Our Problem: Born in Adam — Spiritually Dead
From the beginning, humanity has been born in Adam’s image and likeness, not God’s. When Adam sinned, the Spirit of God departed, and spiritual death entered the human race.
Adam’s son Seth was born in Adam’s likeness—without God’s Spirit—and so are we.
Like Adam and Seth, we are born spiritually dead, separated from God, and unable to bring ourselves to true life. No amount of rule-keeping, moral effort, or religious behavior can change this condition. Once you have the Spirit of God, you are saved completely.
The Solution: Faith That Jesus Rose From the Dead
Jesus came to give life where Adam brought death. Salvation and eternal life come through believing in His resurrected life.
Romans 5:10 “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.“
Pre-Resurrection Faith in Jesus
Before the cross, Jesus offered eternal life to all who believed in Him. This is before they knew about Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.
John 1:4 “In Him was life, and that life was the light of humanity.”
John 5:24 “Whoever believes has eternal life and has crossed from death to life.”
John 5:39–40 “The Scriptures point to Me, yet you refuse to come for life.”
John 10:10 “I came so they may have life in its fullness.”
John 11:25–26 “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes will live.”
John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth, and the life—no one comes to the Father except through Me.”
John 14:19 “Because I live, you also will live.”
Key Point Jesus offered eternal life through belief in Him even before the resurrection. Yet the Gospels say the disciples did not understand His statements about rising again:
- Mark 9:32 “But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it.”
- Luke 18:34 “The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about.”
- John 20:9 “They did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” On Easter morning, John and Peter ran to the tomb and were surprised to find it empty.
Faith in the Resurrection (After the Cross)
After the cross, Scripture is explicit: we are saved from spiritual death by believing that God raised Jesus from the dead.
Romans 4:25 “He was handed over because of our sins and raised so we could be made right.”
Romans 5:10 “Though once enemies, we were reconciled through His death and saved by His life.”
Romans 6:4 “Just as Christ was raised from death, we also walk in new life.”
Romans 8:11 “The Spirit who raised Jesus gives life to our mortal bodies.”
Romans 10:9 “Believing God raised Jesus from the dead brings salvation.”
Galatians 2:20 “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”
Colossians 2:12-13 …“having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins”
Ephesians 2:4–6 “God made us alive with Christ and raised us with Him.”
The Gospel Defined by the Resurrection
Romans 1:2-4 “the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Romans 4:25 “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
Romans 6:4 “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.“
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
1 Corinthians 15:1–4“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”
1 Corinthians 15:17 “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…”
1 Corinthians 15:20–22 “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”
1 Peter 1:3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
The Spirit Brings Life to Believers
God promised a new Spirit, and through the resurrected Christ we now receive Him and be saved from spiritual death.
Ezekiel 36:26–27 “I will give you a new heart… and put my Spirit in you…”
John 3:3–6 “No one enters God’s kingdom without being born of the Spirit.”
John 6:63: “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.”
John 7:37–39 “…the Spirit, whom those who believed were later to receive…”
Romans 8:9–11 “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”
1 Corinthians 15:45“So it is written: ‘The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.“
2 Corinthians 3:6 “He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”
Galatians 6:8 “The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “When you believed, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit…”
New Testament Resurrection Connections
Romans 6:3–5 “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
Colossians 2:12 “Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.”
Philippians 3:10–11 “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.“
1 Peter 3:20–21 ..“God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.“
Old Testament Foreshadows
John 11:25-26 — “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”
Matthew 12:40: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.“
Matthew 27:52–53 “The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.
They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.”
Genesis 22 recap God’s provision of Isaac as a sacrifice foreshadows the resurrection life through God’s power (key theme; full text in Genesis 22 details Abraham’s test and God providing the ram).
Future Resurrection Promises
Daniel 12:2“Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”
John 5:28-29 “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out–those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise bo be condemned.”
Acts 24:15 “I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.”
1 Thessalonians 4:15–17 “According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”
Revelation 20:4–6“I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.“
Receive His Life Today With This Prayer
(A prayer will not save you, but only the attitude of your heart)
“Jesus, I believe You died for my sins, and I believe You are alive.
By faith, I receive Your Spirit and resurrected life in me.
Thank You for saving me and giving me Your Spirit and life.”
