A Word in Season: The Image of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:49)

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You've heard perhaps of the doppelganger, somebody's living double, or you use the language of the spitting image, the son who looks like, and walks like, and talks like, and acts just like his father.

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Or you might know of the the trend that there was not long ago of people going into art galleries and standing by famous or not so famous portraits, and you would see a striking resemblance between the portrait and the person standing next to it, the way that the light fell on a certain face with the hair so arranged and the clothes after a certain fashion.

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The truth is that we all bear someone's image. The Bible makes very clear in 1

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Corinthians chapter 15 and verse 49 that as we have borne the image of the man of dust we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man.

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Now by nature we all bear the image of the man of dust, and some of us remain with that image, with that corruption, that dishonor, and that weakness.

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By nature we are all in Adam. He is our representative before God.

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We are descended from him, not just physically, but spiritually, and it is in him that we find our nature and our identity.

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It's the reason for our sinfulness and for our need of salvation, and it's the reason why ultimately these bodies will die and will go into the earth and they will be consumed.

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But for believers there is something more, because though by nature we are in Adam, yet by grace we are in Christ, and we live in him.

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We enjoy union with him. He is now our spiritual head.

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He is the one in and through whom and because of whom God has all his dealings with us.

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And so the promise arises in 1 Corinthians 15 49 that as we have borne the image of the man of dust we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man.

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We feel at times the the weight of this corruptible body. It not only sometimes wears us down and drags us down, we find that when we want to do good, evil is right there with us.

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When the spirit is willing, still the flesh is weak. And yet we know that our redemption is for the entirety of our humanity.

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So what is our hope? For if this body dies before Christ returns, how then are the dead raised up?

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That's the question that the Corinthians were asking. And with what body do they come? And Paul emphasizes then that there is this expectation that as we have borne the image of the man of dust, the man of the earth, this natural body, so at the return of Jesus Christ we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man.

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Now what a wonder that is. What a prospect. How defeating of our finite mortal reasoning that we shall be like Christ in the resurrection.

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He has a spiritual body, and I think you would need to put that with a capital

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S. He has a body that has been crafted and is characterized by the work of the

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Holy Spirit in power. So it's not an immaterial body.

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It is a body that is entirely characterized and influenced by the work of the

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Holy Spirit. And in that kind of body we too shall live, so that our souls, now renewed and being perfected, perfected at the moment of death, shall have these perfected and glorified bodies in which we shall live.

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And then no more corruption, but raised in incorruption. No more dishonor, but raised in glory.

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No more weakness, but raised in power. Sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body, bearing the image of our

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Redeemer, Jesus Christ, in that moment when the entirety of his redeeming work is known in all our redeemed humanity, so that both body and soul we are like him in purity and perfection.

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So in the midst of all the sufferings and the sorrows and the pains and the problems and the weaknesses and the wearinesses of this world in this body, let those who are

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God's people look forward with eagerness to the day when, though now we bear the image of the man of dust, we shall bear the image of the heavenly man.