The Cross, Part 1

In Between Is the Cross

By Tammy Lacock

“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." (1 Corinthians 15:45)

Warren’s mission this week is to help us understand the Cross as central to Paul’s gospel of grace.

In 1 Corinthians 15:45, Paul reveals to us a distinction between the soul and spirit. We must rightly divide them if we are ever to understand God’s plan (Hebrews 4:12; 2 Timothy 2:15).

In the Old Testament, God moved through the soul of man, through our minds, wills, and emotions in our obedience to the law. Paul tells us God no longer works salvation through man’s soul. We are now saved only by His Grace. Through the sacrifice of His Son on the cross, we have been saved by Christ’s blood. By just believing in Him, we are now saved in our spirits, joined to Christ’s Spirit making us one Spirit in Him. (1 Corinthians 6:7). In Christ, our spirits have been set free of Satan’s curse through Adam, and now we have been translated into the kingdom of Christ. We went from soul-living to spirit-living, our old lives passing away (2 Corinthians 5:16).

“Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.” (Colossians 1:13)

“He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” (1 John 5:12)

As brand-new creations in Christ, we are now bona fide sons and daughters of God, begotten of Him. God no longer looks at works-based salvation through our souls. He sees Christ in us. He looks at our new life in Christ in our spirits. We are no longer bound by our weaknesses because we now know that our weaknesses were built into God’s plan. By ourselves, we’ll never get it right. Only by the Cross are we saved and quickened in Christ. By God’s grace we are finally complete by the Incorruptible Seed of Christ now alive in our spirits. In fact, Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:4 that we were in God’s plan before the foundation of the world, already chosen in Him even before Adam made his appearance, “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”

As believers in Christ, we have moved from soul to spirit, from law to grace, from death to life. What happened in between was the Cross.