I sense an urgency to pen this truth again. Why? Because Satan is the wisest and most beautiful creature that God created, and he is in the mind blinding business. “But even if our gospel is veiled [hidden] it is veiled [hidden] to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them” (2 Cor. 4:3-4).
Satan, the master of illusion, blinded the minds of scribes who copied and translated one Hebrew word incorrectly – not once, but several times. The confusion goes back to the very beginning when the Lord Jesus Christ – the Potter – seized a large clump of clay and fashioned it into the first human – Adam. The Lord Jesus made Adam different from animals. Different how? He gave Adam, like the second person of the Trinity, a torso that stood upright – a body, a head, two arms, two hands, two legs, and two feet. Here was God’s prototype for all human beings.
And Adam’s body was different in another way, an invisible way. The Creator knelt down, and He breathed life into Adam nashemath chayyim (two breaths, two lives), not nephesh chay (breath of life). The English reads “And the LORD God formed [shaped] man of the dust of the ground [like a potter] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2: 7). It is in this “breath of life” phrase that Satan’s deception appears. With the man, it does not read “the breath of life” in the Hebrew text as it does when speaking of the animals.
True, when God created the animals, he gave them a single breath. This means when that single breath leaves their bodies, animals die once and then return to dust. But when the Lord Jesus knelt down over Adam, the original Hebrew says that He breathed into Adam nashemath chayyim, not nephesh chay. One does not have to be a Hebrew scholar to see that these four words do not look the same. And they are not! This truth is a game changer. To make a Hebrew masculine noun plural, you do not add an “s” or an “es” or an “ies.” To make a masculine noun plural in Hebrew, you add an “im.” There is one cherub, two cherubim; one seraph, two seraphim; one kelev (dog), two klavim (dogs); one tik (bag), two tikim (bags) – you get the idea.
Jamieson R. Fausset, in his Critical Commentary, an Explanatory on the Whole Bible, meticulously translated Genesis 2:7 word for word, and he made the truth of nashemath chayyim crystal clear. He copied every single Hebrew word from the original text. It all made sense until it came to the phrase “the breath of life.” Fausset emphasized the difference. God made Adam different from the animals by breathing into him neshemath chayyim (plural), giving Adam two breaths, two lives. One life in Adam was physical, the other spiritual. So being taken from the dirt, fashioned into a person, and having two lives (two breaths) – God made Adam the federal head of the entire human race to be responsible solely to God. And as a result, God gave Adam the honor of naming all the animals (Gen. 2:19-20). He became our great-great (several greats back) grandfather. This is very critical to understand.
The physical breath connected Adam with the earth and made him earthy, and the spiritual breath connected him to God. It made a personal relationship with God possible. It was this link in the chain that was broken when Adam sinned. God made man a trichotomy: body, soul, and a human spirit. Paul said to the church at Thessalonica, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely [set you apart to Himself] and may your whole spirit, soul, and body, be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord” (1 Thess. 5:23).
This trichotomy is graphically revealed by the fact that before they sinned, the couple were naked but not ashamed (Gen. 2:25). They evidently had personal fellowship with God in the garden. When Satan deceived Eve and she sinned, nothing happened. But when she gave the fruit to Adam and he ate, instantly they both knew they were naked and they stitched together fig leaves to cover the shame they now felt. They were instantly separated from God. They had died spiritually.
Adam and Eve heard the Lord Jesus walking in the garden, and they were afraid. One does not hear a spirit walking or crunching leaves. Adam hid himself from God the Son (Gen. 3:8). The reason is that Adam had died. In fact, he had experienced two deaths. He began to die physically the instant he died spiritually. Adam physically lived 930 more years before he died physically (Gen. 5:5).
So Adam was not alone when he sinned and died. He was created a whole man, with human seed already in His body – sufficient seed to become the father of all of humanity. His seed became corrupt seed, death seed. Everyone born from this corrupt seed is born a sinner long before their first act of sin is committed. Beginning with Cain, Adam fathered an entire civilization of spiritually dead sinners. This is why Jesus Christ had to be born of a virgin. He had no human father, thus He broke this death chain and as a perfect Man could die for our sin. God made Him who knew no sin to become sin for us on the cross of Calvary (2 Cor. 5:21). This clearly explains why we must be born again, or we will not see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). This is also why Paul wrote, “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2:1).
While contrasting the superiority of Melchizedek’s priesthood (our Lord’s priesthood) to Aaron’s priesthood, the author of Hebrews argued that Levi, the head of the priestly tribe who collects the tithe of a tenth, paid a tenth through Abraham when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek. How is this possible? Levi was not yet born nor had his Levitical priesthood been established. Levi was there, nonetheless. He was in the body of Abraham genetically (Heb. 7:9-10).
Likewise, the entire human race was in the body of Adam seminally, and all sinned in him. As the representative head, Adam – through his corrupt seed – became the progenitor of the entire fallen human race. If we had a human father – and we obviously did – we were born slaves of sin and we need a Savior. We are not born free, as free as the wind blows, as the old song says. We are born connected to Adam, and our salvation must therefore, begin with God. Slaves have no freedom.
Oh, by the way, God replaced Adam’s fig leaf wardrobe with clothes that He made. The Lord God made tunics of animal skins and clothed them. This foreshadowed the fact that man’s sin was to be paid for with a blood sacrifice. God became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. As a man, He went to the cross and paid the price for our sin. And not for our sins only, speaking of Paul and his disciples, but for the sins the whole world. And why not! The world is where sinners live. The world is where God’s sheep live. The world is where salvation occurs. Peter’s words shout to us. “Having been born again not with corruptible seed, but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23).
