Tag: Adam

How do we know that Christ loved His bride like Adam didn’t? We know because the Bible makes the connection.

Husbands must love their wives “as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). The human relationship should be patterned after the gospel. But it turns out that the human relationship was a pattern to point to the gospel in the first place.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:31)

Adam and Eve didn’t know it, but their relationship, and every marriage after them, was an example of a greater union. Paul likens the marital bond to the husband’s own body; of course he would take care of his body. And this is in the pattern of Christ and the church, “because we are members of His body” (5:30).

The church doesn’t have physical intimacy with Christ but it is spiritual union; we share communion. Through Christ’s death we have an abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness causes us to reign in live with the one man, Jesus Christ (Romans 5:17, 21).

On the night He was betrayed, “Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body'” (Matthew 26:26). This part is familiar to us who celebrate communion.

But don’t those words sound familiar for another reason? In fact, the reason for the Second Adam saying “Take, eat” is because of what the first Adam took and ate. The serpent deceived Eve about God’s word, and when she saw that the tree was good for food and delighted the eyes and desired to make one wise, “she took of its fruit and ate” (Genesis 3:6).

The “took” and the “ate” are the same vocabulary words in the Greek translation of the OT as the Greek words in Matthew 26 (from λαμβάνω and ἐσθίω respectively). Of course then Eve gave Adam the food, he ate, and he failed. And so, “By a man came death,” “in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:21, 22)

In his commentary on Genesis Derek Kidner wrote:

The Second Adam not only obeyed, He gave Himself as the bread of life. So, “by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead,” “in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21, 22).

The serpent lied and said, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” Now God says in truth, “Take, eat, for you will surely live, and you will be made like the image of My Son.”