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The Purpose of the Anointed One

There has been a great deal written and preached regarding the Will of God.

Regardless of what scholars, theologians, and all the others who have written their version of the meaning of the will of God, the subject—indeed, any discussion on the will of God—must be approached from the one source that provides the correct context: the Word of God.

Not surprisingly, there has even been the wide practice, both within Christianity and outside, of using God's will as a means to punish and control.

The focus here is the revelation of God's will and purpose for giving to us[1] His anointed one.[2] Foreseen nearly three thousand years ago, through the words of the Psalmist, we hear the heart of God's anointed crying out, “Then I said, ’Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.’ I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD. I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation. As for you, O LORD, you will not restrain your mercy from me; your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me!’”[3]

Today, the believer can hear God's ordained servant speaking through the proleptic[4] words of the Psalmist, “In the scroll of the book it is written of me.” In time and space, God’s anointed one would be born of a woman, and his name would be called Jesus. His purpose for coming into the world is clearly stated, “to do the will of (his) my God.”[5]

Jesus, the Christ of God, is the ordained servant who came to do the will of his God.[6] The scriptures reveal he has come and has accomplished all which the Father sent him to do. For it was Jesus’ obedience to the Father that is reflected in the words of the prophet, "...I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."[7]

According to Jesus, the entirety of the scriptures[8] testify on behalf of the anointed one of God. "You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf.”[9] What is called the Old Testament scriptures, from the beginning to the end, bear out Yahweh's promise to send His appointed and anointed servant. In fulfilling this promise, God sent His servant to show the world that a man whose heart was set on the will of God could be found.[10]

There had been others who were appointed, anointed, and sent of God, but none were blessed with the announcement from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."[11] According to what the prophets wrote centuries earlier, even the announcement from heaven was foreordained, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”[12]

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God’s purpose in bringing His anointed one to us is bound in His wisdom and counsel and was established from the beginning with His plan for the two Adams.[13] The objective of redemptive history is centered on the last Adam, the Christ of God, and is the focus of this thesis.
     The two Adams strongly affect redemptive history in the reality that all of mankind is bound to them.[14] In the determination of God, [15] to be revealed at the end of this age,[16] mankind is to be judged[17] based upon which of the two Adams one is found.[18]

As we have already noted, redemptive history began with God’s desire, and with His decree to make man in His image and likeness. In God's wisdom, it would require both of the two Adams for His desire to be realized, and the same two for His decree to be completed. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” [19] God reached down and from the dust of the earth created Adam. What followed was a theft.

The theft took place when the first Adam reached out, in what he believed would make him like God,[20] and stole the knowledge of good and evil. The scriptures record the forensics of the scene in the garden of God.
    Here are the results of Adam’s disobedience to God's command not to eat from the forbidden tree:[21]

In partaking of the forbidden tree, what Adam first discovered was his nakedness. "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked."[22] To understand what God is doing in redemptive history, the nakedness of Adam and the woman[23] are crucial to a proper theology which will lead to the key and the achieved goal.[24] Of primary importance, the forensics of the garden scene reveals that Adam and the woman were naked while they walked with God in the garden, in other words, their nakedness was central within the relationship God had established. In this relationship, they remained naked. And just as important, while in this relationship with God, the man and woman apparently did not realize they were naked.

How it is that, prior to eating from the forbidden tree, Adam did not realize his nakedness? The nakedness of Adam is a question which probes deep, a question which compels us to consider the answer both theologically and anthropologically. And if we look to the evolutionists, the question becomes paramount. When did man begin to clothe himself because he was ashamed of his nakedness? If man clothes himself for warmth and protection, it does not adequately justify the shame of being found naked. In other words, man is the only creature who exhibits the virtue of shame in his nakedness.

Continuing with the forensics, when the knowledge of good and evil dawned[25] upon the transgressors, their reaction was to hide and cover themselves with fig leaves. "I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked: and I hid myself."[26] Adam felt fear for the first time. This was something he had not previously experienced in his relationship with God. After the revelation of their nakedness, and now fearful of God, the man and the woman hid among the trees of the garden.[27] This is what mankind does best, trying to hide from God while busy trying to conceal the shame of nakedness.[28]

By partaking of the forbidden fruit, Adam did lose something, but it was not innocence.[29] This is brought to light with the Apostle Paul’s understanding that Adam was not deceived as the woman was.[30] Adam’s guilt rings loudly in the awareness of God’s command when the serpent spoke, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of every tree in the garden’?"[31] The woman was not present when Adam received God's warning not to eat from the forbidden tree.

Since Adam’s headship[32] had been established by God,[33] the woman was under his protection.[34] But Adam had direct knowledge of what God said concerning the forbidden tree, and with that direct knowledge, even while he questioned God's Word, any innocence he might have had was now in jeopardy. In the act of his outright disobedience[35] to God’s Word, Adam lost[36] the established relationship he enjoyed with God while in His garden. Just as the temptation promised, Adam did gain the knowledge of good and evil when he reached out to grasp what was not his and partook of the forbidden.

Ultimately, what the forbidden fruit revealed in Adam was the existence of both the good and the evil already residing in his heart. In other words, Adam was a sinner waiting[37] to commit the transgression. The hard fact is, the forbidden tree, actual or allegorical, was placed there by God as the means to reveal what was in Adam's heart.

 

The lesson of the garden story is this: Adam was created with a heart bent on disobedience. The propensity for disobedience was inherent in Adam's being, and was manifested when he stood before the forbidden tree and succumbed to the temptation to be like God.[38]

The temptation of Adam, along with the idea God allowed him to be tempted, has troubled many. Worse, is believing God unrighteous and uncaring for allowing what happened to Adam! Even so, it was in the purpose of the Sovereign God to create Adam with such a heart. As God, who is Sovereign over His creation, there could have been no surprise on His part concerning Adam’s disobedience. The God who is omniscient knew the day in which Adam would partake of the forbidden.

Adam did not have a choice to eat, or not to eat from the forbidden tree! The tree was not placed there by God as an exercise of Adam’s free will. Ultimately, there was but one choice Adam would make as a man bound by the desires of a deceitful, impure heart. For Adam, it was just a matter of timing, “In the day you eat of it.”[39] The word of God was set. Adam was going to die regardless, being the mortal man he was![40]

What eating the forbidden fruit ultimately did was establish the reality of the death[41] decreed by God. When Adam partook of the forbidden fruit the warning became the reality, “in dying you shall surely die.”[42]

The day dawned[43] upon Adam, with his newly acquired knowledge of good and evil, that he was surely to die,[44] and in so doing would return to the dust of the earth from which he had come.[45] Because of his disobedience[46] to God’s Word, the judgment upon Adam was sure: In dying he would surely die. Adam was the man without hope. In the purpose of God,^[47] Adam was the man predestined to die.

 In the end, as the result of his disobedience, Adam now found himself separated from God, the Object of Perfect Love.[48] The story of Adam is relevant to each and every one of us. We are all, just as Adam, burdened with a heart that is incurably deceitful.[49] We are all in need of the transformative[50] power of God,[51] the new heart, the pure heart, that a man must have if he is to see God.[52]

Theologically speaking, Adam is the prototype of the man who, when apart from God, dies without hope. Adam is revealed to us in the scriptures as the man who hides his iniquity[53] and, without repentance,[54] dies without the hope of resurrection. Adam is the epitome of the lost man.
    If Adam is understood as the lost man, then Jesus of Nazareth is the anti-type of the man for whom salvation is found.[55] In Paul’s’ theology,[56] the last man, the second man, was sent to restore what was stolen by the first Adam. A thousand years before Mary gave birth to Jesus, God’s appointed and anointed one[57] was foreseen coming into the world, when the Psalmist spoke of him prophetically and in the first person, “though I have stolen nothing, I still must restore it." [58]

In the fullness of time,[59] Jesus came to us as the second man, the last Adam, in whom redemptive history achieved its goal. Hence, everything we know about Jesus of Nazareth[60] points to the fulfillment of God's desire and design to create man in His likeness and image.

The first Adam was just the first step of God’s plan to create man in His image and likeness. The consummation of God’s plan is found in the second Adam. His name is Jesus and he is the head of the new man,[61] who is the image of God.[62] To be saved from the surety of death,[63] the believer in God places his or her hope in Jesus, being found in him,[64] with the promise to awake from the sleep of death,[65] in his likeness.[66] 

 For those people chosen for salvation[67] before the foundation of the world,[68] God’s promise was revealed in His expressed desire for man to bear His image and likeness. To bear the image and likeness of God is to be made immortal, to be made a life-giving spirit, just as Jesus was.[69] Jesus of Nazareth is the first[70] of many to bear the image of God, and was declared the heavenly man upon being raised up from among the dead, freed from the law of sin and death.[71] To this day, the first Adam remains in the dust of the earth, the second Adam sits at the Right Hand of God because of the resurrection power of God.

 

In conclusion, the goal of redemptive history is realized in Christ Jesus, who is the express image and likeness of God.[72] The goal is clearly revealed in the glorified Jesus of Nazareth, who as the Son of man, now sits at the right hand of God.[73] For the believer who trusts God’s Word, is the promise to be conformed to the image of His Son.[74] What this ultimately means is that the promise of God is the basis of the believer’s hope to be conformed to the image of Jesus, who is the fulfillment of God's desire and decree to make man in His image and likeness.

As the Apostle Paul states, “to be found in him”[75] is the goal for the believer who has faith in the promises of God. Ultimately this means that for the trusting believer who currently bears “the image of the earthy [the first man] ...we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” [the last man].[76]

What Jesus accomplished by submitting to the Father's will,[77] was to return what he did not steal and grasp[78] for himself. All that the Father determined to give[79] Jesus was predicated upon his obedience to Him.[80] By entering into a covenant of death,[81] Jesus became the sacrifice which satisfied God’s justice upon sin[82] and disobedience.[83] What Jesus brought to the people of God, in their relationship to God, was life and righteousness and justification. The Apostle Paul concurs, “So by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.”[84]

What the last Adam willingly took upon himself, as Yahweh’s obedient servant,[85] can best be understood through the words of the prophet, “It was the LORD who laid upon him the iniquity of us all.” And why did the LORD do this? “For the transgressions of my People he (Jesus) was stricken.” “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him. He has put him to grief, when You made his soul an offering for sin.” “Having suffered, he will reflect on his work, he will be satisfied when he understands what he has done.” “My servant will acquit many, for he carried their sins.”[86]

Yahweh's appointed and anointed one was His offering[87] to His people for their justification. In the mind of God, all was as good as accomplished before the event took place. In the minds of many who have considered the event of Jesus’ death, it was an evil thing that he died at the hands of sinful men—evil and even preventable.

 

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