Paul’S Contrasts
PAUL’S CONTRASTS
1 CORINTHIANS 15:42-50
Adam was the natural life-giver of the human race. The last Adam, Jesus, is the life-giver of the new race of believers.
The hinge in Paul’s argument is 15:42, as it links the previous analogy with the subsequent reply which the question of 15:35 had raised.
The body, as we have seen from 6:12-20, is a key term in Paul’s thought. Based on clear Old Testament teaching, he assumes that the body as part of God’s created order is good; it is the vehicle of the human spirit, indeed it is the spirit in visible expression as representing a person’s true self, but it is weighed down by natural limitations. Some of these restrictions are part of God’s ordering of life (eg the body is weak, mortal and subject to decay, because like Adam’s it will return as dust to the earth: Genesis 3:19 lies behind 15:47-48a). More seriously, it becomes an “instrument of unrighteousness” (Romans 6:13) because people, as sinners, use their bodies as the vehicle in which they break God’s commands. This teaching lies in the background of 15:42ff. with its vivid portrayals of the finite and unredeemed nature of our “natural body”: it is perishable, capable of dishonor (when we abuse our body), weak, physical (ie liable to dissolution in the grave)—and all because it is stamped with Adam’s likeness (15:49a). Made in God’s image, the man chose to live independently of his Creator, suffered the defacing of that image and passed on a twisted nature to his descendants (Genesis 1:26-27 which goes with Genesis 2:7, in turn quoted in 15:45; Genesis 3:17-24; 5:3).
But with Christ’s coming a new beginning was made. Sin’s rule and its fateful chain of consequences were broken. As Paul explains this new chapter in humanity’s story in this passage, the spiritual era has arrived (15:46) and those who are “in Christ” share all the benefits that his advent, obedience (reversing Adam’s original disobedience), death and triumph have secured. Christians receive the blessings given by the last Adam as a life-giving Spirit (15:45) and share in the nature of the heavenly Man (15:48-49). And not least, in their final inheritance they receive a spiritual body like his (15:50), whose qualities form the counterpart of the first halves of 15:42-44. Philippians 3:21 sums it up, but the process of renewal has already begun (2 Corinthians 3:18; Galatians 4:19; Ephesians 4:24), and at Christ’s coming the transformation will be complete.