Last Adam OR 2nd Adam?

"Jesus is the Last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45). 

Many commentators also refer to Jesus as the ‘second Adam’, largely due to proximity between the titles ‘second man’ and ‘Last Adam’ in 1 Corinthians 15. 

However, we argue that this is an invalid interpolation into the text. The term ‘second Adam’ does not appear in the Bible. Moreover, it masks both the theological richness of 1 Corinthians 15 and the history of redemption.

Jesus is not the only character besides Adam to have been given the commissions Adam was given in Genesis 1 and 2. Jesus is the last of several Adamic figures, and He ends the line because He succeeded where all the others failed. 

 

Moreover, 

--God’s replication of the Adamic vocation to multiple people throughout the history of redemption indicates these commissions and promises were anchored in a literal, historical Adam.

In 1 Corinthians 15:45–47, there is an important contrast. Drawing on Genesis 2:7, Paul calls Adam ‘the first man Adam’, but he refers to Jesus in two different ways: Jesus is ‘the last Adam’ (v. 45) and ‘the second man’ (v. 47). 

Some think, therefore, that ‘second man’ is a synonym for ‘second Adam’, since as a ‘second Adam’ Jesus is the firstborn of the new creation. However, we must respect Paul’s precision—he calls Jesus ‘the last Adam’, not the ‘second Adam’. 

 

Adam was a special man. He was the first ever human, and he is the father of us all: “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). As such, he was given a special role. God gave him, with Eve, dominion over the earth: Adam was given the first task of exercising dominion over the earth by naming the animals (Genesis 2:19–20).  

Adam thus was given rule, and had a primacy of authority even among humans, since he is the one from whom all other humans have come. 

 

Adam was a priest-king: he ruled as a king over creation and served in God’s garden in Eden as a priest served in the tabernacle and temple. 

--But He failed in his role. He sinned...And so, sin, decay, and death came into the world and infected the human race.

 --Jesus is thus the beginning of a new mankind. He is the founder of a new everlasting spiritual race of mankind that is greater than the first natural race, which, through disobedience, would be subjected to death. 

 

However, 

there is a twofold contrast in 1 Corinthians 15:45. First, Adam became a ‘soul’ (psychē) at his creation 

and Jesus became a ‘spirit’ (pneuma) at His Resurrection 

(neither lacked a body, but had bodies governed by different life-principles).

Jesus is the climax of salvation history; a history that began with the creation of the first Adam."

JimHughes/ShaunDoyle/CMI