1 Corinthians 15:45-49

1 Corinthians 15:45

The two bodies, the natural and the spiritual, are connected with the first Adam and the second Adam respectively. That is the teaching of these verses. The Apostle is anxious to strengthen in the minds of those to whom he is reasoning the conviction that there is a spiritual body as well as a natural body.

I. "The first man Adam was made a living soul." The statement of the Apostle is a quotation from Genesis 2:7. Had Adam not fallen, it might have been said of him that he became, not a living soul, but a living spirit; his material frame being now accommodated and assimilated, not to the lower "soulish" principle of the animal life, but to the higher principle of life, spiritual and Divine. Even in that case, however, he could not be said to become a life-giving or quickening spirit. That honour belongs to the second Adam alone. At the best, the first Adam would only have been a receiver of the new spirituality, or spiritual vitality, in his body, which was to supersede and displace its original merely animal vitality. It would have been to him personally a gift of grace. It was not his to give to his posterity.

II. "The last Adam was made a quickening spirit." Where, and how? At his resurrection, and by His resurrection. It cannot be His incarnation that is here referred to. He was then made, He then became in the first Adam, and as the seed of the woman in the first Adam simply a living soul. As a quickening spirit, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, dying for us and rising again, quickens spiritually our whole human nature in all its parts. There must, therefore, be a spiritual body. It is no devout imagination to speak of such a thing. Nay more, the Apostle apparently looks upon the spiritual body as the fitting sequel and, as it were, complement of the natural.

R. S. Candlish, Life in a Risen Saviour,p. 190.