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1 Corinthians 15:22, 45-49 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. … … So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.  The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual.  The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.  As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.  And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

What a great and profound truth Paul declares to us here!  We are ALL born ‘IN ADAM’ – we have no choice about this, it’s the way things ARE!  And, because of the historical ‘Fall’ recorded for us in Genesis 3, we therefore ALL DIE, we are ‘MORTals’.  (When Paul uses the word ‘all’ he can either mean ‘all without exception’, or ‘all without distinction’, and we rely on the context to show us which one he means.  Clearly, by ‘in Adam all die’ he means ‘all without exception’, as is indicated throughout Scripture, and demonstrated by our universal experience.)

This is the BAD, but TRUE, news.  But there IS GOOD news which is also TRUE (our Creator God does not deal in ‘fake news’)!

The ‘Good News’ begins with God sending a ‘SECOND ADAM’, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was BORN as a MAN, but who CAME from HEAVEN’.  “O loving wisdom of our God!  When all was sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came.” (John Henry Newman).  It BECOMES ‘good news’ to us when we take hold of it by GRACE, through FAITH (cf Paul’s, “by the GRACE of God I am what I am” in verse 10).  We are then BORN AGAIN, and move over from being ‘in Adam’ to being ‘in Christ’, firmly and securely.

Moreover, the availability of this grace is not limited by our ethnic background, our skin colour, our intellectual ability, our gender, or anything else, so Paul is able to say, “so in Christ ALL (without distinction) will be made alive”.  As the Apostle John records the promise from Jesus’ own lips: “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me HAS eternal life and will not be condemned; he HAS CROSSED OVER from death to life.” (John 5:24).

Is it any wonder the Apostle Paul was so insistent and emphatic about the importance and centrality of the doctrine of the RESURRECTION in 1 Corinthians 15?