“But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead.” (1Cor 15:20-21) It is written: “The first man Adam became a living soul.” But breaking the commandment, he sinned and became a dead soul. He lost the divine life. All his descendants are born dead souls, deprived of the divine life. “The last Adam – Jesus became a life-giving Spirit.” This is the only solution for a dead soul – to receive a life-giving Spirit. How? By repentance. It means to stand up against the system of lies and pride which manipulates reason and to accept the basic realities and truths concerning earthly and eternal life: the reality of death, the reality of personal sin, the reality of God’s judgment and consequently of just eternal punishment. Another reality is to acknowledge God as the Creator of the whole universe and of all living creatures on earth. To receive the love of God, which is in Christ. He took the just punishment for our sin. He cleanses us from sin and gives us a new life. To receive Christ and to receive His Spirit is the condition of our salvation, because if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.

Jesus Christ, the second Adam, baptizes with the Holy Spirit, i.e. He gives us the fullness of the Spirit and restores us to communion with God – to life. Without the Holy Spirit people are mere “living” corpses abusing God’s gifts and talents for their egoism, pride, crime, perversion and wars. This is the fruit of sin, and our memory, reason and will keep boycotting this reality. Various philosophies and psychologies are now in fashion, which, in essence, is a system of deceit keeping man in spiritual death. Man is manipulated into becoming a slave of lusts, sexual perversion, drugs, alcohol, mammon, career, and this is a crime. To idolize spiritual corpses enslaved by the spirit of lies and death, to make false idols of them, is total nonsense. It is high time to tear the mask off and to call things by their proper names. And this is not possible without the elementary step, which is repentance. This means to receive Christ who gives life through His Spirit. Our spirit must then cooperate with the Spirit of Christ and human soul must become an instrument of righteousness and love instead of sin and lies. However, this requires an everyday fight, i.e. self-denial and dying spiritually with Christ – the loss of our soul in practice. These are the fundamental words of the Gospel: “Whoever loses his soul for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it.” It means to lose the spiritual infection causing temporal and eternal death and to keep the soul for eternity. The world and its system of lies and vanity together with the prince of this world and demonic forces in the heavenly places influence the human soul so that it remains in darkness and becomes a plaything of all kinds of lusts and perversions which consequently enslave the human body too. So our life is a fight for the salvation of the human soul.

Concerning spiritual resurrection with Christ, it has been given to us through baptism and faith. It is a new life of Christ in us.

Concerning physical death and physical resurrection, death comes at a particular moment in everyone’s life in his own order, but physical resurrection will take place at one moment on the day of the second coming of Christ, and it will be connected with the intervention of God’s almighty power when our body will be glorified and will be like the raised body of Christ, i.e. it will be spiritual and no longer subject to the laws of sin and death or physical laws. It will be immortal, just like our spirit.

The Apostle Paul writes: “The first man Adam was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is from heaven. 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.” The Apostle explains what resurrection is like: “The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body – psychikon, it is raised a spiritual body – pneumatikon. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” The first man Adam became a living soul but then he sinned and the consequence was death, not only physical one, which takes place only once, but also spiritual one, which means that man is born a dead soul, and not a living one. From the very moment of conception, man carries death in himself – both earthly and eternal. That is why we must be born again so that we may enter the kingdom of God. We are born again of water and the Spirit, and this also requires that we receive Christ as our Saviour and Lord. He is the last Adam, He is a life-giving Spirit – pneuma zoopoioun. As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But the question is whether you are in Christ or in Adam and in your dead soul. All who are in Christ shall be made alive in their proper order: “Christ was raised as the first; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when He comes back.” (v.20-23)

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