A Better Adam and a Better Ending
Notes
Transcript
Genesis 1-3, Revelation 22, 1 Corinthians 15
Genesis 1-3, Revelation 22, 1 Corinthians 15
Intro: SEND Network and Radiant
In Genesis one through three, we find our origin story.
In the first chapter, God creates the earth and all that fills it. He builds a garden temple where He chooses to dwell, but it’s not His desire that He dwell there alone:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
In these verses, God gave life to His most precious creation, those with whom He desired to share “The Life” He would later speak of in John 14.
Man and Woman were created, to dwell with God, without barrier, and to experience the fullness of His grace every moment, of every day.
Grace in relationship with each other,
Grace in nature,
Grace in their work,
And above all, Grace in fellowship with God.
But then…darkness entered the picture.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
The ESV Bible I preach from calls this enemy a “serpent,” but the Hebrew word nahash points to something more complex than a simple garden snake.
The term is associated elsewhere in Scripture with shining metal, enchantment, and hidden knowledge. It’s language tied elsewhere to mysticism, spiritual deception, and even chaos.
In other words, the creature confronting Eve likely did not provoke immediate fear or disgust. He appears to have been striking rather than repulsive, intriguing, persuasive, even impressive. He stood upright before her, and his danger was not obvious in his appearance….but was revealed in his message, because he spoke in a way that subtly contradicted God’s word while making disobedience sound wise and desirable.
And this is where Adam and Eve’s failure hits home. They did not merely eat fruit and break rule; they chose to trust the voice that questioned God over the God who had spoken clearly to them.
The serpent reframed obedience as restriction and rebellion as enlightenment, and they accepted that reframing…and the world continues to follow suit to this very day!
Instead of receiving their identity and wisdom from God, they reached for autonomy, desiring to define good and evil on their own terms.
Thus their sin, was not just rule-breaking, but a shift of allegiance: they believed the deceptive promise of becoming more, and in doing so, they distrusted the One who had already given them everything.
And what happened in the garden didn’t stay in the garden. When Adam and Eve trusted the deceptive voice over God’s word, sin didn’t just enter their hearts — it entered the human story. Their rebellion fractured creation itself. From that moment on, humanity inherited both the guilt and the consequences of that choice: alienation from God, corruption in our nature, and ultimately death. The world we live in now, marked by decay, conflict, war and death, is not the world as God made it, but the world as it became through Adam.
And thus Paul writes these words in his first letter to the Church at Corinth:
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
For as in Adam all die:
When Adam stood by the sea, and realized he was a man, I can’t help but wonder if he understood the full extent to which he was a representative of every human being that would ever walk the earth. In the same way, I don’t know that we understand the ways in which we represent those who will come after us.
As I get older, I realize more and more that the traits I inherited from my parents are not just physical characteristics, I also inherited aspects of their unique nature, good and bad, I feel more and more that which I inherited. And initially, it’s easy to chalk that up to experience “your just manifesting that which you grew up observing.” But having spent years working in foster care, I have seen that this is deeper than that, for I have witnessed again and again, children who never observed the nature of their parents, wrestling with the same unique and inherited nature, and I have seen it across generations.
Adam and Eve, did not share this experience, they inherited no sin, no generational curse…instead they bore the responsibility of laying the foundation of ours, and the decision they made to turn from God’s rule, and toward wickedness, defined their nature as well as the nature of all who would come from them.
And so through Adam, we have inherited death. Life detached from the garden, life in the wilderness, unsustained, withering, fleeting, and ending in the death of the body.
But yet, Paul declares the good news, that:
in Christ shall all be made alive.
The context of Paul’s words are in response to theological error in the church regarding the resurrection. It seems there were some in the church that were seeking to deny the resurrection, specifically, the future physical resurrection of the believer. Now, to understand this conflict, you have to know that Corinth was a city heavily influenced by the greeks, and the greeks believed wholeheartedly that the soul was immortal. In fact, they saw the physical body as not only inferior to the soul, but as a prison the soul needed freed from. So for them, salvation meant escape from all things physical, and the resurrection of the dead was not only irrational but undesirable. It’s the same greek mindset that Paul encountered in:
Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.”
So though people believed that the soul be rise again, they couldn’t bring themselves to believe that physical death would be overcome, but Paul’s language here addressed that head on as he declares that what shall be physically dead, shall be made alive through Christ, the better Adam. And the emphasis of his point, is that if they believe we are not going to be raised, then how can they believe that Christ was raised? And if Christ, was not raised, then he says:
“Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
In other words:
If Christ raised was raised from the dead, we should care about nothing else.
If Christ was not raised, then we should care about nothing!
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
In Adam, the seed was corrupted and with it, the harvest ruined. BUT, Christ planted a new seed, a seed that contained both physical frailty (that being, a body that would wither and die) and, divine life (God Himself). And this seed, was the “firstfruits” of a new and better harvest.
In agricultural terms, the “firstfruits” is the first produce picked from a new crop, it’s how you know the result that is to come. The firstfruits not only assure you that a crop is coming, but it tells you the condition that is to be expected!
And thus, Paul describes this firstfruits later in the chapter:
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Paul’s point is that resurrection is not merely about coming back to life: it’s about being raised into a new kind of life patterned after Christ Himself. Adam passed down a corrupted humanity, one marked by frailty, decay, and death. But Christ, the true firstfruits, rose with a body that was still physical and recognizable, yet transformed, no longer subject to decay, weakness, or death.
His resurrection body is not less real than ours, but more real: embodied, glorious, and alive with the power of heaven.
Paul explains this using the image of seed and harvest. What is buried is not the final form but the starting point. The body we sow into the ground is perishable, dishonored by sin, and weakened by mortality. But what God raises is imperishable, glorious, and powerful. Just as a seed contains continuity with the plant that grows from it, so our future bodies will still be us, embodied, personal, and human, yet transformed into the likeness of the risen Christ.
This is why Paul contrasts the “man of dust” with the “man of heaven.”
We have all borne the image of Adam, fragile, mortal, and earthbound. But those who belong to Christ will bear the image of the risen Lord. The post-resurrection body, then, will be:
• Imperishable — no decay, sickness, or death
• Glorious — no longer marked by shame or corruption
• Powerful — not limited by weakness or mortality
• Spiritual — not immaterial, but fully alive and aware of the physical and spiritual realms, and sustained by the life of God!
And we know this is not theoretical, because we have already seen it in Jesus Christ.
He ate with His disciples, spoke with them, and could be touched…yet He also stood beyond the limits of ordinary human life . His resurrection is both the proof and the preview of what is coming.
So Paul’s message is not simply that we will live again. It’s that Christ’s resurrection has begun a new humanity. We have died to, and put off the former inheritance of Adam, and we have been given the life and in inheritance of Jesus.
For when He stepped out of the grace, a new and better harvest began, and everyone united to Him will one day stand in bodies like His, not merely restored to Eden, but raised into glory.
And as glorious as that is, Paul makes clear that this is not only true for the redeemed creatures of the sixth day, but for all that was created on each day before:
Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
That means the resurrection isn’t just about what happens to us after we die. It’s about what happens to the whole world God made. Christ rose to begin the reversal of everything that went wrong in the garden.
The Bible begins in a garden, with humanity walking with God among the trees of life, and it ends in a garden-city.
When we turn to Book of Revelation 22, the tree of life stands again, the curse is gone, and God dwells with His people face to face as before.
What was lost in Eden is restored in the New Jerusalem.
The story that began with exile ends with homecoming.
Closing:
Closing:
And so to close this morning, I want to consider the revelation of that homecoming found in:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
When we reach this final vision in the Book of Revelation, we’re not just seeing the end of a story, but in this last chapter of the bible, we’re seeing the healing of everything that unraveled in the first chapter.
John shows us the river of the water of life flowing from God’s throne, and beside it stands the tree of life once again. But notice what’s new: its leaves are for the healing of the nations.
In Genesis, sin fractured humanity, brother against brother, tribe against tribe, nation against nation…how real is that fracture today after the news that flooded the airways yesterday?
But in the new creation, God doesn’t just save individuals; He restores humanity itself. Every division sin created is healed to its very root…which is something we will never accomplish (elaborate).
Then John says, “Nothing accursed will be there.” That’s the full reversal of Genesis 3. The curse that brought thorns, toil, decay, and death is finally gone. No more resistance in creation. No more corruption in the human heart. No more shadow of judgment hanging over the world.
What Christ began in His resurrection is finished here, the curse is undone!
And then comes the most breathtaking promise: “They will see His face.”
All throughout Scripture, sinners cannot look directly upon God and live. Moses is hidden in the rock. The temple veil shields His presence. But here, at last, nothing separates God and His people. The goal of redemption was never just forgiveness, it was restored fellowship. We will see Him as He is and walk together again as was always God’s intention and desire.
And not only that, His name will be on their foreheads.
In Genesis, God places a mark on Cain not as punishment, but to shield him from harm; in Exodus, the blood on the Passover doorposts spared Israel from death; and in Ezekiel, the “taw” (cross) traced on the foreheads of the faithful marked them as belonging to God.
In the ancient world, a name marked ownership and allegiance. This is the opposite of the fall. In Eden, humanity grasped for autonomy, wanting to define good and evil for themselves. But in the new creation, we are joyfully marked as belonging to God. Our identity is no longer self-made but God-given, secure, and eternal.
No night, no darkness, no need for created light, because God Himself is our light.
And instead of being driven from the garden, we are told we will reign forever.
Humanity finally becomes what it was always meant to be: God’s image-bearers, rreigning with Him in a world made new.
So the Bible ends where it always intended to go not just rescued souls, but healed nations, not just forgiven sinners, but restored children, not just life after death, but life with God, face to face, forever.
Knowing the place we were designed to live, makes it no wonder we are constantly in a place of discontent.
The struggle is that we daily try to ease our discontent with the false promises of the nahash, thus Paul warns us:
Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning.
C.S. Lewis once wrote:
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who goes on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased”
If the story of Jesus ended on the Cross, we not only cannot imagine a holiday at the sea...but could never attain it....mud pies that the world adores would be the height of our destiny and “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die” would rightfully be our most rational anthem.
But the story does not end on the Cross. Because Jesus rose from the dead, the offer of infinite joy is no longer just imagined, it is guaranteed, and thus we live in light of that guarentee right now today! We can face every manner of circumstance with love, hope and assurance.
What was once beyond our grasp is now ours in Him: life, restoration, and the fullness of God’s presence.
No longer are we doomed to settle for mud pies; we are invited to feast at the table of the King, to walk in light, and to see His face forever.
Let us give thanks together
Communion - A seat at the King’s table, a foretaste of the Kingdom to Come.
