Agency Under our Federal Head

For a number of years I was a property and casualty insurance agent. I sold car insurance and homeowners coverage and liability policies. To do this work I was given what was called "binding authority." If I said your car was covered, it was. It didn't matter if your check cleared or the information was wrong on your application. As an agent of the company, I could act with the authority of the company. What the people who recruited me didn't tell me was that in the agent contract there's a stipulation that if my agency was losing too much money, the company could withdraw my binding authority. I was still an agent, but I couldn't create coverage with my spoken word. I had responsibility without any real power.

This example of agency may help us understand the story of Adam. Atheists and doubters invariably ask, "If God is omniscient (all-knowing), why didn't He create Adam so he couldn't sin?" In other words, why go through the charade of the putting the tree off limits if God knew our first parents would disobey?

Adam was created to an "agent;" that is, one with a special relationship to the Triune God. Genesis 1:28 ff. says, "Let us create man in our image, after our likeness, to have dominion (to share authority) over all living creatures. So God created us male and female." What is the image of God? The most obvious answer is that we were made for relationships. Just as God is a relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ("Let us make ..."), people were made for relationships. No, it's actually deeper than that. We weren't just made for relationships, we are relationships. We originated in a relationship. We develop in relationships. We define happiness and meaning by relationships.

Back to my insurance analogy. The insurance company is a relationship of stakeholders who give authority to their agents. I didn't create the agent relationship even though I was expected to start my own agency in a specific place. So, like the Garden of Eden was planted in a specific place, I was given a territory in which to set up my agency. Now the problem was, this place had a history of excessive insurance losses. None of the other agents in this terriotry were profitable and almost all of them were on probation due to excessive losses. I didn't know that going in. And Adam doesn't know that in this good creation lurks an evil presence.

Let's step back a bit and ask, Why was there a creation anyway? In Revelation 12:7-9 we read:

"War arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world -- he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him."

This might all be a lot of mythology except that Jesus said in Luke 10:18 that he witnessed this event. Time-space were created as a place to confine the rebellion. That is why Jesus referred to Lucifer as the "prince of this world" (John 14:30). Adam was created to be God's agent to destroy Satan and his rebellion. Don't miss this: Adam was given authority over living creatures, including the creeping things. Satan in the form of a serpent was under Adam's authority. Adam could have defeated the evil arrayed against God. Why didn't he?

Nobody forced me to write bad insurance risks in my agency. I was obeying what I knew was my mandate from the company: "Be fruitful and multiply." But fear and greed and a desire to please made me think I could write bad business and not get burned.

God did not cause Adam to sin. As an agent, Adam had moral freedom to obey or take a short-cut. Adam sided with the rebellion and what he did somehow infects everyone in Adam's line. Adam is our federal head. The word "federal" means representative authority. Adam in Hebrew means "earthling." Adam is every man. He isn't some mythic character in the mists of time. Adam is us. We have all lost our binding authority. We have lost our moral compass. We have all inherited the penalty of Adam's disobedience: we will die.

The original agency contract is still in effect. It's called the covenant of works. The natural law God built into the creation that was originally designed for our blessing now leaves us hopeless, confused, in pain, and afraid (see previous lesson). The creature made of relationships (human) is alienated from self, others, and God. Every covenant contains blessings and curses. The works covenant blessing is that we will be fruitful and multiply. We will work and keep the Garden (our part of the world). People are meant to find meaning in their work and overcome sin's alienation in covenant love between man and wife. But the curse was and is, disobey and you will die.

After Adam's failure to defeat Satan, God begins to lay down His law, but Adam (and I) am powerless to keep it. The natural law that was originally designed to reveal God and provide for our well-being now seems such a muddle. That's because natural law was designed to work for people who are agents, and not rebels.

But buried in Genesis 3:15 is the first glimpse of God's plan to overcome the covenant of works and natural law with a promise, a gift, grace. From Adam's seed will come one who will bruise Satan's head, one whom Satan will try to destroy but who will succeed in destroying Satan and death. This is the beginning of God's promises to immoral humanity and the start of special revelation.

The rest of the Bible story is working out of this promise. The search is on for a right-living agent who will keep the law, be declared righteous, and overcome the curse. The nation of Israel emerges as a candidate. Give us the law and we will keep it, they promised. But, like Adam, Israel fails. Israel says, Give us a King. Let the King be our new federal head. He will keep the law. But the Kings of Israel fail. Finally prophets receive the special revelation that God will send an Israelite in the line of King David to be the federal head, the Chosen One, the Messiah, to reclaim righteousness and destroy the power of death and Satan himself.

So we live in Adam's shadow, knowing the condemnation of God's law. But by grace we live under Christ, our federal head, by whose agency we receive the good news of death's defeat and life eternal.