Advent Devotional - December 14, 2016

“Adam’s likeness now efface / Shine Thine image in its place / Second Adam from above, / Reinstate us in Thy love / Hark! The herald angels sing, / “Glory to the newborn King!”

-Hark the Herald Angels Sing

Throughout C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, human beings (as opposed to the other creatures in the world of Narnia) are referred to as “sons of Adam” and “daughters of Eve.” Such language is intended to draw our minds to our first ancestors, and to the Biblical account where we learn of them. But any long look at Adam and Eve inevitably brings despair, for it is through Adam and Eve that the curse of sin enters the world, and the pain of death is introduced. The apex of God’s glorious creation, formed out of dust like a potter forms a vessel out of clay, is now destined to die as a result of sin. God tells Adam that he and all of his offspring would suffer the same fate: “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

As we bear the likeness of Adam, we know that we too share the destiny of Adam. We sin like Adam, and we will die like Adam. We ourselves are dust, and to dust we shall return. But, as this song reminds us, the Son of God came to “efface” Adam’s likeness. Efface is not a word that we use too often, but it simply means to erase or blot out. This is not to say that Christ will make us un-human, but instead, that he will make us fully human. The likeness of Adam that will be removed from us will be the likeness of sin and death. And in place of Adam’s likeness, Christ will shine his perfect image – the image in which we were originally created. First Corinthians 15:47-48 tells us that as the first Adam came as a man of dust, the second Adam – the true and better Adam – comes from heaven, and his name is Jesus.

Apart from Christ, our destiny is dust. But in union with Christ, our lowly bodies will be transformed to be like his glorious body (Philippians 3:21). Our perishable, dust-destined bodies will put on the imperishable; our mortal bodies will put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53). And all of this is possible, because Jesus Christ, the God-Man emptied himself, being born in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:7). Christ put on flesh, so that we could put on Christ, and so be reinstated in the love of God. Christ came that we could exchange our dust for the divine.

“Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we [who are in Christ] shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:49).