A real estate agent once told the story of an old warehouse property he was selling. The building had been vacated and left empty for a long time. Unbeknownst to him, some unscrupulous homeless people moved in and used it as temporary lodging. When the agent brought a prospective buyer to show him the property, he discovered that the doors were broken, the windows were all smashed and there was debris and garbage all over the house. The agent tried to reassure the buyer that he would repair the broken doors and windows and clean out the garbage. “Forget about the repairs,” the buyer said. “When I buy the house, I’m going to tear it down and build something completely new.”

When God takes over our lives, God is not content merely to carry out simple repairs of our broken lives, God means to remake us completely into new people. God’s grace in us is not just about fixing and improving the old person but transforming the old person into a completely new person. As Paul tells us in today’s second reading, this is because it is only the person who has been regenerated, made new, and transformed by God’s grace who can share in the resurrection. The earthly person who has not been made new by God is incapable of sharing in the life of the resurrection. “What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:50).

To illustrate his teaching on the need for human life to be transformed by God’s grace in order to qualify for the resurrection, Paul uses the teachings of a famous Jewish philosopher and theologian, Philo of Alexandria. Philo had taught the doctrine of the two Adams. The first Adam, created in Genesis 1 in the image of God, was the spiritual Adam. The second Adam created in Genesis 2 from the dust of earth was the physical Adam. This would mean that there are two old Adams. But since Paul sees Christ as the new Adam, the ancestor of the new humanity, just as the old Adam was the ancestor of the old humanity, he reverses the order of the two Adams in Philo: “But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven” (verses 46-47).

So, for Paul, there are two Adams, the first or old or earthly Adam, and the new, second or heavenly Adam, which is Christ. These two Adams have the entire human race between them, some belonging to the camp of the earthly Adam and others to the camp of the heavenly Adam. At the end of time, those who belong to the earthly Adam will remain in the dust of earth, while those who belong to the heavenly Adam will rise to new life. “As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven” (verses 48-49).

To those who argue that the human body as we know it – needing food and shelter, and prone to all sorts of illnesses, disabilities, ageing and decay – cannot rise to live forever, Paul says yes and no. Yes, because it is the same body that is going to rise; and no because it will be completely transformed such that it is no longer susceptible to these changes. The risen body of Christ was still able to eat, but had no need to eat. So shall we be at the resurrection, if we remain in Christ.

As humans we all come into life belonging to the camp of the earthly Adam. The greatest challenge of life is to see that, although we are born in the camp of Adam, we do not die on the side of the old Adam but on the side of Christ. We need to change sides from Adam’s territory to Christ’s domain. We do not achieve this by simply trying to becoming better people. Christianity is not just about becoming a better person, it is about becoming new person. Today is a good day to say a prayer of total surrender to God. And so we pray: