The Last Adam: a Life-giving Spirit

 The following revealing insights are from W. Ian Thomas' book The Mystery of Godliness:

"To insist that Jesus Christ came into this world by natural birth and lived a sinless life, is to repudiate the Fall of man!  It means that what was possible to Him as a natural man, must be possible to you and to me as natural men, so that if we are not what He was, it is because we do not try hard enough!

"It this were true, the message of the Gospel would simply be an exhortation to greater effort--an attempt to realize the inherent adequacy that is self-existent within every human being--including Christ!  A message of spiritual regeneration would become patently superfluous, and the Fall of man a myth, for by nature man would have what it takes!

". . . As descendants of the first Adam, we were born uninhabited by God--heirs of His absence--and inhabited only by sin.  The Lord Jesus Christ, miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary, was born uninhabited by sin and wholly inhabited by God!  He was the last Adam--the second Man, as sinless as He Himself had created man to be . . . .
 
".  . . Adam was created knowing the Truth from within, through the Spirit, and he listened to the Lie from without, through the word of Satan; and he exchanged the Truth of God for a Lie--The Truth went out and the Lie came in!  He stepped out of dependence into independence--out of Life into death!

"You were born blinded by the Lie from within through the flesh, and you listen to the Truth from without through the Word of God.  When you repent you accept the Truth and obey it, stepping back out of independence into dependence--out of death into Life!"