And so it is written, “The first man Adam becme a living being.”  The last Adam became a living Spirit. (46) However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual.  (47) The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven.  (48) As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly.  (49) And as we have borne the image of the man of dust we shall also bear the image of heavenly Man. 

The apostle Paul wrote the first letter to the faithful Corinthians in response to their doctrinal questions and our verses today concern their questions of how the dead are raised up and what resurrection body do they have?  The Corinthians believed that Jesus was raised from the dead but they did not believe that humans would be resurrected.  Paul devotes chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians to this – he moves from proof of Christ’s resurrection to proof of man’s resurrection.

The human race was created in the first man – what God deigned to give to all he conferred to that first man.  By the fall Adam ruined himself in sin and all men were drawn into that same ruin.  The second man, Jesus, true God and true man, restored our nature. We cannot be restored in Christ without first being born a living soul in Adam. – we live in this world in Adam but Christ Jesus is the beginning and author of heavenly life. The body of Christ was subject to death but by Gods providence, not to corruption. His heavenly life first appeared in His resurrection. The resurrection of Christ is the foundation of the gospel.    Christ is the prototype of our resurrection

Paul is saying the spirit of man is eternal but will not exist eternally without a body. God created man as a whole and will redeem him the same with body and spirit – the spirit will not go back into some cosmic deity. From birth we manifest corruption of the body – the grave reveals the truth about our bodies now but some day we will be raised and that resurrection will reveal the truth of our glorified body – the natural body and our supernatural body are to be different. As we are like Adam now we shall be like Christ – something different and something so the same: incorruptible.  When all flesh is gone – the human sinful part; the part that blocks the glory of God – we will shine forth in the Father.