There are many names and titles for Jesus in Paul’s letters. He is Christ and Lord , Israel’s Messiah and the one true God of Israel (1 Cor. 1:1-3; 16:21-24; Phil. 2:5-9). He is our great God and Savior (Tit. 2:13; Rom. 9:5) and the Son of God, the true Israel and greater David (Rom. 1:4; 1 Cor. 1:9). He is the mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:15), the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. 2:8) and our Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7). He is the image of God, not only in his humanity but as the eternal Son who perfectly reflects the nature of the Father (Col. 1:15). He is the the firstborn over all creation, the beginning of God’s new creation (Col. 1:15-18), and he is the firstfruits of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20).
In the second main section of Paul’s exposition of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:35-49) we names and titles given to Jesus as result of his resurrection from the dead and his exaltation to his Father’s right hand. These are not as common as “Christ” and Lord” but they are just as significant; they are at the very heart of the gospel of redemption accomplished and applied. Paul presents the risen Christ as the Last Adam, the life-giving Spirit, and the man of heaven, who not only possesses resurrection life (as man) but also confers resurrection life (as God) to his church.
Christ, the Last Adam and Life-Giving Spirit
…If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. (1 Cor. 15:44-46).
After making several comparisons between our present and future resurrection bodies (1 Cor. 15:42-44) Paul moves to a contrast between Adam and Christ, making the argument that, “if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body” (44). In support of this argument, Paul quotes from Genesis 2:7, where we learn that, “the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” At creation, Adam became part of a natural order of existence. But when Christ was raised by the Spirit he entered a new glorified state, a new order of existence that was spiritual. This does not mean the risen Christ entered an ethereal, non-physical existence, like some sort of ghost (cf. 1 John 1:1-4). Rather, a glorified spiritual body is bodily existence that is animated, empowered, and ruled by the Holy Spirit and fit for life in the age to come. What Paul is saying is that, just as Adam was the head and representative of humanity at creation, the risen Lord Jesus is now the last Adam, the final and better Adam, because he is the “Head and representative of the new humanity and new order of being.1Anthony C. Thiselton, First Corinthians: A Shorter Exegetical and Pastoral Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 285.
Remarkably, Paul not only says that Christ is the last Adam but that at his resurrection and subsequent exaltation he became a life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). This participial phrases uses the same verb from the previous Adam/Christ contrast, where Paul said, “in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). However, as Richard Gaffin has persuasively argued, this almost certainly a reference to the Holy Spirit, so that Paul is saying Christ became the life-giving Spirit. At first glance this seems strange and borderline heretical. But Paul is not saying Jesus is the Holy Spirit, as if he is blurring the personal distinctions between two of the divine persons. Gaffin puts it well:
Paul’s point is that by virtue of resurrection (glorification), Christ as the last Adam has come into such complete and permanent possession of the Holy Spirit, as he himself has been so thoroughly and climactically transformed by the Spirit, that consequently the two are equated in their working. They are to be seen as one as they have been made one specifically in the activity of ‘giving life,’ eschatological, resurrection life.2Word and Spirit: Selected Writings in Biblical and Systematic Theology, Richard B. Gaffin Jr., eds. David B. Gardner and Guy Prentiss Waters (Westminster Seminary Press, 2023) 442-443
This close association between Christ and the Spirit is seen all throughout the NT (cf. 2 Cor. 3:17). Jesus says that he will not leave his followers as orphans but he will come to them (John 14:18) and will be with them to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20). The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9-11) and the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7; Phil. 1:19), and both Jesus and the Spirit are said to give life (John 5:21; 6:63; 10:10; 10:28; 11:25-26; 14:6; 1 John 5:11-12). Gaffin concludes: “Eschatological life in the Spirit is the shared life of the glorified Christ. When the New Testament speaks of the work of the Spirit in the church, in view is the resurrection, eschatological life of Christ; conversely, when the New Testament speaks of resurrection, whether present or future, in view is the eschatological work of the Spirit.”3Gaffin, Word and Spirit, 444.
With this title, of Jesus as “life-giving Spirit,” Paul is giving us a one-sentence commentary on Pentecost. This is precisely how Peter interpreted the extraordinary events that followed Jesus’ resurrection: “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing” (Acts 2:32–33). Thus, Paul is bringing into view, “the momentous and epochal significance of the resurrection for Christ personally.” He is highlighting “Christ’s own climatic transformation by the Spirit in his resurrection, a transformation that results in a new and permanent relationship between Christ and the Spirit.”4For more on the importance of this title, see Richard B. Gaffin, “‘Life-Giving Spirit’: Probing The Center Of Paul’s Pneumatology“, JETS 41/4 (December 1998) 573–589. This title might even help us more fully understand what it means that Jesus breathed on his disciples, saying to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).
Christ, the Man of Heaven
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also 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 Cor. 15:47-49).
In verse 47 we have a continuing contrast between Adam and Christ. Whereas Adam was of the earth and of the dust, Jesus is called the man of heaven. Yes, Christ “came down from heaven” for us and our salvation in the incarnation, but that is not what Paul has in view here. The context of this title is the resurrection of Jesus and Jesus being the model and means of our own resurrection.5This helpful phrase comes from N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God. He is not saying Christ “parachuted in from heaven,” but that the risen and exalted Christ now has a physical body empowered/imbued with the spiritual life of heaven. He possesses a spiritual body fit the life in the new creation. Being the man of heaven is another way of saying what Paul said earlier, that Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection, the beginning of God’s new creation. Just as the first man, Adam, embodies the natural and earthly order of existence, so now the “second man,” Jesus, embodies the spiritual and heavenly order of existence as the risen and ascended Christ.
Then in verses 48-49 Paul shifts his focus to those who belong to Adam and Christ and the benefits the church receives as being filled with the Holy Spirit. All those who belong to Adam are of the dust, and they all die; but all those who belong to Christ are of heaven and they shall all be made alive (cf. 1 Cor. 15:21-22). The church is the company of those who have received the Holy Spirit as the down-payment, the firstfruits, of resurrection life (Eph. 1:13-14; Rom. 8:23). And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, by being “in Adam”, we shall also one day bear the image of the man of heaven, when Christ returns in power and glory. Yes, those who have come to Christ in faith-baptism are new creations in Christ now, but we still await the glorious day when we fully bear the image of the man of heaven and are raised with spiritual and glorified bodies.
The verb for “bearing” the image of Adam and Christ in verse 49 is often used in Scripture for wearing clothing (John 19:5; James 2:3), and it ties together with Paul’s earlier illustration of a “bare kernel” that was sown being clothed with a new “body” (1 Cor. 15:37). Those who have received the Holy Spirit from the resurrected Christ have likewise “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after image of its creator” (Col. 3:10). Additionally, this theme of “wearing” the image of the man of heaven is connected to what Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthians, about longing to put on our heavenly dwelling (2 Cor. 5:1-5). Ciampa and Rosner conclude, “We have all worn the (perishable and mortal) image of (fallen) Adam, but we will end up clothing ourselves with the (imperishable and immortal) image of Christ (the new Adam), in the resurrection from the dead.”6Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), 826.
Conclusion
By virtue of his resurrection, ascension, and exaltation Jesus is now the Last Adam, the life-giving Spirit, and the man of heaven, who not only possesses resurrection life (as man) but also confers resurrection life (as God) to his church. These titles which Paul ascribes to the risen Lord remind us of the significance of Pentecost in the God’s unfolding drama of redemptive history. To quote Gaffin once again,
It does not overstate it to say this: without Christ himself being constituted the justified, life-giving Spirit, and his correlative outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost, there is no salvation. Without Pentecost, the definitive, unrepeatable work of Christ is incomplete. In no respect is Pentecost a model for an additional, ‘second’ blessing that makes for a ‘full gospel.’ It is a first order, primary blessing apart from which there is simply no gospel.
Yes, Christ died as the Passover lamb to secure atonement for sin and was raised for our justification. Christ Jesus has received the name “Lord,” the name which is above every name (Phil. 2:5-11). But Christ has also obtained eternal, resurrection life in the Spirit, which he now graciously pours out on his church, so that we too may share in this eschatological life, bear the fruit of the Spirit, and one day fully share in the image of the man of heaven (Col. 3:1-4).
