A study explaining that Jesus Christ was the Perfect Man ­ Man as God intended man to be. Jesus was perfect in spiritual condition, perfect in behavioral expression, and perfect in benefit for mankind by taking man's death consequences before God that man might have His life.

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   Natural man "in Adam" was in a hopeless and helpless condition. He was alienated from God, and without the indwelling presence of God could not be man as God intended man to be. There was nothing man could do to escape from his spiritual predicament of estrangement from God and behavioral dysfunction. Resolutions, renunciations, reason nor religion could remedy his condition.

   The only one who could remedy man's fallen situation was God. God would have to take the initiative if there was to be a remedy to man's problem and a restoration of functional humanity, though He was not necessarily obliged to do so. When God acts He cannot act "out of character." He always acts in accord with His character. He does what He does because He is who He is.

   God is a just God. He is righteous and true. He must keep His word; He cannot lie (Titus 1:2), and He had said that the consequences of sin would be death. "In the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17). Paul also explained this connection of sin and death when he wrote, "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23), and "the sting of death is sin" (I Cor. 15:56). God's justice demanded death for sin, and He cannot act contrary to any facet of His character.

   God is also loving. "God is love" (I John 4:8,16). God is gracious and merciful and desires to act in the highest good of the other, i.e. His creatures, and particularly mankind. God's love and mercy and graciousness prompted His desire to forgive man.

   How could God act consistently with His character of justice and gracious mercy at the same time?

   Only God could act to counteract that which Satan had done in man. Only by His omnipotence could He overcome him who has the "power of death, that is the devil" (Heb. 2:14), and set aside the "power of our iniquities" (Isa. 64:7). Only God can forgive sin, because sin is a violation of His character. Only God can set men free to once again be man as God intended man to be. Only God can "save" man.

   Only man could take the death consequences of sin. The living God cannot die. The just consequences of death for sin must be taken by mortal man.

   Only God can deal with sin. Only man can die.

   So to express both His justice and His grace at the same time in remedying man's dilemma, the mediator, the saviour, would of necessity have to be a God-man. As God he could administer His power in overcoming the "works of the devil" (I John 3:8) from whom sin is derived, and thus forgive mankind their sin by His grace. As man the mediatorial saviour could be the recipient of the death consequences of sin and satisfy God just demands.

   God's remedial and restorative action on man's behalf required a God-man; one who was both God and man at the same time. The paradoxical antinomy of this is soon recognized, for the attributes of deity and the attributes of humanity are mutually exclusive in reference to their functionality.

   God sent His Son, the second person of the Godhead, to be the saviour and mediator. "God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son" (John 3:16). "The Word, who was God, became flesh" (John 1:1,14). God, the Son, who from eternity was the One who expressed God as the "Word," and revealed God visibly as the Divine "image" (Col. 1:15; II Cor. 4:4), became man. "There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus" (I Tim. 2:5).

   The question might be asked: "Why did God wait so long?" If God had from beginning determined to redeem mankind in accord with His character of love and mercy, why did he put off this redemptive action for thousands of years? God knew what He was going to do, for Jesus was "the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4; Heb. 4:3; Rev. 13:8). (This action not in historical actuality, but in Divine intent.) So why did God postpone the redemptive work of Christ for several millennia?

   When Eve bore her first child she apparently thought that she had borne the "seed" who would crush the head of the serpent. She exclaimed, "I have begotten the manchild, even Jehovah" (Gen. 4:1). She thought God's promise of the "seed of the woman bruising the serpent's head" (Gen. 3:15) was being fulfilled. Little did she realize how long it would be before such was enacted.

   Why did God not place the cross just outside the gates of the garden of Eden, and begin His remedial and redemptive work at once? Is it really consistent with His love to forestall His divine action on man's behalf for such a long period? Yes it was! A preparatory time was needed. Man needed to learn the consequences of sin, the extent of his sinfulness, his utter helplessness to be man as God intended apart from God. Man needed to learn that God was a "God of His word," whose judgement was indeed just. By his inability to keep the commandments of the Law, man would recognize his insufficiency and depravity, and only then be able to appreciate the salvation that God would make available by His Grace in His Son, Jesus Christ. God pictorially prefigured all that He was going to do in Christ by His typological activity throughout the old covenant. Then "in the fullness of time" (which only God can determine); God sent forth His Son, born of a woman" (Gal. 4:4).

   The great Christological passage of Philippians 2:6-8 records that "Christ Jesus, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, being made in the likeness of man. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross." What did Jesus empty Himself of? Did He empty Himself of being God? No, for He could still say, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30), and that not just in purpose or intent, but in essence of being. Did He empty Himself of certain divine attributes that were incompatible with humanity, such as omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, etc.? No, He did not cease to be wholly God with all of His attributes intact. Did He empty Himself of His glory? No, for John explains that "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father" (John 1:14). Jesus emptied Himself of the divine prerogative of independent exercise of His divine activity. God is independent, autonomous and self-generates His own activity in accord with His character. Man, on the other hand, is a dependent creature who is always functionally dependent, derivative and contingent upon a spiritual resource for his spiritual condition and behavioral expression. In order to become a man, Jesus did not empty Himself of divinity, but merely deferred the independent, autonomous and self-generative exercise of His divine function, in order to function as a man.

   This will become more apparent as we consider how Jesus was the "perfect man," by virtue of His being perfect in being, perfect in behavior and perfect in benefit.

   When the Son became man, how did He avoid that which was predicated to all mankind because of Adam's sin? All men died in Adam (Rom. 5:12,15,17,21; I Cor. 15:22). All men were under condemnation (Rom. 5:16,18). All men were made "sinners" (Rom. 5:19) in their essential spiritual condition and identity. All men were "by nature, children of wrath" (Eph. 2:3), with the "prince of the power of the air, (being) the spirit that was working in these sons of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2), identified with the "disobedience" of Adam (Rom. 5:19).

   How could Jesus become a man without partaking of spiritual death, Satanic energizing and the inevitable expression of sinful behavior? If He did not escape the transmission of these consequences of Adam's sin, then He would have been in the same helpless and hopeless plight of all mankind. In that condition He could not have saved Himself or anyone else.

   In becoming a man, Jesus did not come into being as a man by the same natural processes of human paternity and maternity, as do the rest of mankind. This does not make Him any less human, for He was "born of a woman" (Gal. 4:4) with direct lineage of physical humanity all the way back to Adam, as the genealogies of the gospel records indicate. Adam was human, but his parentage was of divine creation. Jesus is referred to as the "second Adam" or the "second man" (I Cor. 15:47). Jesus was the second man to be born with only God as His paternal father. Jesus told the Jews that He "proceeded forth and came out of God (ek theos)" (John 8:42). Like the first Adam (Gen. 2:7), He came into being with the Spirit of God in his spirit. Thus He was perfect in His spiritual being as a man, for the perfect Spirit of God dwelt in Him from His birth.

   This is not to imply that Jesus, the "last Adam," was the same or identical to the first Adam. Adam was a man with the spirit of God's life in the man (Gen. 2:7). Jesus was incarnate deity. He was God, and never ceased to be God, but became man.

   The Son of God becoming man was accomplished via the supernatural conception of a child in the womb of Mary. The paternal seed (sperma) was not provided by Joseph but by the Holy Spirit. The God-man was the "seed (or progeny) of the woman" (Gen. 3:15), "born of a woman" (Gal. 4:4), without human paternity. Some have speculated that the transmission of the death consequences of Adam throughout the human race is through the seminal paternal transmission of the human father, but evidence for such is inconclusive. What we do know is that Joseph was not the human paternal father of the baby that was conceived in the womb of Mary, and this was quite unsettling because Joseph and Mary were not yet married. When Mary was advised that she was going to have a child, she asked, "How can this be? I am a virgin." The angel explained that "The Holy Spirit will come upon you." (Luke 1:34,35). Joseph, likewise was told, "Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 1:20). Jesus was conceived by the supernatural conception of the Holy Spirit, which is often referred to as the "virgin birth," and thus He did not partake of the spiritual and behavioral consequences of death that came upon all natural men because of Adam's sin. This evidences the necessity of understanding and accepting the "virgin birth" or supernatural conception of Jesus Christ, else He could not have been "perfect in being" and the sinless Savior of mankind. To jettison or deny such is to cut the heart out of the gospel.

   Born "perfect in being," Jesus was not born "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1,5) as are all natural men, but rather the Spirit of God's Life indwelt His spirit from conception. Jesus did not have the personal resource of death, the "one having the power of death, that is the devil" (Heb. 2:14) operating and energizing within His spirit, as all natural men seem to have from their birth (Eph. 2:2). To His disciples Jesus explained, "The ruler of the world...has nothing in Me" (John 14:30). Jesus was perfect in spiritual being by the presence of the Perfect Spirit of God indwelling the spirit of the man, Christ Jesus.

   How did Jesus live the life that He lived? Did He have some additional capabilities since He was God to live life as a man? Did He have something that allowed Him to live perfectly that Christians do not have?

   The perfect spiritual condition of the human Jesus gave Him the perfect potential to evidence behaviorally the character of the Perfect One who dwelt in His human spirit. In the behavior mechanism of His soul there was open access for God to function in the behavior of the man, as God intended when He first created man. Jesus did not have the patterned propensities of the "flesh" which have developed in all natural men, who while functioning as "slaves of sin" (John 8:34; Rom. 6:6) form tendencies of selfishness and sinfulness in their behavior patterns. These patterns of behavior were not formed from the earliest years of His life as they are in all natural men, but this does not necessarily mean that Jesus had any resource or capability for behavior that other men (that is Christian persons) do not have.

   Although He was God, He did not function as God during His life and redemptive mission on earth. God functions by the independent, autonomous and self-generated activity of His own being and character. Man is a dependent creature who functions only and always by derivative and contingent receptivity from a spiritual resource. Although Jesus could be God and be man at the same time, He could not function as God and function as man at the same time. He could not behave as God and behave as man simultaneously. This is why He "emptied Himself" (Phil. 2:7) of the prerogatives of divine function, determining not to exercise those infinite capabilities independently. In order to become fully man He had to become functionally subordinate and thus to function, act and behave as a man, who by receptive derivation and dependency would allow the indwelling Father and Spirit to function as God in the man.

   In conjunction with all human beings Jesus had freedom of choice. He had the volitional option as to whether He would allow the perfection of spiritual being which indwelt Him to be experientially manifested in His behavior of soul and body as a man. Although He was never "in the flesh" (Rom. 8:9) entrapped by fleshly tendencies, He was nevertheless tempted to choose to engage in fleshly activities. He was "tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15).

   The question is often asked, "Could Jesus have sinned when He was tempted?" In theological terminology this is the issue of the impeccability of Jesus. James explains that "God cannot be tempted by evil..." (James 1:13). Some argue therefore that since Jesus was God He could not be tempted to evil. What they are forgetting is that although Jesus was indeed God, never less than God, He was functioning behaviorally as a man. It was not as God that He was tempted, but as a man. W. Ian Thomas explains,

"It is no explanation to suggest that though tempted, the Lord Jesus Christ was not tempted with evil...for the statement 'yet without sin' clearly indicates that the nature of the temptation was such that it would have led to sin had it not been resisted. ...inherent in His willingness to be made man, was the willingness of the Lord Jesus Christ to be made subject to temptation,... ...inherent in man's capacity to be godly is man's capacity to sin."1

   It is of no value to speculate on such hypothetical questions as: "What if Jesus had opted to sin? Did God have any other options by which to save mankind?"

   In spite of the temptations to choose to engage in behavior that was less than perfect and not derived from God, Jesus did not so choose and did not sin. The Scriptural record is abundantly clear that Jesus was "without sin" (Heb. 4:15). "In Him there was no sin" (I John 3:5). He "knew no sin" (II Cor. 5:21), and "committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth" (I Peter 2:22). Jesus Himself could ask His contemporaries, "Which of you convicts Me of sin?" (John 8:46), and no one could do so. He was a "high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners" (Heb. 7:26), who "offered Himself without blemish" (Heb. 9:14), "a lamb unblemished and spotless (I Peter 1:19).

   Jesus did not sin, but the mere avoidance of sin is not necessarily "perfect behavior." To avoid sin may be to simply do nothing at all, but that too might be the sin of omission. Anyone who observes the recorded life of Jesus cannot conclude that He was lethargic or passive. He was very active, and the entirety of His activity was the expression of "perfect behavior." Perfect behavior is only the result of a choice which allows the Perfect God within a man to express His Perfect character perfectly in the behavior of a man. When such "perfect behavior" is expressed in a man, God is "well pleased," and God proclaims such divine pleasure concerning the behavior of Jesus Christ both at His baptism (Matt. 3:17) and at His transfiguration (Matt. 17:5). God is only well pleased and glorified by the manifestation of His own perfect character. Jesus knew that this was the basis of His human functioning, for He asserts, "I always do the things that are pleasing to Him" (John 8:29).

   Jesus exercised His freedom of choice to allow the perfect God to function perfectly within the man for every moment in time for thirty-three years. He always chose to let God function through His humanity. Such receptivity of God's activity is the way that man was designed by God to function.

   Repeatedly Jesus explained the modus operandi of His behavior to those who observed what He said and what He did. "The Son can do nothing of Himself; ...the Father shows the Son all things that He Himself is doing" (John 5:19,20). "I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge..." (John 5:30). "I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself has given Me...what to say, and what to speak" (John 12:49). "The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works" (John 14:10). Jesus did not function by His rightful divine initiative of independent, autonomous and self-generative function. As a man He was receptive to the divine activity that His indwelling Father desired to express through Him. Functioning as a man He derived all of His behavior from God, contingent upon the Father in the dependency of functionally subordinate faith.

   Thus functioning as God intended man to function, Jesus was imaging the character of God in all that He did. "When you see Me, you see God in action." "He who beholds Me, beholds Him who sent Me" (John 12:45). The invisible character of God was perfectly "imaged" in the visible perfect behavior of a man, the Perfect Man, Jesus Christ, who was but man as God intended man to be, normally functional humanity. Christ was, and is, "the image of God" (Col. 1:15: II Cor. 4:4); the fullness of deity dwelling in bodily form (Col. 2:10), but the basis of His functionality is to be the basis of the function of all mankind.

   Though Jesus thoroughly explains that "the Father abiding in Me does His works" (John 14:10), and that He just participates in "whatever the Father does" (John 5:19), some still question whether the independent initiative of divine action was necessitated for Jesus to work miracles. Peter explains in the first sermon of the church that Jesus was "a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him" (Acts 2:22). How did Jesus perform the miracles? As a man He was receptive to the supernatural activity of God operative through Him. Thus it is that Peter and Paul and others throughout Christian history have been able to express the supernatural work of God also.

   In light of the human functionality of "the man, Christ Jesus," who demonstrated "perfect behavior" by His receptivity of divine activity, why is it then that Christians are so keen to demur and to claim that "Jesus could live like He did because He was God, but we are just human." No! Jesus was a man who lived like He did because He chose in faith to allow the Father who indwelt Him to act through Him. Christians who have become "partakers of the divine nature" (II Peter 1:4), have the same indwelling spiritual resource that they might choose in faith to allow the indwelling Christ to express His character and activity through them, to the glory of God. We cannot cop-out by using the excuse of the inadequacy of mere humanity, for it was in just such humanity that Jesus exhibited "perfect behavior."

   Though "perfect in being" and "perfect in behavior," Jesus still needed to be "made perfect." In fact, at the risk of being misunderstood, I might assert that if Jesus were merely "perfect in being" and "perfect in behavior," the world would have been better off without Him. Why? Because such a matchless example would have condemned us all the more. No other man could be born as He was born, "perfect in being," and therefore no other man could have behaved as He behaved, "perfect in behavior." Such incapability would have been frustratingly condemnable. But Jesus did not come to condemn us by a matchless example; He came to become condemnation for us as a vicarious sacrifice. Therein He was "made perfect" in the obedience of the things which He suffered (Heb. 5:8,9). "Jesus, by the suffering of death...was perfected as the author of our salvation through sufferings" (Heb. 2:8,9).

   The perfect purpose of God in having His Son become man was that He might provide the "perfect benefit" for all of mankind in the remedial and restorative activity of the Messiah. The remedial action is observed in the death of Jesus Christ whereby He takes the death consequences of the sin of mankind upon Himself. The restorative action is the result of the resurrection of Christ whereby the life of God is once again made available to mankind.

   Some have asked, "Why did Jesus have to die?" It is not that death is intrinsic to humanity, for Adam could have eaten from the "tree of life" and "lived forever" (Gen. 3:22). Human death is the consequence of sin (Gen. 2:17). But Jesus was "without sin" (Heb. 4:15), so why did He have to die? He became a man in order to die! He "came to give His life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28). God sent His Son "in the likeness of sinful flesh," so that He might be "an offering for sin" (Rom. 8:3). He came to earth as a man to assume the death consequences of the human race. In His death He incurred all of the death consequences that had occurred in Adam and which were thus transmitted to all mankind, in order to reverse those consequences and allow for spiritual re-creation that man might function as God intended man to function.

   Jesus, who "knew no sin, was made to be sin on our behalf" (II Cor. 5:21). The man, Christ Jesus, was undeserving of any death consequences since He was "perfect in being" and "perfect in behavior." It was the sin of all mankind that was imputed to Jesus Christ that He might bear the death consequences thereof. It was not His sin, but our sin that made Him liable to death. "Christ died for sins,...the just for the unjust" (I Peter 3:18).

   It is interesting to note the contrast between the first man, Adam, and the second man, Jesus Christ. Both faced a human choice at the site of a tree. Adam made a choice of "disobedience" (Rom. 5:19) at the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Gen. 2:17; 3:3-6, and as a consequence all men "were made sinners" (Rom. 5:19), (designating their spiritual condition and identity), and condemned to partake of the death consequences (Rom. 5:12,14,17) of sin. Jesus Christ made a choice of "obedience" (Rom. 5:19), "learning obedience through the things which He suffered" (Heb. 5:8), "becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:8). It was at that "tree" of the cross (Acts 5:30; Gal. 3:13) that Jesus was "made sin" (II Cor. 5:21). The sin of the entire human race was imputed to Him. The composite quantification and qualification of all sin was invested in Him. As a sinless man He became the diabolic personification of all sin contrary to the character of God. Vicariously He became the sinless substitutionary sacrifice to satisfy the just consequences of death for sin.

   The totality of the death consequences which occurred in Adam were incurred by Jesus Christ: the personal resource of death, the prevailing ramifications of death, and the perpetual representation of death.2

   The "prevailing ramifications" of death are most evident, for as the "god of this world" (II Cor. 4:4) came against Jesus, personally and directly in the temptations in the wilderness, and through his religious agents in Judaism, Jesus was physically crucified by "death on a cross" (Phil. 2:8). The physical death of Jesus Christ was empirically observed and is historically verifiable. The gory details of death by crucifixion have adequately been explained.

   How the "personal resource" of death was imputed to Jesus on the cross is more difficult to understand. If Jesus took all the death consequences for man, then He not only took upon Himself physical death but also spiritual death, for that is the first aspect of death that occurred in Adam (Gen. 2:17). The theologians of early Christianity often explained that "the unassumed is the unrestored," implying that if Jesus did not assume all of the human death consequences, then the remedial action necessary for the restoration of God's life in man would be inadequate. Jesus seems to have assumed spiritual death when He cried out from the cross, 'My God, My God, Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34), and "gave up His spirit" (Matt. 27:50; John 19:30). He experienced the separation from and absence of the life of God in the man, which is spiritual death. As a derivative creature, man can never be an autonomous, independent void. Spiritual death is not annihilation or mere cessation. Jesus was "made to be sin" (II Cor. 5:21), and the source of all sin is in Satan (I John 3:8). Could it be that the "spirit" (Eph. 2:2), the "one having the power of death, that is the devil" (Heb. 2:14), actually invaded the spirit of the man, Christ Jesus, at that last moment of His pre-crucifixion existence, and entered into the one man he had never been able to get into? If so, Jesus became the personification of all sin, even of Satan himself, and God poured out His wrath, the judgment of sin, on all that was contrary to His character. This might also explain the suddenness of Jesus' physical death, which surprised the observers who knew that crucifixion was a slow and agonizing process of death (John 19:33). Could it be that in giving up His spirit (Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46) He "laid down His own life" (John 10:17,18) in physical death so as to disallow any Satanic activity in the behavior of His soul and body which would have contravened the sinless sacrifice? "The body without the spirit is dead" (James 2:26). These latter questions are indeed speculative conjectures, but the reality of the assumption of spiritual death by Jesus must not be overlooked.

   The extent to which Jesus experienced the "perpetual representation" of the death consequences of man's sin is even more difficult to explain. The Apostle's Creed formulated early in Christian history indicates that Jesus "descended into hell." The Scriptural record reports that Jesus "descended into the lower parts of the earth" (Eph. 4:9) and "preached to the spirits in prison" (I Pet. 3:19), "even to those who are dead" (I Pet. 4:6), and "His soul was not abandoned to Hades" (Acts 2:27,31). Though we could wish for more details, they are not provided. In some manner that is beyond human explanation, Jesus experienced the qualitative, or even quantitative, everlastingness of death in the midst of His physical death. The temporal factors of timing, whether this was during the three hours of darkness or during the three days of physical death cannot be ascertained and need not be, for with God "a day is as a thousand years" (II Pet. 3:8), and thus Jesus could have experienced the everlastingness of death within any period of time.

   In His death on the cross Jesus accomplished what the Father had given Him to do. It was a victory cry that He issued from the cross, "It is finished!" It was certainly not a cry of defeat about having come to an untimely end, whereby the mission was aborted. The Greek word tetelestai that Jesus exclaimed was derived from the word telos, meaning "end." Jesus was declaring that the perfect end-objective of God for man was accomplished. The resurrection, Pentecostal outpouring, and even the consummation of His return, though not yet historically enacted, were inevitable consequential outworkings of the remedial action that was achieved in His death. Death and sin were defeated. "Mission accomplished!" "Paid in full!" "It is finished!" Indeed it was for "the Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil" (I John 3:8), and "through death render powerless the one having the power of death, that is the devil" (Heb. 2:14).

   For the man, Christ Jesus, who was sinless, yea perfect, "it was impossible for Him to be held in death's power" (Acts 2:24), and "His flesh did not suffer decay" (Acts 2:27,31; 13:35). He had no personal sin, by the consequence of which "the one having the power of death, that is the devil" (Heb. 2:14) could hold Him. He thus was resurrected unto life out of death.

   By the resurrection of Jesus Christ the life of God was restored for the first time to a man who had experienced spiritual death. The resurrection of Jesus had been foretold by David (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:31; 13:35), who also indicated that the resurrection was a type of birth (Psalm 2:7; Acts 13:33; Heb. 5:5), as the Perfect man was restored to life out of death. Jesus was the "first-born from the dead" (Col. 1:18; Rev. 1:5). This cannot mean that He was the first man to be restored to physical life out of physical death (Luke 7:15; John 11:44), but the first man to have experienced spiritual death and then to be restored to spiritual life. Do not think that Jesus was "born again" in the same way that Christians are, for we fallen human beings were spiritually dead as "sinners" deserving such consequence, whereas Jesus was "made sin" and His death was an undeserved consequence of our sin. His resurrection was accomplished by virtue of His own sinlessness and the power of God (Eph. 1:19,20) whereby He had the power to "take it up again" (John 10:17,18), whereas our restoration to life is accomplished only by virtue of His sacrificial death on our behalf, and the availability of His resurrection-life poured out by the Spirit of Christ at Pentecost.

   By His resurrection Jesus became the "first-fruits of those who are asleep" (I Cor. 15:20,23), and "the first born among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29), who could in similar manner based on the prototypical resurrection/birth of Jesus Christ be restored to spiritual life out of spiritual death by receiving His life. "By reason of His resurrection from the dead, He was the first to proclaim light both to Jew and Gentile" (Acts 26:23). Having experienced life out of death, Jesus proclaimed the availability to all men of experiencing spiritual "life out of death" (John 5:24; I John 3:14), being "raised to newness of life" (Rom. 6:4) as they are "raised up with Christ" (Col. 2:12; 3:1) by the receptivity of His resurrection-life.

   By His resurrection "the last Adam became a life-giving spirit" (I Cor. 15:45) making available His life (John 11:25; 14:6) to restore the Life of God to mankind and re-create man as a "new man" (I Cor. 5:17; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10). We can be "born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (I Peter 1:3).

   Only by His being "perfect in being" (supernaturally conceived with God as His father and indwelt by the Spirit of God) could Jesus have been "perfect in behavior" (allowing the character of God to be expressed perfectly at every moment in time for thirty-three years). Only as He was "perfect in behavior" (receptive by faith to let God act through Him) could Jesus have been "perfect in benefit" (taking the death consequences of all mankind in order to give us His life). His sinless submission made His sacrifice sufficient in order to restore the life of God to man. He was indeed the "Perfect Man," and because He was Man as God intended Man to be, we can be man as God intended man to be by His life functioning in us, deity within humanity, Christ within the Christian.

1    Thomas, W. Ian, The Mystery of Godliness. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Co. 1964. Pgs. 48,49.
2    See explanation of death consequences in previous chapter, "The Fall of Man."