The First Adam and the Last

The Man from the Ground

The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). His name says where he came from. In Hebrew, adam means man, and it echoes adamah, the ground he was taken from. Adam had no human father. Luke closes the genealogy of Jesus by calling him the son of God (Luke 3:38), because God made him directly.

God made Adam in His own image and set him in the garden with every good gift and one command. Adam broke it. Eve was deceived, but Adam was not deceived (1 Timothy 2:14), and the consequences reached far beyond the garden. That same day he hid from God and blamed his wife (Genesis 3:8–12). In the next generation his son murdered his brother (Genesis 4:8). Within a few generations the earth was filled with violence (Genesis 6:11).

And Adam died. All the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died (Genesis 5:5). Genesis 5 repeats that refrain over his descendants, one after another, because they were his descendants. Genesis 5:1 recalls that God made man in the likeness of God. Two verses later it says that Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image (Genesis 5:3). Adam passed on what he had become.

Thousands of years later Paul looked back at that garden and explained what it means for every one of us:

“Wherefore, 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 · KJV