Changing Our Likeness

 

DEVOTION

THE 1^ST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

CHANGING OUR LIKENESS

 

1 Cor 15:44-49

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

NIV

It cannot be any plainer than this. We are born in the flesh as a descendant of Adam. We are a natural being with flesh as Adam became. We use this term, became, because we have to believe that God created Adam as a spiritual being with a body, but when Adam sinned, he became mortal, simple flesh as his spirit was dead in sin, or died in some sense because of sin. The immorality gave way to mortality. This is how we are born in the flesh, with the original sin of Adam, and we are mortal.  This is the reason for the need to be born again, our spirit must be reborn into the family of God. We are no longer like the first Adam, but we have been transformed into the likeness of the second Adam, Jesus. Although we have been transformed, we are also in a continual state of transformation into the likeness of Jesus. There is work to be done within us and God, who started that work, is faithful to complete it. We think that is one, if not the key to everything. It is God who works in us, and not us doing the work. We cannot bring about this transformation within ourselves. No matter how hard we try to be godly, or righteous, we are going to fail. This is not to say that we should continue to sin so God’s grace could increase, God, forbit! But the point is we also cannot live as a perfect human, free of all sin, for then there would have been no need for Jesus to die for us. We could have done perfection without him. We could have given up our inheritance from Adam and taken up our inheritance from Christ, doing all the work. But we cannot, it is the work of God. Without Jesus we would only be a living being, however, when we became born again, we were given life, eternal life. What a joy that will be, when our Jesus we will see. We are going to be in the full likeness of Him, which means we will be like a being from heaven, eternal. That is what God has done and is doing. He changed and is changing our likeness from Adam to Jesus.