But Christ is a new Adam, a new head of humanity, and those who are
connected with Him by faith become heirs of a double heritage of a
precisely opposite kind. On the one hand, just as through our birth in
the first Adam's line we get inevitably entangled in guilt, like a
child born into a family which is drowned in debt, so through our birth
in the line of the second Adam we get involved in a boundless heritage
of merit, which Christ, as the Head of His family, makes the common
property of its members. This extinguishes the debt of our guilt and
makes us rich in Christ's righteousness. "As by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made
righteous." On the other hand, just as Adam transmitted to his
posterity a carnal nature, alien to God and unfit for righteousness, so
the new Adam imparts to the race of which He is the Head a spiritual
nature, akin to God and delighting in righteousness.
The nature of man, according to Paul, normally consists of three
sections--body, soul and spirit. In his original constitution these
occupied definite relations of superiority and subordination to one
another, the spirit being supreme, the body undermost, and the soul
occupying the middle position. But the fall disarranged this order,
and all sin consists in the usurpation by the body or the soul of the
place of the spirit. In fallen man these two inferior sections of
human nature, which together form what Paul calls the Flesh, or that
side of human nature which looks toward the world and time, have taken
possession of the throne and completely rule the life, while the
spirit, the side of man which looks toward God and eternity, has been
dethroned and reduced to a condition of inefficiency and death. Christ
restores the lost predominance of the spirit of man by taking
possession of it by his own Spirit. His Spirit dwells in the human
spirit, vivifying it and sustaining it in such growing strength that it
becomes more and more the sovereign part of the human constitution.
The man ceases to be carnal and becomes spiritual; he is led by the
Spirit of God and becomes more and more harmonious with all that is
holy and divine.
The flesh does not, indeed, easily submit to the loss of supremacy. It
clogs and obstructs the spirit and fights to regain possession of the
throne. Paul has described this struggle in sentences of terrible
vividness, in which all generations of Christians have recognized the
features of their deepest experience. But the issue of the struggle is
not doubtful. Sin shall not again have dominion over those in whom
Christ's Spirit dwells, or dislodge them from their standing in the
favor of God. "Neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities
nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor
depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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