Before we get going on the five (yes, I’m serious — five) verses we’ll study today, let me remind any gentlemen reading that these Bible Studies are intended exclusively for women. Unless you are my husband, an elder from First Baptist Church Weymouth Massachusetts or vetting me before recommending this blog to your wife, please don’t cause me to violate 1 Timothy 2:12. Thanks!
Are they gone, ladies? Okay. We have a lot of ground to cover, so let’s read our passage and then talk about verses 45-49.
42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 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 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. ~~1 Corinthians 15:42-49 (ESV)
In verse 45, we see a new turn in Paul’s defense of bodily resurrection. Having taught the differences between our earthly bodies and our resurrection bodies, Paul goes on to contrast the first Adam with Christ (the last Adam). He uses these terms to denote that Adam and Christ are the two representative heads of humanity. He already hinted at this concept in verse 22.
Referring to Genesis 2:7, he reminds them that the first Adam became a living being when God breathed life into him. This first Adam, however, also introduced death to all mankind (Romans 5:14) even while being the first human to receive God’s breath of life.
In contrast, Christ (the last Adam) gives eternal life. John 1:4 says, “In Him was life, and that life was the light of men.” According to Matthew Henry, John 5:21 shows us that both the Father and the Son give life. Paul’s comment about the second Adam being a life-giving spirit demonstrates this claim.
Paul deems it entirely reasonable, in verse 46, that our natural, decaying bodies should precede our spiritual, imperishable bodies, just as the seed precedes the fully developed plant. As Matthew Henry puts it, “If the first Adam could communicate to us natural and animal bodies, cannot the second Adam make our bodies spiritual ones?”
We might apply this principle in our walks with the Lord. Christians put away the natural inclination towards sin in favor of putting on Christlike characteristics. See Romans 6:6, Ephesians 4:22-24 and Colossians 3:9-10.
Paul tells us in verse 47 that Adam quite literally came from the earth, as Genesis 2:7 and Genesis 3:19 testify. As such, he had a corruptible nature that all of us inherited. In Adam, our present bodies are destined to return to the earth.
In contrast, Christ is of heavenly origin, as we learn in John 3:13 and John 3:31. Paul calls Him the second Man because of His reversal of Adam’s curse on humanity. Since Christ is heavenly, His physical body is suited for heaven. Therefore, those who are in Him will likewise be given bodies suited for heaven.
Paul elaborates on this point in verse 48 by saying that all of Adam’s descendants share his earthly nature. Interestingly, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown tie this statement in to our need to be born again (John 3:6-7). Apart from Christ, our bodies are prone to decay.
In contrast (again drawing from Jamieson, Fausset and Brown), regenerated people will have bodies like the resurrected Lord’s (Philippians 3:20-21). The second Adam assures us that He will fit us for eternity with Him!
Paul reaches the pinnacle of his argument in verse 49. Like our natural forefather Adam, we have bodies that are weakened (see Romans 5:17a). As Barnes puts it, our earthly bodies are “subject to sickness, frailty, sorrow, and death.”
But in Christ, our resurrection bodies will shed the limitations we inherited from Adam. Like our resurrected Lord, we will have incorruptible bodies that are free both from sin itself and from its consequences. 1 John 3:2 promises that, even though we don’t know specific details concerning our resurrection bodies, we have the assurance that they will be like His.
Join me next Monday as we begin the final section of 1 Corinthians 15. I may be a little bleery-eyed from watching the Red Sox win the World Series, but I look forward to studying a far greater event — our bodies being changed “in the twinkling of an eye.”
The Outspoken TULIP 