As we read the opening verses of the Gospel by John, the mind instinctively recurs to the commencement of the Book of Genesis. Both speak of the beginning, the former of Him Who already existed, the latter of what was then first called into being. “In the beginning was the Word.” “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” But the similarity between these two books does not end there. With different themes for their subjects—Genesis treating of the first Adam and his descendants, John of the last Adam, His words and works—there is, nevertheless, as is attempted in the following paper to be pointed out, so marked an agreement in the subjects of the first few chapters, and the order in which they are narrated, as to lead the reader to the conclusion that He, Who sees the end from the beginning, was so directing what should take place from the commencement of this world's history, that, when the events of Genesis and John should be recorded and compared, the master mind, the guiding hand, should be discerned. Nor this only, but all that is related of the first Adam when compared, or contrasted, with what is told us of the last Adam, should bring out the surpassing glory and excellence of the latter, and the rich grace of God in sending Him into the world.
The earth prepared for man, all the animals over which he was to rule having been created, the first chapter of Genesis tells us of his appearance fresh from the creative hand of God. “God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” A creature representing God on earth, and like Him, pure, free from spot and sin—such was the one placed as head over this then new creation. And God expressed His approval of this His latest work. He had on the previous day blessed the work of His hands, the fowls and all that moved in the seas; now He blesses man that he may fill the earth and subdue it. It was man's place to rule over it.
Turning to the first chapter of John, we have mention of the appearance of another man on the earth, a head like Adam, but a head of another race—the Word made flesh. And as of Adam and all His works God had expressed His emphatic approval, so we get a no less decisive mark of His delight in the Word made flesh, when the Spirit of God descended like a dove and rested on Him The firstborn of every creature, His only begotten Son, when He appears must be signaled by the special favor of heaven. On Him the heavens opened.
But what comparison with any of the sons of men can bring out His excellency or delineate His glory. There must be contrasts to show what they had not, and what He has. Adam was made after the likeness of God; He was God. Adam was made in the image of God. Of Him it could be said, He was the image of the invisible God. All creation could see in the first Adam one representing God on earth. All who had opened eyes and prepared hearts could discern in the Lord Jesus “a glory as of the only begotten of the Father:” moreover He declared the Father (1:1), which Adam, though made in the image of God, could never do. Again, Adam was created. The Word was made flesh. Both had a beginning in flesh on the earth. The first had none before he lived here. By the Second, the first was created. Adam appeared on a scene prepared to receive him; He entered a world ready to reject Him Adam walked about surrounded by the works of God's hands. He came to His own things εἰς τὰ ἴδια, and whilst He came to give grace upon grace, and to give authority to become children of God, Adam was to receive the unqualified submission of God's creatures on earth and to be lord of all here below. This is next brought out. It was God's expressed will when He created him. It was carried into execution by God Himself when He brought all creatures to be named by him. “And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”
Placed in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it, all acknowledged his sway. To own Adam was to submit to God. To receive a name from him was as if it had been pronounced by the Lord God Himself. Beautiful picture of order and subjection to the one set over the works of God's hands! But he was only the type of Him Who was to come (Rom. 5:1414Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. (Romans 5:14)). So when He came He could not do less than give names likewise; to Simon He gave the name of Cephas, signifying, as head of the new creation, the use to which He would put him. Afterward the sons of Zebedee He surnamed Boanerges (Mark 3:1717And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder: (Mark 3:17)). By and by He will give to His saints each a new name, which no man knoweth but he who receiveth it (Rev. 2:1717He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. (Revelation 2:17)). And just as we have Adam in the garden surrounded by all the living creatures, and owned by them as head of that creation, so we have the Lord Jesus presented to us as King in His kingdom, enforcing the subjection of all to His authority and will. The second chapter of Genesis gives us the one, the second of John the other. Alike in this, each one the center appointed by God, how great is the difference. The glory of Adam seen that day in Eden passed away never to be restored. The glory of the Lord displayed in earth in a brief passing way can never pall, never decay, “He shall be great to the ends of the earth,” “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end” (Mic. 5:44And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth. (Micah 5:4); Isa. 9:77Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. (Isaiah 9:7)).
And, differing as Adam did from the Lord in the transient character of his glory, we may trace a difference in the circumstances connected with it. The former had to subdue the earth, but had no rival to dispute his sway, and no unruly spirit to reduce to subjection. The latter came on this earth on which His glory is one day to be revealed and His kingdom established over all, with every opposition to encounter and the ruling spirit of evil to overcome. In Eden there was real subjection to God; in Jerusalem it was professed subjection to Him, coupled with the strongest manifestation of personal hostility to the One He had appointed, and the most determined opposition to the authority of God's King. Yet as God's anointed He must exercise the rights of sovereignty over the world. The second chapter of John gives a glimpse of what it will be. The happiness of Eden gone, and gone forever, we learn how happiness can yet be enjoyed on this earth. The Lord provides the wine for His disciples and those who called Him to the feast. But it is when their provision is exhausted that He comes in and gives sufficient to last throughout the feast; for what He provides can never end, depending as it will for its origin and continuance on the work and everlasting acceptance of Him Who provides it. The happiness of Eden, brought to its climax when Adam received his bride, was soon alloyed with trouble, the fruit of sin. In the happiness of the kingdom His people will know no admixture of bitterness, for “the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces, and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off the earth, for the Lord hath spoken it” (Isa. 25:88He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it. (Isaiah 25:8); Rev. 7:16, l 7).
Passing from Galilee to Jerusalem another work presents itself to be accomplished. He must vindicate God's authority where it has been denied. He purges, therefore, His Father's house. Oxen, sheep, doves, their vendors, the money-changers, all must depart at His bidding. He drives them out with a scourge, acts as none had acted before Him, and as none did after Him. For to Him, and Him alone, this place of pre-eminence belongs. Such is a brief glimpse of the double work of the Second Adam in His kingdom. To both the first was a stranger. He sat in Eden to receive the homage of God's creatures. The Lord will give of His bounty to make glad the hearts of His saints, a more blessed position surely than Adam ever occupied (Acts 20:3535I have showed you all things, how that so laboring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. (Acts 20:35)), and will act in judicial power to assert the just claims of God. At Cana inanimate creation owns His power. At Jerusalem, living creatures, men, beasts, birds, obey His will, a foreshadowing of what the Psalmist predicts, “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet” (Psa. 8:66Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: (Psalm 8:6)).
This display of power, as of blessing, loads to the consideration of the need of such a work. Gen. 3 tells us of the entrance of sin, which caused it, and the sad consequences of disobedience. John speaks of the remedy and its blessed results. In both chapters we get God and man brought face to face. In the former is the last meeting before they parted never to meet as they had done on earth again. In the latter we learn how they can meet so as never again to part, if man will only hearken to God. At that meeting in Eden God passed sentence of death as the penalty of disobedience. At this interview between the Lord and Nicodemus He spake of everlasting life as the gift of God. And here another parallel comes out. In both cases we have the mention of a third party. But again we have a marked contrast. For in the one, the third party is the serpent, the seducer of Eve and destroyer of Adam and his race: in the other, the third party is the woman's seed, the Son of man, the Savior of the lost; and what formed the chief topic of the serpent's conversation with Eve, and the snare by which he entrapped her, is the subject the Lord takes up and deals with when Nicodemus comes to Him. The serpent persuaded Eve that God had withheld something from them they ought to enjoy. He made her doubt the reality of God's love. The Lord, when teaching the master in Israel, tells out the exceeding greatness of that love which stopped not at the giving up of His only Son for a ruined, sinful, world. Adam and Eve ought to have resented any doubt thrown over the reality and fullness of God's love. What they failed to do, that the Son of man takes up and carries through. They had proofs abundant of His love to them, and the very presence of Eve was enough to show that what was good for Adam to have, God would provide. “It is not good,” God said, “that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” He saw his need and let none but Himself supply it. Would He act differently about that tree, concerning which He had given such a particular injunction? Should any one of His creatures be allowed to supply the lack which God, conscious of it, had left unfilled? They failed to repudiate the insidious attack on their Creator. It remained therefore for the Son of man to show how entirely contrary to truth it was. And how does He do this? By pointing to what Adam and Eve had received and the place they had occupied as sinless creatures? No: but by showing God could love a sinful world. Adam had evidences of God's love in plenty to adduce; the Lord gives a new proof in coming to die for him and his descendants. And so after four thousand years had rolled by, the lie of the serpent is contradicted. God could so love the world, as to give His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should net perish, but have everlasting life. As far as the misery and ruin of Adam's sin had reached, so far could the remedy now announced go forth. Wherever there was a child of Adam, there was one for whom God in His love had provided” a Savior. Now God and man could again meet on terms which could never be altered. No longer on the ground of man's innocence, nor on the ground of man's responsibility, for that had signally failed; but on the ground of a gift which God had given, and a work which the Son of man would accomplish.
Another point in these two narratives must be noticed. Gen. 3 tells us of a voluntary act on the part of Adam, and an act of necessity on the part of God—the driving him out of paradise, lest he should take of the tree of life and live forever. John 3 tells us also of a spontaneous act, and an act of necessity. The spontaneous act was on the part of God, and the act of necessity on the part of the Son of Man—the being lifted up on the cross. Adam's act was a gratuitous assumption that he knew better than God. God's act in driving him out of Eden was one of mercy to His rebellious creatures. In John 3 we get something more than mercy—we get grace, God showing favor to sinners in giving them what none would have dreamed of, and no child of Adam have dared to ask. Adam, in Gen. 3 stands forth as the author of the ruin of his race. The Son of Man appears in John 3 as “the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him.” It was needful to banish Adam from Eden, lest he should perpetuate his sinful condition forever. And the same God, so grossly misrepresented by the devil, and who appeared to pronounce sentence in Eden, is brought before us by His Son in a different character, as a gracious God, able and desirous to save the world.
The next subject the historian of Genesis takes up is the family of Adam, and the respective sacrifices of Cain and Abel. How to approach God with acceptance is a question of immense importance to fallen creatures, and of necessity follows closely on the fall. How to worship God aright is a question which must follow closely on the unfolding of God's grace. These questions are respectively taken up in Genesis and John, and the first fully answered in the sacrifice of Abel, and God's acceptance of it. He brought of the flock. He owned thereby his condition and desert—death, and that life for the dead sinner could only be procured at the expense of the life of a substitute. Did the consequences of the fall stop here—the solution of the question how to approach God with acceptance—how many a dark and blood-stained page of history had never been written. But sin being in the world, its fruits are quickly made apparent, not only in entailing death on Adam and his children, but in inciting Cain to stain the earth with the blood of his brother Abel. Worship and death are the prominent subjects of Gen. 4. Worship and life are brought before us in John 4. And here we get more than the acceptance of an offering. It is the Father seeking worshippers. “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.” Whether or not the head of the fallen race told Abel how to approach God, we know not; but it is revealed and we read of it, how the Head of the new creation communicated to a poor abandoned woman, by the side of Jacob's well, the true principles on which the worship to God must now be founded. And further, He unfolds to her, the last person in the world, we in our ignorance would have thought of, the relationship in which God will now stand to all who believe on His Son. And as we read in Gen. 4:8, 238And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. (Genesis 4:8)
23And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. (Genesis 4:23), of man taking the life of his fellow-creature, the contrast would not be complete unless we had set before us the Lord restoring to life one who was nigh unto death, and in the next chapter, re-invigorating the limbs of one who had an infirmity for thirty and eight years. How great is the difference here between the offspring of Adam, begotten in his own likeness after his image, and the virgin's Child, begotten of the Holy Ghost.
This leads us on to the following chapter in Genesis, where the sentence pronounced in Eden is seen carried out on Adam and all his descendants till the days of Noah. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:1212Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (Romans 5:12)). Cain could shorten the life of his brother Abel, but sooner or later death must overtake him, “It is appointed unto men once to die.” This is the solemn record of Gen. 5 “He died,” is the simple statement of the inspired historian appended to the lives of all but one herein named. “There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death; and there is no discharge in that war,” is the word of the preacher (Eccl. 8:88There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it. (Ecclesiastes 8:8)). And the one exception to the common lot of man forms no exception to the rule, that none can deliver himself from death; for we read, “he was not, for God took him.” It was God's act, not Enoch's efforts, which kept his body from the grave.
Turning to John 5 we find death and the grave brought before us again; but how different is the way in which they are presented. It is not the common inevitable lot of man that we are called to meditate on, but the power of the Son of Man over “the king of terrors.” The grave closed on Adam and his descendants, and hid them one by one from the gaze of their families and friends. The grave shall one day open at the voice of the Son of Man. None could escape the consequences of Adam's transgression. None can remain in captivity to death, when the Second Man shall speak. “For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves, shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.” Death by Adam's fall obtained the mastery over all his offspring. By Jesus it shall be swallowed up in victory, and finally be destroyed. “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:21, 22, 26, 2721For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. 22For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:21‑22)
26The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 27For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. (1 Corinthians 15:26‑27)). How cheering that the enemy which entered the world by one man has been overcome by another. Yet what profit would that be to us if we had not the hope of sharing in the victory. This too is presented to us. And here again comes out the difference between these two heads in a bright and glorious contrast. Adam involved all in death, not merely of the body, but also of the soul. The Lord can give life in resurrection to the body, He can also quicken dead souls. “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” How this work is carried on is unfolded in vers. 24, 25, of the chapter: “For as the Father hath life in himself: so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.”
With Gen. 5 the history of Adam closes. Of his career after the fall Scripture says nothing. We read in Heb. 11 of a catalog of worthies; but his name is not in the list. His future position is shrouded in mystery. Before the Second Man, Whose genealogy in Luke is traced up to him, he will one day stand. His voice he will one day hear and obey. But of Him, before Whom he will stand, there is no uncertainty now. He like Adam passed out of this world by death. But we know He lives, and lives for evermore. He has life in Himself, and He gives of it to others. And this John 5 discloses at once what He has, and Who He is. Son of God and Son of Man, He has full authority from God, and all shall honor Him as they honor the leather. He has full power too, for “what things soever the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.” And the place of pre-eminence from which Adam fell is filled, and more than filled, by Him. He quickens whom He will. He will judge all. His voice when heard now gives life. His voice as Son of Man, when heard, shall raise the dead. Another Man is found to be set over the works of God's hand, worthy to be there, able to maintain His place. For He seeks not His own will, but the will of the Father which sent Him.
From Adam what have we received? Of what have we to boast? A nature wholly corrupt, flesh not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be; for an inheritance, a life of sorrow and vexation of spirit; for a prospect, death, “and the house appointed for all living” (Job 30:2323For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living. (Job 30:23)). What did he give creation? By him the living creatures, indeed, were named. But by him the whole creation was made subject to vanity, and because of him the ground was cursed. Blessed be God this position is not irremediable, because another Man has been found Who was obedient to death. From Him we receive, but how unlike that which our first parent entailed on us, a nature which cannot sin, an inheritance which cannot fade away, and a prospect of life beyond death, nay the assurance of everlasting life, which the grave cannot cheat us of, the great enemy cannot deprive us of. And this is unchangeable to those who possess it. And the universe too shall rejoice in Him. The curse shall be removed, and the groaning creation be brought into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. Ruin, misery, death, follow the track of the first man. Blessing, happiness, everlasting life, flow from the Second. He gives—gives to the unworthy, gives to the unclean, gives to sinners. This characterizes Him. Of Adam we have to say; he entailed on his posterity the consequences of his sin; of the Lord we have to record, He gives everything the sinner needs, everything the saint throughout eternity can enjoy.