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The Place and Meaning of Jesus in Human History

by T. Austin-Sparks

Transcripts of messages given in January, 1962. The spoken form has been retained verbatim, words which were unclear are in [square] brackets.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Necessity for Jesus Christ

Chapter 2 - The Triumph of Jesus Christ

Chapter 1 - The Necessity for Jesus Christ

Will you please open your New Testaments at the first letter to the Corinthians. The first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15, the first verse: "Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand, by which also ye are saved. I make known, I say, in what words I preached it unto you."

With these words the greatest apostle that Jesus Christ ever had, draws his mantle together over his shoulders and sets himself to gather up everything that he has been saying into a climax and a consummation. We can almost hear him breathe a sigh of relief that he has got through all the unpleasant business that was imposed upon him in the writing of this letter, and having got through it, he says, "Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you."

He had been compelled to write about a whole lot of unpleasant and difficult matters. He was, at the time, in Ephesus, about to conclude a very wonderful time of ministry there. And his fellow labourer Apollos had arrived and told him the state of things in Corinth and sent three other people, probably slaves of the household of Chloe in Corinth, who had also arrived and they had poured out a very deplorable story of things in the church in Corinth. Sad stories of divisions, schisms, quarrels, and disorders, moral evils, social wrongs, of spiritual immaturity, of Christian unkindness one to another, and so on. It's all here.

By either Apollos, or these others, they had sent a letter to Paul asking him to answer a number questions on a lot of matters about which they were troubled. And, as you know, this letter is his answer to that whole situation and all those aspects of it. A labourious thing... you can't read it without feeling how the apostle was labouring with this situation, as well he might be. Troubled, heartbroken, deeply moved, he passed on from point to point, covering the whole. And then with what is the end of chapter 14 in the dividing up of men of this long letter into sixteen pieces, he finishes that. And I think, as I have said, gladly finishes that. You might very gladly finish that as far as the job is concerned, and he, in effect, says, "Having dealt with all that I'm not prepared just to leave it there. Let me take you back, brethren, right to the beginning of your life and history as a company of the people of God and remind you of that basis upon which you came to be a church and a company of God's people - what I preached unto you, and you then believed, and upon which you stand, that is, you have your very existence and by which you're saved". Having written all the rest with a sick heart, he concludes that he must restate the gospel, he calls it, which he had preached and which was the ground of their existence as a church.

Now, while all the conditions at Corinth, all of them may not obtain today in many churches (thank God) there are some things that persist and are at least the abiding peril of companies of God's people. In any case, there's something that comes out of this final resolve of the apostle which is of inestimable value to the church and the churches in all ages. We are not glad that the Corinthians were what they were, were like that, but here is the wonderful sovereignty of God - that He takes hold of the most deplorable situation and makes it the means of drawing out some of the most sublime things in Divine revelation. And who would be without what we call the fifteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians? Who would be without it? Thank God for His power to use the darkest black background to bring forward the most glorious revelation!

And you notice that this chapter, or this section, is a summary and is a consummate restatement and a climax. Paul uses this word preach, you see, several times in verse 1, verse 11, verse 14: "The thing preached".

The Thing Preached

So you look to see what was the heart and the essence of that preaching. Well, you've only got to underline one word: Christ. You find yourselves right at the beginning in the presence of a mention of Christ no fewer than thirteen times, I say, at the beginning, showing what the foundation really is, what the preaching really is.

Now into this consummate restatement, the apostle gathers a revelation which is well-nigh unparalleled in holy Scripture. (For, if I may make this parenthesis, if you read through this long chapter, you are amazed and you hold your breath and you say, "Where did the apostle get that? Where did he get that? How did he come by that?" Things that he's telling you here about glory and the differences in glory, and the resurrection body and what it will be like, and so on. You say, "Well, this is something that no man ever concocted, this never arose in a man's brain, there's something here of unparalleled revelation!")

Into a designation of Christ he gathers all this wonderful unveiling and unfolding. It is summed up by him in a title, a double title. Verse 45: "It is written, the first man, Adam, became a living soul; the Last Adam, a Life-giving Spirit." [Verse] 47, "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the Second Man is of Heaven."

There's your title or designation: the Second Man, the Last Adam. And in itself, dear friends, that double title of the Lord Jesus is a summary of human history from the beginning. And in the immediate context, it is a summary of human history on both sides: that of the first Adam, the human history of tragedy; the Last Adam, the story of human history in recovery and glory. Christ Jesus, the Second Man, the Last Adam. Always be correct in how you put that. Even such a scholar as John Henry Newman has slipped up on it. As we've just sung, and you sang it so beautifully, no He's not a second Adam it's a Last Adam; maybe a Second Man, but it's a Last Adam. Finality is reached in Christ in human history.

Now, in the first place, that is an explanation of Jesus, and it is quite right to say, dear friends, that the whole of the New Testament is a combined operation to declare and explain Jesus Christ. Do get hold of that. The whole of the New Testament is a combined operation to declare and explain Jesus Christ. And it should never be used in part or as a whole, for any other purpose, because it has been used for all sorts of things. For all sorts of things! For everybody who has some particular bee in their bonnet, will quote something in the New Testament to support their view, and because it has been used for so many things, it has lost its mighty authority.

The New Testament may be used for one thing and one thing alone, and that is to explain Jesus Christ; explain why ever there was a Jesus Christ, why ever Jesus Christ came into this world, why He lived, taught, and worked, why He died, why He rose again, and why He is in Heaven. The New Testament, I say, is all gathered into the business of explaining Jesus Christ. One question should always govern our reading, in part or in whole, whenever or wherever we read in this book, and that question should be: what has this to say about Jesus Christ? What light does this throw upon Him, either by direct statement or by right and true implication or inference? What does it say about Him?

Now, these words in verses 45 and 47 are a very important instance of this very thing.

The Explanation of Jesus Christ

How is He explained by these words? The Second Man! The Last Adam! Dear friends, it does not require profound scholarship or great intellectual ability to see that such a title, such a double designation, puts the One referred to into a position of unique relationship to the whole human race. A second implies a first. A last implies an original. And by the two, everything in human life and history is encompassed. You cannot get before the first. There is no such thing as before the first - in anything, anywhere - and you certainly cannot get behind the last. There's nothing beyond the last. And so here we have human history - for that is the subject encompassed by this title.

But what does it imply? Clearly the conclusion is that two different humanities stem from two different racial heads. One humanity stems from the first man: Adam. Another (and quite Another, and that's the theme of the New Testament) stems from the Second Man, the Last Adam. Two distinct lines; two distinct kinds; but - mark again - in this very connection, the teaching of Scripture is that the Second Man, the Last Adam, stepped into humanity in order to supplant and displace the first and the original; to set aside all the damage which the first had brought into humanity by his sin, by his wrongdoing. The Second and the Last was a necessity because of the utter breakdown of the first and the original.

Paul has, as you know, a corresponding paragraph on this very thing in his letter to the Romans chapter 5, at verse 12, from verse 12 to verse 21, he dwells upon this: "As by one man sin entered, and death through sin." "As by one man sin... so by one Man's righteousness." It's a good, strong section on the function of the two racial heads. You can read it. But there in that chapter, Paul, in referring to the first Adam, says, "Adam was a type of Him that was to come" but all, all too briefly so, all too briefly so. Adam's typological position was just this: in his being the first and the progenitor of a kind, and I think that's where it ended. Before his fall, he was the first of a race, he was the progenitor of a race, and in that sense he was a type of Him that was to come. There may have been other features at that time, but that is the significance of Adam being a type. But there was a gap, you see, in his history.

The Gap of Probation and Testing

He was placed, and then there was to be in the intention of God all that he was meant for; made for. But between the placing and the fulfillment, there was this gap of probation, when he was put on test. All the immense potentialities which were crammed into that gap, that probation, that is what we are going to see, I trust, today: the immense potentialities that were there in the balances, in the balances of that gap, that probation. What tremendous things hung upon one thing, one thing! And that one thing? How he would use the great trust of free will; the great trust of free will.

On the one side, all that God meant, intended, and hoped for in the creation of man demanded that man should be a free agent - not compelled, not forced, not just a piece of machinery going without its own volition, desire, or thought. You would never be satisfied with anybody giving you anything on those terms that they couldn't help themselves, they've got to do it - you've got it because they had no volition. You would only be satisfied if by choice of their own heart and reason, and desire, they gave it to you. So God made this great trust in the man, gave him at the same time trust and responsibility of free will. Everything was in the balances of how he would use that trust.

There was a law governing, a law governing. Not the law of compulsion at all, but it was the law of dependence upon God, just dependence upon God. Whether he would use that trust of freewill in dependence upon God, or whether he would use it in independence of God. What immense things, unspeakably great things were bound up with that probation, that test, that question! All Heaven might have been holding its breath at that time.

We know... we know, we know all too well what happened. I'd say we know all too well before I am through, God helping me, you will see what is involved for us in this. Well, we know the story, how he used that trust, how he broke that line of dependence upon God. He severed that link and took his trust into his own hands, to realise all his potentialities out of relation to God, in independence upon God. And because of that, and all the entail, the terrible, terrible entail of that, a Second Man, a Last Adam became necessary if the world was to be saved and humanity was to be saved.

Now look at some of the essential facts of this last, this final Adam, this Second Man. In order to really undo all that which we've not yet touched upon, but in order to undo all that entail, He Himself must be the negation of the violated law. If the law was "Every thing, everything by dependence upon God", and that law was broken, and Adam said "Everything without dependence upon God" - for that was the issue and the upshot. That law was broken. The Redeemer must Himself be the embodiment of that law: absolute dependence upon God and nothing else. Nothing else to it. Nothing to help in Himself, humanly, or in the world, anywhere, of any kind. Nothing but God, the God of Faith - to the last, very last gram and breath - God.

The first of a new type, you tell me that that's the Adam race? Not a bit of it, not a bit of it, not as you know yourself and I know myself. It's not like that is it? This is another order of being that is like that and will go that way, even unto death - and the most ignominious death – where, by deliberate choice He refuses any kind of deliverance that could come to Him, because He is a committed man to the will of God. He, then, as such a last one, such a second one, is the Progenitor of a race which is to be like Himself in this very respect: a race of people who on this very principle of His life will be constituted: the principle of everything to the last fraction by dependence upon God.

Oh, brethren, doesn't that in itself open up the first message to the Corinthians? Read from the beginning again and see these Corinthians and all their self-sufficiency, self-strength, self-glory, glorying in worldly wisdom and what not. That's an aspect of the whole we must leave for the moment, I just mention it to let in light on this: why Paul preached Christ and said, "when I came to you, I determined to know nothing amongst you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." What does that mean? What does that mean? If it does not mean crucifixion to all that independence of God which came in through the first Adam, all that taking into his own hands, all that seeking for himself, drawing to himself, that acquisitiveness, that possessiveness, that assertiveness, that pride - it is characteristic of all who have come from that first one - but none of it in Him. And as the first, the Second in this new movement of God, He must reproduce - must reproduce - after His own kind; must reproduce after His own kind.

Now that, dear friends, after all, is only introductory. I hope I'm not wearying you. But it's very important that we get our foundation well laid. That brings us right to our present point. There are some things that every seriously minded person will be concerned with and sooner or later everybody will be seriously minded about life, sooner or later. But Christians are particularly supposed to be seriously minded people who are really concerned about this matter of life, and there are four things that comprise their concern. One is: the meaning of human history, the meaning of human history. Have you ever really sat down with your Bible to seek from it the explanation of human history? The second is the meaning of Christianity. The third, the meaning of spiritual experience, and the fourth, the meaning of the Christian church. And the meaning of all those four things is gathered into one Person: Jesus Christ. And He, as the Second Man, the Last Adam, as such He explains human history, as such He explains spiritual experience, as such He explains Christianity, and as such He explains the church.

Now then, I don't propose to try and cover all that ground so fear not. But I'm tremendously concerned, dear friends, I'm burdened; this is no mere subject that I'm interested in and occupied with. If you are a seriously minded person, this really does concern you. And are you not, are we not being forced, being forced in our time to have a serious question about human history? What's the meaning? What's the meaning of it all - the human race, mankind, and all the history of mankind? What does it all mean? You know, we are being headed right up to that question today. We'll leave it there for the moment.

As a Christian, are you not increasingly confronted with the question as to the meaning - the meaning - of Christianity?

The Meaning of Christianity

After all, what is this thing? What does is it mean? Let's see if we can deal with this in general or in particular. What does it mean? Further, if those are too objective, are we not being forced more and more to face the question of the meaning of spiritual experience? Is there not in our heart a recurrent question: why? Why are we going the way we're going? Why is God taking us this way and through this? Why is this being allowed and that? Why to the children of God, is all this? If that is not a really pressing question in your heart, I'm not giving very much for your spiritual life dear friends, for anybody who's really alive to ultimate things is very concerned about this. What does our spiritual experience in the hands of God really mean? What does it mean? What is God after? What is God explaining? What is He doing?

Now, on the one side again, on the one side human history, on its one side. We must see that God has taken all time - now I'm not going to say how long that is - human history at least embraces 10,000 years. Well, let's leave it at that. Let's leave it at that, if that's all, that's only now. God has taken all time to demonstrate, to demonstrate the meaning and the results of the wrong use that man made of his trust of free will when he took that into his own hands and it became self-will instead of God's will. Can I repeat? God has taken all time to demonstrate the meaning and the results of that act.

It's here that we come to a point which is very full of the most important instruction. What was God left to do? You say, you say, "Why, when man did that, when man did that, broke that law of dependence, and took his will into his own hands and out of God's hands and violated His trust, why didn't God destroy him right away, finish that right away and start again there and then?" Well, it's easy, isn't it, to talk like that? Perhaps that's what you would do. Perhaps that what you think He ought to have done in view of all we know. Do you not see that for God to have done that would have been to have simply said He never did give man free will? To have nullified the whole principle of option? He would have destroyed at once the primary thing: free will. It is never free will, if when you use it you're at once destroyed for doing so, that's not free will! No, but what did God do? What did God do? Ah, that's history, that's history!

The Lord's way has been and still is, like it or not, to let the choice have full course and destroy itself - bring its own judgment upon itself. That's history. That's history. It's a long-term business, a long drawn-out business. And just into that, into that, let me say a thing, a very intimate thing to you and to my own heart: there are some prayers that God answers which would to God He'd never answered. Would to God He'd never answered! Because man would not take a no or an alternative.

There's a little fragment about Israel's long stiff neckedness and hardness of heart. This little fragment is: "He gave them their request but sent leanness into their soul". Have you ever prayed and insisted and refused to take a no or an alternative and wished to God He'd never answered your prayer? That's possible. It's where your will is: on your own side or on His side. There's a lot of spiritual history bound up with that, isn't there? But here we were saying that the Lord has taken all time to demonstrate the folly, the madness, the iniquity of this wrong use of a sacred term. Note, then, the development of this - all the immense potentialities to which we've referred in man have been allowed to express themselves, have been drawn out by history, and today we're amazed! We marvel at the potentialities in man.

Why, in the last 50 years, what a story of the uncovering, unveiling, and exploiting of the potentialities in man! Make no mistake about it. In five hundred years we've moved from the making of iron cannonballs to the atomic bomb. You call that progress, do you? But look at it, what man can do. What is in man to do. We're all wondering, aren't we, what he's going to do next. If things go on for another fifty years as they've gone on for the last fifty, my, where shall we be? Where shall we be? This is no Jules Verne imagination, is it? These things are realities, reality. It's going apace. And all this is in the man that God made.

But do you recognise, and recognise with the acceleration and the intensification of this process, that man has never yet either made a discovery or an invention, but what there has come along a parallel curse with it? A new problem that almost, almost did not altogether bedevil the discovery. Any realm you like, any realm you like... oh, that we were here long enough to survey the ground adequately. That's all we can do. These potentialities which were in the man that God created, have been given full play by God through all time to express themselves. But! But always with a curse. What is a curse? What is the curse? I could put the curse into one word: fear. Fear!

The further man goes, the more fearful he becomes. It's fear, fear that is alive to the greatest discoveries and inventions of man. It's fear, dear friends, that is ruling men's hearts today. They are conscious of insecurity. Aren't they? Insecurity. They are striving for some kind of security in order to overcome this fear, this fear. The Bible is right, you know. It always is. It is right on this: that a mark of the end time will be men's hearts failing them for fear. Oh, you would only have to read some of the books that have been produced by the discoverers of the nuclear, and they'll tell you. They'll tell you in unvarnished language that it only wants the touch of a finger to end the whole human race by this very thing that they have discovered and are now exploiting. The end of the human race and an awful end, if you've read the story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Spread that over the whole human race.

Now, I don't want to be a sensationalist, but these are facts. They're in volume form by the very men who are mostly related, associated with this very matter. Men are afraid. There's a fear in their hearts, and all this effort to find some way of security, security. Isn't that a word today? It's because of this fear and, mark you, the point is this: that that is accentuated and intensified the further men go in their inventions and discoveries and in the development of the potentialities in their own beings. That's the end! We're coming very near.

I repeat: God has taken all history and what a lot that word history covers - past, present, and future (if it's not a contradiction to speak of the future as history), but there is a history that is being made for the future. History is on the one side demonstrating beyond any question or doubt that man, oh, he has made a mistake somewhere, he has gone wrong somewhere, he has defaulted somewhere. No, worse than that, he has done something infinitely evil and it has come out on himself by the wrong use of his own will, his own will. Do you not see? Are we blind? Are we blind, and are we not taking account? I said seriously minded people are concerned about history. Are you not taking account of this, that where this state of things in development, of uncovering, of intensification, of application, of discovery, of invention, everything is most pronounced, you have the most awful strength of human will against God, against God. Isn't that true? That is beyond any argument. It's a soul strength, a strength of human soul. It's like that.

And how we fail to see that the one thing that history has revealed is this contradiction, this strange, but so patent paradox: the greatness of man and at the same time his smallness. The greater he seems to be, the less he seems to be able to cope with his own greatness! Is that true? Yes, he's brought it out, but now he's a mere pawn, a mere puppet, a mere plaything of his own "greatness". How little he is at his greatest. Isn't it true? Well, look, that's the way of history and that's what's happening, dear friends. The greatness of man.

The greatness of man; yes, as God made him, but now because of this one thing, a greatness that is cancerous. There's no other word to explain and define it, it is a cancerous weakness. What is cancer? What is cancer? Well, I can't answer all the research on that matter, but I'll tell you what is known: that cancer exists because of the loss of one central, governing, and regulating authority. Got that? It is something that has broken away from authority and ignores controlling and regulating authority in the organism and becomes an authority in itself, becomes some thing, that is, something in itself; has absolutely refused that central authority regulating and governing within the organism - taken things into its own hands. That's cancer. This greatness of man is like that. Look at it. It has broken right away from the great controlling authority of God, and God's will - the authority of God the answer. What a scourge on humanity.

Now, at that point, were it possible, I could put in a tremendous section by way of illustration. I only have to mention the things without any additional words. What about international relationships? What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with it? Oh, the tentacles of this cancerous thing in human life, in humanity. Why, you cut one off and half a dozen more spring up at once. Isn't it like that with international relationships? Why, you think that you've just got the thing nicely settled and it breaks out in more than one other place. You cannot cope with this, cannot be on sides with this. International relationships. We've got all the existing potential of a prosperous and happy world, it's all there, but upon it... what? A curse. Destruction instead. All the instruments and the institutions for peace. And there was never so much loss of peace in human history as today.

All the amenities and facilities for rest, for rest! For rest... think of all your gadgets to save work, think of all the inventions to make life easy; never so many amenities and facilities for rest and leisure, and never in history so much discontent! Is that true? Something's wrong with this humanity. This world. And we might look at industry and we might look at science and we might even look at religion, but you want me to stop somewhere! So I must leave it there for the moment. That's one side, one side.

But, dear friends, we're not talking just objectively. That is you, that is me, by nature! The deepest, truest thing about you and about me naturally, is self-will, is pride, is possessiveness, is the desire for power. Don't agree with me? All right, all right, if you'll allow the Holy Spirit to take you in anyway at all, you'll discover that is true. That's the first man, that's the old Adam, and you will see at once how that opens the door for the Second Man and the Last Adam to start things all over again on another basis; to be the racial Firstborn, the Head, the Progenitor of another kind. And you'll see a lot more when once you've seen that.

But I am really well aware that all that I have said may be oppressive, may be the heavy side, but friends, you and I have got to understand history and present history; what it means, what it means. What are the forces? And what are the things that are producing this marvelous, wonderful, amazing, startling, terrible world? And where is it leading? Well, you see, God has said, "All right, all right, all right, you have made your choice. You have decided that you would not have it otherwise. Very well, very well." The history of a kind of person or race like that will lead on and on and on until the final verdict of sin, sin is wrought out. It's sin.

I wonder if you'll still bear with me just this moment, something that you'll be well to just store up. You know, dear friends, one of the things that is going to amaze us, perhaps more than most other things - a few things will amaze us when we get to Heaven - will be this: our discovery of how much more, infinitely more, there was in any one statement of God than ever we imagined. Oh, when God speaks, He doesn't speak just platitudes. He does not speak just observations and remarks casually. In anything that God says there is the infinitude of His knowledge and His wisdom. And if any life comes into the hands of the Holy Spirit, that's one thing you'll discover; there is an unfathomable depth of meaning in anything that God has said and you'll never exhaust it. Preach, preach, preach on the same thing all your long life and you haven't exhausted that same thing. It's come from God, there's still something more, and I say we're going to be amazed when we get to Heaven to see the infinitude of what was in some things which were almost commonplace things with us.

Oh, if God uses the words: sin, disobedience, rebellion, self-will there's all time gathered into that in tragedy. You never, never will fathom that. The Last Adam did, He went to the bottom of it, drained it in His cross. But that's where the other side opens up. We'll go on later.

Chapter 2 - The Triumph of Jesus Christ

With the words of 1 Corinthians 15:45 and 47 before us, we now turn to the other side of this whole matter of the place and meaning of Jesus Christ as the Second Man, the Last Adam.

We have taken a lot of time, not enough to cover all the ground, but a lot of time to see, to review the necessity - the Divine necessity - for a Second Man, a Last Adam. And out of that consideration of God's demonstrating through all the generations of history the terrible entail of one basic and inclusive choice or decision in the wrong use of a great trust - that of free will - demonstrating how deep and terrible a thing it is to move out of the will of God into self-will. I say, God having taken all time and used all history to demonstrate to the world, to the universe, what a terrible thing that is.

We have dwelt a little upon that side of history and that interpretation of history. We are led to this one quite clear conclusion: that God, when He does anything, has very good reason for doing it, whatever it is. God never acts on any flimsy and unsubstantial ground. In this matter, God has given us this terrible, terrible story, which is not all told yet, to let us know that when He did act in answer to Adam's rebellion and disobedience, He acted with a full, full knowledge of what was involved in that act. And He has shown by history - and is showing by history - what He knew to be involved in a single act of disobedience. As one, as Paul puts it, "by one man's disobedience and by one act of disobedience...". What a story. But there is another thing to which all this brings us: when God sent His Son into the world as the Second Man, the Last Adam, there is an unspeakably great thing bound up with that.

First, we have just passed through a season of a vast amount of sentimentality, prettiness, and a good deal of childishness. All right, but, dear friends, in the coming into this world of God's Son, no less and no smaller thing was involved than the total overwhelming of this entail of the first Adam's one act of disobedience.

And some of you may have wondered why we took all that time on that sorry and sordid story, that dark side of history. Perhaps you saw little point in it. Certainly you felt little comfort in it, but you know, you can never understand or recognise the greatness of Christ unless you see the immensity of the background against which He stands. And that is not our conclusion and that is not the conclusion of this platform. That is what God has done. He has, in effect, said, "Do you want to know how great My Son is? Then I'll show you by at least 10,000 years of history that He has got to clear up." And if you can fathom that, if you can comprehend that, then you'll get near to the appreciation of how great He and His work really are. That is why our object is not to tell the miserable story of human failure, that is only a means to an end. Our object is to present the greatness of Jesus Christ.

So we turn over now to this other side of the Second Man, the Last Adam, coming into humanity to supplant, dispose, depose the first, the original. We have seen that certain words describe, or certain phrases describe, the state into which the first man, the first Adam, brought the race. The utter, utter loss of human peace, the strivings for peace. Everything that man can conceive of to bring about a reign of peace. The older the world becomes and the longer the shadow of human life, so less the peace, less the peace, less peace in human life today than at any time in human history. Man has been striving and is striving with all his resource (which is not small as we have seen) for rest, for rest, relief from tensions and stresses, to find leisure. And the longer history draws out, so the more dissatisfied, discontented, and restless man is.

Man has striven for security. Today the human race is shot through with fear born of a sense of insecurity and the defeat of every effort to bring about a state of security. Man has striven for ascendancy, for victory. And today, more than ever in his history, he is conscious of the defeat of all his efforts. Indeed, only within these past few days the question has arisen out of this sense of frustration and inability to cope with the world situation, as to whether, after all, the United Nations organisation is worth retaining. Man has striven and is striving for liberty, and his greatest inventions are his prisons. So it is.

What about the Second Man, the Last Adam? Are these not the very words that come in with Him? Are they not? Yes, of a different kind, it's true. Of a quality and of a nature and in a realm that is altogether different. That's what it's meant to be: "Nevertheless, peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth..." Peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. And when you've said that and haven't you gone right back behind the first man, the original Adam who broke that peace with God? You've got right back behind and undercut all that Adam number one let in. I say it's of a different kind and a different realm. It's in the heart. But isn't that the place to have it? What you can stand up to, what you can stand up to in the world if you've got the peace of God in your heart. And how much can you stand up to if you haven't peace?

Jesus said, "Come, I'll give you rest. I'll give you rest." We know what that means. No, it is not what the world seeks: release from responsibility, escape from labour, from work, but there is a rest that remaineth for the children of God into which we are brought in Christ Jesus, a rest, which can be rest in labour and even in conflict, into something spiritual in one.

What about security? Security. The apostle - this apostle - gives us a long catalogue of the things which to the world speak insecurity - life, death, things present, things to come, height, depth, principalities, peril, and all the rest. And finding his stock exhausted, he has to lump all the rest together in this "or any other creation... and I am persuaded that none of these things shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus." Is that not security? Life can be a formidable thing, and death can be a formidable thing. And all these other things may be very disconcerting things, but, says the apostle, the whole lot put together and anything else you'd like to mention and add, cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Is that not security?

And so you could go on with all that comes in with the Last Adam that He is. But what a difference, what a difference. You see, with Him, that thing of which we have said much, which dogs, dogs every effort of man to realise his destiny, for man was made to have dominion, that's stated, but he was made to have it in relation to God, and he decided to have it without that relationship. He lost it, and history is one long, long story of man's effort to get it without God. And there's running alongside of every one effort of man a dogging thing - that he takes a step forward and something comes up either to make him take two steps backward or to frustrate the full realisation of his effort. Just that, it's just like that. So that his most advanced step, as we are seeing it today, has running alongside of it the most terrible threat, which takes the very heart out of it and makes it, all this great advance, after all, a very doubtful thing. A very doubtful thing. It would be better if we never found that out, if we never discovered that. It would be better.

All right, but that's what is meant by the curse which dogs man's steps and runs alongside till the end - the end is what we can so clearly visualise now: a wonderful, wonderful development ending in the most ghastly tragedy. But for the intervention of Another, where would this world end? Well, we know. The curse is taken hold of like the sting in the tail and is plucked out by the Last Adam. The curse is taken, and that element, that element of neuturalising is destroyed in the Cross of the Lord Jesus. He undercuts all the nature and history produced by the defection of the first Adam.

Now, note: how does He do this? How does He do this? What is the strength of this? The law of this? The secret of this that He does? For He does it, there's no doubt about that, wait a moment. Well, He does it by reversing, completely reversing and contradicting the way that the first Adam took which led to all this disaster. What was the motive, the motive by which the first Adam acted and opened the door to this history? The motive was my will, my will. The motive of the Last Adam: "not My will but Thine." That's sounds a very simple way of putting it. It doesn't take many words, but there's an infinity of meaning in that. The law and the watchword of the Last Adam was, from the coming, from the inception to the last breath: "not My will but Thine be done."

And on that basis, see whether He as man - representative man - is great. See the greatness, His greatness. A greatness, you see, that man today at his most just covets with all his might. His greatness in the physical realm. He comes into this world, into this physical consequence of the first Adam's act and finds this state of physical defeat, sickness, infirmity; a terrible physical state.

Physicians, be patient with me, you spend your whole lifetime - and they have for generations - spent all their strength and all their energies. Thank God for them and what they've done to help in order to do what He did in a moment - in a moment, with a word. And a lifelong disease yielded in an instant. All the entail of sin in the physical body was cancelled out with a word from His lips. Don't you doctors wish you had that greatness? This is the Last Adam.

And men strive and struggle to get the mastery of the natural forces - the forces of nature - and they think they've got a long way in doing that, and then something happens. Some disruption, some disturbance in the heavenly bodies, some terrific storm, hurricane; something in the realm of nature and man is rendered utterly impotent and helpless. The thing just runs away with him. He can do nothing about it. A mighty threatening storm, wind, and sea and not a word from His mouth till the whole thing subsides, the whole thing subsides. "Be still," said He, and there was a great calm; natural forces yielding to Him. How great He is.

Men, women, torn, distracted, bewildered by evil forces. We read of one woman out of whom He cast seven demons. Men just tortured by evil powers and others trying to tame them, put the poor fellow in chains to tame him, but he plucked the chains off. No one, it says, could tame him. Evil forces. Evil forces. With a word, with a word out they go. The poor victim sits, clothed, in his right mind.

And what shall we say about sin? About the grip of evil habits? Sin, sin. That awful thing: sin. Soul distress. Soul distress. "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Here they are, plenty of them, about Him the distressed of soul, the harassed of soul, mastered by evil habits and an evil nature. And with a word, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." And it's not only a word, something happened. Something happens, he goes away with heart rest, forgiven and delivered.

Social, family disruptions, factions - if you like: broken homes. We know something about that today. And all the efforts of social institutions failing. Utterly failing and they do, and they do. And He comes into the scene and there's reconciliation and there's mended relationships. How great He is, this Last Adam, without any of the organisations, the institutions, the paraphernalia, the efforts, the expenditure, He is great enough with a word to just undercut the whole entail of the first Adam's sin.

He's great and one of the greatest things, I think, that the Last Adam recovers and restores is that vital factor of a sense of purpose in life, in being. Do you think of that? That goes to the heart of a great deal.

A well-known psychiatrist and psychologist has put it on record that one-third of all the people that go to consult him are plagued and distraught by the malady of having no sense of purpose in life. Frustrated, that's the great word, frustrated. It's only another way of saying: no purpose for living. And what a door that opens up. How much rushes in through that door if only you are robbed of a sense of purpose in life, of being at all. And do you not see that this is a growing malady today? It's spreading, it's spreading like a disease.

Everywhere men are asking: what is the purpose of it all? What is the purpose of it all? What's the meaning of life? The lost sense of a great purpose in having a being. I repeat that it's just there, which is a root thing in human life and history, it's just there that the Last Adam comes in. I have often put it like this - suffer this repetition - that when a person really comes in surrender to God in Jesus Christ and accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as their own Saviour, the very first thing in their consciousness is: "I have something to live for! I have something to live for that I didn't have before." They may not be able to explain what that is, they could not tell you now what this great purpose is, but there has been born, born like a new child, born within their consciousness: "Life was meant for something, I have a being for something, there's a purpose for which to live." That grows, if there's a normal spiritual growth, and becomes stronger and deeper and becomes clarified: that you know. You know. The Last Adam brings that. There was a great purpose, but in relation to God, and it was lost when that relationship was broken. He recovers it, He recovers it, and gives the sense of purpose.

Now I must hasten to this. Earlier I said that amongst those things which every person who takes life seriously, which means especially every Christian, there are several things that that person wants to know, and must know, and seeks to know. And I said amongst those things was the meaning of spiritual experience.

The Meaning of Spiritual Experience

Well, dear friends, if you can read your own spiritual experience, can you not read these parallel columns? On the one side, the Holy Spirit has got hold of you and is making you know what you are in yourself, in old Adam. No one like a true Christian knows what old Adam really is. Does that sound terrible? Yes, but that's just it. That's just it, because a true Christian is one who is going to really, really appreciate the grace of God. And you never appreciate the grace of God unless you see the necessity for it. So that along one line, the spiritual history of a Christian, along one line is the discovery, and the growing discovery, of our own utter worthlessness. I was going to use another word, is it too strong a word to say our rottenness? If you feel you're very respectable, a nice person, forgive me, I don't want to insult you, but I don't think that's too strong a word. The depravity of this old Adam life is unfathomable, and it's got to be shown in order that really God's Son may be understood and appreciated. It must be set over against that background.

But thank God, spiritual history runs along another line - and it is all too slow, I grant you, all too slow - nevertheless, by the grace of God, by the work of the Holy Spirit, the inculcation of the Life, the nature of the Second Man, the Last Adam. We have nothing to boast about that we can boast about. Indeed, indeed, we will never say anything about our attainment in that matter. But God only knows where we would be but for Jesus Christ! So I have to look at things: where would I be today if it hadn't been for Jesus Christ? Knowing now what I know that I did not know of yore: the depths of this nature and the awful possibilities that are in it. It's there. But the Holy Spirit has got hold of a Christian life, a truly committed Christian, and is working, is working into that life this disposition, this disposition of the Last Adam. And what is that disposition? Ah, it may be your battlefield, it really may be your battlefield, thank God, thank God for the measure of victory, but is it not here: "Nevertheless not My will but Thine"? Isn't that it?

Are we not more and more being brought by the Spirit of Jesus Christ to that place where this will of ours becomes subject to the will of God? It's true. Where we are discovering the need for - and thank God - being more and more enabled to accept absolute dependence upon God for everything. Where all that resource in ourselves, that self-resource is being undercut and removed and our resource is found to be in God, truly in God, but only in God, and we are put onto a very wonderful basis. Oh, dear friends, if you are a truly born-again child of God, you are put onto a marvelous basis!

I have spoken of this Last Adam's greatness. What is the word that sums all that up? Supernatural. Super-natural! Isn't it? That's not natural, [oh yes]. We don't need to say that. Supernatural. Do you not realise that your very new birth is a supernatural thing? That's the truth, isn't it? Do you not recognise that your continuance and endurance is a supernatural thing? If you don't, well, I don't know what's the matter with you! We are put into those positions where for endurance, endurance, going on, there's no possible hope or ground or way but God Himself to carry us on. And that's supernatural history! It is, it's supernatural history. That's not natural. That's not natural, some of you may not know what I'm talking about, but some of you do. So, you see, what was true of Him - in a spiritual way, mark you, in a spiritual way - is being made true in us. I say again, all too slowly, all too meagre, and yet it happens: we are put on to a supernatural basis.

I believe that there's a very much larger need for us to prove this, to know this. If I might carry this into the Body of Christ, the church, wherever it may be represented in local companies. You know, the supernatural elements ought to be found more in evidence. I believe that a great deal of our physical troubles ought to yield to prayer and that our family disturbances and upheavals ought to yield to prayer, and these other things, they ought to yield supernaturally. They ought to yield. We are brought into much of this in Christ to be known now. What a helpless, weak thing the church is. Ought it to be like that with the Last Adam resident within, with all this meaning?

Well, dear friends, that's where I'm going to leave things for the present. You will find that quite enough, I'm sure. But there it is, here is this Second Man, this Last Body, this Last Adam, who has come in on the one side, on the one side to expose the old, to condemn the old, and to put away the old by His Cross in which the whole of that old Adam was crucified. And on the other side to bring in, to introduce, to establish, to constitute, to build up, to propagate and extend a race - a race of men and women who are taking up of His own potentialities, who are given His own gifts spiritually and morally, who are learning, by His working and by His grace and the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, that after all, there is a dominion for which God meant man and that that dominion, that ascendance, and that victory is found in Christ in real measure now. And the end, the end is that race of which He is the first and the last, reigning, glorified. The complete reversal of all the other where you read at the end - we heard yesterday - no more, no more pain, tears, death. No more, no more, but everything to the contrary. You see the triumph of the Second Man, the Last Adam, and that is what remains when all the other is no more.