Two Men, Two Heads

For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. –Rom. 5:17

I have been thinking about headship a lot lately. Not in the sense of male headship and the relationship between men and women. No, I have been thinking about original sin and new birth.

In Genesis, Adam is responsible for the fall of mankind. He is, in a word, the representative of mankind. In my mind I imagine a triangle, at the top is Adam and the volume proceeding from him to form the rest of the triangle is the mass of humanity. All of humanity, every single person, is counted as being in Adam; this is the doctrine of original sin.

As the representative of humanity, when Adam sinned, the rest of humanity was considered to have joined in that sin, thus we are all guilty of original sin and death rules over us, since the wages of sin is death.

This is a hard concept to grasp. Consider this, when President Bush declared war on Iraq, or when Congress declared war on Iraq, America declared war on Iraq. It was not these few men themselves declaring war on a nation, but an entire nation declaring war on a nation.

In the same way, Adam stands as a representative for the entire human race, much like a king or a president or an emperor. In effect, what he did was declare war on God. Sin is an act of rebellion against God who has created all that exists, who loves His creation, who is almighty. In effect Adam, through his actions decided that he no longer wanted to be governed by God, but wanted to govern his own life.

We see this same characteristic in our own hearts; at least I know I do. So often I want what I think is best rather than trusting that what God has given me is the best. I am not innocent in this; we are not innocent in this. Our sinfulness is almost like a gene that we inherited from Adam that we still bear full responsibility for. We have all declared war on God and must now surrender.

So far the picture is bleak, but the Good News is this: Jesus Christ is the new Head! Just like Adam represented humanity, those who were born into his lineage; so too Christ represents those who are born into His lineage: Christians. This is not a physical birth, but a spiritual birth. In Adam we are dead to God but alive to sin, when we accept Christ and put our faith in Him as our Savior, our old self is put to death on the Cross with Christ and we are resurrected like Christ so that, in a very real but a very mysterious sense we no longer live, but Christ lives within us.

There are also practical implications to this doctrine, it is a key argument against those who say that everyone goes to heaven. They would argue that, if Adam is the old head and Christ the new, then all those who were under Adam would come under the headship of Christ, but that is simply not the case. Adam is head over those who proceed from his lineage, that is, natural man born naturally. Christ is the Head over those who proceed from His lineage, spiritual man born spiritually. One must be born again to have Christ as Head and receive the benefits thereof.