Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Yet God purposely placed every elect soul “in Adam”, who was flesh and blood, a process that demanded that the elect should be ultimately transferred to Christ. Gen. xv. points to the same process, and the “pattern” of the ages, can be set out in the form of a letter V, a descent before the ascent and the goal.
The elect members of the Church of the One Body, are destined to enjoy “spiritual blessings in heavenly places” and to this, flesh and blood even when unfallen is by its very nature alien.
What do we know of spiritual beings? Very little. Angels and other ranks of the spiritual world break into the record of the Scriptures, they exhibit extraordinary powers, are apparently above the influence and reach of many of the “laws of nature”, but very little positive teaching is discoverable in the Divine record. The earliest institution, appointed by the Divine will is that of marriage, and this is one thing that is foreign to the experience of angels.
“This children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world . . . . . neither marry nor are given in marriage, neither can they die any more: for they are equal to the angels” (Luke xx. 34-36).
At the resurrection, the believer will receive a “spiritual body” (I Cor. xv. 44) and in this too he will be equal to the angels. Here then is an outstanding divergence. Man from the beginning was created with marriage as a normal experience. Angels as created are excluded from such an experience only by “keeping not their first estate” and by leaving “their own habitation” could any semblance of marriage be attained. The union of man and wife makes them “one flesh”, and their children are called their “seed”.
If it be true that marriage is unknown among spiritual beings, it follows that angels and principalities are all separately created beings. No angel is either the descendant ofor parent of any other spiritual being. There can be no such unity among angels as is found among mankind. Home, family, parent, child, members of one body, all of one blood, these features which are essential characteristics of the human race, are all absent from the spirit world. We can and do use the word “race” of humanity, for it means “A class of individuals sprung from a common stock; the descendants collectively of a common ancestor”. We cannot legitimately use the word “race” of angels, it has no meaning or place in the spirit world. It seems, therefore, to be an inevitable conclusion, that in the wisdom of God, it was imperative that those who were elected to be blessed with all spiritual blessings, should commence their term of conscious being “in Adam”, even though they had been chosen “in Christ”, and would have to be translated.
Before we proceed further, there is a question that demands an answer, “Is the title ‘Christ’ restricted to the Saviour to the period that follows His incarnation? can the title be used of Him, in His pre-incarnated glory, the glory that He had before the world was?” There are a number of expositors who unhesitatingly affirm, that the title “Christ” belongs only to the Saviour as the Man, Jesus, the Christ. It is well known that the word “Christ”, the Greek Christos is the translation of the Hebrew Mashach, which is transliterated into English as the Messiah and means the anointed. This “anointing” was done with oil (Psa. lxxxix. 20) and it is this fact that gives the word Mashach its significance. There is another word that is translated anointed and that is the Hebrew suk, which in every one of its nine occurrences is rendered “anoint” in the A.V. A word derived from the same root is nasak, which occurs in Psa. ii. 6, “Yet have I set My King”, where the margin reads Heb. “anointed”. While this reveals the necessity to include nasak and mashach, it does not answer our question. There is, however, a passage which does:
“The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way; before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was . . . . . when He prepared the heavens I was there . . . . . then I was with Him, as One brought up with Him . . . . . rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth, and My delights were with the sons of men” (Prov. viii. 22-31).
Young’s literal translation reads “From the age I was anointed”. Here we are taken back “before the foundation of the world”, and there we find One Who is called the “Anointed”. When the church was chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, “Christ” was there, “I was there” (Prov. viii. 27). This rids the mind of the necessity to await the incarnation of the Saviour for He Who was acclaimed “The Christ” here on earth, was “The Anointed” from the beginning. Yet, even though this illuminates one aspect of the mighty truth we are considering, it only makes the problem deeper. Why, seeing that Christ was “there” did the Lord wait geological ages for the advent of Adam? and why, seeing Christ was already “there” must He too in the fullness of time “come in the flesh”? We might at first be inclined to think that He only came in the flesh because man had sinned—but we have already seen that unfallen Adam was the figure of Him that was to come, and that the fact of sin and the need of redemption but adds to the problem without solving it. In Phil. ii. there is observable a twofold descent: the one reaching its goal when Christ became man, the other when He still further descended to “the death of the cross”.
“Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”
This is the first stage.
“And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. ii. 6-8).
This is the second stage.
Christ in the first stage came to reveal the Father, in the second stage He came to redeem the church. But more, the goal before God is a Unity, expressed with such overwhelming fullness in the language of John xvii. 23.
On one occasion Paul wrote: “Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful”, and when the Apostle’s judgment was given he concluded by saying:
“She is happier if she so abide after my judgment: and I think also I have the spirit of God” (I Cor. vii. 25-40).
“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked: and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
When challenged by the Lord, Adam’s immediate reply was: “I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Gen. iii. 7 and 10). When the doom was pronounced upon the man and his wife, a most unexpected turn is taken. Instead of receiving the death sentence, as Gen. ii. 17 would lead us to expect, child birth is referred to. First in the form of a prophetic promise:
“I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
Secondly, in the form of a chastisement and continual reminder:
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
The sexes were never “equal” even at creation, as I Cor. xi. 3-9 and I Tim. ii. 13 will make clear. Now since the advent of sin and death, a further subordination of woman is instituted, echoed by the sweat and the toil that Adam now faced, as compared with the labour of love which occupied his unfallen energies in the Garden. The words: “Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Gen. iii. 16) are repeated, with the necessary alterations of gender, in Gen. iv. 7:
“If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted (margin have the excellency) and if not sin (or the sin offering) lieth at the door. And unto thee (margin subject unto thee iii. 16) shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”
Cain, as the firstborn, had pre-eminence (see Col. i. 18), a position which he forfeited by sin. When Cain was born, Eve in naming him gives utterance to a strange expression:
“I have gotten a man from the Lord” (Gen. iv. 1).
“Gotten” is the translation of the Hebrew qanah, from which root the name “Cain” is derived. Some, with Luther, render this passage: “I have gotten a man, the Jehovah”, referring to the promised seed of the woman. Subsequent events show that Eve was mistaken. Cain was not the promised seed, he was, rather “of that wicked one” the false seed (I John iii. 12). Nevertheless, Eve must have had good grounds for such an expectancy, even though the advent of the promised Seed did not take place until nearly 4000 years had passed.
With these facts before us, we suggest (speaking always after the manner of men, for God knew what He would do from the beginning) that the primal purpose was that the Incarnation should take place by virgin birth in the Garden of Eden itself, that Christ should be “made flesh” and tabernacle among men from the beginning. The intrusion of the Serpent, the temptation and fall of the first pair, opened a door for sowing of the false seed (Cain) and the murder of Abel foretold the agonizing conflict that ensure culminating in the shedding of the blood of Him, Whose blood speaketh better things than that of Abel. The virgin birth of the Son of God was postponed until nearly four thousand years had passed, but in the fullness of time, He was born of a woman, entering not into the full glory of the Incarnate Son, because the added complication of sin and death, necessitated a sacrifice and an offering to deliver the heirs of promise from their bondage. That being graciously accomplished, resurrection and change, provide the appointed way in which both the innate frailty of sinless “flesh and blood” and the inherited corruption consequent upon the fall, should be exchanged for immortality, incorruption, and likeness to His body of glory.
This is “my judgment” and I believe I can in good conscience say: “I think I also I have the mind of the Lord”, even if I cannot say with Paul: “I think also that I have the spirit of God.”
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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 37, 117).
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