Dr. John Hartmann

In this study we look at Adam, Abraham, and Jesus, and their respective roles in redemptive history. God appointed Adam, the first man, to the Federal Head of the whole human race. His sin plunged us into a plight of sin and death, subjected to fallen angelic powers who stand in opposition to God. God’s plan for the redemption of a people who would fulfill Adam’s original immediately begins to emerge, even before Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden. This plan, foreknown to God before the foundation of the world, would involve the redemption not only of God’s image-bearers, the species Man, but of the whole creation over which Man was appointed to rule.

Abraham too is an important figure in salvation-history. He is the one with whom God makes a covenant that ultimately involves redeeming the whole creation from the effects of the first Adam’s sin. Though his role in this regard is very important, Abraham was not appointed to be the new Federal Head of the human race. But he does become the father of the people God will redeem from the sin of Adam in every nation, a people defined by the faith Abraham displayed when he believed in the God Who raises the dead and calls into being what does not exist. Abraham is important then in two regards: 1) he is the bearer of a covenant that will in its fulfillment redeem the world from Adam’s sin; 2) his faith is the prototype of the faith of the people God redeems from all nations that inherits what the first Adam lost through transgression.

The covenant of redemption established with Abraham comes to fulfillment in Jesus, Whom God appoints to be a Second/New Adam, the Federal Head of a new creation. Jesus entered into stage one of this role in the Incarnation, and has now reached the 2nd stage through crucifixion, resurrection, and exaltation to the right hand of God, where He is seated as Gods’ New Man, the New Federal Head of the new humanity that He redeems, far above all the powers of darkness that usurped the authority given originally to Adam. The 3rd stage comes when He returns to rule the nations with a rod of iron as God’s New Adam during the Millenial-Messianic kingdom that appears in Revelation 20:1-10 (cf. Acts 3:21), after which He then delivers the kingdom up to God the Father (1 Cor 15:20-28), so that God may be all in all in the 4th stage, when there at last is a New Heaven and New Earth (Revelation 21-22; cf 2 Peter 3:13).

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