Paul says that this Son-ship process is an ongoing one, much like the growth of an embryo or fetus in the womb of a mother. The “outer man is wasting away, while the inner self is being renewed day after day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). This is not Plato’s dualism of mortal body and immortal soul. It is the life-giving Spirit of Christ, dwelling in the mortal, decaying body, and which brings life. Paul says that the process of inner transformation has already begun: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). In that sense, Paul says that these chosen ones are not “in the flesh” but instead “in the Spirit,” since the Spirit of Christ dwells in them, making their spirits alive, though their bodies are “dead” (Romans 8:9–11). The final step in the “Son-ship” is what he calls the “redemption” of the body, when it is set free from its bondage to decay (Romans 8:23).
THE LAST ADAM
Paul’s core understanding of the mystery is based upon his teaching about two Adams, a first and a second, or last. Theologians use the term Christology to refer to the various views of Jesus that were developed and debated in the early church. In what ways was Jesus understood to be more than an ordinary human being? Within the New Testament one already finds a complex and diverse mix of views.10 In Paul’s letter to the Philippians he provides us with what is generally considered to be our earliest expression of Christology. His words are carefully chosen and formally set forth. Many scholars have argued that Paul inherited this confession of faith, because it has the making of a formal creed, but I regard Paul as its author and originator since it reflects his unique view of Christ so completely. It is very nicely written in Greek, in stanzas, much like a hymn. Here is a very literal translation:
Though he [Christ] existed in the form of God, he did not consider being equal to God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of a man. And being so born, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him and favored on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6–11)
The allusions to Adam in the Genesis story are unmistakable. Adam is the one who tried to “grasp” equality with God, and thus he lost his potential to eat of the Tree of Life and live forever (Genesis 3:5, 22–23). As a “man of dust,” he and all his descendants were doomed to return to the dust, with no hope of escaping death (Genesis 3:19).
In contrast to Adam, Paul believed that Christ, before he was born as the human Jesus, existed from the beginning in the form of God, and had equality with God.11 Whether Paul understood Jesus as a created being or one eternally existing with God, he never says. Paul does, however, believe that Christ was an agent in the creation in the world, and that he gave up the riches of his heavenly status, taking on the form of a mortal man:
Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:6)
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)
The writer of the letter of Colossians, likely writing a decade or more after Paul’s death, possibly made use of some earlier material from Paul, particularly on this topic. Here is how he fills out the description of Christ before his human birth, something Paul himself does not elaborate in the letters we have from him:
He [Christ] is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities—all were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15–17)
It seems reasonable to assume Paul had something like this in mind.12 Christ would have been the very first of God’s creation, put over everything else, whether the invisible angelic hosts, or the visible things on the earth. The letter of Hebrews, which was also written after Paul, but probably influenced by his thinking, says that Christ was the one “through whom God created the world” (Hebrews 1:2). But all this was before the human being Jesus existed.
According to Paul, by emptying himself and being born of a woman as a flesh-and-blood mortal we know as Jesus, and then showing his willingness to be obedient to God by suffering to the point of death on a cross, Jesus was raised from the dead by God. His resurrection was a victory over sin and its resulting process—death. As we have seen, according to Paul, Jesus was not merely a “man of dust” restored to mortal life, but one transformed into a “man of heaven,” whom God exalted above every other created being in the universe. He becomes the first “man of dust,” ever transformed into heavenly immortality and glory, inaugurating the process of salvation for others who would follow his example of obedience and suffering.
By becoming like the first Adam, Jesus has paved the way for a group of second or last Adams, that is, a new genus of heavenly beings, transformed from dust to Spirit as he had been. Paul explains this to the Corinthians:
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:47–49)
Paul explains that the first Adam, of the dust, was an earthly parallel to the last Adam, who becomes a life-giving Spirit. “It is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual.” Adam and Eve were made in the image and likeness of God in the very beginning: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). However, they were perishable physical models or prototypes, reflecting the image and likeness of God, but made of dust and thus subject to death. Since they greedily grasped at their potential to be “equal to God,” they were banished from his presence. When Christ was born in human likeness, taking on the form of a man, he represented a potential reversal of the process, in which one who bears the image of the man of dust could undergo the glory and transformation to immortality.
Even though Paul’s language here can sound symbolic, analogical, and even mythological to our modern ears, for him the process of bringing about the birth of this new family of heavenly beings was as real as the air he breathed and the ground he walked upon. After all, he believed that he was the chief agent God had chosen to reveal the Announcement of the mystery to all nations. He also believed the time he had to complete his mission was quite short. He was driven night and day by the visions and revelations that he believed he had received from Christ. At any moment he expected to look up to the sky and see Christ there, come to initiate with unimaginable power and glory the final stages of human history.
A HEAVENLY KINGDOM
Paul does not tell us much about what he thinks will happen after the arrival of Christ in the clouds of heaven when “those who belong to Christ,” whether living or dead, will be glorified and lifted up into the heavens. He refers several times to “inheriting the kingdom of God,” referring to the heavenly glorification that his followers were expecting to receive: “Now this I say brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:50). He warns his followers any number of times that if they persist in immoral behavior they will “not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10; Galatians 5:21).