Chapter 5
The Second Man
A stolen throne calls for a rightful heir.
The serpent hijacked a realm that was never his. But hijacked is not the same as bought. A thief does not alter a title deed; he only hides it. The lawful Owner remained the Owner, even while the usurper sat upon the throne. And somewhere, one day, He would return to reclaim His property — not with a ruse, not with a lie, but with papers that withstand every test.
In this part He lays those papers on the table. For before the King ascends the throne again, He proves His right. And His case is airtight.
First, the oldest deed. His lineage.
He was there before everything
The opening line of John's Gospel draws the arc all the way back, past Genesis, past the first day, into eternity itself: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).
When there was a "beginning," He already was. Not created — creating. Not a cog in the machine, but the Hand that made it. "All things were made through the Word, and without this Word nothing was made that was made" (1:3). Every star you saw last night, every marvel of a single cell, every note of Bach — through Him. He does not stand within creation; He stands above it, as its Source.
That is why Paul calls Him "the Firstborn over all creation" (Colossians 1:15) — and here people stumble. "Firstborn" does not mean "the first creature," as though He Himself were made. It is a title of rank and inheritance. The firstborn was the heir, the bearer of the name, the lord of the house. Verse 16 makes it crystal clear: "for in Him all things were created." You cannot be created and also be the Creator of all things at once. He is the Heir of the estate, not the first piece of furniture in it.
And when His adversaries one day tried to corner Him with His age — "You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?" — He spoke four words that made the stones of the temple court tremble: "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58).
Not "I was." I am. The name from the burning bush, the name too holy to be spoken, the Name of the Eternal One — there, out loud, from the mouth of a carpenter from Nazareth. They understood Him exactly. They picked up stones (8:59). For this was either blasphemy, or God standing on the temple court.
No later claim can stand against this. In every dispute the rule holds: whoever was there first is the rightful owner. And He was there before everything that exists.
And then the Eternal One became a baby
But ownership alone does not win this case.
For the realm that was lost was a realm of mankind. The estate that was forfeited was the human estate. And by God's own law, only a blood relative can buy back what a kinsman squandered. An angel cannot pay for Adam — an angel is not family. No seraph with six wings has the right to redeem mankind.
So the Eternal One did the most unthinkable thing the universe ever saw. He who was "before Abraham" let Himself be carried for nine months beneath the heart of a girl from Nazareth. The Hand that hung the galaxies clenched into the tiny fist of a newborn. The voice that gave the oceans their bounds could not yet speak. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14).
That is why Paul calls Him "the last Adam" (1 Corinthians 15:45). There are only two who bear that name — the first man, and Him. The first Adam was made of dust a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit, who not only lives but gives life. He stepped into our skin, our dust, our hunger, our tears, our mortality — not to make an impression, but to gain the right to speak in the courtroom of man.
Daniel had already seen Him coming, centuries ahead, in a vision of the night: "One like a Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven [...] To Him was given dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away" (Daniel 7:13–14).
No wonder "Son of Man" was Jesus' favorite name for Himself. It sounded humble — and it was the opposite. It was His title in the trial, His right as Man to reclaim mankind, and at the same time His claim to the everlasting kingship Daniel had seen.
Eternal Owner. And full-blooded Man. The first deed is stamped and signed.
But the throne He comes to reclaim was not promised to just anyone. It was promised to one tribe. And to read that deed, it is necessary to go back centuries, to the deathbed of an old man blessing his sons.
In Depth — The eternal origin: three words by which heaven names itself
Three pronouncements carry the whole first deed. Each of the three has provoked contradiction down the ages — and each of the three holds firm when you read it in its own language.
The Word. John opens his Gospel with logos — "word, utterance, reason." It is no stray saying; it is a Person: "the Word was God, and the Word was with God" (John 1:1). And with what does he begin? With "In the beginning." It is, word for word, the first sentence of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, struck once more — only now John places the logos before and above that creation: "all things were made through Him" (1:3). Here lies the front edge of everything. Before there was a world to save, before there was an estate to claim, there was the Designer in whom the plan already lay. And then the turn that gives the Gospel its whole tension: this same creating Word "became flesh" (1:14). The height that could rise no higher descends into the clay it had itself shaped.
The Firstborn. Paul calls Him prōtotokos, "firstborn" (Colossians 1:15). The word carries two charges that a dictionary cannot pull apart: it can mean "born first," in time, or "the foremost, the heir," in rank. And it was precisely on this one word that the Arians, centuries ago, built their whole doctrine: if Christ is "firstborn," they reasoned, then He is Himself the first creature — a made being, not the Maker. But the text itself shuts that door, in the sentence right behind it: "for in Him all things were created" (1:16). The ground of His title is not that He is created, but that He created. And a few lines further Paul calls Him "the Firstborn from the dead" (1:18) — where "firstborn" cannot possibly mean "the first to come into being," for the dead already existed; there it means, crystal clear: the first in rank, the lord over what follows. So it worked in ancient Israel too. The firstborn was not merely the child who happened to lead the way; he was the bearer of the inheritance, the man of the double portion, the head of the house. It is a dignity brothers fought over and that you could forfeit — Esau bartered it away for a bowl of soup, Reuben forfeited it through his sin (Genesis 49:3–4). The title, then, is not about birth order, but about who inherits the estate. And over all creation only One inherits.
"Before Abraham was, I am." That sentence is carefully built. Of Abraham Jesus uses a verb meaning "to come into being, to have become," in the past tense — Abraham came into being at some point in time. Of Himself He uses egō eimi, "I am," in the present tense, a timeless present that does not begin and does not cease. Abraham became; I am. And those two little words are not chosen at random. At the burning bush the Eternal One called Himself "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14); in the ancient Greek translation that sounds out exactly as egō eimi. The same ring echoes through the chapters of Isaiah, where God says again and again: "I am He" (Isaiah 41:4; 43:10). That is the ground on which Jesus' word lands — the Name a devout Jew did not even dare to speak aloud, now calmly uttered by a man of about thirty on the temple court. And the bystanders understood Him flawlessly. They began no debate about age; they picked up stones to kill Him (John 8:59), for blasphemy was punishable by stoning. Their reaction is the proof: they heard no pious understatement, they heard a man laying the Name of God upon Himself. No creature — not even the fallen angel who hijacked this whole realm — can be older than, let alone have any right against, Him who from before all time simply "is."
Standing beside these, finally, is a fourth title, softer in tone and just as high in claim. When Gabriel announced to a girl in Nazareth whom she would carry, he said: "He will be called the Son of the Most High" (Luke 1:32). "Most High" is the ancient name of God — and in one breath the angel ties to it: "and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David" (1:32–33). The divine origin and the earthly kingship, heaven and the throne of Jerusalem, already stand in the same sentence — as though the first deed (who He eternally is) and the deeds to follow (His right to the Land and the Throne) already, here, hold one another's hand.
The three words and the title together, and you have the front edge of the whole case. But do not miss the movement already in it. The eternal Word became flesh. The Firstborn of creation became the Firstborn from the dead. The height bends, willingly, downward — not because it was forced, but because this was the only path by which He could truly take His inheritance into possession. The seniority descends, to be ratified soon, through the resurrection. First the descent, then the crown. The pattern that carries this whole book lies hidden already in the first line.
In Depth — The Son of Adam: why God had to become man
The first deed establishes His deity. This second establishes His humanity — and with it something that is so surprising precisely because of its lowliness: the right to act on behalf of mankind. For think the matter through rigorously, like a lawyer reading the letter of the law. The realm that was lost was a realm of mankind. The estate that was forfeited was the human estate. And by God's own law only a rightful blood relative can buy back what a kinsman squandered. An outsider has no right to speak in that courtroom. Therefore — not as a whim, not as a display, but as a legal condition — the Word had to become flesh.
The last Adam, the second Man. Paul sets two humanities over against each other, and he does it with surgical precision: "The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam a life-giving spirit" (1 Corinthians 15:45). The first Adam received life and then passed death on to everyone who came from him. The last Adam not only receives life, He is "life-giving" — He gives it. And that word "last" is a diagnosis. There comes no third Adam, no fourth attempt, no next round. What is restored in this Man is final. Paul draws the contrast out further: "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second Man is the Lord from heaven" (15:47). And then, at the very end, a promise that closes the circle back to the very beginning: "As we have borne the image of the earthy man, so shall we also bear the image of the heavenly Man" (15:49). There the word "image" returns — the same image after which man was created in Genesis 1, the image on which dominion hung. The first Adam bore it and defiled it; in the second Man we get it back. And the restored image brings the restored dominion with it. That is why "the second Man" is no nickname but a promise about you: the image that broke in Adam is struck anew into you in Christ.
The Son of Man. The image in which Daniel saw Him coming sounds, at first hearing, modest — "one like a Son of Man" (Daniel 7:13). In the Gospels it becomes Jesus' most-used name for Himself, more than any other. And there is exactly where the breathtaking irony lies, for it is no word of weakness; it is a throne scene. What follows immediately says everything: this Son of Man comes "with the clouds of heaven" — and in all the Old Testament that is the vehicle of God alone — and "To Him was given dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away" (7:14). A Man, on the clouds, to whom all peoples submit forever. No wonder Jesus chose this very title. It was His claim in two directions at once: downward, as Man with the right to reclaim mankind, and upward, as the Exalted One to whom the everlasting kingship belongs. And when, on the evening of His trial, He was at last forced under oath to say who He was, He quoted precisely this vision — the Son of Man, coming on the clouds (Matthew 26:64). It was the sentence on which they condemned Him to death. And then one more small word in Daniel: the dominion is given to Him. It is granted, received, not seized. That difference is decisive, for it separates this King by a whole heaven from the usurper who hijacked His throne: the one seizes, the Other receives.
Why this was legally necessary. And now the heart, the hinge on which this whole deed turns. The promise to Adam was dominion — "have dominion over the fish, and over everything that lives" (Genesis 1:26–28) — and that dominion was lost in the fall. Psalm 8 still sings the old calling: "You have crowned him with glory [...] You have put all things under his feet" (Psalm 8:5–6). But the letter to the Hebrews does something you would not expect in a holy book: it frankly admits that it does not match what we see. "But now we do not yet see all things put under him" (Hebrews 2:8). The crown lies in the dust. Man does not rule; he is ruled by fear and death. And then comes the turning point, in one small word: "But we see Jesus, crowned with glory and honor, because of the suffering of death" (2:9). It is in those last words: the crown hangs on the suffering of death. The dominion is handed over not in spite of the cross, but through the cross. And immediately after, the writer lays bare why the incarnation was indispensable: "Since the children share in flesh and blood, He likewise shared in the same" (2:14). There it stands, naked and legal: He became flesh and blood because only flesh and blood can pay for flesh and blood. He had to become our Brother in order to be our Redeemer. No angel could — an angel is not family. No pious hero could — a debtor does not pay off a debt. Only a rightful blood relative, himself without debt, could buy back the forfeited estate. And that is why the Eternal One let Himself be carried beneath the heart of a girl.
See how one line draws taut across thousands of years, from the beginning to the throne: Genesis 1 (man crowned with dominion) → Psalm 8 (all things under his feet) → Hebrews 2 (the crown restored in Jesus, but by way of suffering) → Ephesians 1:22 (all things under His feet, and through Him destined for those who belong to Him). That is the pattern of the whole Kingdom in four verses. The Son of Man who receives the everlasting realm is the same who, in that very same vision of the night, is trampled under the power — and precisely thereby receives the crown. First the Lamb, then the Lion. First the descent into our flesh, then the throne over all peoples. The incarnation is no intermediate step to be quickly read past; it is the legal ground itself. Without the second Man there is no second chance.
Eternal Owner, and full-blooded Man. The highest lineage there is, and the deepest kinship that exists — both at once, in one Person. The first deed is stamped and signed. And the King who bears it has become your Brother to buy you back.