OLD ADAM/LAST ADAM
22/01/23 15:14
Old Adam is separation from God and an existence in him is this body of death. The New Adam is the Father of the New Creation human race, created out of the person of Jesus Christ in the Spirit and in the flesh of those in whom Christ has come in the flesh.
CHURCH REBUKED
In Corinthians Paul takes the Believers to task because they were living in selfishness, fragmentation and sin. But Paul does not rebuke the sinfulness of each sin. He rebukes them because they were not living as The Body of Christ. This is to say that they were not living as the embodiment of the risen Christ.
Alive in The Body means to be alive in the incarnation – Christ our life – Jesus expressed as us as per the eucharist. We are literally the Body when by the Spirit the person of Jesus is you and us.
BODY OF LIFE
What does it mean to live in the embodiment of Christ? It means that we have embraced the at-one-ment and are living in the purpose of the cross and resurrection: We have been made one with God and more. We have been interwoven into the person of Christ, our Father and Holy Spirit. The meaning of ‘embodiment’ is made plain in Jesus’ words, ‘You will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20 NIV. This is to say you have been interwoven into God and God has been interwoven into you.
IRRELEVANCE OF ADAM AND MOSES
The law is irrelevant to our life in Christ. Christ is not irrelevant to righteousness however. His life as our life is holistic righteousness. God manifesting as us – the sons of God. The spirit of sonship is not ours if we are tied to the law. The law of the Spirit of life is ours when Christ is our life.
This interwoveness is not a collection of words, nor a definition or a mental construct. It is both personal and communal. It’s not a function of the letter because it is the relationship of persons – the trinity in you and you in the trinity. God being three and yet one is ultra-personal. And so are you when you have embraced your sonship by the Spirit. You become a real self and a real person as a son of God.
BODY OF DEATH ANULLED
Before the cross people lived in separation from God. They lived in a grace that we yet to be fully realised in Christ.
After the cross Adamic and Mosaic separation was no more. Just as Jesus and His Father were one, now Jesus and the church are one. Christ is our oneness with God. The new covenant reality is that Christ is our life, we are in Him and He is the Body manifest. Christ is not like the Body. He is the Body as a result of which you and all of us are the manifestation of Him.
REAL BODY OF CHRIST DEFINED
Frank Viola puts it well. “In so many modern churches, a set of doctrines, a certain theology, a charismatic personality, a set of special works or ministries, is the centrality rather than Christ. Mark it down: The centrality of anything other than Christ is a betrayal of the new species.” (1)
THE MANIFESTATION OF HIS PERSON
In the law or in a quasi-law paradigm, we are forced to define our life in God in what it is not. Some abstraction. When our life is in Christ, we are who we are: The church built without human hands. The basis of Paul’s homily in Corinthians is that the Corinthian church is part of Christ, the expression of Christ and that Believers should aspire to live from who they have become in the resurrected Jesus: The manifestation of His person.
BODY OF CHRIST OR BODY OF DEATH?
‘Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin’ Rom 7.24,25 NIV.
ADAM AND JESUS
There are two key figures in the saga of salvation. Adam and Jesus Christ. ‘In Adam all died. In Christ all are made alive.’ Adam is the figure and literal representation of ‘this body of death.’ Jesus is the Second Adam and representative of new creation in Himself. Christ our life is life. The law our life is the lie that the law brings life. It’s Satan’s lie in another form. Use the words the knowledge of good and evil for the law and you have it exactly. Use Jesus to be your life and you have your inheritance in Christ.
HALF WITTED AND HALF ALIVE
To live in Adam is to sentence oneself not see and to be partially dead.
We can live as the Body of Christ or the dead body of Adam and Moses. Our inheritance is that all Believers belong. We can live in this inheritance or we cannot. Our inheritance can be ignored through misunderstanding, wilful ignorance or because of an attachment to false doctrine. Paul urged the Corinthians to live in their inheritance of being part of the person of Christ because this is the new testament, living way – the way where Christ becomes us and is us. We are not the embodiment of the risen Jesus if we are the embodiment of the law. Back with Adam we are the embodiment of the body of death.
(1) Viola, Frank. From Eternity to Here: Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God (p. 272). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.
