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Originally Posted by awareness
Okay we can't really pin down life-giving spirit.
But still, we haven't addressed "became," or "was made," (ginomai)
"the last Adam became a life-giving spirit."
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First, "became" is only implied in the part about the last Adam, but clearly so.
Actually, that is what we have been talking about. The mortal body is sown in death and what it "becomes" is resurrected immortal and spiritual. That has been what Paul was talking about the whole time. While he did not use the word "became" in the earlier verses, it is the same thing. Nothing new. Here in 15:45 he says "became."
For three verses (as the later scribes inserted years after the originals) Paul has said "raised" over and over. Then in v 45 he gets more specific and says that Adam "became a living being (soul)." That is the fact that Adam was created as such by God. And immediately, it says, "the last Adam, a life-giving spirit." And this is a parallel to "raised in the earlier parts of the passage. "Became" is parallel to "raised," and the "becames" (actually only one stated, but the other implied) are parallel to what is sown v what is raised in resurrection. And the thought is to give this observation of a resurrected body as an example of the one that the rest of us will receive. And since we are not going to become the Holy Spirit, that is out of bounds of what Paul is discussing. Therefore highly implausible as a meaning of this particular snippet within the discussion.
In fact, prior to this one verse, Paul has ben saying that this sown-raised "process" is the way it is, but has not provided evidence that it is so. And now in v 45 he finally does it by noting that the natural body that Jesus began with was what is provided by God to Adam and passed down (by biology) to each of us. Then, in death, that body was buried. Then when it was resurrected, it "became" something different. It was spiritual. And the only example to date of the resurrection was Jesus. And Jesus received this spiritual body. And, BTW, he is life-giving. At some level, the reference to life-giving was not necessary to make the point. That may be the reason that some think it just has to mean more. But since Christ is life-giving, Paul is often prone to being somewhat superlative in his descriptions of God/Christ. That does not naturally raise a specter of reference to the Holy Spirit, especially since he did not reinforce it, but immediately went back to the "natural/spiritual" comparisons.
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The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.
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Does this help?