Translation and Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS 27 Dec 2009, 5 Apr 2026, and Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Carbondale, IL, 03 Jan 2010.
42. The resurrection of the dead is also like this: sown in perishableness, raised in imperishableness;
43. sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power;
44. sown a soulish body, raised a spiritual body. If there is a soulish body, there is also a spiritual one.
45. Thus also it was written, “The first man – Adam – became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-imparting spirit!
46. However, the spiritual one was not first, but rather the soulish, then the spiritual one.
47. The first man was of dust out of the earth; the second man is out of heaven.
48. Whatever the one of dust is, such also are those of dust, and whatever the heavenly one is, such also are those who are heavenly.
49. And just as we carry the likeness of the one of dust, let us carry also the likeness of the heavenly one.
Our annual celebration of Jesus’ resurrection is a distinctly Christian tradition.
Jesus didn’t actually command us to institute this holiday.
The only thing He actually commanded concerning it is recorded in 1 Corinthians 11:24-25, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, for the purpose of the remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.”
He didn’t say how often to observe this holy ordinance of Communion, so we believe He left it up to us to decide, and our tradition is to do it every week, but it’s OK if other churches do it more-frequently or less-frequently.
But setting apart a weekend to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus (at about the same time of year that He actually died and rose) has been an almost-universal tradition among Christians throughout history.
The Gospels tell us that Jesus was
condemned to death by the first-century Jewish and Roman authorities in Jerusalem for claiming to be the King of the Jews,
and put to death on a cross on a Friday afternoon, the day before Passover,
that His body was confirmed dead and was buried in a tomb before sunset that Friday and remained there over the course of Friday night, all day Saturday, and a little bit of Sunday morning – so at least parts of three consecutive days by Hebrew reckoning,
and He then got up and walked out of the grave the following Sunday morning and held meetings with His followers and continued to teach them.
Non-Christians have tried for thousands of years to disprove this, but they have never succeeded. The resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact which proved that He is indeed the Son of God who came down from heaven to teach us God’s word (as the promised Prophet who was greater than Moses – Deut. 18:15), and to reconcile sinners to God (as our great High Priest – Heb. 2:17), and yes, to be the King promised to David, who will reign forever (1 Chron. 17:12).
Since Bible times, Christians have chosen various points around that time of year to set apart a day to commemorate Jesus’ resurrection.
In fact, there were so many different days being set apart for this purpose in churches around the world that in the year 325, the Council of Nicaea (in addition to developing the Nicaean Creed also) decided to instruct all churches to observe Resurrection Day – or Pascha, as they called it – on “the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.1”
The vernal equinox is where the earth’s equator runs perpendicular to the Sun, and it happens around March 21 every year, but since the Passover was based on a lunar calendar, the Nicaean Council also added in the varying factor of the next full moon.
That worked to unite the churches to observe the day of Christ’s Resurrection on the same day until the Europeans adjusted their calendar in the late 1500’s to shave 11 minutes per year off of the Julian system to match the solar year more exactly, putting Western Christianity out of sync with Eastern Orthodox Christians by 11 minutes a year, which works out to about 13 days this year.
So anyway, this is Resurrection Sunday – or Easter, as the ancient European Christians dubbed it (for reasons no one seems to be able to explain definitively), so I thought it would be good to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus by studying the most famous chapter in the Bible on the theology of the Resurrection: 1 Corinthians 15.
The context of this passage is that Paul was trying to correct the Corinthians for believing false teachers who proclaimed that there is no afterlife, that Jesus had not been raised from the dead and that there never will be a general resurrection of the dead either. In verse 35, Paul takes a couple of the questions which the false teachers had asked derisively to embarrass Christians, and he answers them head-on:
He answers the question, “How are the dead raised?” in v.36 and following by saying that they are raised by God through death.
And he answers the second question, “What kind of body is the resurrection body?” by saying in verses 37-49 that it is a different body, a body determined by God, a unique body that continues your personal identity, and a glorious/splendid body that is imperishable, powerful, and spiritually-oriented.
Jesus’ resurrected body is the prototype of what our resurrected body will be like:
Jesus’ body was different enough not to be recognized by Cleopas on the road to Emmaeus, but similar enough to be recognized by His disciples in the upper room.
It was not limited in the same ways regarding matter and energy that our bodies are, for Jesus passed through His grave clothes, leaving them undisturbed – just as they had been wrapped around His body, and he passed through locked doors to visit His disciples in the upper room (John 20), and he ascended into heaven without the assistance of jet propulsion.
Later on, when He appeared to Paul, there was an audible voice, but the appearance was so gloriously radiant that it literally destroyed Paul’s eyes (Acts 9:3, cf. Matt. 17:2).
Paul concludes this section with the theological principle of
Federal Headship, which assures us that just as surely as we all
inherited mortality from Adam, so we who are in Christ will be
glorified with Christ in the resurrection.
In v.42, Paul talks about “planting” natural bodies and then having spiritual resurrected bodies. The word “sown” is an extension of the analogy of planting seeds and seeing the bodies of plant grow out of those seeds.
It creates a beautiful picture of hope for the believer, because burying the dead body is like planting a seed that will spring forth with new life in the future.
However, I think that the “sowing” mentioned here is not limited to burying a body in the ground, but indicates the whole of our natural life, from the time God places our soul on earth at conception, to the time our body dies.
This is the point where I want to step into the passage:
Paul goes into a parenthesis in v.45 to quote Genesis 2:7 from the Greek Septuagint “man became a living being/soul,” adding the name of the first man, Adam.
This indicates that Adam was the personal name for the first man and thus was a historical figure and not a myth.
Then Paul states that, “The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” Who is the last Adam?
Romans 5:12-19 expounds on this: Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned:-- for until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come. But not as the trespass, so also is the free gift. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many. And not as through one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment came of one unto condemnation, but the free gift came of many trespasses unto justification. For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ. So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous.” (ASV, cf. Job 19:25)
Adam was the physical head of the human race who gives us all physical life through physical descent and yet who also plunged us all into sin when he disobeyed God. Jesus lived to undo the problem of sin and to redeem us from sin. Jesus is our spiritual head who gives spiritual life to all who believe in Him. (Vincent)
Jesus is not only the “last Adam,” He is a “life-imparting spirit:”
The essence of human life is to survive – to keep from dying, but the essence of Jesus’ life was to make others alive. (Calvin)
John 1:4 “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (KJV)
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (KJV)
John 5:21 “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes.” (NASB)
John 10:10b “…I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (KJV)
John 11:25 “…I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, will live even if he dies…” (NASB)
“It was when Christ’s body was raised and glorified that He became a life-giving spirit. For then, as the reward for his atoning death, He received the promised Spirit in His resurrection and ascension… He became a life-giving spirit as the last Adam, i.e. the last man: the unique and exclusive representative of those whom the Father gives Him, who leads them to that glory which Adam should have obtained for the human race as its first representative.” (Geoffrey Wilson)
British Christian apologist John Blanchard explained the doctrine of Federal Headship this way in his book, Why on Earth Did Jesus Come?
“For some time after ‘God created man in his own image’ (Genesis 1:27) our first parents lived in flawless harmony with God, with nature, and with each other. Then at some point in time they suddenly flashed their fists in God’s face and went their own way. When they did, ‘sin came into the world’ (Romans 5:12), with catastrophic results. Their relationship with God was wrecked, their natural inclination to righteousness was replaced by a bias to do evil, they lost their moral balance, and they developed an appetite for wrongdoing.
“While they were both guilty, the Bible focuses on Adam, who sinned not only as the natural head of the human race but also as its representative head, and when he sinned he dragged humanity down with him. Later, he fathered children ‘in his own likeness, after his image’ (Genesis 5:3). They and their successors inherited not only their father’s physical nature, but also his spiritual nature – and we have the same spiritual DNA. Israel’s King David confirmed this when he confessed, ‘I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me’ (Psalm 51:5). The same is true of us. Assuming we were carried to full term, we were sinners nine months before we were born.
“This may be hard to take, but it is
impossible to deny. Our greatest moral problem is not what we do
but what we are!
As Adam’s descendants, we have inherited guilty, fallen natures and
a fatal tendency to break God’s law. Anyone who doubts this has not
faced up to the fact that ‘The law of the LORD is perfect’ (Ps.
19:7) and even a single sin means the entire law has been broken. (If
a policeman stopped me for breaking the speed limit, it would be no
defense for me to prove that I had kept every other
part of the traffic law.) We may not all have sinned in the same way,
or to the same degree, or with the same knowledge of what we were
doing, but this much is certain – we have all sinned, and one sin
is sufficient to make us guilty in God’s sight and deserving of His
judgement.”
V.47 contrasts the origin of Adam (“of the earth/dust/clay/dirt”) with the origin of Jesus (“from heaven”).
The noun form of this Greek word “of dust/earthly” is found in the ancient Greek translation of Gen. 2:7 “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust [from] the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul,” and later in Gen. 3:19b, God told Adam, “...from [the ground] you were taken; For you are dust, and to dust you shall return” when you die. (NASB)
Every descendant of Adam is also “of dust/earthly/clay/dirty” – that includes you.
The “heavenly man” is Christ, Who has ascended to heaven and will return from heaven:
John 3:13 “No one ha[s] ascended into heaven but He that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man, who is in heaven… 31 He that come[s] from above is above all: he that is of the earth is of the earth, and of the earth he speak[s]: He that come[s] from heaven is above all.” (ASV)
Eph. 2:6 God “raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus…” (ASV)
Phil. 3:20 “For our citizenship is in heaven; whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ…” (ASV)
Mark 14:62 “And Jesus said, ‘… y[ou] shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’” (ASV)
1 Thess. 4:16 “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump[et] of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first…” (ASV)
The idea is that whatever Jesus is like, that is what we are going to be like. Everyone who has had that second birth is a child of God – a spiritual descendant of Jesus – and will be like Jesus. The resurrection is not just for spiritual superstars, it is for you too. (Ratliff)
This does not mean, however that we will become God ourselves. We will remain creatures subordinate to God. (Arnold)
What it does mean is that God guarantees glorious resurrected bodies to all who are in Christ.
“At the resurrection, the Creator’s purpose that man reflect His image will be finally realized when we are conformed to the Man who is Himself the image of God.” (Geoffrey Wilson)
There is an interesting difference among the Greek manuscripts and modern translations of verse 49. The variation is found in the word translated “we shall bear” in most English translations.
The vast majority of Greek manuscripts (including the oldest-known one which dates back to the year 200 AD, all the way up to the 2009 Tregelles text published by Cambridge), spell the word with a long vowel in the ending, which throws the verb into a subjunctive, hortatory form, “Let us carry/bear.”
With the exception of John Calvin, all the commentators I read seem to agree that this is the original spelling and that this is the way this spelling is standardly translated. (ATR, Vincent, and Gordon Clark)
The ancient and modern Latin translations also carry this word through as a hortatory, “Let us bear the image of the heavenly.”
There are a handful of Greek manuscripts, however (most notably the 4th Cent. Vaticanus), that spell the word with a short vowel in the ending, making it a future tense verb: “We will bear...”
All the English translations that I read, except for the NET Bible, went with this future tense variant, translating the last part of this verse, “We will bear the likeness/image of the heavenly man.”
The sense is that we can have assurance of the resurrection of our own bodies because, just as surely as we bear the likeness of Adam, so surely we will bear the likeness of Christ.
Is this true? Absolutely! But it has already been stated in the previous verses and in Romans 5.
I’m going with the hortatory, “Let us bear the likeness of the heavenly man.” And the best thing about this is that it gives me a great application point!
V.44 – It is spiritual rather than soulish/natural:
In other words, it is oriented toward the Spirit of God, attentive to Him, seeking to be guided by Him, rather than oriented toward the flesh and its desires – what you can eat and drink and have your own pleasure with.
Often when I need to be concentrating on studying God’s word, I get a craving for a cup of coffee, and it becomes a tug-of-war between my flesh and my spirit. I’m not saying that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with coffee (although it can be abused like anything else), but it can help me see which way I am oriented – toward the flesh or toward the Spirit.
That tug-of-war also shows up when we have the choice to rest or to engage with another human being. The easy way might be to watch a movie when we’re tired and not go to the trouble of thinking about what to say to make disciples of the people around us – or of our own children and grandchildren. Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with moving pictures, but the question is our orientation, is it natural or spiritual?
“Let us
bear the likeness” of our Lord from heaven by looking to God to
show us what to do and then disciplining our bodies to do it,
rather than focusing on what our flesh wants.
V.45 – The last Adam is a “life-giving spirit.” Do you have that quality?
Do you impart life, or are you a collector of resources for your own survival?
Listening to the Gospel of Mark as I drive around to do errands really puts me to shame, because my natural tendency is to get in to the store and get out with what I need in the shortest time possible. It is easy for me to consider interacting with people to be a time drain that I want to avoid. Jesus, however, had compassion on people when He saw a crowd. Jesus incessantly made disciples. He seemed to have never tired of teaching the things of God to whoever happened to be around Him wherever He was. This imparts life.
John 5:24 Jesus said, “...he that hear[s] My word, and believe[s] on Him that sent me, ha[s] everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” (KJV, cf. John 6:68 “...Thou hast the words of eternal life.”)
“Let us
bear the likeness” of our Lord from heaven by imparting His own
life-giving words to others that they may believe and live!
V.46 – The last Adam did not come first. He represented a changing of the guard:
Have you had that changing of the guard in your own life yet?
You cannot “bear the likeness of the man from heaven” if you have not believed on Jesus.
You cannot “bear the likeness of the one from heaven” if He is not your Lord whom you obey.
God knows every thought you think. If you agree that Jesus died for your sins and was raised from the dead and is your Master, God knows that you are a believer.
If you have never bowed your heart before Jesus and pledged allegiance to Him as the Lord and leader of your life, I urge you to do so now.
“Let us
bear the likeness” of our Lord from heaven by believing in Him
and submitting to Him as our Lord.
Even though we make choices to bear the likeness of Christ, we cannot attain the resurrection by our own efforts. Our growing likeness to Jesus Christ is effected by God Himself:
Rom. 8:29a “For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son…” (ASV) God loves us, and He is going to glorify us. He is serious about transforming us and sanctifying us!
2 Cor. 3:18 “So, as for us all, while seeing-mirrored, with unveiled face, the glory of the Lord, we are being metamorphasized into the same image, from glory into glory, just as it is by the Spirit of the Lord.” (NAW) The picture is that of simply looking to God and being transformed by Him as we keep looking upon Him.
Let us keep our eyes upon Jesus so that we may indeed “bear His likeness” both now and in the world to come!
1 This formula is widely attributed to the council of Nicaea, but in my perusal of the actual source documents, I have not found this formula. The closest I have found is Constantine’s letter afterward which states, “We further proclaim to you the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, that this particular also has through your prayers been rightly settled; so that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves and all those who have observed Easter from the beginning.”