Judicial Union with Christ

 Among his other accomplishments in life Arthur T. Pierson succeeded C. H. Spurgeon in the pulpit of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, from 1891 to 1893.  The following is from his excellent book Shall We Continue in Sin:

". . . Christ is called the Second Man and the Last Adam, 1 Cor. 15:45, 47.

"Observe, not the Second Man only, as in verse 47, but the Last Man or Adam--for this excludes any succession.

"We can understand the last Adam only by understanding the first. Who was the first Adam but the Judicial Head of the race he represented?

"Whatever may be our theological definition of our relation to Adam, the practical fact is that he stood for us and when he fell, we fell. He could transmit to his descendants no higher nature than his own, and so it is significantly said, that he begat a son in his own likeness.

"His own nature being fallen, he transmitted a fallen nature with its proneness to sin, and its exposure to pains and penalties.

"As he had lost his original estate, his children could inherit only his moral bankruptcy and ruin; and, as he had forfeited his right to the tree of life, his offspring find the cherubim with the flaming sword, still guarding the way, until we come by a new and living way, through the rent veil of Christ's crucified body.

"Christ is therefore, as the Last Adam, what the first Adam was, the representative of the race.

"By blood and birth we were all identified with Adam; by the faith in the blood that atones and by the new birth of the Spirit, we become identified with the Last Adam. We exchange the standing of sinners for the standing of saints, the bankruptcy of sin for the riches of holiness, and the forfeited right to the Tree of Life for the full and eternal enjoyment of all sacramental privilege. Rev. 22:1-14, R.V."