FaithInChrist, thanks for your posts. Welcome aboard!
Could you please tell us a little about yourself? How long have you been in the LRC? Do you believe that it’s the only genuine Christian church? What do you think about saints who left it? Do you know what reasons make saints leave the church? Have you ever read anything about the hidden history of the LC?
It would be interesting to know you opinion. You may open a new thread here:
http://localchurchdiscussions.com/vB...isplay.php?f=9
Thank you in advance!
PS I got an epub version of Orthodox Study Bible. So I’d like to share some footnotes from it. I don’t think it will add anything new to the discussion. But I’d like to pay attention to 1 Corinthians 15:22, where the Apostle Paul says that we die in Adam, but we shall be made alive in Christ. Paul uses the present tense in the first part of the sentence and the future tense – in the second. So it’s quite clear that in 15:22 and 15:45, Paul doesn't speak about the Holy Spirit but about the contrast between our present mortal body and our future immortal spiritual body. Christ is risen. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. One day Christians will be resurrected and made alive in Christ, living in immortal spiritual bodies.
1 Corinthians 15:22
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
All people share the same human nature, but Christians have two fathers: first Adam, who became the father of mortality and earthly life, and now Christ, the father of immortality and spiritual life.
1 Corinthians 15:35-54
How will the dead rise? What is the resurrection body like? Paul's most basic contrast is that between the natural (lit. “soulish”; Gr. psychikon) and the spiritual (Gr. pneumatikon, v. 44), that is, between the present body and the deified body. Other contrasts are corruption vs. incorruption (v. 42), dishonor vs. glory (v. 43), weakness vs. power (v. 43), living “soul” (literal translation) vs. life-giving spirit (v. 45), of the earth vs. from heaven (v. 47), of dust vs. heavenly (v. 48), the mortal vs. the immortal (v. 54). This present body is only a seed (v. 38) of the body to come. The “spiritual” body is not a pale shadow of the material world we now know; the opposite is true. The resurrection body is the fulfillment of what God intends for our present body. It is the material fulfilled, not dematerialized
1 Corinthians 15:45
Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
Whose body is this? As our present body is Adam's, so the resurrection body is that of the last Adam, Christ.
Adam and Eve did not physically die the day they ate from the tree, the words “you shall die” indicate a spiritual death through separation from God. Adam disobeyed God’s commandment and diverted himself, or fell, from God’s path to perfection, thus separating himself from His Creator, the Source of life. Christ, by His Death and Resurrection, conquered the devil and death, freeing mankind from the fear of death (Heb 2:14–15) and making possible a more complete communion between God and man than was ever possible before. This communion allows people to become “partakers of the divine nature” (2Pt 1:4), to transcend death and, ultimately, all the consequences of the Fall.