1Cor 15:45-49 - Two Men, Two Destinies

45-49 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As 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. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.


Now here is the kicker once more ... It is all in Christ that this resurrection takes place, that our death becomes life, that our sin ravaged and corrupted bodies become glorified and eternal. Apart from union with Him through faith there is no glorification - there is no spiritual body capable of dwelling in the consuming light of God, which fills heaven, and from the glory of which angels cover their faces with their wings.

Here we find both the similarities and the differences between Adam and Christ. Both are referred to as "Adam;" they are both federal representatives and members of the human race. Both were born and both died. Both had bodies that were mortal. Adam’s was mortal by decree of God, as God to creature - he was a fully dependent being. Christ’s body was mortal as voluntarily offered up through meekness (power under control) - also by decree, but by a decree that was entirely of Himself, without dependency and in completely sovereign control. {Joh 10:17-18} Put another way, Adam died against his will and Christ willed to die.

Note how this fits into Paul’s argument about necessity and order. There is progression in this contrast between the two Adams. The first Adam became a living being because God created his body and breathed life into Him. The second Adam became something more - He became a life-giving spirit. This deserves to be unpacked at length.

First, what does it mean by "became." Any concept of this other than the right one is fraught with danger. Cults love to misinterpret such language. They conceive of Jesus as merely a man who, due to His efforts as a man, was promoted by God to an office and a position He did not always have. This is not the sense of "became" here. Christ became a life-giving spirit to the objects of His grace. He always was a life-giving spirit as the Eternal Son {Joh 1:3-4} The problem was that man as a race was, in Adam, under the curse of God; he was under the curse of death; he had died spiritually in that there was no fellowship with God in his own spirit, and he was born dying. As the saying goes - nobody was going to get out of this life alive.

So Christ became, to the objects of His redemptive sacrifice, a life giving spirit, because life in Him was once more imparted to His creatures. They are re-born in Him. They are re-created in Him. Life is still in Him and it is still the light of men - and it is a light which is given and which forever sustains all those in whom He is, and are in Him.

Federal representation and the principle of imputation are axiomatic to this process. If we want redemptive, imputed life by dint of our union with Christ, we must accept our corruption by dint of our union with Adam. We cannot have imputed righteousness if we first reject the imputation of Adam’s sin to us. We cannot be raised unless we are fallen. We cannot be made alive unless we are first dead. We have no need of a physician if we are not sick.

Man’s problem is not first and foremost that he sins. Man’s problem is that he is a sinner by nature - a nature inherited from the father of the entire race. The solution to this problem is not to apply the band-aid of topical treatment for individual sins. The solution is to change the very nature of man through the re-creative process without erasing the personality. The solution is also to once forever put away all the sins committed by the redeemed and to assuage the righteous wrath of God for them. The answer to both these things is found in Christ - through union with Him - through adoption into the family of God.

Going back to the line of Paul’s thought with this right conception of Christ’s "becoming" we can now pick up the orderly flow in history of the revelation of God’s purposes in redemption. There is an order (remember, "order" is also one of the most important themes of this epistle) by which God’s purposes are revealed in history - and it involves the mortal becoming immortal, the fallen being made righteous, the corrupt being made holy. These salvific and redemptive themes are not adaptive - they do not emerge from a God who, on the fly as it were, comes up with answers to problems that He could not foresee. They are by deliberate design.

God purposed (but did not cause) the fall so that man might be saved to the glory of God in Jesus Christ. He purposed it so that a people could be redeemed who would forever understand, accept and appreciate the wonders of His grace towards them in Jesus Christ. Christ did not come as a plan "B" for the human race because the original idea had gone wrong. Christ is the original idea. He was all along. He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. {Eph 1:4 1Pe 1:20 Re 13:8}

This plan, however in no way makes God the author of sin and evil. God makes use of the pre-ordained sin and evil in the universe in order to accomplish His plan and still holds his creatures accountable for the wickedness that they do. {Ac 2:22-23}

Now take a look at the two Adams. The first was mortal and mutable; he died and passed death on to all men because they sinned, having inherited his corrupt nature. The second, though eternal, took on mortality by becoming completely human, yet without sin. Born of a virgin and conceived of the Holy Spirit, so that he did not inherit from Adam the corruption that all other humans had. The first was made of the earth - he was nothing of himself - a creature made merely from dust and given life by God. The second was everything in and of Himself, yet laid this aside voluntarily and left the glory of heaven. He was a spirit (for He was God, and God is a spirit) yet he became a man in order to represent all those He came to save.

Adam, in his fallen nature, along with all who descended from him because they were in him latently by nature) is constitutionally corrupt. Those who are of the Adamic order alone - the natural order - are already under condemnation {Joh 3:18}. Those joined to Christ through faith in His righteousness and His penal substitutionary atonement on their behalf are partakers in His (eternal) life. Heaven is in Christ. Life is in Christ. Men must be joined to Christ or there is no salvation for them. From the heavenly perspective (a perspective we have a duty to accept) men are in Christ by divine election unto salvation. From the perspective of history we are in Christ through faith and apart from faith even the elect would be lost. But what makes sense of this last statement is that God ordains with election all that is necessary for the elect to be effectually called, including their faith and repentance. Men exercise these things, but God ordains them.

So then, nothing salvific can or does come from Adam's heritage. He is dust. He is a dead man awaiting the funeral. He is corrupt and unable either to please God (because he lacks faith) or to receive the things of the spirit of God (because he is spiritually dead). We must accept this truth and preach it in order to be transmitting the true gospel. Man is absolutely helpless and utterly powerless. Someone must reach into man from outside his existence and perform a sovereign work of grace on his behalf - a work entirely apart from man’s own efforts.

This is, in fact, what God has done. He has come down from heaven in the person of His Son and has been found in fashion as a man. This rendered Him no less heavenly, just because he veiled His glory and held His God-ness in submission to the Father as a man - as representative man. But the major significance of this act of incarnation, death and resurrection is found in His representation of all the children of God. All the once-born, who sprang from Adam’s carnal, earthly, fallen, corrupt loins are destined for everlasting destruction. All the twice-born, who spring from Christ’s heavenly life, who are products of His spiritual generation, due to His work on their behalf, belong to heaven eternally. It is union with a God Who hates divorce. And because it is His doing and not ours - because it depends entirely upon the work of Christ - it is something that no mere man, including we ourselves who are the saved, can ever undo.

And our union with Him guarantees that we shall be like Him. We shall follow our representative in character and, to one degree or another, in experience - including the experience of the resurrection of the body. In Adam we shall die bodily because we bear his image (marred and fallen, corrupt and sinful). In Christ we shall be raised in a glorified spiritual body because we bear the image of the One to Whom we are joined - pure, righteous, holy. We shall have bodies suited to our conversation with Christ and for bearing us in the presence of God. But just as the death of our bodies originally sprang from the act of one man, so our resurrected bodily life springs from the act of the One man, Jesus Christ.