Having
supported his rebuke against the dissenters with agriculture and astronomy,
Paul now utilizes Scripture and the Adam/Christ comparison to further his rhetorical
counterattack. With the formulary “as it is written,” Paul points to the
creation stories of Genesis to deduce the difference between humanity’s past in
Adam and their future in Christ. The first man, Adam, came as a living being,
but the last man, Christ, came as a life-giving human and an earthly human in
the two creation accounts of Genesis. The difference is profound: a living being
can only survive, but a life-giving Spirit subsists by God’s won power and
gives life to others. The vast difference between the earthly body and spiritual
body parallels that between Adam and Christ. The two distinctions serve to
underscore the heightened level of the mystery of the resurrection. A third
pair, dust and heavens, parallels the Adam/Christ contrast. Those who are with
Adam will inherit the dust in their future. But those who are with Christ, the
heavenly man, have the heavens as their promised inheritance. This inheritance
is marked by putting on the image of Christ or of Adam (dust). There is little
doubt that one group is dramatically more attractive than the other. A way of
knowing (human and spiritual) in 2:1-13 now becomes one’s manner of being
(human and spiritual) and eternal identity (the dust, or the heavens).
The
development from the a element (15:35-38) explains how this heavenly
inheritance comes about for those who are in Christ. The power by which the
seed is “brought to life” only after it dies belongs to Christ, who is not a “living”
being alone like Adam but a “life-giving” Spirit. This imagery coheres with
Paul’s earlier declaration that God will raise believers by Christ’s power and
verifies for the audience the faithfulness of the resurrection (6:15-20). If
the audience believes that God would send his Son to redeem them and sanctify
them with his Spirit to preserve them for their heavenly inheritance, how then
can they say that he would not complete his plan for them? If the gospel in
which they believed and the manifestation of the Spirit in them are anything
worth their salt, then God has already begun to fulfill his promises for their
salvation. (Timothy Milinovich, Beyond What is Written: The Performative Structure
of 1 Corinthians [Eugene, Oreg.: Pickwick Publications, 2013], 203-4)
