God Soothes Our Greatest Fear With A Greater Adam - Made to Tremble: Finding Awe in Your Anxiety

“Although he was crucified in weakness, he now lives by the power of God. We, too, are weak, just as Christ was, but when we deal with you we will be alive with him and will have God’s power.” (2 Corinthians 13:4, NLT)

“And he is able to deal gently with ignorant and wayward people because he himself is subject to the same weaknesses.” (Hebrews 5:2, NLT)

A stronger covering (the righteousness of Christ) and a better tree (the cross at Calvary) are our only hope—but they cannot be grasped or even possible if there’s no Messiah to begin with. If Jesus was never born, we’d still be waiting for some sort of solution to the human condition of sin, and all the anxious aftermath that comes with it.

Author Toni Morrison said, “Can’t nothing heal without pain, you know.”^a Yes, we know, Toni. Jesus teaches us this when He stepped into our world to bear the pains of being a human in a sin-filled world to bring healing to His creation. Jesus doesn’t just look down from His throne in heaven to find us in our weak state. Jesus joins us in our condition of human weakness.^b His presence exposes the real wounds in our world, and His life addresses them so that through His sacrificial death, He might solve the problem of sin, bringing healing to the pain animal sacrifices could never fully cure.

Humanity’s first representative, Adam, failed. What humanity needed was a new and greater Adam than the first. And that’s exactly who Jesus is. Where Adam failed, Jesus conquered. Where Adam brought chaos, Jesus brings peace. Jesus, our Prince of Peace, is the final and victorious Adam. This is why Romans 5:15-17 says,

“But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by the one man’s trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift which comes through the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed to the many. And the gift is not like the one man’s sin, because from one sin came the judgment, resulting in condemnation, but from many trespasses came the gift, resulting in justification. If by the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”

Consider those words: “The gift is not like the trespass.” We all are familiar with the results of trespassing because it’s why we are suffering now. But the gift is different.

The free gift of God has come to us not based on our merit or our ability to maintain a state of serenity. God came to us through Jesus to rescue us right where we were amid our chaos.

The Fall’s effect is all around us and in us. The gift, then, is so much greater because not only does it provide grace, which delivers us from the penalty of sin, but it also restrains us from the power of sin and will eventually save us from the presence of sin. When we are awestruck by what God has done through Jesus to deal with fear, it makes all the difference in how we are made to tremble.