The text is found in 1 Corinthians
chapter 15 and verse 22. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and
verse 22. For as in Adam all die, even
so in Christ shall all remain alive. For as in Adam all die,
even so in Christ shall all be made alive. I want us to turn
to this verse to consider these two very obvious points, very
simple division the text breaks into. On the one hand we see
death in Adam and on the other we see life in the Lord Jesus
Christ. So we simply attend to that division. First of all, to consider that
death which is in Adam. Adam of course, the first man. The very name that was given
to him, Adam, means man. And it should not surprise us
that first man serves as the type of him who is the second
man. We see that quite clearly in
this chapter. Verse 45, as it is written, the
first Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made
a quickening spirit. The last Adam of course being
another than Christ himself. Then again at verse 47, the first
man is of the earth earthen, the second man is the Lord from
heaven. There are various characters
in the Old Testament who are typical characters, some with
disputes with regards to precisely which ones are to be considered
as types of the Lord Jesus. But there is no doubting at all
concerning this man, Adam, as we saw in that portion that we
read in Romans chapter 5. He is spoken of there as the
figure of him that was to come. Romans 5 and verse 14. Adam is
the figure of him that was to come. The guy there, we are told,
for that all have sinned. When he sinned, when Adam sinned,
when he transgressed, when he disobeyed the commandment of
God, he was serving as the head of all the human race. Just as the Lord Jesus Christ
is the head of his body, the Church, and as Christ comes to
represent those who are given to him, in the eternal covenant,
so that first man Adam serves as the head of all who were there
in his loins, all who were in the succeeding generations to
be born, and so we are told there in Romans 5, 12, for that, or
as the margin says, in whom all have sinned, when he sins them,
each and every one of us, and all whoever lived upon the face
of the earth, all sinned in Adam. By one man's disobedience, many
were made sinners. He is really a remarkable type
of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we think of Christ as that
one who is the head of his body, So this man is a figure of the
Christ who was to come. Adam is the head of all the human
race. And he was told, was he not,
quite plainly, by God, there in the paradise which was the
Garden of Eden, that he could eat, he could partake of every
tree in the Garden of Eden. Only that which is called the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden. God said
they shall not eat of it, but in the day that they eat thereof
they shall surely die. Adam did what God forbade and
he partook of that fruit when it was presented to him by his
wife Eve. She had been tempted by the serpent
as the instrument of Satan and partaken of the forbidden fruit.
So she gave to her husband and with his eyes wide open he partook
of what God had commanded he should not eat. And so there
was death. And there is death in Adam as
in Adam all die. Now what is that death? that
came through the first man. Well, there's physical death,
the body dies, Adam was made with the body and the soul. We're
told how God formed his body of the dust of the earth and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and he became
a living soul. And we all have Bodies, we all
have souls, and the body dies. The soul doesn't die. The body dies and the spirit
returns to God in David. There is that awaiting then of
the final day of judgement. But then that physical death
is a terrible thing. because God intended body and
soul to be united, that was how he created the man, but it is
the consequence of Adam's sin there is a physical death. In everything there is a season,
and the time to every purpose under heaven, the time to be
born, and the time to die, the time to die. then shall the dust
return to the earth as it was, and the spirits to God who gave
it. This, I say, is physical death,
and it will come to each and every one of us in the appointed
time, unless, of course, the Lord himself should return beforehand
in power and great glory, but we are told quite clearly it
is appointed unto men once to die, then cometh the judgments. There's no escaping the fact
of physical death. There's some of those words in
Ecclesiastes chapter 11 in the place where the tree shall fall,
there shall it burn. When we come to die we're confirmed
in that condition that death finds us in, either in belief
or in unbelief. Where the tree falls, there shall
it burn. the day that they meet us thereon,
they shall surely die. Now, physical death is a certain,
but there's not only physical death as the consequence of Adam's
transgression, there's also spiritual death. Adam did not die Immediately,
did he? He didn't die physically. Immediately
upon partaking of that that was forbidden to him. In fact, in
Genesis 5 and verse 5 we're told that he lived to a great age.
He was 930 years old when he died, was Adam. How many of the
succeeding generations was Adam favoured to serve? Some today
do live long lives and they see children, not only to the first
and to the second, but even to the third generation. But how
many generations of his children must Adam have seen, 930 years
old we're told, when he died. And yet God said, in the day,
in the day that thou meetest Aaron, thou shalt surely die. What are we to understand by
that? Well the margin there in Genesis 2 verse 17 gives the
clue. The margin tells us that the
Hebrew literally says in the day that they'll eat us thereof,
dying thou shalt die. Dying thou shalt die. It's rendered,
thou shalt surely die. And that's quite a legitimate
and right and proper rendering of what is being said. The literal
wording of the original does give us a clue. Dying, they shall
die. He didn't die physically, immediately. The seeds of death were there,
and his body began to die. That body that was in such a
pristine, perfect state when he came from the hand of his
Creator God, when God pronounced the Word so very good. The seeds
of death were in that body and his body began to die and some
930 years further on he would actually die. But there was an
immediate death, you see. Dying, thou shalt die. He did die in the day that he
partook of that fruit. And we see that, do we not, in
that there was death now in his soul. He was dead. in trespasses and in sins. Immediately there is a separation
from God. Immediately there is alienation
from God. What does Adam do? When God comes
into the garden, as was God's will, He would come into the
garden. There was fellowship between
God and Adam and Eve. When God comes into the garden
after that transgression, They feel their alienation. They heard
the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of
the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence
of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God
called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou? He's now
aware, you see, of his separation. He's sinned against God. He's
in a state of enmity with God. And yet God comes with that gracious
word and surely he could not concede himself from God's all-seeing
and all-searching God. That is a gracious word when
God speaks and says to the man, where art thou Adam? Or that God would come and put
that word to us tonight. Where are words? Where are you? Where am I? I believe I'm right
in saying, in the experience of that great Baptist theologian,
Dr. John Gill, it was his text. It
so spoke to him at the time of his conversion, a young man.
He was only about 13 or 14 years of age. And his minister preached
from the text, and the words, Adam, where art thou? And he came home to John Gill.
John Gill, where art thou? All our real religion is so personal
of him. There was Adam, there was Eve.
They are alienated. They seek to hide themselves
from God. They don't want to know God or communion with God
anymore. And then ultimately God thrusts
the man out. The end of that third chapter,
that solemn chapter of Genesis. Therefore the Lord God sent him
forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence
he was taken. So he drove out the land and
he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims and
a flaming storm which sent every way to keep the way of the tree
of life. What came to Adam and his wife
Lene was at spiritual death, they were dead in their soul
immediately. This is what sin does, your iniquities
are separated between you and your God, and your sins are hid
his face from you. This is man's condition, is it
not? By nature, this is the condition of all those who descend from
Adam, without any exception. We're all born in that solemn
condition. We're dead in trespasses and
in sins, where in time past we walked according to the course
of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that then worked us in the children of disobedience,
among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in
the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of our flesh and
of our mind and were by nature the children of wrath, even as
others. That's man's condition. An understanding
dark and alienated from the life of God through the ignorance
of his inner, because of the blindness of their hearts. Yes, in due course, physical
death came to Adam, came to Eve as it comes to everyone. But
here is Adam's condition immediately upon transgressing. The sin brings
death into his soul. The sin means now that he is
separated from God in a state of alienation. Oh, there's death
in Adam. There's physical death and there's
spiritual death. But there's something worse,
you know. Physical death affects the body. spiritual death has affected
the soul of men. But there is a death and it affects
both body and soul. And what is that death? It's
eternal death. It's an eternal and never-ending death. Judgment
came upon all men to condemnation, says the apostle. That's because
of sin. Condemnation The Lord Jesus says,
fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill
the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body
and soul in hell. Who is the one who can destroy
both body and soul in hell? That's not the devil. That's
not the devil. The devil could not in any way
touch Job until he had permission from God. The one who is able
to destroy both body and soul in hell is none other than God
himself. That is eternal death, the condemnation
of the wicked. That is the second death that
is spoken of in Revelation chapter 21, that second death, that final
death, that final separation. Now there is a goal fixed, you
see. As we read concerning the rich man and Lazarus in the Gospel,
there's a great conflict between those who are saved and those
who are lost. Those who are lost, what do they
endure? They endure an eternal death. In Adam, as in Adam, all die. Even so, in Christ shall all
be made Well let us turn now to the second part of the text.
There's death in Adam, there's life in the Lord Jesus Christ. And what is it that Liskevsky
is speaking of? Even so in Christ shall all be
made alive. Well, strictly speaking there
is a reference here to the general resurrection. the general resurrection,
both of the wicked and the good, both of the goats and the sheep,
both of the sinner and the sight. It's a general resurrection,
a resurrection that's spoken of in Acts chapter 24 for example. the resurrection of the dead,
both of the just and of the unjust, we read there in Acts 24. And
hasn't God given a guarantee of the truth
of that general resurrection of the dead? That's what Paul
says in the course of his preaching when we see him in Athens, in
the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. In the course of his ministry,
as he preaches there, Paul makes this statement. Remember how he has witnessed
the superstitious ways of the Athenians. They have an altar that's devoted to the
unknown God. As I passed by and beheld your
devotions, says Paul, I found an altar with this inscription,
to the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him I
declare unto you. And from that Paul begins to
preach. And what does he preach? He preaches
Christ, the unknown God. Whom is the unknown God? This
is the true God. This is the Lord Jesus Christ, here He's
calling. He sees the opening, the opportunity to preach, and
He begins to preach the Lord Jesus Christ. Then He says this,
at verse 31, Because He, that is God, hath appointed a day
in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that
man whom He hath ordained. He's speaking of Christ, you
see. God has appointed a day in the which He will judge the
world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath appointed, whereof
he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised
him from the dead." Oh, he's given assurance to all men that
there's going to be a general resurrection, all are going to
be raised again, and what is the guarantee of that? God has
raised the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Christ's resurrection. is the
guarantee of the general resurrection from the dead. Verse 23 here
in this 15th chapter, the first instance, every man in his own
order, Christ the first root, after would die the dark Christ
at his coming, then cometh the end. Christ's resurrection is
the first to guarantee that there will be that raising again of
all men in what is called the general resurrection. The Lord
Jesus Christ himself speaks of it in the course of his own earthly
ministry. In John 5, verse 28, marvel not
at this, says Christ, the hour is coming in which all that are
in the grave shall hear his voice and shall come forth They that
have done good unto the resurrection of life and they that have done
evil unto the resurrection of damnation. In Christ's form. All shall be made alive. There
is to be that general resurrection from the dead. You see, as I've already said
here, We have to remember that Adam and Christ are distinct
federal heads. They are the heads of certain
categories of people. In God's sight there are but
two men. This is what the Puritan Thomas
Goodwin makes so plain. He says in God's sight there
are are but two men. There's Adam, there's Christ,
and all men are in one or in the other. We're either in Adam
or we're in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is the head of the church. Christ is the Saviour of the
world. And it's only the elect, of course,
who share that life that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the
elect. who were chosen in Him before
the foundation of the world. You see what Paul tells us in
Ephesians chapter 1, is it not? He says, Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as
He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world that
we should be holy and without blame before him in love. And the question is, of course,
which of these two men are we to be founding? Are we those
who are inhabited by nature with all inhabited? But or that we're those who by
the grace of God's are to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ?
That is the great question that we have to ask ourselves. And
what blessings there are for those who are in Christ. We have that little couplet in
Isaac Watts' the paraphrase of Psalm 72, Jesus shall reign wherever
You're familiar with it, I know the hymns aren't even going to
be selection. But there's that little couplet that appears in
one of the verses and it says this concerning Christ. In him the sons of Adam boast
more blessings than their father lost. What an amazing thing it
is. All that was lost in Adam, all
that death that's in Adam, all to those who are in the Lord
Jesus Christ, They are far greater than the blessings that ever
Adam lost. And that's not poetic hyperbole,
that is scriptural truth. God has blessed us in heavenly
places in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what Paul is saying there
in Ephesians chapter 1. He has blessed us in heavenly
places in the Lord Jesus Christ. What is that life that is in
Christ? It's eternal life. As many as
were ordained to eternal life, he says. He lived. That's what God has appointed
his people to. What is the mark of those who
are in Christ? They hear his voice. Which is
the mark of those who are the sheep. Remember, we can say that
those who are permanently in Adam and only in Adam have a
goat. that those who are in Christ
are His sheep. And Christ says of His sheep,
My sheep hear My voice, and I love them, and they follow Me, and
I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
My Father which gave them Me is greater than all. No man can
pluck them out of My Father's hand, for this is what they come
to possess. Are we those friends tonight
who as we look to ourselves and examine ourselves are concerned
to know whether or not we possess that life. That life which is
to be found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. So important is it not that we
know that we have that life. Now what is the mark? What is
the evidence that we have that life that comes only from Christ? Well, paradoxically, those who
have received that new life, they feel their sin and they
feel the deadness of their sin. That is the paradox of the Christian's
experience. Nor can he expect to be perfectly
saved till he finds himself utterly lost. It's that person who is
lost, who needs to be found. It's that poor sinner who feels
himself to be dead in trespasses and sins. The dead man, of course,
feels nothing. But here is the paradox. You
see, there's life in this man because he feels it. He feels
his deadness. He feels he's in the military.
He feels himself to be so impotent he can be nothing. He's lost. He's dead in trespasses and in
sins. He's lost in Adam. And those
who know that they are lost and dead, they are the very ones
that Christ saves. We had the sentence of death
in ourselves, says Paul, that we should not trust in ourselves,
but in Christ. or in God, he says, the race
of the dead, the sentence of death in ourselves. And to this
end, you see, for this purpose, in order that we should not trust
in ourselves, all the money is brought to the end of himself. He's lost in Adam, and he sees
that salvation must be outside of himself. And that salvation
is only to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Even so in Christ, shall all
be made alive. These are the very ones that
Christ came for, are they not? And he says it so plainly in
the Gospel, they that are whole have no need of the position,
but they that are sick, I cannot call them righteous, but sinners.
sinners to repentance. And in order to give this life,
this eternal life, to those who were dead in Adam, what did Christ
do? Christ gave his life. That's the great thing, is it
not, friends? In order to give eternal life to those who were
dead In Adam dead, in trespasses and in sins, the Lord Jesus Christ
came and gave his life. It cost him his own life. Verily,
verily, except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,
it abideth alone. But if it dies, says Christ,
it bringeth forth much fruit. That's Christ. All the fruit
that he brings forth by his death. Christ also hath once suffered
for sins, the just and the unjust, to bring us to God. Those, you
see, who were in that state of alienation out of a need there
in the garden, hiding themselves from God, why Christ has come
and He has once suffered for sins, to bring us to God, to
bring reconciliation. He reconciles the sinner to God.
That sinner who is in that state of awful alienation, They can't
remind you, see, that he's such terrible enmity against God that's
not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can they. But
Christ reconciles the sinner, makes peace through the blood
of his cross. So what does Paul say here? This
is the Gospel that we're dealing with, of course, in this chapter.
In opening words, remember, moreover brethren, I declare unto you
the gospel. You see what Paul is dealing
with? I declare unto you the gospel, which I preached unto
you, which also ye have received and wherein ye stand. Well, what
is this gospel? Well, look at what he says, verse
20, Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits
of them that slept. For since by man came death,
by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all
die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. With every
man in his own order, Christ the firstfruits. Afterward they
that are Christ that is coming, then come at the end. For this is the gospel you see.
There's death in Adam, there's life in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now notice what he says concerning
the order. There's an order here. It all
must be in order. Every man, he says in verse 23,
every man in his own order. Christ, the first fruits. There's an order of time. We see it in the Old Testament.
Christ, the first fruits. Remember what was said in the
Levitical law concerning the sheaf of the firstfruits. In the services that were to
be conducted in the tabernacle and then subsequently in the
temple of the Lord, amongst those services they were to take the
firstfruits of the harvest and to present the first fruit before
the Lord. In Leviticus 23 verse 9, the
Lord spoke unto Moses saying, Speak unto the children of Israel
and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give
unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall
bring the sheaf of the first fruit of your harvest unto the
priest, and ye shall weigh the sheaf before the Lord, to be
accepted for you on the morrow after the sabbath the priest
shall ride it and he shall offer that day when he rides the sheep
and heal them without marriage of the first year for a burnt
offering unto the Lord so it's associated with sacrifice with
the shedding of blood but it's a significant feast that is to
be observed the bringing in of that sheep of the first fruit.
And it anticipates, of course, the fullness of the harvest that
is to follow. And this is the imagery that
we have here in what Paul is writing. In verse 20, now is
Christ risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them
that slept. Christ's resurrection is the
first. There were others who were raised from the dead
in the course of his earthly ministry. We read of those who
were raised from the dead, the widow of Nain's son, for example,
Lazarus for another. But these men, though raised,
would eventually die. They would eventually die when
the time appointed by God came to pass. They passed away. But Christ rose from the dead,
never to die again. is the power of an endless life. He is the first religious of
them that slept. And here we have the order. Christ's resurrection is the
guarantee. And Christ's resurrection is not only that which is significant
with regards to the certainty of the resurrection, but Christ's
resurrection from the dead is also associated, is it not, with
that regeneration, that new life that comes into the soul of the
sinner. The sinner, dead in trespasses
and sins, must be born again. And Christ's resurrection is
in a sense a pledge of that, because He says to His disciples,
He shall live also. Not only in the Gospel, but when
we go back into the Old Testament and into the Prophets, Isaiah,
for example in Isaiah chapter 26 and verse 19 it says, Thy
dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they
arise. Isaiah chapter 26 and verse 19,
Thy dead men shall live together with my dead body, shall they
arise awake and sing ye that dwell in dust. For thy Jew is
as a Jew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. And
we can understand that coming not simply in terms of resurrection,
but regeneration. Thy dead men, those dead in trespasses
and sins. We have those words of the Apostle
in Ephesians 1 verse 19 followed. the exceeding greatness of His
power to us all do believe according to the working of His mighty
power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead.
All the power that is there in those who believe, only those
saving the believer are born again. There can be no saving
Christ without the new birth. You might have a, what we might
term, a natural faith, an historic faith, you might tell me tonight,
I believe in God, I believe in what the Bible says, I believe
in what scripture asserts concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. We can
all give that mental assent. But you know, that's not saving
faith. There then is saving faith that is first of all that new
birth. All the power that is demonstrated
in the soul of that sinner. It's the same power that was
there when Christ rose again from the dead. That's what Paul
says. The exceeding greatness of his
power to us all do believe. According to the working of his
mighty power which he wrought in the cross, when he raised
him from the dead. Do you know what he cricketed?
We were dead in trespasses and in sin. Christ's resurrection. Oh, it's so important, so significant
in relation to that new spiritual life that comes into the soul
of the sinner. Or do we know it, friends? Do
we desire it? We might know it. Power of God. That fight that is of the operation
of God. the fact that he is the gift
of God. This is what we long and yearn for, to know something
that is real, because we feel what we are by nature, we are
those who are in Adam. And in Adam all die, we are all
dead. All our life is in Christ and only in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is an order then of time
here. Christ the first Christ. And there is also an order of
type, an order of type. Verse 37, he says, That which
thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but
their grain. It may chance of wheat or some
other grain, but God giveth it a body as he hath pleased him,
to every seed his own body, to every seed his own bodies. In other words, you sow the seed,
you sow wheat, you don't expect that you're going to have a harvest
of barley. You don't expect that. That's
what he's saying, it's as simple as that. To every seed, his own
body. To part the seed, and it germinates,
and if you sow barley, you'll have barley. If you sow wheat,
you'll have wheat. Otherwise there'd be nothing
but confusion. But it is also true, is it not,
spiritually. We reap the thing that we sow. That's what Paul says in Galatians
chapter 6, verse 7, we reap what we sow. God is not lost. For whatsoever
a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his
flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. But he that soweth
to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Now we have to be careful with
regards to what we sow. Because what his soul is what
is rich. And he follows then that what
a man is in this life, and what a man is when he comes to die,
that is what that man will be in the resurrection from the
dead. The corn is put into the ground,
dead. And yet, in a sense, there's
a sort of resurrection. But it's what's put into the ground that
indicates what is going to grow. What the man is when he comes
to die is what he will be when he is raised from the dead. He'll be either a believer or
a non-believer. If he's a believer in this life, he'll be raised to everlasting
life. If he's a non-believer, he'll
be raised to that eternal death. There is no work nor device in
the grave, says the preacher in Ecclesiastes 9.10. No work,
no device. Perpetually, that awful doctrine
of the Roman Church is nonsense, contrary to the word of God.
There's no such place. There's no work, no device in
the grave. In the place where the truth
poureth, there it shall burn. When we come to the end of Scripture,
we have it so solemn in the twenty-second chapter of the Revelation, in
verse eleven, the very last chapter of Scripture. He that is unjust,
let him be unjust. And he that is filthy, let him
be filthy still, And he that is righteous, let him be righteous
still, and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And behold,
I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give to every
man according to his work shall burn. According to his work shall
burn. And solemn it is, you see. There is then In that general
resurrection, in order of time, in order of time, reverend sees
his own body. If we die as those who are only
in Adam, we have no hope. Our only hope is to be found
in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the great thing, friends.
thing that should concern us primarily all our days? Are we
those who are true in Christ? Are we those who are looking
only to the Lord Jesus Christ? Is He that One who has made unto
us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption?
Are we those who are glorying only in Christ? O God, grant
that we might be those friends who are favoured to know We have
that blessed assurance that we are the Lords, that all our hope,
all our trust, all our confidence, can centre only in Him. For as
in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Amen.