Hope for Virus-Infected Bodies, Part 2

Dr. Alan Dunn

If we would entertain any hope given our susceptibility to things like viruses, we need to understand our physical, bodily existence in the light of creation and the fall. In part one, we looked at Adam in the context of the original creation. Our Creator has united us to our world in a mutually symbiotic relationship. God gave Adam rule over creation as His image. Creation’s well-being depended on whether or not Adam would be faithful to God in the exercise of his “headship.” We can recognize an operative principle: As it goes with Adam, so it goes with the world. When Adam sinned, he brought death into his domain. Likewise, as it goes with the earth, so it goes with Adam. When the Lord cursed the ground, Adam, who is animated dust, was enveloped in that curse and will now return to dust.

Although physical death is the collapse of our bodies back into the dust of the earth, we are not to think of death as annihilation or a recycled assimilation back into the creation. The most basic idea of death is that of separation. We see this notion of separation in James’ description of dead faith in James 2:26, For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. When Adam sinned, he brought death into his domain and things began to fall apart, but God stepped into the scene with grace. He salvaged the original created order and launched His program of redemptive love. Of all that Adam destroyed, his relationship with God is the most tragic. Separation from God is fallen man’s default stance and condition. But God… but God… the good news of the gospel begins with those two wonderful words, but God.[1]

The relationship between our bodies and this earth was established in creation but altered in the fall. Now, thirdly, consider The Resurrection of Jesus and the Implications for Our Bodies and This Earth

Who is the Jesus who rose from the dead? The Old Testament answers that question by revealing Jesus to us in prophecies and typologies.[2] Our Old Testaments give us the categories by which we are to recognize and understand Jesus and His Messianic mission. He came that we might have life, abundant life, eternal life, the life of the age to come, resurrection life [John 10:10]. God initially promised this life in Genesis 3:15. That gospel promise was elaborated and sustained throughout the history recorded in the Old Testament and finally fulfilled in Jesus. The resurrected Jesus tells us to define Him and His life, death, and resurrection in terms of the Old Testament [Luke 24:44-48].

Once again, we need to look back to the original creation of Adam’s body in Genesis 2 if we would find hope virus-infected bodies in the resurrection of Jesus. Remember for Adam to be “Adam,” he must be materially united with his earth, and as it goes with Adam, so it goes with the earth. Adam is not Adam without his planet, and the planet cannot be what God designed it to be apart from its Adam. That kind of Adam-earth mutuality is at play when Paul presents Jesus to us as the last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15. As it goes with the Adam of the new creation, so it goes with the new creation. Our focus is explicitly on the significance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Luke presents Jesus as the second Adam by tracing Jesus’ genealogy to Adam. We then see Jesus being tempted by Satan, as was Adam, but Jesus triumphed whereas Adam fell [Luke 3:38-4:13]. Paul makes the comparison between Adam and Jesus explicit in Romans 5:12-19 and 1 Corinthians 15:22-28. Paul focuses in on the two kinds of life men have in union either with Adam or Jesus. His analogy in 1 Corinthians 15:45 is stunningly astounding! So also it is written, “The first MAN, ADAM BECAME A LIVING SOUL.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. There are several things to note that inform our hope for virus-infected bodies.

1 Corinthians 15:45 is the only place in the New Testament that quotes from Genesis 2:7.[3] Paul directs our eyes to the moment when the Lord formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life. Here is Adam in his very good creatureliness. Thus formed and in-breathed by God, he is a living soul. So, on the one hand, we see Adam in the unalloyed beauty of the pre-fallen creation, before Satan’s invasion, before death. Wow… can you imagine? The sinless man, alive with vigor and vitality that permeated every single cell in his body. How would you like to have that body!? No viruses there, eh? If only we could have bodies like Adam’s original body. Wouldn’t that be our hope for virus-infected bodies? If only our doctors could heal us to where we could be like Adam was in Genesis 2:7. Is that even possible?

On the other hand, we see the last Adam, which is to say, “no more Adams.” That this last Adam is the resurrected Jesus is evident from Paul’s previous comparison of Adam and the resurrected Jesus in vss 21ff. Paul is not comparing Adam with Jesus at the point of His incarnation, but at the point of His resurrection. It is as the resurrected Lord that Jesus is the last Adam. Note that Paul’s focus is on their respective bodies in which they live their respective lives. Paul contrasts Adam’s body at the point of its formation with Jesus’ body at the point of its resurrection. We already attempted to envision the pristine pre-fallen Adam, but what about the resurrected Jesus? How are we to think of Jesus’ resurrected body now ascended and exalted upon the throne of God?

We realize that Jesus veiled His glory during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension. It is evident that His body, even during that time, was capable of supernatural feats. But are we given a clearer glimpse of Jesus’ resurrected body? I submit to you that Jesus’ transfiguration gives us such a glimpse. Peter speaks of the transfiguration and tells us that he was an eyewitness of His majesty when He received honor and glory from God the Father [2 Peter 1:16-17]. He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light [Mat 17:2]. Is this not the Jesus who confronted Saul on the road to Damascus [Acts 9:3-5]? Are we to think that we could hope for a body like that? Yes. When? In the resurrection. Then THE RIGHTEOUS WILL SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear [Mat 13:43, see Dan 12:2]. Now, which virus-free body would you want? Adam’s original, pre-fallen body, or Jesus’ resurrection body? Is it possible to obtain a body like Adam’s pre-fallen body? Would you want to? Is it possible for us to have a body like Jesus’ resurrection body?

Whereas Adam became a living soul, the resurrected Jesus became a life-giving spirit. This phrase is challenging to translate. Note that it is the resurrected Jesus who gives this life. Whenever we find the phrase, here translated as a life-giving spirit, it always speaks of the life of the age to come, life after death, resurrection life.[4] Our hope for virus-infected bodies is in our union with the last Adam, the resurrected Jesus, and the glories of the age to come. We will enter that glory, bodily, at the resurrection at the end of this age when Jesus returns.

²⁰ For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; ²¹ who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself [Phil 3:20-21].

By pointing to Adam and the resurrected Jesus, Paul is comparing and contrasting the life of the original creation embodied in Adam with the life of the new creation embodied in the resurrected Jesus. The contrast is between living soul kind of life, which is natural, from the earth, earthy, and life-giving spirit kind of life, which is spiritual, from heaven, heavenly [vs 46-49]. We ought not to think that Paul is differentiating what is material [natural] from what is immaterial [spiritual]. He is telling us about what comes first and then what comes last, or second. The Bible does not present us with a Gnostic contrast of matter and spirit, but with the contrast between this age and the age to come, this creation and the new creation, this death-conditioned life in Adam and eternal life in Jesus.

It is futile to hope that somehow, through medicine perhaps, that we could obtain a virus-free body – because our bodies in union with Adam are “death-conditioned.” Only in Christ can we have made alive bodies.

²¹ For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. ²² For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive [1 Cor 15:21-22].

Where is our hope for virus-free, liberated-from-death, bodies? Jesus. He is our only hope. He is the resurrection and the life [John 11:25]. Trust in the resurrected Lord Jesus, who is the Savior of all who call upon Him in repentance and faith. Would you have a resurrection body that shines like the sun in the kingdom of God? Be joined by faith to Jesus, for if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved [Rom 10:9].

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[1] ⁴ But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), ⁶ and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; ⁹ not as a result of works, that no one should boast (Ephesians 2:4-9).

[2] God foretold the fulfillment of his promises for life with prophecies [words] and typologies [depictions seen in the history of Israel, its institutions, and its leaders].

[3] Many translations of the New Testament capitalize words to show that the author is quoting an Old Testament verse.

[4] John 5:21 the Son gives life; John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; Rom 4:17 God who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist; Rom 8:11 he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies; 1 Cor 15:22 so also in Christ all shall be made alive; and 2 Cor 3:6 the Spirit gives life.