The New Birth of All Humankind

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. (1 Peter 1:3)

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. (Colossians 1:15-18) 

For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22)

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the New Birth of all humankind, for he who is Firstborn from the Dead is Firstborn of All Creation. The universal nature of this connection, which brings it all together, is found in the Incarnation, by which Christ has united divinity with humanity, divine nature with human nature, divine being with human being, God with humankind. For we are not a collection of individual beings who happen to have similar features, but we are, each of us, instances of the one and only human being there is. We each partake of the only way there is of being human.

There is divine being and there is human being. Our Lord Jesus Christ is both. He is divine being by nature, but in divine grace he has become human being, so that we may become by grace what he is by nature. In the Incarnation, he did not become merely a singular instance of human being, he became human being itself, the human being of which we all partake and in which we all participate. 

By becoming human being, Christ defines for us what it means to be human. Humankind, which was once headed up in Adam, is now headed up in Jesus Christ. This means that we are all connected with Christ and each other. So, when Christ died on the Cross, all of humankind died. Likewise, when Christ was raised up as “Firstborn from the Dead,” all humankind was born again, given new birth through his resurrection.