If there is one chapter in Genesis most Christians would claim familiarity with, it’s Genesis chapter 1. In the beginning. Tremendously deep, Genesis 1 is a well that no man has even remotely exhausted. It starts with the creation of the heavens and the earth, then light, the boundaries of light, the waters, the boundaries of the waters, vegetation, animals, and mankind – each bounded not only by the garden itself, but also by the flesh. For in the beginning, male and female were one. Adam.

The story of Adam is long and somewhat unpleasant. Adam had his tests and challenges, excelling at some and failing others miserably. By the time the Apostle John began to write his gospel, he was able to perceive a strategy of God that many miss. He saw that God had re-created everything. He had “created all things new”. He began his gospel within the mold of Genesis 1: In the beginning.

• In the beginning, God created everything.
  • Gen 1:1  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
  • Joh 1:3  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
• Let there be light.
  • Gen 1:3  And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
  • Joh 1:4  In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
• Let there be reflections, or witnesses, of the light.
  • Gen 1:16  And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.
  • Joh 1:7-8  He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.  (8)  He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
• God creates Adam.
  • Gen 1:26  Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
  • Joh 1:14  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
• Adam is commanded to multiply.
  • Gen 1:28  And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
  • Joh 1:12  But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God

Jesus, our last Adam, came to regain for us what Adam lost – our identity as sons and daughters.

1Co 15:22  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.