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The Catholic Telegraph
February 16, 2001Having dealt with the centrality of Christ’s resurrection to our faith and with some of the consequences of denying the resurrection of the body, Paul now deals with two more items that seem to have been troubling the Corinthians. The first was the question of the nature of the risen body. What will it be like? This is the subject of this Sunday’s second reading. The other question, how will the resurrection take place, will be dealt with in next Sunday’s live letter.
Apparently the Corinthians had trouble imagining any kind of body other than what they experienced here and now, which simply rotted away after death. In a rather grumpy way (cf. "You fool," in verse 36) Paul offers two parallels, two comparisons to help them see that there is more than one kind of body, more than one kind of life.
In verses 36 to 44, just before our text, Paul offers them the example of a seed which seemingly dies and then comes back to life as a plant. One kind of life form gives way to another. Similarly, when we die we are "sown" as one kind of body, a natural one, but we are raised as another kind, a spiritual one.
Our Sunday reading gives another parallel, this one concerned with two kinds of life arising from two kinds of people.
Paul speaks of two Adams, one, the first man, the other (Christ) the final man, and he lines up the similarities and differences between them. The first Adam was alive in a natural way, but the second Adam was alive in a way that offered life to others. The natural life of the first Adam was "earthly" and preceded the spirit-filled ("heavenly") life of Christ. People who are like the first Adam are "earthly" and people who are like the heavenly Adam (Christ) are "heavenly." Just as we are all like Adam in our present earthly existence, so, in due time, we shall all be like the heavenly Adam.
Our relationship with Adam gives us an earthly body. Our relationship with Christ will give us a "heavenly" one. We will be like the risen Christ just as we are like the earthly Adam. One kind of life will succeed the other. Paul does not go into great detail about the nature of our risen body, but he assures the Corinthians that its principal element will be likeness to Christ.
The nature of a risen body is not a hot issue for us contemporary Christians. Yet there are at least two important facets of this question that we need to be clear about.
The first is that our salvation, our eternal worth depends on our likeness to Christ. That likeness is what constitutes resurrection and final fulfillment. But the likeness we are dealing with here is not mere imitation of somebody else’s actions. We do speak of and encourage Christ-like attitudes and behavior. But that could be a matter of merely pretending to be something or someone we are not. The likeness to Christ that constitutes our resurrection, our salvation, our redemption is a real sharing in the risen life of Christ. We are like Him not because of certain words or actions modeled on Him, but because of His eternal risen life that becomes operative in our life.
This participation in the life of Christ is what the Christian tradition calls grace. It is given to us in baptism, and we are invited to assimilate and develop it throughout our existence in time. Being in Christ, living the risen life of Christ is not some sort of legal fiction in which God pretends that we are like Christ. It’s not a reward that we receive for being good. It’s a gift that we cannot deserve and that consists in really sharing in, really living the risen, glorified, eternal life of Christ. Nothing else makes us holy in God’s sight or worthy of His attention to us.
The second facet of Paul’s teaching about the nature of the risen body that is important for us to be attentive to is that we do not yet fully and definitively share Christ’s risen life. "We shall bear the image of the heavenly Adam," he says. The final transforming action of God on our behalf is still in the future.
We do share the risen life of Christ now through grace. Our transformation into Him is real. But it is a transformation that is partial, contingent, vulnerable, mingled with other levels of life. It is not the case that, once having received the life of Christ through baptism, we are home free and no further effort is required. On the contrary, one might say that the real struggle of the Christian life is just beginning when we are graced with Christ’s life. It is the struggle to appreciate what we have received, to act in accord with what God has called us to be, to understand and respond to the incomprehensible depths of God’s goodness and generosity to us. Our resurrection from the dead begins with baptism, but it doesn’t come to conclusion until we are finished with this life and definitively transformed into the second Adam.
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Conversation Questions
What does being like Adam mean to me?
What does sharing the life of Christ mean to me?
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