To see the explanation for this Advent series, please click here.
Opening Verse
If in your heart you make a manger for his birth
Then God will once again become a child on earth.
Opening Prayer
O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Something to Ponder
We have seen how Advent is a two-fold Season, looking back to the First Advent and forward to the Second Advent.
Advent is also the two-fold Season of the First Adam and the Second Adam.
The key passage is Paul's Letter to the Church in Rome, chapter 5, verses 12, 14-19, and the key verse is verse 14:
Verse 12: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned. . .
Verse 14: "Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.
Verse 15: "But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.
Verse 16: "And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.
Verse 17: "If, because of the one man's trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Verse 18: "Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.
Verse 19: "For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous."
This verse— Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come— launched a Christian approach to the Scriptures known as typology, in which Old Testament figures or events or see as types which anticipate New Testament figures or events.
The First Adam is the type— the anticipation— of the Second Adam, "the one who was to come," Jesus Christ.
Homework:
Take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, and write (or type) "First Adam" at the top of the left hand column and "Second Adam" at the top of the right hand column.
Then, beginning with Verse 12 and ending with Verse 19, write down the phrases that describe the First Adam and the phrases that describe the Second Adam.
Closing Prayer
O God, make the door of my heart wide enough to receive all who need human love and fellowship, and a heavenly Father's care; and narrow enough to shut out all envy, pride, and hate. Make its threshold smooth enough to be no stumbling block to children, nor to straying feet, but rugged enough to turn back the tempter's power. Make it a gateway to your eternal kingdom. Amen.
Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1637-1711
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