Last Adam personalities or representatives (; 1 Cor. 15:20–3, 45–9) and saw human beings as bearing the image of both Adam and Christ (1 Cor. 15:49). Where Adam's disobedience meant sin and death for all, Christ's obedience more than made good the harm due to Adam by bringing righteousness and abundance of grace (). As a "life-giving spirit", the last Adam is risen from the dead and will transform us through resurrection into a heavenly, spiritual existence (1 Cor. 15:22, 45, 48–9). Thus Paul's Adam Christology involved both the earthly Jesus' obedience (Rom. 5) and the risen Christ's role as giver of
Last Adam doubtful by what follows. This divine status and mode of existence stand in counterpoint (the emphatic "but" of "but he emptied himself") to the subsequent state of "assuming the form of a slave", "being born in human likeness", and "being found in human form" (). It is what is said in v. 7 that "first" puts Christ with the community of human beings and their collective image., Adam. Christ belonged to the eternal sphere of divine existence () and joined the human (and Adamic) sphere only when he assumed another mode of existence () which concealed his proper (divine) being.