1 Corinthians 15:22

22. In Adam… in Christ Literally in the Adam, in the Christ. That all the race was done up in Adam and drawn out from him, (just as the successive lengths of a spyglass are done up in and drawn out from the first length,) is not a literal fact. It is an imaginative conception, which, properly guarded, gives a powerful impression of the truth. St. Augustine, by perverting the conception, did almost as much to corrupt Christian theology as he did, in other respects, to defend it. See note on Romans 5:12. The being made alive here, is simply the same as the resurrection in the previous verse, and affirms, merely, a universal bodily resurrection. The being in Christ refers not to the incorporation into Christ’s mystical body of believers by faith, but to their being taken in under his headship of the race, as they were previously in under the headship of Adam by descent.