Reflections with Andy - 1 Corinthians 15: 12-36, Part Two - All Dead in Adam, All Live in Christ

Today we finish up this section, and we talk more about what it means when Paul says all died in Adam, and all live in Christ. And we talk about this whole baptism of the dead thing

Today, we take a closer look at 1 Corinthians 15 and Paul’s powerful statement that “all die in Adam” but “all are made alive in Christ.” What does that actually mean for how we understand sin, humanity, salvation, and the image of God? We talk about our natural “bent to sinning,” why sin is more than simply the bad things we do, and how Christ restores what has been corrupted. We’ll also unpack Paul’s reference to Christ as the “first fruits” of the resurrection and take a closer look at the mysterious passage about baptism on behalf of the dead. Ultimately, this conversation points us away from simply trying to be better people and toward the deeper Christian truth that our hope isn’t found in our actions, but in Jesus Christ.

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Good morning! I hope you’re having a great end to your week. This is Friday, and I hope you’ve got some great plans for the weekend. I’m recording this early, so that’s why I’m wearing the same clothes I wore in yesterday’s reflection.

I’ll be heading down to Hattiesburg to work on my daughter’s car—or, more accurately, to see what needs to be done to my daughter’s car. I won’t actually be working on it because, as you know, I have no useful skills. I’m not a mechanic! But we’ll see if we can figure out what’s going on with it.

So, no matter what your plans are for Friday, I hope it’s a good day. It’s a big weekend here in Starkville because the kids are moving in, so that’s always fun. We’re also wrapping up a sermon series we’ve been preaching for the last few weeks and we’ve been talking about how we’ve got work to do, so let’s go do it.

I always joke that I preach the same sermon every Sunday; I just change the words. So today we’re going to pick back up where we left off yesterday in 1 Corinthians 15:12–36. But I really want to focus on verses 20–29.

Yesterday we talked about how this passage is kind of bookended. Verses 12–19 talk about the resurrection, and then verses 30–36 come back around to talk about the resurrection again. If we don’t believe in the resurrection, or if Christ hasn’t been raised from the dead, then we have some serious problems.

But right in the middle of all of that, there’s a really interesting section that has some important theological and practical things for us to think about.

Paul says:

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”

Now, that is a huge doctrinal point right there for our faith: all die in Adam; all are made alive in Christ Jesus.

You’ve heard me preach this before and you’ve heard me teach it, but I think we spend too much time focusing on the wrong thing. We tend to focus on sins instead of our sinful nature.

And by sins, I mean the things we do that we shouldn’t do. I jokingly call it “smoking and drinking and cussing.” Those things we know are wrong. Those actions can be big or small, but they’re the things we do that we know we shouldn’t do.

But Paul is saying it’s more than that.

“All die in Adam; all are made alive in Christ.”

When Adam failed, when Adam was deceived, when Adam fell into sin, humanity was corrupted. There are a lot of theological words you can use for this. You can call it depravity. You can call it original sin. There are all kinds of ways of describing it.

But the basic idea is that all of us, as human beings, have this bent toward sin.

I love the way Charles Wesley describes it in his hymn “Love Divine”:

“Take away our bent to sinning.”

Alpha and Omega be.

We just have this bent. We have this inclination, this desire to do the wrong thing.

I often describe it this way: How many of us teach our children to be bad?

None of us!

We teach them to be good. We teach them manners. We teach them to share. We teach them how to treat other people. We don’t have to teach our kids how to be selfish. We don’t have to teach them how to lie. We don’t have to teach them how to fight over a toy.

There’s something in us.

As human beings, as the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, we have this natural bent. This is what Paul is talking about when he says, “All die in Adam.”

All of us are dead in our sins. All of us have this corruption.

Now, there are different ways to understand this. In the Wesleyan tradition, which is the tradition the United Methodist Church is part of, we talk about depravity largely in terms of corruption.

In Genesis 1, we’re told that we are made in the image of God. Then the fall happens in Genesis 3, and the image of God is corrupted.

We believe that it was corrupted, not destroyed.

That’s an important distinction.

We believe that all human beings still bear the image of God. Every human being has the image of God upon them. But that image has been corrupted or deformed. It isn’t quite right. It has that bent in it.

All of us have that.

So, when I talk about sin, I don’t ever want you to hear me speaking about sin as though it makes you some piece of scum.

No. No. No. No.

To talk about you being sinful is to talk about you being human.

We’re all sinful. We all have a brokenness. It’s part of being human.

So, all are dead, or all have this corruption, in Adam.

And then Paul says that all are made alive through Christ.

Christ is the second Adam. That’s what Paul talks about later. Christ restores what sin has corrupted.

Through Adam, all of us as human beings have this corruption, this sin. Through Christ, we can all be made whole.

Ted Runyon, in his wonderful book The New Creation, talks about how we are the new creation. That image of God that has been corrupted and deformed through the sin of Adam—that image is being restored through Christ.

The effects of sin are being reduced.

We call that sanctification in my tradition. We call it Christian growth. We have different ways of describing it.

But through Christ, what was broken in Adam is being restored.

All died in Adam, but through Christ, all can be made alive.

And here’s the important thing: It isn’t your actions that make you who you are.

We’re not saved through our actions. We’re saved through Christ.

Likewise, sin corrupts us and often forces that corruption to show itself through our actions. Christ restores us, and that restoration begins to show itself through our actions.

We don’t need to focus only on the surface level.

Y’all, there’s something deeper going on.

And I think that’s the problem with morality sometimes. We focus on being good or being bad. But that’s just looking at the symptoms.

That’s like taking Tylenol to treat an illness.

No, we want to cure the illness.

The old word for preachers is “curate.” We want to cure the illness. And the illness is this corruption that comes through Adam.

So how is that corruption cured?

Christ.

Christ is the answer to our sin problem.

The answer to our sin problem isn’t simply better actions.

The answer to our sin problem is Jesus.

As in Adam all die, through Christ all are raised. Through Christ we are born again. Through Christ we are made new.

And then Paul uses another really interesting phrase. He calls Christ the “first fruits.”

First fruits are a concept from the Jewish tradition. Basically, if you have the first fruits of a crop or a harvest, those first fruits are a sign and guarantee of the harvest that is still to come.

So when Paul says Christ is the first fruits of our resurrection, he’s saying that Christ was the first one to be raised, and because Christ was raised, we shall be raised.

Christ’s resurrection guarantees our resurrection.

That’s what it means for Christ to be the first fruits. His resurrection is the guarantee that our resurrection is coming.

And then, real quick, there’s that strange passage about the baptism of the dead.

This is something that happened in the early church. Sometimes you didn’t just walk down an aisle, get baptized, and join the church. That’s not how it worked back then.

It was a process. It could be a several-year process of becoming a Christian. There was teaching, testing, and preparation.

And sometimes, during that process, you would die of natural causes or you would be martyred.

So what happened if you died during that process before you had been baptized and formally received into the church—even though you already believed in Jesus and were considered a Christian, you just hadn’t completed the process?

When the time for your baptism would have come, someone could stand in for you and be baptized in your name.

That’s what Paul is talking about here.

It was a way of honoring those people who had died before their process of catechism and baptism had been completed. They were in Christ, and the baptism was an act of honoring that.

Now, that’s an interesting phrase, and some churches have built some interesting theology around it. But I don’t think you want to build your theology around this particular practice because it was something specific to that time and place in the early church.

But I do want you to understand what Paul is getting at.

The big point is this: All died in Adam, and all are made alive in Christ.

That’s the good news.

The problem goes deeper than the things we do. The problem is the corruption that has entered humanity. And the solution isn’t simply trying harder to be good.

The solution is Christ.

So, anyway, I wanted you to understand a little bit more of the importance of that phrase: “All died in Adam, and all are made alive in Christ.”

On Monday, we’ll pick up with the resurrection body, where Paul really tries to explain something that’s hard to explain.

So Monday may be very interesting.

And very messy.

I hope you’re well. Have a great weekend. And if you’re here in Starkville with us at First United Methodist Church, we’ve got a great church and some great things going on here.

Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you Monday.

Thanks!