What does Paul mean, when speaking about Adam, in whom all die, and about the Christ, in whom on the contrary, all have life? Do not people live a natural life, “Adam's life”? And don’t Christians die, although partially, because they are not yet transformed to the end? If we look at the natural life of a man and at its life in the Kingdom as at...
What does Paul mean, when speaking about Adam, in whom all die, and about the Christ, in whom on the contrary, all have life? Do not people live a natural life, “Adam's life”? And don’t Christians die, although partially, because they are not yet transformed to the end? If we look at the natural life of a man and at its life in the Kingdom as at two lives completely diverse, isolated one from another, the question will remain unresolved. Already the division of life into natural and spiritual does not allow to adequately understand the apostle. One can understand Paul only by having looking at life with the look of the authors of the biblical books, who did not divide the life of man into parts. In fact, when God breathes in the nostrils of man His breath, and man lives, he receives life in all its possible plenitude for his nature, both spiritual or physical.
But before the fall it is in particular the spiritual component that prevails in his life: it is not accidentally that the biblical author connects the lively strength ("the soul") of the unfallen man with this breath of God, which makes him just like his Creator. And the natural component of the human life in itself contradicts not at all that: because before the fall, prevails in man the spirit, and not the nature. The situation is different after the fall: the lively strength of the fallen man is now connected not with the breath of God, as it was the case before the fall, but with the blood, with what is natural, physiological.
Now already the nature begins to prevail over the spirit in the life of man, and man begins more and more to look like animal: because the life force of animals is connected also exceptionally to nature, with the same blood, which is in many similar to that of man. And the mortality of man is connected in particular to this ascendancy in his life of the natural principle over the spiritual. But man, even the fallen, is not deprived of the spiritual life: because he does not lose definitively the image of God after the fall. But if before this image was clearly visible, forming the core of the personality of the perfect man, then now, after the fall, he shows through only in man, constantly darkening the prevailing natural principle.
And in Christ, through Whom man joins the life of the Kingdom, begins the process of the transformation of the human nature damaged by the fall. Transformations, the result of which is not only the overcoming of the consequences of this fall, but also the change of the quality of the nature forming the personality of man. Such change, after which one can’t already naturally speak about any mortality: because in a new transformed person the spirit does not simply triumph on the nature, but also the nature is completely under the power of the spirit: because only such a nature, changed by the breath of God can become an organic part of the Kingdom.
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15:22 As through Adam all, even the righteous, die, so through Christ all these shall be made alive - He does not say, "shall revive," (as naturally as they die,) but shall be madealive, by a power not their own.