First Adam – Last Adam
1 Corinthians 15:44b-49
44bIf there is a natural body, there is
also a spiritual body. 45Thus it is written, “The first man Adam
became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46But
it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47The
first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48As
was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man
of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49Just as we have
borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of
heaven.
I have often wondered what
Paul would write to the modern Church. But those ponderings are brought up
short by the realization that we have everything we need to know in the words
already written. But – I still wonder. In the passage for today we find Paul
continuing to address the wrong-thinking that was happening in the Corinthians
church. Paul may have been addressing a tendency in Jewish or early-Gnostic
philosophy to give priority to “spiritual” and intellectual wisdom and
knowledge that the physical was despised. Thus, he launches into a discussion
of what we find in Genesis about the creation of man (Adam).
Genesis 2:7
“…then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the
ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a
living creature.
This verse has three steps:
1.
God formed –
from dust
2.
God breathed
life
3.
Man became a
living creature
In the Hebrew, that “breathed
life” is where God imparts the spiritual. “Breath” is most often associated
with the Spirit. When Jesus arrives on the scene in His Nativity, He becomes
fully human, with the same kind of body as Adam and us. He already possessed
the Spirit. Since He came to save us from an eternity in hell because of our
sin, He is now the Last Adam. The
power of sin no longer has control over us, because He came and paid the price
for Adam’s (and our) sin. And because the price has been paid, we will not
experience the “second death” as discussed earlier in the chapter.
Clearly, the physical is
not something to be despised, as the early Gnostics taught, for if it were to
be hated, why would God bother to resurrect us in The End? Clearly, God has
chosen to make us both physical and spiritual and both are important. To
believe otherwise flies in the face of these words.
Comments
Post a Comment