But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
You can't expect to teach without getting students' objections. I don't usually answer my students uninformed questions with "How foolish!" (v. 36; literally in the Greek, "You fool!"). I may think that, but I never say so directly. But Paul was using a rhetorical device quite acceptable in his day. His analogy of the seed was also used by later rabbis, who also used it to explain the Jewish view of a literal bodily resurrection in the last day. We know now that in the seed is the genetic code that determines the appearance of the plant to emerge. Our resurrection bodies may not look exactly like our present ones — personally, I will be glad of that! — but we will be recognizable. And I take it that the code inside the "seed" will be what we might today call our personality, making allowances for the effects that sin has today on that personality.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
Now Paul leaves behind his similes of seed and different kinds of flesh, and explains the various ways in which our resurrection bodies will differ from our present ones. Our present ones are "perishable," that is, they will all die. When I buy milk products in the grocery store, I always check the "sell (or use) by [date]" information. So it is with our physical bodies today. Some of us have a "use by …" date that is closer than others. But eventually we all die.
Secondly, our present bodies are not glorious. Paul says they are "sown in dishonor." By "dishonor" Paul does not mean to imply with the Neo-Platonists that the body per se is a degrading thing. The Old Testament and Judaism of Jesus' time had no such conception of the human body, nor did Paul. What he means is that there is nothing particularly beautiful or honorable or glorious about a corpse. Even the mortuary "beauticians" can only do so much to disguise it! Many Jewish teachers believed that the body would be raised in exactly the form in which it had died, even if maimed, and only then be healed. This notion expressed their conviction that there was continuity between the old and new body. Paul clearly sees the resurrection body in different terms.
The present bodies die in weakness: feebleness of limb and mind. I sat recently with a 90-year-old man whom I had known in his prime as a historian and college president. In his younger days he had been not only brilliant in his field but a man of great practical judgment. But as we talked, his mind drifted in and out of coherence. One used to call this "senility;" nowadays it is often called by a polysyllabic name. But however you name it, it's all the same: as we approach death, we become feeble of body and often of mind, even if still (hopefully) strong in faith and love. This is what the present body is like. But the resurrection body will be powerful in every way.
Our present bodies are "natural" (NIV, ESV)—"physical" (NRSV)—while our resurrection bodies will be "spiritual." I am not entirely satisfied with any of the English translations suggested above by the NIV, ESV and NRSV. The NRSV's translation "physical" for the present body implies that by "spiritual" Paul meant that the resurrection body would be "non-physical." This is clearly untrue, as what Paul goes on to say proves. And the NIV and ESV's word "natural" is far too ambivalent in meaning. The word "natural" in English often means "not artificial," which is likewise not Paul's meaning. Paul uses two Greek adjectives here, built on the two nouns "soul" and "spirit." The human soul (Greek psyche) controls our physical life in the present body. In the age to come it will be God's Holy Spirit (Greek pneuma) who will empower our new bodies. The difference will be like going from a horse and buggy to an Alfa Romeo sports car. The difference will not only be vastly increased powers of perception (i.e., seeing, hearing, knowing) and expression (i.e., communicating with each other and praising God), but also of moral capacity—our ability to love God and one another will be super-charged. And the vehicle in which this inner life will be "housed," as it were, will be in mysterious ways in continuity with our present bodies and with Adam and Eve's DNA. God will have completely rolled back the effects of the Fall of humanity and erased the marks of what at present looks like Satan's victory. This display of God's victory would not be nearly so complete, if all that our afterlife consisted of was a shucking off of the body and life as a disembodied spirit floating forever in clouds in "Heaven."
45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
In these verses Paul has transformed the Jewish philosopher-theologian Philo of Alexandria's interpretation of the dual telling of the creation of humans in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis. Philo contrasted the incorruptible “heavenly man” of Genesis 1 with the “earthly man” of Genesis 2; the former represented the ideal spiritual state of the mind seeking heavenly things, the latter the carnal person devoted to temporal things. Paul turns things around. His term "earthly man" refers to the first human being in both chapters of Genesis, and the "heavenly man" is the resurrected and ascended Jesus. Thus he can write in verse 46 that "The spiritual did not come first [i.e., Philo's view], but the natural, and after that the spiritual." All human beings bear the indefinable "image" of the first human being, Adam. He in turn was created in the image of God. But when we commit ourselves to Jesus as Lord and Savior, we are "born again" and begin to bear a new image. That image is God's mark upon us, unseen by others. It is the image of Jesus, placed in us by his Holy Spirit who indwells us.
50 I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
It is unbelievable what nonsense is often taught on the basis of this verse. To say, as some do, that Paul here teaches that the resurrection body cannot be really physical is to use one verse against all the rest in the chapter! In view of what precedes and follows, he clearly means that our existence in the final kingdom of God requires a transformation of our present "flesh and blood" into the more glorious resurrection bodies. In one way or another, as he proceeds to say, "we will all be changed."
51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep [i.e., die], but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55 “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a furious attack going on today—even by some evangelicals— against the notion that Jesus will return suddenly and take out of the world his own people, leaving others behind. This is what is called "the Rapture." I will not debate the details of that view here. Some of us will be persuaded that the Second Coming will have two phases: the first such a "Rapture" [taking believers away from the earth] followed by a period of great evil and then by a coming of Jesus with the previously raptured saints to put down human rebellion and evil and setting up his rule over the earth, — and some may not. It is not wrong to question the interpretations of biblical passages by other believers. But the viciousness of the attack on those who hold the first view, the Rapture, even by evangelical scholars whose writings I otherwise highly esteem, is very disappointing to me. We need to be more charitable to one another. More civil and respectful in our discourse. The language of current political debate has become so extremely polarized as to be distasteful in the extreme. But we need not imitate it in Christian dialogue.
Paul does not here settle the issue of whether or not there will be a Rapture. But he does make clear that before the glorious kingdom of God can finally prevail over all, every believer will be transformed physically. This is the Old Testament hope, the hope of Judaism in its earliest and classical form, and the hope of the apostolic church. It is a hope that unfortunately has been transformed by the church's shifting of the focus from God's final triumph to the church's limited advances in the present age. And in recent years this shift has been given an even more unsettling aspect by the removal of the notion of evangelism and conversion from the picture, in favor of the improvement of "human rights."
58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
There is surely nothing wrong with Christians participating in efforts to encourage society to meet the needs of the poor and disadvantaged. This too is "the work of the Lord." But our focus must always be first and foremost on using the gospel to transform individual lives—one by one. None of the recent high profile writings and movements within evangelicalism should be allowed to blur this distinction. The ethical imperatives of the prophets and of Jesus should be urged on our neighbors, but the Great Commission of Jesus did not address this or make it the main focus of the Church.
Our urgent desire, as that of the apostles should be—as they expressed it in Aramaic, Jesus' own language—marana tha "Come back, Lord!" And until he returns we "stand firm" on the Bible's teachings, and go on working for Christ, not discouraged, knowing that our efforts are "not in vain" in the Lord.
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