The scope of Adam’s transgression still bears all its telltale signs throughout the world and is best described as our last enemy, death. It’s everywhere, and it will, in one way or another, claim us all. This is a result of Adam’s transgression referred to in Romans 5. If death is a result of Adam’s disobedience, what, then, is the result of Christ’s obedience? Life, the very opposite. In direct proportion to what the sin of Adam produced, death, the righteousness of Christ produced the opposite…life. The degree of undoing, wrought by Adam, was the degree of doing, wrought by Christ. It is unthinkable that the disobedience wrought by Adam’s sin was greater than what the obedience of Christ could rectify. He and His righteousness was every bit the match for the moral devastation produced by the sin of Adam. This means the extent of the damage done in the fall was the same extent of the repair wrought by Christ in His death. Such is the burden of Romans 5 stating, “So then, as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so, through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.” A glorious truth. Stated another way, could you suppose there was something Adam and his sin broke that Christ and His righteousness could not salvage, repair, restore, and renew? Perish the thought!
Well then, if Christ did this for us, including the provision of eternal life, why do we still die? Well, we do, and we don’t. What does that mean? Sounds like double-talk. It does deal with a double issue. We all live a double life, so to speak. The believer in Christ does die in his physical body, but he does not die in his spirit. Body and spirit are separate entities although they dwell in the same soul. The body is material. The spirit is immaterial. The physical body is subject to physical death and decay. The spirit is not. Both body and spirit comprise the totality of our personhood called “the soul”. The soul is part spirit and part body. James 2 tells us the body without the spirit is dead. At physical death, the soul, comprised of body and spirit, comes apart. It disintegrates. The body goes to the ground from which it came, and the spirit returns to God from which it came. One part of our soul may be alive while the other part is dead. Our body may be alive while our spirit is dead. By dead, we do not mean it has no existence, but it is separated from God. Separation of the spirit from the body is physical death. Separation of the spirit from God is spiritual death. Adam was dead spiritually, that is, separated from God long before he died physically. He lived, we recall, to the age of 930 years. The scope of Christ’s reconciliation included our spiritual life as well as our physical life. His death provided life for the eternity of our being.
CC 09-20
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