The Second Man (1) - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2024

The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven.
1 Corinthians 15:47 NKJV

The Second Man (1)
A Second Man has entered this scene. This great fact, while it sets forth the marvelous grace of God towards the “first man” and his posterity, proves in the clearest and most unanswerable manner that the first man has been completely set aside. If the first had been found faultless, then no place would have been sought for the Second. If there had been a single ray of hope as to the first Adam, there would have been no need for the Second.

But God sent His Son into this world. He was “the Seed of the woman.” Let this fact be seized and pondered. Jesus Christ did not come under the federal headship of Adam. He was legally descended from David and Abraham, as we read in Matthew 1:1. Moreover, His genealogy is traced to Adam by the inspired penman in Luke’s gospel. But here is the angelic announcement as the mystery of His conception: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you … therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God” (Lk. 1:35).

Here we have a real Man, but one without a single taint of sin or a single seed of mortality. He was made of the woman, of the substance of the virgin, a Man in every particular, just as we are, but wholly without sin and entirely free from any association which could have given sin or death a claim upon Him. Had our blessed Lord come as to His human nature, under the headship of Adam, He could not have been called the Second Man since He would have been a member of the first, like any other man. Further, He would have been subject to death in His own Person, which is blasphemy to assert or suppose.

But, adored forever be His peerless name, He was the pure, holy, spotless One of God. He was unique. He stood alone, the only pure untainted grain of human seed that earth had ever seen. He came into this world of sin and death, Himself sinless and lifegiving. In Him was life and nowhere else.

-- C. H. Mackintosh