Putting Adam Back Together
by Joshua Creel
via Biblical Insights, Vol. 15 No. 2, February 2015
Adam was broken; he was in pieces. Now, before you worry too much, allow me to explain that Adam is a statue - a very valuable statue. The Italian Renaissance master Lombardo crafted him from marble in the late 1400s. The statue has been on display at The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) since 1936, but on a Sunday evening in 2002, the statue fell, and Adam was broken. His head came off, his body shattered into 28 large pieces and hundreds of smaller fragments. The MET’s director called it “about the worst thing that could happen.” Over the next 12 years, no expense was spared to reconstruct the statue. CT scans were taken, laser mapping technology was used to construct a “virtual Adam” to guide the engineers and conservators, fiberglass pins were inserted, and every little piece was put back into place using a special adhesive. Adam has been put back together, and should you visit the MET today, you could see him on display.
I doubt that I’m the only one to see a parallel between the statue of Adam and its biblical model, the first man. Adam fell. He was broken. It was the worst thing that could possibly happen. Yet, God spared no expense to put Adam back together again. The apostle Paul speaks of this at some length in Romans 5-6. There, we read that Adam’s sin did not result only in his fall, but in a broken world. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). No, this passage does not negate other clear biblical teaching that each man is responsible for his own sins (see Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 2:9-11; 3:23). Paul would also relate that his
own spiritual death was the result of his own coveting, not the original sin of Adam (see Romans 7:9-11). Yet, the truth of this passage is stark and sobering. Adam’s sin resulted in a fundamental change in creation’s relationship with the Creator. Sin and death had entered the picture, and sin and death spread to all. Adam fell, and the world was broken.
But God already had a plan in place to put everything back together. It would require a Second Man, His own Son. Through His life and sacrifice, everything can be reclaimed. “For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to many” (Romans 5:15). The meaning of the passage is plain when read in context. Paul is not describing a universal salvation for all; he has already maintained that only those with true faith would be saved. Instead, the apostle is contrasting epochs of time and experience. The former epoch of Adam was one of brokenness, typified by sin and death. However, Christ has ushered in a new epoch, a new and restored relationship with the Father typified by grace and life. The world may have been broken through Adam’s sin, but in Christ, all things can be new again.
It is in this context of contrasting epochs that Paul’s words regarding baptism in Romans 6:1-11 should be read. God’s desire is for man to escape the sin and death of Adam and to be found alive in Christ. But how can any man escape the epoch of Adam? He must die. Thus, we are “buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.. .knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, so that our body of sin might be done away, in order that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin” (Romans 6:4, 6-7). How could anyone read these words and question the necessity of baptism? This is God’s means for recreating that which was broken, His means by which we are rescued from the death of Adam and given life in Christ. Adam fell, the world was in pieces, but in Christ we are restored.
The statue of Adam has been repaired. To the untrained eye, it would look as if nothing had happened. Yet, there are still cracks hiding beneath the surface; the statue is not whole as it was when it was created. That is not the case with us. Just as man was created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), so we are recreated in His image (Ephesians 4:24). That is the “newness of life” we have received in Christ. Now we are on display for the world to see, and may it see us sound and whole, recreated men and women in God’s own image.
