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From Adam to Christ: Death, Life, and the New Humanity · Reformed Thinking

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What if the way you treat your body this weekend is, you know,
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tied directly to the architecture of the entire
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cosmos? Right.
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Like, imagine for a second that your physical habits, what do
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you eat, how you sleep, what you do with your hands, are not just
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biological functions. Yeah, they are actually setting
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the stage for an eternal reality, which is, I mean,
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pretty heavy thought for you to sit with today.
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But in the ancient world, a group of people decided that
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because they had achieved a sort of elevated spiritual
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enlightenment, well, physical morality just did not matter
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anymore. They thought they had outgrown
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their bodies. Absolutely.
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They believed they had cracked the code to a purely spiritual
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existence. And if the physical body is just
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a temporary shell that eventually rots in the ground.
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Then the logical conclusion is that the rules governing that
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body are temporary too, yes. You can do whatever you want
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with it because it has no future.
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Welcome to Reformed Thinking. Today we are taking a deep dive
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into a scholarly analysis by Philippe de Jesus Le Carreta
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Castillo. We are looking at his research
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regarding the Apostle Paul's letters.
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Specifically, we are going to look at the massive theological
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arguments laid out in First Corinthians 15.
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Right, and the paper examines how Paul uses the historical
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figures of Adam and Christ as two representative heads of
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humanity. So our mission for this deep
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dive is to understand how the physical resurrection of Jesus
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Christ is not, you know, some isolated historical anomaly.
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Far from it. Paul presents it as the first
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spark of a massive cosmic renewal.
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And this future bodily reality demands A radical shift in human
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morality right now, in the present tense.
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Before we can grasp the solution Paul brings to the table, we
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really have to look at the absolute chaos happening in the
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ancient city of Corinth. Yeah, we have to remember Paul
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was not writing a systematic theology textbook in a vacuum.
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He was writing a crisis management letter.
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The Christian community in Corinth was fracturing in real
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time. Let us paint a picture of
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Corinth for you. It was not a quiet, isolated
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village. It was a cosmopolitan hub.
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Right. You have major trade routes
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intersecting there. It was wealthy, it was saturated
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in Hellenistic philosophy, and well, it was famous throughout
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the ancient world for being morally loose.
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You had this intense collision of different cultures, different
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ideas and Pagan religious backgrounds all operating in one
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compressed space. And in the middle of all that
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noise, you have this new Christian congregation trying to
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plant its roots. But instead of influencing the
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culture around them, they are they're absorbing the cultural
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static. Ligeretta Castillo points out
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that a specific faction within the church, Paul, simply refers
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to them as some We're actively denying the future bodily
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resurrection of the dead. They are looking around at their
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Greek culture, which teaches that the physical world is
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inferior. Yeah, and they are saying, sure,
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maybe there is a spiritual afterlife where our souls float
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on clouds, But this physical body, it decays.
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It stays in the bird. It does not come back and Paul
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recognizes the danger immediately.
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If you pull the thread of physical resurrection out of the
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gospel, the entire fabric falls apart.
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Right. He does not just offer a gentle
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correction. Here in First Corinthians 15,
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specifically verses 12 through 34, he deploys a brilliant
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rhetorical strategy. The ad absurdum argument.
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Yes, he takes their shining new premise that dead bodies do not
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rise, and he forces them to walk that logic all the way to the
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edge of the Cliff. He lists 7 conditional clauses
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to show them the catastrophic results of their disbelief.
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He starts with the most obvious consequence.
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He says if there is no such thing as the resurrection of the
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dead, well then Christ himself has not been raised.
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Which is the linchpin of the whole faith.
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Absolutely. And if Christ is still dead,
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Paul says, then our preaching is completely empty.
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And if the preaching is empty, your faith is empty.
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You are believing in a dead man. Furthermore, it makes the
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apostles liars because they have been going around testifying
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that God raised. Christ and the dominoes just
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keep falling. If Christ is not raised, Paul
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says, you are still dead in your sins.
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Because a dead savior cannot offer forgiveness.
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Right. And worse, anyone who has
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already died believing this message has completely perished.
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They are just gone. Paul is showing them that their
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so-called minor theological adjustment actually erases
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Christianity. But we need to look at how this
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plays out on the ground, because bad theology inevitably breeds
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bad ethics. Ligeretta Castillo's text notes
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that this specific disbelief in the physical resurrection LED
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directly to a dissolute lifestyle among the Corinthians.
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I mean, that makes complete sense when you think about human
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nature. How so?
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Well, if you tell people there is no future physical
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accountability, why would they practice physical restraint?
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Right, they summed up their entire worldview with that
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cynical little phrase. Let us eat and drink, for
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tomorrow we die. It is the ancient equivalent of
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fatalism mixed with hedonism. If the body has no eternal
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future, what does it matter what you do with it?
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It really is. I look at this and I see ancient
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Yolo culture. You only live once.
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Oh that is a great way to frame it it.
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Reminds me of the way people treat rental cars.
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OK, unpack that for us. If you own a car and you know
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you have to drive it for the next 10 years, you get the oil
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changed. You do not eat messy food in the
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driver's seat. You take care of it.
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Yeah, but if you run a car for a weekend in Vegas you do not care
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about the long term maintenance. You might drive it over
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potholes. Leave trash in the back seat.
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And just drop the keys off on Sunday night because it is not
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your problem anymore. The Corinthians were treating
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their bodies like rental cars. That analogy gets right to the
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heart of the behavioral disconnect.
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If the body is just a disposable shell you rent for 70 years,
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well, the logical conclusion is to indulge every physical
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appetite while you still can. Right.
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Why pursue holiness in your physical actions if the physical
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world is going in the garbage bin?
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Paul sees this moral decay and confronts it with a severe
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ethical exportation. He quotes a famous proverb of
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the time. Do not be misled.
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Bad company corrupts good character.
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And then he says, come back to your right senses and sin no
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more. He is treating them like they're
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drunk. Come back to your right senses.
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Wake up from his theological intoxication because they were
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leaving entirely for themselves. They were hyper individualistic.
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They were just trying to maximize their personal physical
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pleasure before the clock ran out.
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So to dismantle this hyper individualism, Paul performs a
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massive conceptual shift in his argument.
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He reveals that human history does not operate as billions of
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disconnected, isolated individuals making independent
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choices. No history hinges on 2
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representative men, Adam in Christ.
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He introduces this double antithesis in verses 21 and 22.
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For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the
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dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in
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Christ all will be made alive. This brings us to the concept of
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federal headship, and to grasp the gravity of Paul's argument,
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we need to analyze the Greek word he uses here.
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Which is a parsh. Right, a parsh which translates
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to firstfruits. We hear that term a lot in
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church settings, usually around offering time, but in the
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agricultural context of the Old Testament it had a very specific
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legal and physical meaning. It did.
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The first fruits were the initial portion of the harvest.
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You went out into your field, gather the very first ripe grain
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and offered it to God. And that physical action
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consecrated the rest of the entire harvest.
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Exactly. I mean, spot on.
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It guaranteed that the rest of the crop was coming, and it
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determined the nature of that crop.
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If you bring a sheaf of barley to the priest, the entire rest
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of the field is going to be barley.
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It locks in the identity of the harvest.
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So Paul sets up Adam in Christ as two opposing.
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Try 2 opposing first fruits or representative heads.
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Adam is the head of the old creation and Christ is the head
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of the new creation. What happens to the head
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determines what happens to everything connected to that
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head. Leia Retta Castillo points us
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toward Jewish apocalyptic literature from that era to help
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us understand how Paul and his audience viewed Adam's role.
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Yes, we are looking at texts like for Ezra to Baruch and the
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life of Adam and Eve. While those texts are outside
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the canonical scripture, they are vital for understanding the
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cultural and theological framework of the 1st century.
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They really are. These apocalyptic writers were
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wrestling with the state of the world.
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They looked at the suffering, the oppression, the failure of
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humanity. And they traced it all back to 1
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primeval moment. They heavily taught that Adam's
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disobedience brought decay and death to the entire world.
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It was a cosmic catastrophe. The source text mentions that in
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Four Ezra, the author argues Adam's transgression was fueled
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by an evil heart or an evil root.
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And that root then infected all his descendants.
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It made them entirely corrupt and incapable of keeping God's
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law. The author of Four Ezra is
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burdened by this. He sees the law given to Israel,
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he sees Israel's constant failure to keep it, and he
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concludes that Adam introduced a legal packaging into the human
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bloodstream. The disease is passed down to
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everyone. But I have a massive problem
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with this logic and I know a lot of listeners will too.
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What is the issue? If Adam ruined the whole system
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for us before we were even born, how is God just in holding me
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accountable? That is the big question.
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Right. If I inherit an infected evil
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heart and a poisoned will, my choices are already biased
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toward rebellion. How can Paul or these ancient
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Jewish writers claim that individuals are responsible for
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their own sins when the game was rigged from the start?
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You are hitting on the classic tension between human agency and
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inherited corruption. Ligureticus Dio addresses this
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by showing how these ancient thinkers balance that exact
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paradox. How did they do it?
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He cites a brilliant passage from Tubaruk, chapter 54, verse
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19. The text says each of us has
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become our own atom. Each of us has become our own
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Adam, so it is not just about what the first guy did.
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Right. The author of Two Baruch
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acknowledges that Adam was the representative head who
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initiated the corruption and plunged humanity into death.
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But no individual is a helpless, innocent victim drag, kicking
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and screaming into sin. Exactly when an individual
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reaches the point of moral action, they look at the
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rebellion Adam started, and they willfully ratify it.
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We. Choose it.
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We choose it. We're born corrupted, but we are
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entirely responsible because we gladly participate in the
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rebellion. We become our own Adam.
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I see we cannot just point the finger at the garden and claim
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we would have done better. No, we cannot.
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When we are given the choice, we join the family business of sin.
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We love the rebellion. This is a critical pillar of
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Paul's argument. By natural birth, every single
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person is born into the headship of Adam.
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We share his corrupt nature and therefore we share his destiny,
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which is death. If you remain connected to the
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first Adam, you reap the harvest of the first Adam.
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So how do we get out? How do believers transfer from
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the headship of Adam, which leads to death, to the headship
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of Christ, which leads to life? To explain this rescue
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operation, Paul has to do some heavy theological lifting.
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He has to dismantle a massive misunderstanding the Corinthians
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had absorbed from Greek philosophy about how humans were
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created in the 1st place, right? The Corinthians were swimming in
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Hellenistic thought. Lagoretta Castillo highlights
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the likely influence of Philo of Alexandria on their theology.
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Philo was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher.
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He lived around the same time as Jesus and Paul.
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And his whole project was trying to harmonize Greek philosophy,
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particularly the ideas of Plato, with the Hebrew Scriptures.
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Plato taught that the physical realm is a flawed, shadowy copy
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of the pure, perfect spiritual realm.
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Yes. Matter is heavy, restrictive and
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corrupt. Spirit is elevated and divine.
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So Philo took those Greek lenses and put them on when he read the
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book of Genesis. And he developed a double
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creation theory. He looked at the two creation
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accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, and instead of seeing
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them as complimentary stories of the same event, he separated
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them chronologically. In Genesis 1, God says let us
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make mankind in our image. Philo reads that and argues that
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God first made an incorporeal, heavenly man.
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A perfect spiritual idea of a man completely untainted by
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physical dirt. A pure floating intellect.
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And then Philo gets to Genesis 2, where God forms man from the
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dust to the ground and breathes into his nostrils.
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Philo interprets this as a second secondary creation.
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Right, This is the earthly composite man, made of muddy
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matter and divine breath. You can see how this philosophy
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categorizes the physical body as a downgrade.
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You really can, and this distinction is crucial because
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of how the Corinthian church weaponized it.
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They took follows philosophy, mixed it with their new
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Christian faith, and created a toxic theological cocktail.
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They started believing that because of their advanced
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knowledge, their intellect, and all the spiritual gifts they
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possessed, they had already graduated to the status of that
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Genesis 1 heavenly spiritual man.
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They believed they had shed the need for the physical body.
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They thought they had arrived at ultimate spiritual perfection in
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the present moment. And if you believe you are
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already a pure heavenly spirit dwelling temporarily in a
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meaningless meat suit, then the idea of a future physical
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resurrection sounds awful. Right.
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Why would a pure spirit want to be permanently chained to
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physical matter for eternity? They concluded that physical
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direction must be a myth. It is staggering arrogance.
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Think about how this plays out even today.
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We see it all the time. We often prioritize our digital
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avatars, our minds on the Internet, and treat our actual
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physical reality as a secondary annoyance.
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We want to live in the realm of pure thought.
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The Corinthians were doing the ancient equivalent of trying to
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upload their consciousness to the cloud and leave their bodies
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behind. So Paul firmly corrects this
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warp timeline in verses 45 through 49.
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He takes Philo sequencing and flips it entirely.
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Paul states that the natural, the Greek word is psychicon,
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comes first, and then the spiritual, the pneumonicon.
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He grounds his argument right back in the text of Genesis.
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He says the first atom was made of dust and became a living
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soul. He was natural, He was earthly.
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The last Adam, which is Christ, is from heaven and became a life
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giving spirit. Paul insists that the
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Corinthians are jumping the gun. They're currently living in the
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era of the natural earthly body inherited from the first Adam.
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The spiritual body, the heavenly reality, is not something they
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can achieve right now through intellectual enlightenment or
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ecstatic spiritual experiences. No, it is a future physical
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reality guaranteed by the last Adam to be received at the
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resurrection. I liken this to a student who
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thinks they have already graduated with a PhD while they
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are still sitting in freshman orientation.
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That is a perfect way to look at it.
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Paul is resetting their timeline to show them they are still
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awaiting the final graduation, the physical resurrection.
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He takes their Greek disdain for the physical world and crushes
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it. He says the physical body is not
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garbage to be discarded, it is the starting point.
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Christ is not offering a spiritual escape hatch from the
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physical world. He is offering the redemption of
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the physical world. And this correction of their
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timeline is the engine driving Paul's ethical commands.
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Right. If your physical body has an
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eternal future, it dictates how you were supposed to behave in
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that physical body today. Because you cannot just trash
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the rental car if you realize you actually own it forever.
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Let us look closer at the ethics of burying the image.
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In verse 49, Paul writes, Just as we have borne the image of
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the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of
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heaven. Ligurette Castillo provides an
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excellent analysis of the Greek verb used here for bear.
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The word is forio. What does that imply in the
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original language? It implies A continuous habitual
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wearing. This is not throwing out a
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jacket for 10 minutes because the wind is blowing.
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This is putting on a uniform that defines your daily
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identity. Because believers are united to
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Christ, the last Adam, they must begin shedding the moral decay
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of the first Adam and habitually wearing the moral character of
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Christ. We wear the image of the earthly
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man right now, in our physical vulnerability, our aches, our
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pains, our mortality. But we are commanded to start
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wearing the image of the heavenly man in our daily
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ethics. The text highlights Paul's
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severe warning in verse 50. Flesh and blood cannot inherit
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the Kingdom of God. We need to unpack how flesh
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operates in Pauls vocabulary because he uses it on 2 levels
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simultaneously. This is a huge point of
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confusion for a lot of readers. You.
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Know it trips people up. If Paul just spent a whole
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chapter arguing that our physical bodies are going to be
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resurrected, how can he suddenly say flesh and blood cannot
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inherit the Kingdom? It sounds like he's agreeing
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with the Corinthians. It sounds contradictory until
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you understand his categories. On the first level.
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Flesh and blood refers to our physical perishability.
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Our bodies get sick. They age, their cells breakdown,
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they die. Exactly.
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A perishable, fragile body cannot endure an eternal,
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imperishable Kingdom. The environment of the new
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creation would overwhelm it. So there has to be a physical
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upgrade. Yes, but on the second level,
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flesh heavily denotes moral corruption.
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It represents the sinful inclinations, the selfish
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desires, the evil root we inherited from the first Adam.
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The part of us that inherently wants to rebel against God's
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design. Right.
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Corrupt flesh cannot enter the uncorrupted Kingdom.
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God will not import the disease of the old creation into the
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health of the new creation. Therefore, to inherit this
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uncorrupted Kingdom, believers must conform their lives to the
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moral qualities of Jesus Christ right now.
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Belonging to the new creation means a total decisive break
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with the old creation dominated by sin.
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Let me make sure I am tracking the logic perfectly.
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Paul is arguing that the eternal future of our physical bodies
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demands physical holiness today. Yes, we cannot compartmentalize
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our lives. We cannot say my soul belongs to
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Christ, so I am saved, but my physical body belongs to my own
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appetite, so I will do what I want on Friday night.
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That compartmentalization is exactly what the Corinthians
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were attempting, and Paul is dismantling it.
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Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
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It is destined for resurrection. Therefore, physical actions,
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what you eat, your sexual ethics, how you speak, how you
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use your hands to help or hurt your neighbor are linked to
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eternal realities. You cannot live under the
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dominion of the first Adam on Monday through Saturday and
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expect to inherit the Kingdom of the last Adam on Sunday.
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It is a total overhaul of the self.
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But there is a glaring question here.
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If corrupt, vulnerable flesh and blood cannot enter the
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uncorrupted Kingdom, how do we actually get across the finish
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line? What do you mean?
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Well, even if a believer pursues holiness and habitually wears
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the image of Christ, our bodies still decay, we still age, we
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still get sick and die. Right.
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A massive physical metamorphosis must take place at the end of
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history to complete this shift. Paul describes this final event
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as a mystery. In apocalyptic literature, a
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mystery is not a puzzle you solve with clues.
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It is a divine secret that God kept hidden but is now revealing
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to His people. He says this metamorphosis will
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occur at the last trumpet. The trumpet is such a classic
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prophetic symbol is the sound of divine judgement, the arrival of
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the king, the gathering of the assembly.
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It is the cosmic alarm clock waking the dead.
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To explain how a body can be both the exact same body and yet
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entirely different in its nature, Paul turns to the
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natural world. He uses the metaphor of sowing a
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seed. He says you sow a bear seed.
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The Greek is Gymnonkokon. A naked kernel.
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You plant this bear seed in the ground, and God gives it a body
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as he is determined. The sea dies, in a sense, to
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become what it is meant to be. It is sown in dishonor and
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weakness. It is raised in glory and
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strength, Right. I love this analogy because it
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makes the concept so tangible. I was walking through the park
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the other day looking at these massive oak trees.
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Oh, that is a good visual. If you had never seen an oak
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tree in your life and I handed you an acorn, this tiny hard
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brown nut. And told you this is going to
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become a 90 foot tall structure of solid wood and green leaves
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that can withstand a hurricane. You would think I was out of my
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mind. The discontinuity and appearance
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and capability is staggering. But the continuity is absolute.
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That specific oak tree came from that specific acorn.
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It is not a different Organism. It is the acorn glorified.
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That is what Paul is saying about the human body.
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What goes into the grave is the acorn week.
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Perishable, vulnerable to disease.
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What comes out of the grave is the oak tree.
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Imperishable, powerful, Spiritual.
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It is a brilliant way to hold both continuity and
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discontinuity together. It is still you, but a version
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of you fitted for eternity. And Paul then reinforces this
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with a second metaphor, clothing.
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He uses the Greek word ndo. He writes that this mortal frame
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must put on immortality. The perishable must put on the
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imperishable. Like putting on a heavy winter
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coat to survive a Blizzard, we have to put on immortality to
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survive eternity. Again, this shows it's
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continuity. It is still you underneath the
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clothes, yeah, but there is a radical change in state.
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You are being clothed with the environment of the new creation.
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The mortal frame is swallowed up by life.
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How does Paul bring this massive theological argument in for a
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landing? Yeah, how does he wrap it all
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up? Legarito Castillo details how
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Paul constructs his grand finale using an ancient Jewish
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exegetical method called Jezereshawa.
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Breakdown how that technique works in practice.
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It is a sophisticated rabbinic technique of interpreting
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Scripture. A rabbi would take two different
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biblical texts that share the exact same catch words and link
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them together to create a new synthesized theological point.
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It is a way of letting scripture interpret scripture to reveal a
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deeper truth, yes. Paul takes Isaiah 25.8 and Hosea
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13.14. He combines them using the catch
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words victory and death. Let us look at those texts.
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Isaiah 25 talks about God swallowing up death forever on
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his holy mountain. And Hosea, 13, talks about the
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plagues of death and the sting of the grave.
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So Paul weaves them together and modifies the text slightly to
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declare a triumphant theological conclusion.
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Death is swallowed up in victory.
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Oh death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting?
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It is a taunt. He is standing over the grave
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and trashed, talking death. He has every right to because
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the last Adam has defeated it. But Paul does not end with just
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a victory shout. He adds A striking, sobering
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theological anchor to ground the entire argument.
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He writes the sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is
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the law. Let us hover over that phrase
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for a minute. The strength of sin is the law.
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It is a heavy statement. That sounds completely backward
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to anyone who thinks religion is just about rule keeping.
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Shouldn't the law be the thing that restrains sin?
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Why does Paul say the law gives sin its strength?
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Humanly speaking, we assume laws fix bad behavior, but Paul's
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theology of the law is brilliant and devastating the.
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Law itself is holy, righteous and good.
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It reflects God's perfect character.
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But because we inherited that evil heart from Adam, our nature
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is inherently rebellious. When the perfect holy law is
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introduced to a corrupt human heart, it does not cure the
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disease, it aggravates it. It is like telling a toddler not
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to push a red button before you said anything.
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They did not care about the button.
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The moment you give the law, do not push it.
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Their corrupt little heart suddenly wants nothing more than
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to push it. The law exposes the corruption.
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It multiplies the transgressions because it draws clear, bright
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lines that we continually cross. The law takes our generalized,
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vague rebellion and turns it into specific, measurable legal
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violations. It gives sin its lethal strength
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by defining exactly how guilty we are.
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It reminds me of an MRI machine. How so?
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An MRI is a brilliant piece of technology.
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It is perfectly designed to see inside the human body.
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But when you slide a sick patient into the tube, the
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machine does not cure the cancer, no.
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Because not. It just lights it up on the
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screen so you can see exactly how far the tumors have spread.
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The MRI exposes the disease. It has no power to heal it.
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That is a brilliant analogy. The law is the MRI of the human
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soul. It exposes the total depravity
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we inherited from Adam it. Shows us that we cannot save
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ourselves by trying harder or keeping more rules.
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The law leaves us condemned, pointing us to our desperate,
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absolute need for the grace found only in the last Adam,
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Jesus Christ. Christ absorbed the sting of
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death, Death. He fulfilled the righteous
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requirements of the law on our behalf, and He emerged
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victorious from the grave to offer us a new identity, a new
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nature and a new physical body. That is the whole theological
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landscape right there. Let us zoom out and review the
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main themes we have covered from Legretta Castillo's analysis.
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We started by looking at the crisis in Corinth, where people
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were using false spiritual enlightenment as an excuse for
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physical immorality. We looked at the federal
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headship of Adam Howe. His rebellion brought death and
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an infected nature to the entire human race.
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We then contrast to that with the opposing headship of Christ,
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the last Adam, who brings life and inaugurates a new creation.
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We corrected the Corinthian timeline, establishing the
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absolute necessity of a future physical resurrection rather
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than an escape into a purely spiritual existence.
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And we saw how this future physical hope dictates A strict
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moral ethic in the present. Because we are destined for an
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uncorrupted physical Kingdom, we must put off the corrupt
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practices of the old flesh today.
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The theology is dense, but the application is incredibly
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practical. It touches every single aspect
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of how a person operates in the physical world.
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Well, as we wrap up, what should the listener take away from all
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this? Consider this as you go about
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your day. If the exact physical body you
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have right now is going to be raised, glorified, and live
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forever in a new creation, how does that alter the way you look
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at your mundane, everyday physical habits?
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If matter matters to God forever, maybe there are no
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truly minor physical actions in this life.
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If matter matters to God forever, that changes the entire
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blueprint of how we live on a Tuesday afternoon.
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Thank you for listening to this deep dive.