Why is Jesus called “the New or Second Adam”?

The apostle Paul speaks to us about the person of the Lord Christ as the new Adam, who takes the place of the first Adam and offers humanity that which our first father failed to offer, and remedies the corruption that we inherited from him (1 Cor. 15:21–22; 44–49). “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come)” (Rom. 5:12–14).

The first Adam, as the ancestor of humanity according to the flesh, bequeathed sin to us; and through sin, death. As for the Lord Christ, the ancestor of humanity according to the Spirit, through His divine grace through the cross, resurrection, and ascension, He bequeathed to us reconciliation with the Father , granted us His divine righteousness, and brought us into eternal life. We need not wonder when the apostle Paul on many occasions asserts the reality of the humanity of Christ. He became indeed the second Adam who submitted completely to the Father in perfect obedience, even unto the death of the cross (Phil. 2:8). Through this obedience, we renounced our lineage from the first Adam — through whose disobedience the corruption of sin entered our world — and received our lineage from the new Adam — through whose obedience we enjoy salvation. If our Christ had not taken a true body and a human soul, He could not have obeyed unto death, nor would His works have been true, nor would our salvation have been completed through Him.

St. Ambrose says, “In Adam I fell, in Adam I was cast out of Paradise, in Adam I died; how shall the Lord call me back, except He find me in Adam; guilty as I was in him, so now justified in Christ.”⁷³⁴ St. Irenaeus says, “having predestined that the first man should be of an animal nature, with this view, that he might be saved by the spiritual One.”⁷³⁵ St. Augustine says, “all men, for all of whom Christ died, died in the sin of the first man; and … all whosoever are baptized into Christ die to sin.”⁷³⁶ St. Jerome says, “in the transgression of Adam, we have all, through sin, been cast out of Paradise (Gen. 3:23–24). The apostle teaches that, even in us who were to come later, Adam had fallen. In Christ, therefore, in the heavenly Adam, we believe that we who, through the sin of the first Adam, have fallen from Paradise, now through the justice of the second Adam, are to return to Paradise.”⁷³⁷

733 St. Augustine of Hippo, Letters 32.56.

734 St. Ambrose of Milan, On the Decease of His Brother Satyrus 2.6 (NPNF II/10:175).

735 St. Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies 3.22.3 (ANF 1:455).

736 St. Augustine of Hippo, Against Julian 7.7(21) (FOTC 35:331).

737 St. Jerome, The Homilies of Saint Jerome, Volume 2 (60–96) On the Psalms 66 (FOTC 57:68).

St. Cyril of Alexandria says, “He has the name of the last Adam , since he was made out of Adam according to the flesh and has become a second beginning of those on earth, the nature of man being transformed in Him unto newness of life, life in holiness and incorruption through the resurrection from the dead: for thus was death brought to naught, in that the Life by Nature does not endure to submit its own body to decay, because it was not possible that Christ should be held by death, according to the voice of the most wise Peter [Acts 2:24], and thus the good from this achievement passed through unto us too.”⁷³⁸

The new Adam grants us the new life: St. John Chrysostom observes that the Lord Christ — being Life itself and the source of life — must necessarily be eternal; otherwise how could He be the one who bestows life if He himself ceases to exist at some point? He says, “He is “Life” … Life both is always, and is without beginning and without end, if It be indeed Life, as indeed It is. For if there be [a time] when It is not, how can It be the life of others, when It even Itself is not?”⁷³⁹

St. Augustine says, “We become truly free when God manages our lives. Hence, He forms and creates us not just as human beings — for that work He has done already — but rather, He makes us good people through His grace — the work which He is performing now — that we might become new creatures in Christ Jesus. Therefore, we offer the prayer, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God’ (Ps. 51:10).”