To whom do we cling: the earthly person or the heavenly Lord?

We strive in the Lord to cling to Him and become one with Him so that He may establish His kingdom in us, and that our lives may be guided by the Holy Spirit. In so doing, we experience a token of heaven, and are prepared to be attached to the heavenly Second Adam, and dust shall have no place in us. The apostle Paul says, “The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47). “Of the earth” does not mean that he merely walks on earth that is dust, but rather that he bears an earthly nature that is ephemeral.

St. John Chrysostom says, “For the first difference was between the present life and that which is to come: but this between that before grace and that after grace.”¹³²¹

St. Augustine says, “The Lord who was heavenly became earthly that He might make heavenly those who were earthly; that is, from immortal He became mortal by ‘taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:7), not by changing the nature of the Lord; that He might make immortal those who were mortal by imparting the grace of the Lord, not by retaining the offense of the servant.”¹³²²

And St. Hilary of Poitiers says, “ The first man was from the soil of the ground, the second man from heaven (1 Cor. 15:47). Calling Him ‘Man’ he expresses His birth from the Virgin, who in the exercise of her office as mother, performed the duties of her sex in the conception and birth of man. And when he says, The second man from heaven he testifies His origin from the Holy Spirit, Who came upon the Virgin (Luke 1:35). As He is then man, and from heaven, this Man was born of the Virgin, and conceived of the Holy Spirit.”¹³²³

1319 St. Augustine of Hippo, A Treatise on Faith and the Creed 6.13 (NPNF I/3:326).

1320 St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the First Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians 41.6–7 (NPNF I/12:252–253) amended.

1321 St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the First Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians 42.1 (NPNF I/12:255).

1322 St. Augustine of Hippo, Letters, Volume V (204–270) 205 To Consentius (FOTC 32:16).

1323 St. Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity 10.17 (NPNF II/9:186) amended.