◄ The Last Is First ►

"As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly" (1 Cor. 15:48).

Christians have a poor self-image simply because they are thinking and looking upon the condemned and crucified first-Adam life within, instead of being occupied with their glorified Last-Adam life above. "Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:18).

If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new' (2 Cor. 5:17). Does this not mean a new sort of creature, as the Word implies? Do we go back to Adam, the innocent man in the garden in which God set him to dress and keep? No, that would be no creature new in kind. Adam even, pure and good before his fall, was yet of the earth, earthy.

"Is the Lord Jesus but the first man set up afresh? No, He is the second man, the Lord from heaven.' He is a heavenly man, the Last Adam - head of a new race; beginning of a new creation - and you and I who believe are in Him,' seen and accepted before the Father in His Beloved.' The full image of Him we have not yet: true. That will be ours in the day of His coming. The thing we are!" -F.W.G.

"A sinner in himself, the believer has, by faith, taken upon him the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is in Him,' he has been made the righteousness of God in Him. He is accepted in the Beloved' (Eph. 1:6). Faith alone gives him all this comeliness. He has been recreated in the Lord Jesus. This is the beauty of the believer; and he is lovely in the eye of the Lord Jesus. So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty; for he is thy Lord, and worship thou him' (Ps. 45:11)." -J.C.B.

"And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly" (1 Cor. 15:49).