09.04 As in Adam - So in Christ

9 - God All in All; Section 4 AS IN ADAM - SO IN CHRIST

One of the grandest passages of Scripture to be found in all the pages of God’s wonderful Word is in 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 and is accentuated by this remarkable proclamation: "... as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Would God that I had the voice of a trumpet that I could sound from the highest mountain peak this message that "as in Adam ALL die, even so in Christ SHALL ALL be made alive!" Just what does it mean for ALL to be "made alive"? First we must understand what it means for ALL to "die." I will speak very plainly about that condition or state of being that we call death. Who are the dead? Of course some one will say that is a foolish question because it is so obvious that the dead are those who have departed this life, their bodies lie buried in the earth. But far more than our decease was brought in by Adam, and something which affects our souls much more than the sleep which ends our earth consciousness. God did not say to Adam, "In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:17). If He had, Adam would have fallen over dead in the very day he sinned. He would then have had no progeny of sinners. In the precise language of the Hebrew He said, "And dying, you shall die." That is, there would be a process of dying as well as a condition of death. As we now know, there is a long process of disintegration, with which we are all acquainted, even though we are accustomed to calling it life! Ever since Adam sinned, he and his descendants have been dying. It isn’t that death "catches up with us." Death is a part of us, from the very moment of conception until the day it triumphs over us. Like ripe fruit plucked from the tree, our bloom soon passes away. In Adam, all are dying, even while they walk about on two feet. That is the "life" that we inherited from our disobedient parent. But death is much more than this! No more precise definition of death can be given than the one provided by God Himself: "For to be carnally minded IS DEATH; but to be spiritually minded IS LIFE and peace" (Romans 8:6). This is the process of death, descending from the purity of the realm of the spiritual, to thus awaken to the realm of the flesh, to mind the things of the flesh. And as long as we remain carnally minded, we remain in the state of death. It is not speaking of dead bodies, but of a dead-consciousness of God. Those who are not in any sense conscious of God, or His life, or what God is doing about them. They know not God or His will or His work, it is as foreign to them as though they were far away in some other part of God’s universe. The sad part of it is that many of the dead are professing Christians. The apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians and said, "Awake you that sleepest, and ARISE FROM THE DEAD, and Christ shall give you light." Were these words directed to bodies in the cemetery? How foolish! It was written to professed Christians in the Church at Ephesus. Can we not see that in God’s sight, death is not so much concerned with the fleshly body as with the consciousness of God’s life. The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be, for it minds only the things of the flesh, and fulfills the desires of the self-will, all of which perishes. Paul describes this natural state this way, "And you - who were DEAD IN TRESPASSES AND SINS; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others" (Ephesians 2:1-3). The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), and death has passed upon ALL MEN, for that ALL HAVE SINNED. This inworking of the mystery of iniquity has brought every man into the death of the carnal mind, terminating our consciousness of the spiritual realm, and causing us to become very self conscious in the flesh realm. Anybody apart from God in Christ is dead, whether in this life, or in any other. "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (1 John 5:12). Physical death is only one of the results of a previous spiritual death. When Adam sinned, fellowship was broken between himself and the realm of God. It was not merely his physical demise after 930 years that constituted his death, but his separation from God on the very day he sinned was the inner reality of his death. That is the real death! And all the sorrows, frustrations, heartaches, pains, sicknesses, sufferings, disappointments, tragedies, and torments of this poor mortal existence are all part and parcel of the realm of death - truly the condition and state of being of all men "in Adam."

Let us now see how it is that "in Christ" all shall be MADE ALIVE. The verse under consideration is found in 1 Corinthians 15:22, and this whole chapter deals with resurrection. The word resurrection is so inadequate to express the true thought or idea that the Holy Spirit is conveying to us. The common conception of this word carries with it the idea of opening all the graves in the world and the arising out of them of the physical bodies of those who have died. But since death is something more than dead bodies, you can be assured, dear ones, that resurrection is something far beyond bringing bodies out of tombs. To have a false or limited view of the resurrection is to have a false and limited view of God’s work throughout the ages until now. If our view of the resurrection is dwarfed, then our whole view of God’s plan is dwarfed. So we read that in Christ ALL SHALL BE MADE ALIVE. The contrast is not between corpses and walking bodies, but between the dying process and the life process in God. The Greek text actually reads, "As in Adam all are dying, so in the Christ shall all be made alive." The terms "are dying" and "shall be made alive" are in the incomplete tense in the original, which denotes an action in progress. The long drawn out activity of death in dragging men down to sin, death, and the grave is put in contrast with the endless activity of life imparting holiness, power, incorruption, and glory. All who endured the first shall enjoy the second. Here is a message for mankind which should lift it above its misery! The process of His life, and hence, the process of resurrection has already commenced with us! Truly "He hath quickened us together with Christ ... and hath raised us up " so that "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above" (Ephesians 2:5-6; Colossians 3:1). To be "made alive" is more than some instantaneous event to take place some time in the distant future. "Made alive" is not a blasting open of graves and the coming forth of the bodies that have been buried in them. "Made alive" does not point to some event when people will go soaring off into the heavens. When Jesus stood before the tomb of Lazarus, He rebuked Martha for looking for some manner of event in the far distant future and told her that the RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE WAS STANDING THERE BEFORE THEM. "I am the resurrection and the life. " Oh, saints of God, do you not see that the eternal Father within the Christ was and is the resurrection? "I live by the Father," Jesus declared. The resurrection was not some thing that happened to Jesus, not some event of which He was a partaker, not some day marked by the calendar. The resurrection was and is A MAN! "I AM" - there it is! "I AM the resurrection and the life." To possess the Man, to put on the Man, to come into union with the Man is to have resurrection, for the Man IS the resurrection. "In Christ shall all be made alive." This is what Paul is speaking of in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians. He bases his argument on the fact of whether or not the Christ has risen from the dead. In verse sixteen we read from the Diaglott, "For if dead persons are not raised up, NEITHER HAS CHRIST BEEN RAISED." Please notice, and most other translations bear this out, Paul says, "If dead persons ARE NOT (present tense) raised up." He did not say, "If dead persons WILL NOT (future tense) be raised up." He placed it in the present, that if the dead ARE NOT raised up, then the CHRIST IS NOT RAISED. If Jesus the Christ is the only one so far raised from the dead, He is most surely having a lonely time of it, and He too is looking with wistful eyes into the unknown future, waiting for the graves to open. But there is a note of triumph in Paul’s epistle, and that epistle comes right out of Paul’s own personal experience when he proclaims in verse twenty, "BUT NOW IS CHRIST RISEN FROM THE DEAD, and become the firstfruits of THEM THAT SLEPT." Ah, the word "sleep" is in the past tense, them that SLEPT. This can but mean that they are not sleeping now, and Christ has already led forth from the dominion of death an unknown host who are WITH HIM IN THE LIFE OF THE RESURRECTION!

Truly the resurrection is not a future hope - it is a present reality. As those in Adam "are dying" so in Christ men "are being made alive." Receiving of His life we find it to be a RESURRECTION LIFE. The word "resurrection" is from the Greek word ANASTASIS meaning a standing or rising up. It denotes much more than our English word resurrection which we term to mean a restoring to life again. The Greek word means the WHOLE PROCESS OF ADVANCING AND RISING UP UNTIL THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE REALM IS REACHED, and our goal is nothing short than full conformation into the image of God that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him. Resurrection is the process of STANDING UP and ADVANCING, it is arising from the dust and the low realm of the earthy, to bear the image of the heavenly. Resurrection is the process of having our life lifted up from the earth, to be raised to the heavenlies, joined in one with the fullness of the Spirit of God. Our alienation and separation from God, with all the dreadful attending sorrows, are already beginning to end in this life as through Christ we ARE MADE ALIVE! And, blessed be His name, in Christ shall ALL be made alive!