God by obeying the Law, it was useless for Christ to die.

Strong words by Paul: If we can justified by works then Jesus’ death was unnecessary. Yet we know God the Father’s answer to this very point when in Gethsemane Jesus implored him thus in Matthew 26:39 & 42:

And He went a little further and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.”

He went away again the second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cup may not pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.”’

If there was another way that we might be saved, God had a strange way of showing it. Nor is this new knowledge, but a principle established by God in Eden, as we see in Genesis 3:22 & 24.

And Yahweh God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever…So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

In essence, once Adam had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he disqualified himself from any further access to the tree of life, representing God’s grace. It was not that God wished to be unforgiving towards Adam, but that he had to respect Adam’s sovereign choice to reject grace as a means of reconciliation. But now, since Jesus’ finished work on the Cross, all that has changed and we are once again qualified.

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:11-14)