Despising the Man of God
By John Gavazzoni

I hope in this article to impress upon my readers---those most often being of a restoration, kingdom, sonship, Christ in you, deeper life-orientation---that we can be a people having been gifted with significant revelation, and yet have areas in our thinking that are in serious misalignment with the thought of God.    

Recently, in a some correspondence with my dear friend, Jonathan Mitchell, re: his most recent studies in Paul's Epistle to the Colossians, Jonathan mentioned one scholar's comment that Paul was addressing a (problematic) "tendency of thought," a tendency, it would seem, sufficiently entrenched within that believing community to call for apostolic confrontation.

I have become very aware over the course of the last several years, of a tendency of thought that effectively despises, disrespects, misrepresents, and even maligns God's man. Who might that man of God be? He's the man commissioned to "be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, and conquer it." He's the man given dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the beasts of the field, and all creeping things. (While accepting the literal dimension of the above, keep open to the spiritual things they represent).

Our misalignment with God's thought most often manifests when writers and preachers refer to things "Adamic." It is nearly always done so as to leave the reader or listener with a sense of spiritual distaste and even revulsion, re: anything which pertains to Adam (Adamic=that which pertains to Adam). It's amazing to me that folks given to serious Bible study, can miss the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ was "Adamic:" "Son of (the) Man"="The Son of Adam" in the New Testament, particularly in Jesus' own identification of Himself.

I am amazed that so many of those who believe they have a message that the church has an acute need to hear, that they are not impressed that the One who is "the Life-giving Spirit" to us is, as thus, called the "Last Adam," and continues to be "the one mediator between God and men, (as) the MAN Christ Jesus." (emphasis mine). As the mediating Man, Christ Jesus, He is Human, He is.......yes, Adamic. Continuing to place stress upon the reader's possibly slovenly exegesis, our Lord is the Man, who is "of the heaven's heavenly."

To be sure, Paul presents the first man/Second Man/first Adam/Last Adam with contrasting features, but they are BOTH Adamic. Both are found to be WITHIN ONE ANOTHER. A major problem seems to be what we infer from the word, "last," as conventionally translated. Checking both Strong's Concordance, and my massive New Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, I found what I intuited to be true, to be objectively true.

The Greek word translated "Last," as in "the Last Adam," (1 Cor. 15: 45) conveys both finality, contiguity (Webster; the state of being contiguous; closeness of situation or place; a linking together....) Paul is NOT, at all, saying that by the Last Adam, all that is Adamic has been done away with, discarded, rejected as having no place, but that Adam, and all that pertains to him has reached the finality of fulfillment, though that has required his/His death. But as I have so often emphasized, God raised from the dead that very thing/One/one which went into the tomb, raised Him/him in newness of life. As per Paul in Rom. 6, our old man was crucified with Christ, and that same man, stripped of the eonian oldness of death, went on in/with Him to glory.

Now this boils down to the essential relationship between Deity and Humanity. (The capitalizing of "Humanity" is not a typo). The question to be asked is whether humanity was added to Deity in the Person and incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, or did the intrinsic Humanity, which is at the heart of Deity, emerge out from within Him in full flower?

It has been affirmed among truth-seeking believers, that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Hmmm. Might we be able to improve upon that? I think so, but it might require more than the sound-bite summary so relished by our present dumbed-down culture. Might it be more accurate to affirm that Humanity has eternally been within, and essential to, our spiritual being, and that we are having an earthly experience to call forth that eternal Humanity into full manifestation?

A little reminder: Being renewed in the spirit of our minds, being habitually refreshed by the ongoing change of mind (repentance), does involve THINKING. Stubborn areas of what psychologists call arrested development, continue to resist growing up and tackling difficult spiritual questions: "I've never, ever thought about this subject that way. It's troublesome to my mind. I don't like such mind-set disturbance. To meditate on the possibility that this is true, would require such a major restructuring of my thinking, that I'd rather just be left alone, as I am."

OK. I understand that. Been there, done that. But while you're there, doing that, please don't be constantly telling me about YOUR spiritual maturity, because It's maddeningly irritating to MY spiritual immaturity. (giggle, giggle).