Which “Adam” do you follow?
by Brian Knowles
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he Bible speaks of two “Adams” – the original who inhabited the Garden of Eden -- and “the last Adam” who is Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 15:45). The first Adam prefigured the second (Romans 5:14). The first Adam was “of the earth, earthy” and the second was “the Lord from heaven” (I Corinthians 15:47).
We, like the first Adam, are flesh & blood. We are his descendants in every way, both genetically and in our behavior. Like the Edenic Adam, we too have sinned. We have “born the image” of the earthy Adam. Without the intervention of the second Adam, we are doomed to pay the full penalty for our sins, which is death (Romans 6:23).
The original Adam set the precedent for all mankind. By sinning, he introduced death to the human race. The apostle Paul wrote, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). We are not dead in Adam’s sin; we are dead in our own. Like our ancestor, we too have sinned, incurring the penalty of death.
From the time of Adam to the time of Christ, mankind continued to repeat the deadly pattern established by Adam and Eve, the latter of whom was the “mother of all living” (Genesis 3:20). The second generation after Adam began with Cain, and his brother Abel. Abel was a sheep rancher and Cain was a farmer. On one occasion, the two of them made an offering to God. On one occasion, God was pleased with Abel’s offering, but not with Cain’s. Cain was displeased with God’s displeasure. God took note, and then he took Cain aside and explained something to him:
“Why are you so distressed?” asked God, “And why is your face fallen? Surely if you do right, there is uplift. But if you do not do right, sin couches at the door; its urge is toward you, yet you can be its master” (Genesis 4:6-7, JT).
Cain the farmer had hung his head in disappointment and God had tried to encourage him – to get him to lift his head in hope. God’s words were not words of rebuke, but of comfort and fatherly counsel. The next phrase, a warning, contains a mysterious Hebrew word: “And sin shall be a robhes at your door.” This turns out to be one of the most difficult and obscure passages in Scripture. Some commentators have abandoned all hope of understanding it, and so have left it untranslated. The late Umberto Cazzuto was not daunted by the obscurity of the word robhes. He studied similar words in related languages like Akkadian (a Semitic language of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, written with a cuneiform script). In Akkadian, the word rabisu, which is a participle of the stem rbs – just as is the word robhes in our passage – means a kind, or specific class of, demon.
Interestingly, the word had other meanings in Akkadian, one of which refers to a hated class of government official. As Cazzuto explains, “Possibly it is this connotation that is specifically intended here, since it is stated afterwards, its desire is for you, that is, it [sin] wishes to master you and have dominion over you like the state officials who seek to impose their authority over the people” (Umberto Cazzuto, Commentary on Genesis (Vol. I), p. 211.
The thought then is that sin, personified as a demon, lies in wait, looking for an opportunity to exercise dominion over its victims just as did the hated government officials of Babylon or Assyria. The personalities of the demon and of the official seem to fuse in this imagery, perhaps indicating a relationship.
In Judaism, it has long been taught that man is torn between two impulses or inclinations: the yetzer ha tob (the good impulse) and the yetzer hara (the evil impulse). Notice this statement by A. Cohen: “ ‘Satan’ is the personification of wickedness. A significant remark is: ‘Satan, the Jetzer Hara and the Angel of Death are all one’ (B.B. 16a)” (Everyman’s Talmud, p. 54).
Every person has within himself an urge, or impulse, to do evil. At the same time, we all have an opposing desire to what is right. Which impulse we yield to is always a matter of choice. We are free moral agents. Yet when an outside influence comes upon us in a moment of weakness, we may find ourselves inclined to make the wrong choice. Adam and Eve both yielded to their dark side under the seductive influence of the serpent. God had given them dominion over his earthly creation, but they lost that dominion by yielding to the yetzer hara. As above, Adam and Eve set the precedent for the rest of us. At various points in our lives, we, like they, have yielded to our dark side. We have succumbed to the temptations of the Enemy, and have as a result incurred the penalty of death. That is what it means to be “dead in sin.”
We would do well then to take a lesson from God’s fatherly words to Cain. As with Adam and Eve, and with Cain, sin is like a crouching demon that lies in wait for us, seeking dominion over our lives. As God said, “Its urge is toward you, yet you can be its master” (Genesis 4:7b, JT).
God’s words to Cain remind us of Jesus’ words to Peter: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat” (Luke 22:31). Was it not this same Peter who later said, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may desire. Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world”? (I Peter 5:8-9).
Satan lies in wait. He afflicts. He “crouches at the door.” As we go out into the world, he stalks his prey with relentless determination, like a hungry lion. No one is exempt. Our “brethren in the world” are subject all day long to forces of which they are completely ignorant. Every human being, from Adam to the present, is faced with the crouching demon of temptation and sin. All have been unwittingly victimized by it. All have eventually sinned (Romans 3:23). We have all become prey for the ultimate predator.
Whenever we take the bait and sin, we lose some dominion and Satan gains it. Our ancestor Adam and his wife Eve were given dominion over all of God’s earthly creation (Genesis 1:28). God even allowed Adam to classify and name all of the animals in that creation (Genesis 2:19). God accepted those names as “official” (same verse, last phrase).
When Adam disobeyed the God who had given him that dominion, and obeyed the unclean spirit known as “the devil” (the “slanderer”), he lost his right to rule. The apostle Paul understood this principle, and he explained it to the Romans: “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness” (Romans 6:16).
When Adam and Eve ceased to obey God, they ceased being his servants. When they obeyed Satan, they became his servants and he acquired the dominion God had originally granted to them. Perhaps that is why Jesus did not challenge Satan’s right to offer him all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worship (Matthew 4:8-10). Jesus did not yield to Satan; therefore he did not become his servant. He remained the faithful servant of God.
Return now to the story of Cain and Abel.
Cain did not heed God’s loving advice. Instead, he yielded to that against which God had warned him – to the crouching demon of sin that waited opportunistically on his doorstep. “…and when they were in the field, Cain set upon his brother and killed him” (Genesis 4:8 JT).
Cain, in committing the first human murder, became the son of his father the devil, whom Jesus said was “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44). In killing his brother, he became the prototype of all murderers, for all men are brethren. To murder is to become the servant of the one who committed the first murder, and who tempts man to murder – Ha Satan. To murder robs us of our own right to eternal life (I John 3:15).
Satan was guilty of murder by seducing Adam and Eve into sin, the reward for which is death. From this we should take the lesson that those who lead, or seduce, others into sin are, in effect, murderers.
But the “crouching demon” of sin lies in everyone’s path. It is ever present. Cazzuto says, “The verse simply says door (entrance), and the commentator is not called upon to determine what the Scripture leaves undetermined. It means, apparently, your door in a general sense, that is, the place through which you are wont to go in and out constantly; in other words, it will always be found in your path” (Cazzuto, p. 211).
Just as Cain rejected God’s advice, thus ceasing to be God’s servant, and yielded to the crouching demon of sin that stalked his comings and goings, so all mankind has from time immemorial faced the same choice. We have either become servants of God, or servants of sin, and thus the devil. We have either followed the example of the first Adam, who disobeyed God and fell out of his grace; or we have chosen to follow the example of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, who resisted the devil (Matthew 4:1-11) and yielded to God.
The apostle John addressed the issue of whose children we are on the basis of our behavior: “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous” (I John 3:10-12 NIV).
John’s formula is simple: do what’s right and you’re a child of God. Do what’s wrong and you are a son or daughter of Satan. It all comes down to choices and behavior. It’s a matter of following the example of Adam or that of Jesus. We either succumb to the influence of the “crouching demon,” or we resist and master it like Jesus did.
It was Jesus’ half-brother, James, who admonished, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands ye sinners; and purify your hearts ye doubled minded” (James 3:7-8).
In telling Cain that sin lay at the entrance of his comings and goings, and that he needed to master it, he was in effect telling him that life is a journey that involves constant spiritual warfare. The apostle Paul understood that all of us have in the past followed the example of the first Adam, and of Eve (though Adam was responsible). He wrote to the Ephesians: “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. Among whom we all had our conversation [conduct] in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others” (Ephesians 2:1-3).
The original Adam set the course for the world. The result was and is always death. The ruler who stands behind the kingdoms of this world is Satan. It is his spirit – and his spirits – that operates among those who have chosen to become his servants through disobedience to God. Disobedience to God opens the door to Satan and to the full expression of the evil impulse.
Paul understood that our real enemies are not our brethren in the world, but wicked spiritual forces that seek to seduce, convict and destroy us. He wrote, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).
These wicked spirits are arranged hierarchically. Their structure is reflected in that of human tyrannies. The unclean spirits, led by Satan, that are behind the world influence the course of the world. It is human disobedience to God that empowers them. If the whole of the human race had followed the example of the second Adam rather than the first, this dark spiritual hierarchy would be powerless over man. It would be utterly impotent, as it is in opposing Christ himself. Prior to Jesus’ crucifixion, he said, “…the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me…” (John 14:30 NIV). Jesus had, in the temptation, defeated Satan, providing him with no foothold in his life. If we would follow the second Adam instead of the first, the same would be true of us. Note the words of James in this regard: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you” (James 4:7,8a NIV).
If we first submit to God, then we will have the wherewithal to resist the devil. Satan has no hold on those who yield to God and thereby become his servants. When we are living fully within the will of God, there is nothing with which the devil can tempt us, nothing of which he can accuse us, and he has no power to take our lives. When we step out of the will of God, and become like the first Adam, we give Satan a foothold in our lives. To the degree that we live Satan’s way, and resist God’s, we become the servants of the devil. We become pliable instruments in his hands, to do his will in the world.
If we resist Satan by submitting to the will of God, then we become like Jesus, the second Adam, over whom Satan gained no power. Whose example will we imitate – that of Adam I, or that of Adam II? We are Adams, Eves and Cains; or we are like Jesus: servants of the Lord. The choice is entirely our own.