THURSDAY February 22nd
1 Corinthians 15:42
‘So is it with the resurrection of the dead.’
Continuing from the previous devotion we come to the fourth point that Paul has made concerning the resurrected body in verses 42-44, ‘it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body’.
Remember the phrase, ‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’ this demonstrates to us that the flesh is that which is earthly and because of the fall of mankind and the entrance of sin into the world, the flesh has always been weak, and perpetually holds us back in that which we want to do in spirit, but after the resurrection, the flesh will no longer be, for as Paul later says in this chapter ‘flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of God’ v50, therefore the power of the resurrection is such that we are raised with a spiritual body, no longer to be held back with the constraints of the flesh and no longer susceptible to the weakness of the flesh.
In verses 45-49 we read ‘Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 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. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.’
Paul is reminding us that the flesh is to do with first Adam, who became a living-being and the spirit is to do with Jesus who became the second Adam. The first Adam was of the flesh, but the second Adam was from heaven.
The wonder of the incarnation and the redemption story is that Christ came from heaven and took on flesh, so that we who are born of the flesh can one day be raised not in the same flesh but raised by the Spirit with a new spiritual body. And just as in the natural we are like the first Adam, in the spirit we will be like the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our human ancestry is from the line of the first Adam, but our spiritual ancestry is through the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, that is of course if you have been born again by the Spirit of God into this wonderful family.