Gospel

---

   Typically when someone loses something, that one may retrace his or her steps to see if they might be able to recover what was lost by locating it in exactly the spot where it was dropped or left behind somehow.  It occurred to me how that is a good way to understand how God in the person of Jesus Christ “went back to the scene” of temptation retracing Adam and Eve’s steps when and where they lost fellowship and favor with God their Creator.  Jesus went back to the scene so to speak and successfully resisted the temptation to which Adam and Eve yielded and made the right choices in obedience to His Father.  He continued to do this throughout his sinless life culminating in his gut-wrenching resistance in the garden of Gethsemene (the olive press).  The temptations of our spiritual adversary seem to come in cycles covering multiple areas of our weaknesses,  or even strengths in which we become overconfident.   After the wilderness temptations Satan only departed from Jesus for a season,  we were informed in the Gospel of Luke.  
For this reason Jesus is called the Second and Last Adam. 
   He began to do this retracing of steps at the outset of his ministry when he met Satan in the wilderness.  As has been aptly pointed out, he was able to do in a desolate environment and all alone (except for His Father and the Holy Spirit of course) what the first Adam was unable to do in the environment of Paradise and with the fellowship of Eve who had been created as his helpmeet.  The forbidden fruit  was pleasant to the eye, good for food, and desired to make one wise. (the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life from John's first epistle, chapter 2 verses 15-17)  Each of these three elements corresponds to one of Satan’s failed and foiled approaches to undermine Jesus in the wilderness.  The temptation approaches failed because Jesus was clinging to the Word of God which he wielded like a sword and quoted in each attack from the enemy.   He was not to be talked out of the truth of the Word as Eve had been.  He was not to allow the injection into his mind of any toxic doubt about the goodness of his Father’s intentions toward him.  He was not to be talked out of the absolute necessity of the blood sacrifice which was the cross he must endure for the joy that was set before him. 
   And because of all this Jesus was able to secure for us even more than what had been lost or forfeited.  He restored those who receive it back not only to fellowship and favor with our Creator but to a Creator who also now has become our Redeemer.  He restored us back not only to the fellowship of God beside us and before us, but also now to the fellowship of God within us and upon us in the Person of the Holy Spirit.  We’ve gained so much more in the Last Adam that what was lost in the First Adam!  It’s as if the serpent has had to pay exorbitant interest for what he’s stolen and withheld from humankind.  It can’t be said in the full sense of the word that Eden was perfect, as long as he the serpent was present there.  But what God set in motion in sending His second Adam to the earth and then to the cross will climax in a such a state of affairs and in such an environment and condition that it will take the word perfection to another level,  where it will have to be redefined to something and Someone more glorious than we have ever known!

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE AS A MEMBER OR VISITOR