Part 1.5 - continued

There are two great representative men - Adam and Christ. Mankind by nature are copies of Adam thefallen. The risen will be copies of Christ, our

Head. The body enters into the reality of both. As the body of the risen Christ is glorious, so will His saved ones have bodies of glory and power. Christians may speak of "glorified spirits above," but Scripture does not. Glory belongs to the body of the risen, even as it did to our Lord on the mount. And so Moses and Elias, who were with Him on the mount, were men in the body. Close and potent as is our connexion with Adam, so close and powerful is and will be found to be our union with Christ in its eternal effects. Our connexion with Adam in flesh and spirit introduced us into a body of weakness, pain, disease, and death, and a soul at enmity with God. Our connexion with Christ has given us a soul at peace with God, renewed by the Holy Ghost, and a body is preparing for us never to hinder us in good, or to tempt us to evil, but incorruptible, never to be touched by death.

49. And as we have borne the image of the earthly (man), let us also bear the image of the heavenly

(man).

There is here a slight difference in the reading of the best manuscripts, which, however, materially affects the sense. We read it, " we shall bear." But the most valuable manuscripts read as given above - "Let us bear " - an exhortation. Now this strikes us at first as not worthy to be received. Is not the apostle dealing with the kind of body we" are to have in resurrection? And how, then, does exhortation come in ? How can we affect the character of our resurrection-body ? Does not that rest wholly on the Almighty power of God ? To clear up this difficulty, it is to be observed that the Holy Spirit has here changed the phrase. Before it was the origin of the body which was spoken of - " As is the earthy (man), such are the men of earth." But now we have a new phrase - " The image of the earthly; the image of the heavenly." Therein is couched, I believe, a reference to a further word of God in Genesis 5:3, telling us the results of the fall as perpetuated in Adam’s posterity. Adam "begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth." This image of fallen Adam takes in, not the body alone, but the soul and spirit also.

Men by nature are such as the apostle describes in the 2nd of Ephesians - dead in trespasses and sins, following the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

They are such as we find Cain and his posterity, wandering away from a just and condemning God, and seeking, by developing the resources of the earth whence he was taken, to fill up the void occasioned by the absence of God. The tense of the verb confirms this view. It is the indefinite past, or Aorist. Had Paul been speaking of the body alone, he would have used the present - " As we bear the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." No change has been yet introduced into the condition of the body of the believer. But there has been a change in the condition of the soul. We were once of one condition throughout ; we were entirely in the image of fallen Adam. But grace has changed and is changing our spirits into the image of the Son of God. The time of that change is undefined, being different in each believer. The Spirit of the Son sent into our hearts is renewing us into the image of Him who created us (Romans 8:29). Like Moses on Sinai’s top, beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we are being transformed from glory to glory by the Lord the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18). We are changing into the image of Christ, who is the image of God. We have put off the old man, and have put on the new, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created Him (Col. iii.

10). The believer is not, like Adam ^«fallen, ignorant of the knowledge of good and evil. He is not, like fallen Adam, left to the lusts of the flesh, and condemned by the conscience he stole. Nor does God mean to take out of us that knowledge of good and evil so unjustly acquired, but to bring us entirely to obey the sense of what is good. By the past tense the apostle is referring to the change which grace has made in our conversion.

Hence the word of exhortation comes in - Let ’ us resemble the heavenly man more and more.’ It is towards this image that God is transforming us. Here, dear Christian reader, is room for us all to advance.

How is it to be ? By beholding the Son of God. By the knowledge of the Word of God and faith in it applied by the Spirit.