1 Corinthians 15:35-49
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
What Will Our Resurrection Bodies Be Like? 1 Corinthians 15 Explained
Jesus, Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, Amen, we are working through our series on First Corinthians, chapter 15, talking about the implications of the resurrection for Christians, looking at Jesus's death and bodily resurrection so that we can see what it means for our own bodies in eternal life.
The first Sunday, we looked at the eyewitnesses and saw that we believe in the resurrection of Jesus, not despite the evidence, but because there were people there who saw him die and rise, and they gave us their eyewitness testimony.
The next session was about the resurrection and how Heaven is not the goal of the Christian life, but Jesus's return when he will call us from our graves and give us new life, body and soul after that, we reflected on on that and how it shows us that death is the enemy, then that life means having a body. And we talked about what that means, especially at funerals, and how our language needs to reflect that last time, we talked about how our bodies matter now as we look forward to the coming joy of the resurrection, and we ended with a question, What will these bodies be like on The day that Jesus returns?
It is really nice that St Paul asked that very same question he writes,
But someone will ask, how are the dead raised with? What kind of body do they come You foolish person? What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed, its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars. For star differs from Star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written the first man, Adam became a living, living being. The last Adam became a life giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven, just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Clears it up, doesn't it? That's a lot of words to tell. Us what's happening. But what St Paul is doing is he starts, first of all, challenging their assumptions. That first paragraph that talks about the birds and the wheat and the stars and all of that he's trying to say very simply, the resurrected body will be different from your body.
Now, he needs to give them that, because they are imagining a resurrected body that looks like their current body. And you can understand if you were just to raise the body you have, that wouldn't be all that awesome, unless you're about 22 In fact, the Greeks Tell a story about a man named tithanus.
Tithanus, in this version of the story, fell in love with a goddess Eos, and they were so in love that she wanted her mortal husband to live forever. So she went to Zeus, and she asked Zeus to give him eternal life. And Zeus smiled and granted him the wish. He smiled because she did not ask for eternal youth, just eternal life, which meant that he continued living and aging naturally, and after several 100 years, that was not all very good for him in us. You can imagine then why the Corinthians might think it's ridiculous that we would have our bodies back when we are raised from the dead, decaying, broken, hurting bodies. Why would we not be elevated into a new spiritual plane like the Greeks thought they imagine a zombie apocalypse on the day Jesus returns, groaning, mumbling, looking for brains.
Paul's answer is simple. The resurrected body is different from the present body in many and various ways, and he uses all of this language about sowing and growing, heavenly bodies and earthly bodies to introduce it. And he gets down to it when he says, What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. What happens is our bodies become different. The body that goes into the grave will be raised not as it was placed in the grave, but in glory and power. Paul tells us that Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection, which means that he is the pattern for our own resurrections. And when Paul describes the perishable and imperishable dishonor and glory and all the rest. What we can do is look to Jesus to see what that body will be like. And so when Jesus was raised from the dead, we know that that body is physical. He did all sorts of things, including eat with his disciples, showing that he was not a spirit, but a body.
We also know that that body will have some sort of content continuity with our current bodies and. Because they recognized him. Now, some of them didn't at first, but you want to know why they thought he was dead. Sometimes, when I'm in the grocery store and not wearing my clerical people have no idea who I am, right? It happens all the time. Then they go, Pastor? it takes a sec.
Can you imagine thinking Jesus was dead and then seeing him? It would take more than a second to go? Wait a second, Jesus? And I think that's what's going on. But there is also discontinuity with the old body. When Jesus rose from the dead, He rose never to die again. That's a big deal right now, death has no dominion over him. The body that was subject to pain and hurt and disease is subject to it, no longer the suffering servant, the one who came to bear the weight of sin in his body bears that weight no longer, because he has destroyed the power of sin forever.
And that means that while we will still be us, we will still have our bodies. They will be glorified in the pattern of His glorious body, and so there will be no sickness or disease or hurt or pain ever again. We will live forever in perfection. We will be raised from the dead to eternal life, empowered by the Spirit to live forever with Christ, following his pattern in God. Now, sometimes, when people think about the perfect resurrection That we will see and the perfect world that God will create on the day that Jesus returns, we might ask something. Well, there's a question, won't that be boring?
Have you ever asked that one, what will we do in the resurrection when there is no battle to fight, no growth, no challenges to conquer, when we are just perfect. That is a question that a television show that I loved asked. It's called The Good Place.
Anyone seen the good place? In the good place they go to the equivalent of heaven. And when they get there, the people who are there are so bored with perfection that it has rotted their brains. They can get anything they want at any moment, at any time. And they're so bored by instant gratification that they can't do anything. They are like the living dead zombies. And it would make sense then, if that's what eternal life was like, if we were raised from the dead, as we currently are, right? Because we like challenge. We like growth. We actually need things to do to stimulate ourselves, but that's because built into our bodies is sin. We need challenge because we're sinners.
When we are raised from the dead, it will not be like the Good Place sinners in perfect bodies getting whatever we want. We too, our whole being will be cleansed, not just our physical nature, but also. Our mind and behavior, we will not need challenge, because we will be perfect, always and perfectly, trusting in our Savior, always ready to receive the perfection that Christ gives us, never worrying about the future, ever again, if you can imagine it, never wondering what we might need, or questioning the good and gracious will of our God. We will simply do what we were made to do, love and serve one another in perfection for all eternity.
It is so crazy, I have a hard time even imagining what it would be like, which is why I think the Gospels and St Paul and Revelation don't even try to describe it, because it is so different from what we have now that it would boggle our mind to think about it. We will be raised from the dead into a life that is so perfect and so different we can't even imagine it being as great as it possibly is. What amazing gift that Jesus will give us when He returns on that last day to raise us from the dead, we will be sown with our bodies that are perishable and raised imperishable dishonor and raised in glory We are in weakness now we will be raised in power, a natural body now a spiritual body, following the pattern of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Live in perfection forever in Jesus' name. Amen, please stand and.
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