Becoming Human Again: Christ and the Story We Forgot

The gospel isn’t just about sin being forgiven. It’s about the whole story of humanity being rewritten. The early church called this recapitulation — the idea that in Jesus, God re-lives and re-orders the human story, putting everything back the way it was meant to be.

In Philippians 2, Paul paints the contrast. Adam grasped at equality with God; Jesus did not. Adam reached up and fell; Jesus stooped down and was raised up. Christ doesn’t just undo Adam’s failure — he fulfils Adam’s calling. He shows us what it looks like to be fully human: trusting the Father, serving others, laying down power for love.

In Romans 5, Paul goes further. The gift is greater than the trespass. The grace of God doesn’t just balance the scales — it overflows. Those who receive “the gift of righteousness” will reign in life through Christ. The gospel isn’t simply a return to Eden. Under the second Adam, there is a beginning of a new creation, where grace abounds and humanity shares in the life of God himself.

And in Ephesians 1, Paul stretches the vision even wider. God’s plan is “to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under Christ.” The Greek word is anakephalaiōsasthai — to “sum up again.” That’s the heartbeat of recapitulation: everything fragmented by sin is gathered again around its true centre. The world is being brought back into order — and so are we.

To be in Christ is not to escape our fallen humanity but to recover it. In him, we rediscover what was lost: relationship with God without fear, a purpose bigger than ourselves, an identity grounded in love, and a destiny to reign in life, as stewards of God’s good world.

Jesus doesn’t just save souls; he restores humans. He takes up our story, heals it from the inside, and hands it back renewed.

The good news isn’t only that Christ died for us — it’s that in him, we become fully alive again.