I LOVE JESUS And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. — 1 Corinthians 15:45 King James Bible The last Adam. Jesus is the federal head of his elect. As in Adam, every heir of flesh and blood has a personal interest, because he is the covenant head and representative of the race as considered under the law of works; so under the law of grace, every redeemed soul is one with the Lord from heaven, since he is the Second Adam, the Sponsor and Substitute of the elect in the new covenant of love. The apostle Paul declares that Levi was in the loins of Abraham when Melchizedek met him: it is a certain truth that the believer was in the loins of Jesus Christ, the Mediator, when in old eternity the covenant settlements of grace were decreed, ratified, and made sure forever. Thus, whatever Christ has done, he has wrote for the whole body of his Church. We were crucified in him and buried with him (read Col. 2:10-13), and to make it still more wonderful, we are risen with him and even ascended with him to the seats on high (Eph. 2:6). It is thus that the Church has fulfilled the law, and is accepted in the beloved. It is thus that she is regarded with complacency by the just The LORD, for he views her in Jesus, and does not look upon her as separate from her covenant head. As the Anointed Redeemer of Israel, Christ Jesus has nothing distinct from his Church, but all that he has he holds for her. Adams righteousness was ours so long as he maintained it, and his sin was ours the moment that he committed it; and in the same manner, all that the Second Adam is or does, is ours as well as his, seeing that he is our representative. Here is the foundation of the covenant of grace. This gracious system of representation and substitution, which moved Just in Martyr to cry out, O blessed change, O sweet permutation! this is the very groundwork of the gospel of our salvation, and is to be received with strong faith and rapturous joy. The apostle has supported the Christian belief in the resurrection by adducing natural analogies, and these will always possess a certain measure of force for intelligent and reflective minds. But it is observable that he returns to what is the strongest ground of belief in the future life and all which it involves, viz. the personal relation of the Christian to his Divine and mighty Lord. The foundation of our hope is in the assurance of our Saviour, Because I live, ye shall live also. I. THE DESIGNATION OF CHRIST: THE LAST ADAM. This, though a rabbinical expression applied to the Messiah, has a truly Christian signification. 1. It implies our Lords true humanity; he was a descendant of our first parents, and he was the Son of man. 2. It implies his federal headship, his representative character, and his peculiar authority. There is a new humanity created afresh for the glory of God; and of this the Lord Christ is the one rightful Ruler and Head. II. THE DESCRIPTION OF CHRIST: A LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT. 1. This is in contrast with the description of the first Adam, a living soul, so called in the book of Genesis. From our progenitor we have inherited the body and the animal and rational nature for which that body is a suitable vehicle. 2. This is indicative of the perogative of Christ to impart a new and higher spiritual life to humanity. We receive from him by the bestowal of his Spirit a nobler being, a being which allies us to God, and which fits us for the occupations and the joys of heaven. In him was life. He did not however possess life only to retain it as his own, but in order to share it with his people. I, said he, am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. 3. This is explanatory of the revelation of resurrection and immortality. The nature we inherit from Adam fits us for earth; the nature which we receive from Christ fits us for heaven. Adam is the earthy, and they who dwell on earth share his earthy being and life; Christ is the heavenly and they who are made in his likeness and who share his character and spirit are qualified for celestial and eternal joys. In introducing this subject, set forth, explain, and illustrate the distinctions between the relations in which man stands to God as an individual, as bound together in the membership of a community or nationality, or as a specially constituted race. In all matters of government and order God is pleased to deal directly with the individual, but mediately and representatively with families, with citizens, and with races. In these cases some individual stands before God, to deal with him in behalf of those he represents, and the results of his dealing affect all those in whose name he goes forth. Illustrate by the sentiment that was cherished in tribes. The whole tribe was carried, as it were, by the sheikh, or chief, and affected, for good or evil, by his action. Or illustrate by the notion of a champion, as found in Roman history. He stands for the army, and by his conduct carries defeat or victory for them all. Similarly the ambassador, or plenipotentiary, pledges the nation to the peace or settlement which he makes in its name, and every individual really makes the peace in him whom the nation sends forth to stand for them. Upon this familiar fact and truth the idea of the two Adams is based. We must remember that men may be classified in various ways - physically, locally, intellectually, morally, or spiritually, and under each classification men can act both directly and by representation. As a spiritual race of beings, man has had, at different times, two race-heads, the first and the second Adam. I. THE FIRST ADAM REGARDED AS A RACE HEAD, OR REPRESENTATIVE. Show how the race is bound up in him. Whether or not he be the actual race father, this is certain, God has made of one blood all nations to dwell upon the earth, and the blood is Adams, the type is Adams, the whole bodily and mental functions are precisely Adams, and God is pleased to deal with the race through this Adam, making him the races test man, and laying the race under the burdens that were laid upon him. If we force the idea of our individuality into an undue strength, we shall resist the idea that any man can carry us with him so as to win for us blessing or woe; but if we duly estimate the solidarity of the human race, and what this involves for the good of the race, we shall be willing to accept the idea, and the consequences, of this mediation or representation. The standing of humanity before God is settled by the standing of Adam. The disabilities of humanity come as the disabilities of Adam, the consequences of his failure. It may even be that what we call death, as distinguished from simple change and passing, is due to Adams fall. And our very character may be said to be deteriorated through Adams triumphant wilfulness. We do not say that our relations with the first Adam are limited to these representative ones, but we do say that these are the prominent relations, and those which enable us to apprehend the similar relations of the Lord Jesus Christ. II. THE SECOND ADAM REGARDED AS A RACE HEAD, OR REPRESENTATIVE. Observe that the first Adam was directly born of God, not of any previous human being; and so, we are taught, was the Lord Jesus, though his full kinship with our humanity is brought home to us by his having a human mother. He, then, is a fitting new Race Head, and God is pleased to deal with him in our name, and his dealings with him cover, carry, and include us, as those for whom he stands. Work out: 1. How Christ stood for us as penitent sinners, and won for us full pardon. 2. How Christ presented, in our name, perfect obedience, and won for us full acceptance. 3. How Christ asked for us life eternal, and gained the unspeakable gift. He is himself the type and the model of the new human race, the race that hates sin, and loves righteousness, and seeks God; and every one of us who makes Christ stand for him thereby pledges himself that he will give himself no rest until he is in everything just what Christ represents him to be. And so in Christ shall all be made alive. How far has St. Paul come on the path he has been treading? Beginning with the many infallible proofs of the forty days, and adding the appearance of the Lord Jesus to him, he had convicted those of an absurdity who denied a general resurrection. On various grounds, the view they held was incredible. The moral consequences of their belief were set forth. True logic and pure morality condemned their departure from that righteousness which only exists by virtue of the knowledge of God If the one class of thinkers whom he had answered had etherealized a fundamental, historic fact into a sheer fiction, so that a great truth was utterly lost, another class of thinkers stood arrayed against the doctrine itself, and refused its acceptance on the score of its unreasonableness. Nature, they claimed, was on their side. Nothing that died lived again. The whole economy of the material world was opposed to it. A grave was a grave forever. Heaven and earth bore witness that death was death, and could never be other than death. Now, the body is a part of the physical kingdom, and, as such, has well known properties, and is subject to certain laws. Well, he will discuss it on their ground. In the previous branch of the argument, the basis was according to the Scriptures, and he had constant occasion to say, Christ, Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus our Lord, Christ as the Firstfruits, Christ in contrast with Adam, Christ as Mediator, Christ as the second Person in the Trinity. But there is a change, a noteworthy change, now, and for some verses Christ is not named. According to nature, or by analogy, the argument has to proceed if the objectors are met. The new standpoint is promptly taken, and St. Paul and the philosophical critics are face to face. Who are these that have gathered before the eye of his imagination in that humble room in Ephesus, the proud and lordly city, whose commerce connected it with every land, and whose wealth was the wonder and envy of the world? Near by was the magnificent temple of Artemis, renowned over Ionia and far beyond, safe too in its renown, since no art of man could surpass its pillars of Parian marble, its doors of cypress wood, its roof of cedar resting on columns of jasper, and the great masterpieces of painting and sculpture by which it had been enriched. Likely enough, one who could quote from Menander, Aratas, and Epimenides, knew something of Anacreon, Thales, Heraclitus, and others associated with Ionia and Ephesus. Would not some of these illustrious thinkers rise before his vision when he began to meditate on the questions growing out of the relations between soul and body, questions on which Greek intellect had expended its subtlest power of investigation? And would not that memorable day in Athens flash back upon him from Mars Hill, when he confronted the philosophers with the doctrine of the resurrection, some mocking, others saying, We will hear thee again of this matter? However this may have been, it is certain that St. Paul understood perfectly the objections made by Greek philosophy to the resurrection, as to the how and with what body - the general and the specific bases of Greek hostility to the doctrine so near his heart. To answer the two interrogatories how? and with what body? - is the work now in hand. St. Paul had just closed an appeal by the sharp cry of Awake to righteousness, as if intent on arousing the Church from stupor. Now, however, he begins with Thou fool, or rather, Fool, expressing no harshness, but simply the want of wisdom. The analogy is stated at once: That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die - reminding one of similar words spoken by the Lord Jesus (John 12:24). The seed you sow has to die, to pass into decay and dissolution, its component parts separated, before the germ can disengage its life and begin to sprout. Like that seed, your body dies. Like that, your body by dying enters on a condition preparatory to living. If life thus proceeds from dissolution, the general question how is met by the likeness between the decay of the seed and the body. The body of the seed dies, but it has a principle of life which springs thereby into active existence. Then, the contrast having been first presented between death and life, he advances to the second point: With what body do they come? Not the old body; nothing can be clearer than that, for the destruction of the former body supplies the conditions for the process of deliverance from decay, and institutes the work of quickening. And what is the issue of the new process? It is a new body, for thou sowest not that body that shall be; if thou didst, what reality would be in the sowing; what foundation for the hope of the husbandman; what work for the providential agency of nature? On the supposition of the same body in the seed-grain dying and growing, the resemblance would be to sleep rather than death, and, consequently the analogy as here used would break down at the start. Hence the statement so essential to the parallelism: thou sowest not the future body, but a body for transformation. It is bare grain which is put into the ground. This is your work as a husbandman; but God is there to perform his part., and God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him. Admitting that God gives the new body according to his pleasure, does it follow that this act is arbitrary because it is sovereign? Is nature set aside? Are the former laws that made that seed the kind of seed it was, overthrown under the sod? Is it death to the economy of production, or is it production for reproduction? And he answers, God giveth to every seed his own body. On the one hand, the continuity of nature is preserved, the particular character of the seed is not lost; and, on the other hand, the new growth is something unlike that which dies, for God has given it a different body. Similarity and contrast are both maintained. Is the identity destroyed? Nay. Is there a distinction between the body that dies and the body that lives? Yea. Identification must not conflict with dissimilarity; dissimilarity must not antagonize identification. Seen in this light, the change is one of form. Before death, there was body living; in death, body decayed and resolved into its elements; after death, body reconstructed. The identity lies in the fact of body; the difference in the substance, properties, and form of body. If so, what is there incredible in the resurrection? By analogy, it is a possible event. Nature authenticates a principle which may find application to the human body; and if you ask, With what body do they come? the reply is that it will be a new body, one of a higher form, one from him who giveth to every seed his own body. Observe, then, the fact of the resurrection is not rested on analogy. The use of the analogical argument here is not for that purpose. Christs resurrection establishes the fact of a general resurrection. But this having been assured, analogy is employed to show the consonance thereof with reason, by pointing out a correspondence between it and the germination of seed. And how beautiful as well as truthful is this use of nature! Enlightened from another source, even by the Spirit of God, St. Paul is in a position to see the God of nature as the God of the resurrection. He goes to nature and asks, Have you anything like this? And she points him to the growing harvest, a few months ago bare grain, and says, So shall thy dead live! Our heavenly Father has not been content to give us great facts alone, but has superadded images, analogies, illustrations; and the grander the truth, the more clear and copious its kindred associations. That sense of correspondence which exists in us all, and is a mainstay of our convictions, is continually addressed by him, and by thousands of ties he binds together his Word and his works. Inspired teachers exhibit their wisdom in the way they read and interpret nature. Scripture is not written for minds shut up in themselves, the order and grace of the universe hidden from them. Sensational consciousness is just as much a part of religion as spiritual consciousness, and, accordingly, an eminent teacher like St. Paul honours his office by appealing to nature. He wrote for the senses no less than for the spirit, and hence we find him (ver. 39) widening the scope of analogy. And whither shall he tend? What is the objective point aimed at? The identity of the resurrection body with the dust and ashes of the grave - is that the goal of his thought? Nay and yea. Look on the gross side of identification, on the interminable disputes about bones and material particles, and the answer is nay. Look on the higher and far truer side of identification, and the answer is yea. As to the first, had the advocates of the dust and ashes theory existed in his day, he would perhaps have said, Fool! Happily for us, we know that identity as applied to the body means the persistent adhesion to the same idea in the plan and purpose of organization, so that while the particles of matter in the corporeal structure are ever coming and going, and are as short lived as the ephemera of a summer day, such is the law of constancy beneath this variation that identity is no wise disturbed. St. Paul first takes up diversity of animal organisms. To show that the question is not about the retention and revivification of former constituents of the body, but a question solely of body and its capacity to assume such a form as God might be pleased to give, he states, All flesh is not the same flesh. Men, beasts, fishes, birds, differ in flesh. It is all flesh, but very unlike. What then? If body be capable of such variety in bodies, if you have such an interval as appears between man and bird, what limit will you put on body as to organization? Creative power is manifested in matter as matter; creative power makes its most wonderful manifestation in the countless shapes and adaptations of matter. And, accordingly, St. Pauls meaning is that you cannot argue from the structure and particles of the body here to the organization of a spiritual corporeity. But you can believe in new and higher forms, since all flesh is not the same flesh. How far, then, has the argument progressed? To this landing place: body here, body hereafter, body capable of a nobler type of existence. But he proceeds to use another illustration. Hitherto he has been mundane in his view; now he enters on the upper realm. Celestial bodies, bodies terrestial, exist in the universe, and do they present contrasts on a far broader scale than those we see in the flesh of men and other animals? Ay; the diversity now is one of glory. Celestial and terrestrial bodies share different degrees of glory. The sun is a sun in its glory, and its splendour is its own. Moon and stars have their glory, and by this unequal distribution of radiance they impress us when we gaze on the firmament. Just here, then, the movement of the apostles mind takes a sudden spring It bounds afar, and it is no longer form, no longer seed and harvest, nor animal organisms, but it is the splendour of form that absorbs his contemplation. Long ago the royal psalmist had poured forth his wonder and adoration in the nineteenth psalm, that sublime hymn which chants the glory of God in the firmament and keeps the throbbing pulses of the human heart in the rhythm of the universe. And now - the eye dilated and the resplendency full upon it - hearken to the instant utterance: So also is the resurrection of the dead. Sown in corruption - earth and its earthliness; it is raised in incorruption - earth and its earthliness left in the grave. Sown in dishonour - its humiliations all upon it, and demanding speedy removal from sight and commitment to darkness lest it be loathsome; it is raised in glory, and bears a likeness to him whose countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. Sown in weakness - always in a state of infirmity and as a corpse, powerless and unable to resist corruption (Bloomfield); it is raised in power, and made capable of receiving plenitude of energy from the will of the spirit and answering all possible uses of mind. Sown a natural body - as in life so in death, a part of the material order, and subjected to its conditions, and never able to escape its limitations, so natural that this very apostle, caught up to the third heaven, had to suffer a thorn in the flesh that he might not be exalted above measure, - it is raised a spiritual body, and, if once a body that represented the soul, now a body that is in perfect sympathy with spirit as the highest organ in man for communion with God. The last antithesis is so important as to demand restatement: There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. Notice that the term body as used here derives its import as to its character or quality, not from anything in itself, but from its subsidiary relations, in the one case being natural, psychical, as connected with the soul, and, in the other, as contradistinguished from the psychical or soul body, represented as the spiritual body. What does the clear discrimination made by the apostle between the two forms of body require of us? A primary recognition of the difference between soul and spirit as determinative of the difference between the body natural and the body spiritual. Without entering into metaphysics, we may remark that the soul is that form of mind which connects man with the senses and the outer world of the senses, while the spirit is that form of mind which connects man with unseen and eternal objects. If this distinction were not real - a distinction that often develops in the feeling of most painful contrariety - how shall we explain our consciousness; how understand the amazing inconsistencies into which we fall; how give any account of moods and transitions, reactions, and rebounds? The fact of difference is plain to every student thinker: the nature of it is difficult, perhaps impossible to make obvious in language. Is there not a poetry that finds access to the innermost life, and a poetry that goes no further than the external intellect and its correlated sensibilities? And of painting, sculpture, music, eloquence, are there not everywhere two vividly marked divisions, so that while the one kind is very palpable to the soul, the other is felt rather than known, and works by hints and intimations more than by communications actually defined? Still more as to persons: who has not known some individuals that always called forth by their presence the best within him? whereas there were others whose tones and looks were solicitations to evil? Only a few consciously note these experiences, and still fewer analyze them, but assuredly they are facts of life, and life would be barren of its most advantageous suggestions, were it otherwise, Now, it is this difference between soul and spirit which St. Paul employs to give the contrast in the verse: There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. In this world, the body is so organized as to correspond to the soul; in the resurrection, the new corporeity will represent the spirit. Would you see how a great Christian thinker weaves into one pattern thoughts from nature and from Scripture? Ver. 45 presents St. Paul in these words: It is written. Nature, though prolific of types, shadows, parables, cannot long detain him, and now he returns to the Mosaic account of the creation in the first and second chapters of Genesis. Adam was made a living soul (ch. 2:7). Animal he was in corporeal organization, placed at the head of the animal kingdom, sovereign over all creatures and things, and, moreover, much else, for he was the image of God in his reason, intelligence, and moral nature. He had a soul in him, and, it was Gods breath. It was in the fact that he is the only Biblical writer who calls Christ by the name of Adam; while, at the same time that they stand in such close connection with humanity, the contrast between them is forcibly given. What Adam was is expressed in living soul as the starting-point or initiation of human nature, the designation expressing the predominant aspects of his earthly position and his candidacy as a being in Gods image for a much loftier development. By the life-giving spirit, we understand Christ in the power and glory of his resurrection, when he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men, chief of which was the Holy Ghost. The natural precedes the spiritual; and what a philosophy of the universe opens in this single idea! The natural in law and government, the do this and live, the special rule and the special test, the appeal to the senses and the sense intellect, and the primal guardianship of conscience by means of fear over moral interests - the natural in social relations - the natural in the motives to obedience and the uses of Gods grace and the offering of worship - must lead the way, since by no other method apparent to us could humanity attain its high destiny. Afterward that which is spiritual. First the natural, afterward the spiritual, - this is the order in everything that concerns man. Every one of his attributes, such as perception, reasoning, volition, faith, love, obeys this paramount law.; and the miracle of life is, whenever the Divine plan is carried out, that man is seen, as Milton describes the lion in Eden, extricating himself from earthly entangle merits and winning his freedom. St. Paul multiplies the forms of this idea. Of the earth, earthy, was Adam; the second man is of heaven; and as we bear here the image of the earthy in body and soul, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly. Slowly the likeness of Adam fades even now under the fashioning band of God. Natural law is made subservient to spiritual law, so that while the senses decay and the other animal functions abate more or less, the diviner sensibilities acquire the vitality thus disengaged and expand with new vigour. Providence cooperates with grace. And thus, line after line, lineament after lineament, disappearing from the living soul, and also from the lower functions of the body, there comes out in its stead the image of the heavenly. Our growing years, if we are consecrated to God, are all on the side of Christ, and are all helpers and auxiliaries to prepare us for the fulness of spiritual life in a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.… 1. St. Paul bases his assertion that if there is a psychical body, there is also a spiritual, first, on the analogies of Nature; second, on the nature of Man as revealed in Holy Writ (see ver. 44); third, on the historical facts that Adam had the one and Christ the other. 2. Note, however, some interesting preliminaries. The opening clause of the text is almost an exact quotation from Genesis 2:7; that the second refers to Christ is proved by these two facts: that with the rabbis, at whose feet Paul sat, the last Adam was a common name for the Messiah; and that St. Paul never uses the designations the second Man, or the last Adam, of any one but Christ. Again the rabbis bid us note that Moses says, not man was made, but became a living soul. They hold that when God breathed the breath of life into Adam, He conferred on him the higher spiritual nature of man; but that, when Adam sinned, he fell, and became a man in whom the soul ruled rather than the spirit. And the rabbis have the Scriptures on their side. What was the fall but a fall from the higher life of the spirit into the lower life of the soul, into a life of mere intelligence and passion as distinguished from a life of righteousness, faith, love, joy, peace? Why was he debarred from the tree of life but because that it was no longer meet that his body should put on incorruption and immortality? I. THE FIRST MAN ADAM BECAME A LIVING SOUL. 1. The psychical or soulish man is a man in whom the soul is supreme. Conscience, righteousness, faith, God, etc., do not stand first with him; but man, time, earth, the gratifications of sense and intellect. Was not Adam a man of this type? When the spiritual crisis came his faith failed him. God was not first with him, nor Gods will. 2. A soulish man he came to have a soulish body. Indications of this are seen in — (1) Adams newborn shame of his nakedness. (2) The passion which made Cain a murderer. (3) The infirmities, the special forms of death and corruption, to which Adam and his children became liable.Nevertheless, as our own experience proves, the body, even when thus changed and depraved, was nevertheless perfect in its adaptation to the faculties, functions, cravings, needs of the soul. II. CHRIST, THE LAST ADAM, WAS A LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT. 1. He was the true spiritual Man; for in Him all faculties and passions of the soul were in subjection to the spirit. To Him, living and walking in the spirit, all that is of earth and time and soul was as nothing when compared with the eternal realities. And therefore He could refuse all the kingdoms of this world, and could hasten to help any man, however lowly, however earthly, and seek to quicken in him, by help to the body, the life of the spirit. Of a charity so intense that He loved every man, of a faith so clear and strong that He looked through all the shows of time to the eternal substance, of a hope so lively that He despaired of no man, of a righteousness so pure that even the practised eyes of incarnate evil could find nothing in Him, of a peace so perfect that even His unparalleled labour and conflict could not impair it; in heaven even while He was on earth; making His Fathers will His daily food, He stands before us the one true spiritual Man. 2. So also the last Adam teaches us what the spiritual body is. (1) He had a body like to ours, yet not altogether the same as ours. Conceived of a Virgin by the Holy Ghost, Christ took our flesh as Adam took it, from the hands of God, immaculate; receiving a physical body which might change and rise into a spiritual body without passing, as our bodies must, through the purifications of corruption. We die perforce. But He laid down His life. He saw no corruption. It was not possible that He should be holden of death. (a) And therefore we see signs of the spiritual body even in the body of His humiliation. Virtue went out of Him. He lived not by bread alone. He walked on the storm-tossed waves. On Mount Tabor He stood before the eyes of His amazed and dazzled disciples a spiritual man in a spiritual body. (b) But all these signs of the spiritual m the physical region of His life were prompted by that which is of the spirit, not by that which is of the soul. It was at the touch of faith, of spiritual need and desire and trust, that virtue went out of Him. It was that He might feed the hungry, succour the distressed, or deliver the imperilled, that He exerted a supernatural control over natural laws: and He fed, succoured, delivered men that they might come to know Him, and God in Him, and thus possess themselves of eternal life. When the weak physical frame was transfigured with an immortal strength and splendour, it was because His spirit was rapt in the ecstasies of redeeming love as He talked with Moses and Elias, because He saw that the work of His redemption would be triumphantly accomplished. (2) After His death and resurrection, the signs that He inhabits a spiritual body grow more apparent. Though He can still eat and drink, etc., He glides through closed doors, passes as in an instant from place to place, vanishes from their sight as the disciples recognise Him. At His will, He is visible or invisible: He is here. He is there; the spiritual body being now as perfect a servant of the spirit in Him as the psychical body of the soul. He can eat, but He does not need to eat. His body is raised into higher conditions, endowed with loftier powers. It is heavenly, not earthly; it is spiritual rather than physical or psychical. Conclusion: Do any ask: But what is all this to us? Adam and Christ were both exceptional men. If the first Adam was a psychical man and the last Adam a spiritual man, how does that bear on St. Pauls argument? It is much — nay, it is everything — to us; and that precisely because both Adam and Christ were exceptional men, who stand in an exceptional relation to the human race. For (ver. 22) both the Adam and the Christ are in us, and in all men; that they contend together in us for the mastery; that it is at our own option to side either with the one or with the other; and that, according as we espouse the first Adam or the last, we become earthly or heavenly, psychical or spiritual men. If we permit the Christ to reign in us, in our mortal members, our mortality will put on immortality — as His did, and be swallowed up of life — as His was. Like His, our spiritual manhood will demand and receive a spiritual body. And therefore St. Paul may fairly exhort us that, as we bear the image of the earthly (man), so also we should bear the image of the heavenly. — Amen The Resurrection Body …44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So also it is written, The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.… Cross References Genesis 2:7 Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. John 5:21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. John 6:57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. Romans 5:14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. Romans 8:2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 1 Corinthians 15:46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. Hebrews 9:14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! Praise the Lord, Hallelujah , In Jesus name. Amen
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 13:02:50 +0000
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