The Resurrection Body
35But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" 36How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40There 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. 41The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
42So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48As 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. 49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
Dig Deeper
There is a lot of attention these days on how many miles per gallons different cars get. When gas was under $2 (US) per gallon people didn’t seem to care all that much but when it goes over that price or even much higher, then suddenly people start getting concerned about it. People start to want smaller cars that get better miles to the gallon and many have turned to hybrid cars and even electric cars to achieve that. In every case, however, the discussion has to do with powers the cars and makes them go. No one imagines that the material that makes up the body of the car matters a whole lot. When people speak of changing cars to get something with better mileage, they are speaking of what powers the car not what materials make up the body. They want to make a change that will really matter and alter the actual performance of the car in a meaningful way.
If the central hope of the Christian faith is, as Paul has been pointing to, the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the subsequent future resurrection of all of those in Christ, then the obvious questions of how this will all work, begin to arise. What will the body be like? How will it happen? These are the very sorts of questions that Paul will begin to address in this dense section. But like the cars, it is important to know that Paul is not really concerned with what the body is comprised of, with what material it will be made of (there was simply no discussion of that as it was assumed that bodies in the resurrection would be just as physical as bodies are in our present age) but what the body runs on. Paul is discussing the animating force that powers our being and will.
The tone that Paul uses in the original Greek language for the questions of verse 35 suggest a mocking or skeptical tone, indicating a lack of belief in the whole process of actual bodily resurrection. It seems that many in Corinth had maintained the same view of death that their Greek-thinking compatriots had. They most likely held to the view that the resurrection would entail a separation of the body and soul, with the soul living on for eternity once it has escaped the prison of the body. Paul’s answer to them is that they are foolish for this skepticism. Resurrection is not some form of living on after death in spirit form, in a body that wouldn’t be visible to the natural human being, it is an actual reversal of death. That is the key. Those who experience the resurrection will actually die, but in Christ, death will be defeated and reversed as the natural body is transformed into something quite like the natural body, but also quite different.
In verse 44, Paul labels two types of bodies. One is the pre-resurrection “natural body” and the other is the post-resurrection “spiritual” body. This translation is misleading in that it implies that the bodies are somehow of a completely different composition. The question that Paul is answering is not the composition of the body, but rather what animates the body. Is it the soma psychikon, the body animated by the normal breath of life (the soul if you will), or is it the soma pneumatikon, the body animated by the Spirit of the living God? Paul is speaking in equal opposites throughout this passage as he talks of bodies that are perishable versus imperishable, honor (or glorified) versus dishonor, weakness versus power which culminates in a body that is sown a natural body that runs on the normal human soul versus the supernatural (a better translation than spiritual) body that will run on God’s own spirit.
This is the heart of the issue for Paul. In this age, our bodies are given life and characterized by the ordinary human spirit, but in the age to come, those who have experiences the resurrection will have bodies animated by the Spirit of God Himself. This is why he says that our current natural bodies are sown perishable, in dishonor, and in weakness. What Paul means is that the current use of bodies, is not the ultimate purpose for which they have been made. Since the fall of man we have been marred by the effects of sin, subject to death, and become the mere image bearers of sinful human fathers (Genesis 5:3). In Christ, though, we will be raised to bodies that fulfill their true purpose, being raised imperishable, in glory, and in power. Through the Spirit, we will have our natures transformed to natures like God so that sin and death will no longer have power over us, and although we will have free will (as God does), we will no longer be able to sin because it will go against our very natures, the animating force of the Spirit of God. They will be imperishable, glorified, and in power. This is what will power our bodies, which is far more important and profound than a simple discussion of what the body is made of, a discussion that can only come about if we accept the Greek philosophical point that the material realm is bad and must be escaped by the soul.
This is what Paul means with his explanation of verses 38-41. God has created all different kinds of bodies with different purposes and properties. Within the bodies of humans, we bear the seeds of the intended purpose and glory that man was to have. This is not to say that Adam had a resurrection body and lost it due to sin. The resurrection body is something new, something for which man was intended. Paul’s metaphor of a seed does not mean to imply that once we die, the seed of our bodies will flower into something new. His point is that just as a seed has all of the characteristics and ability to be a flower inside of it, so our ‘natural’ bodies have all of the characteristics and ability to be the imperishable, incorruptible resurrection body. The contrast between our new bodies and our bodies in the present age is that when a body is animated by the Spirit it will not wear out, it will not die. There are all kinds of flesh, Paul says. Man has one kind of flesh. It is not that we are going to have a different kind of flesh in the age to come, it is what animates that flesh that is of true importance.
Paul begins in verse 45 to state explicitly what he has had in mind all along. He is describing a new creation, a re-writing of Genesis 1 and 2. There are two kinds of humanity, the body animated by the natural human spirit and the one animated by the Spirit of God. The resurrection body will be the realization of what we were made for in the first place. The prototype of this resurrection body has already been rolled out through the last Adam, Jesus Christ. He is the one worthy of entering into the age to come. He lived without sin and thus had the right to become the truly human being. Those in Christ will experience all of this when He returns. Paul uses the word ‘heaven’ as the place of God’s presences where he keeps things safe before their great unveiling (Col. 1:3-5; 1 Pet. 1:3-5; Acts 3:19-21). This does not, in Paul’s mind, mean that we will die and go to heaven, and become the new type of resurrected human there. No, God will somehow bring the resurrection, the renewal of humanity and all things from heaven to earth. At the time of the coming of Christ, He will transform the bodies of Christians who are still alive, and raising the dead to the same renewed deathless, glorified, body. Up to this point, we all have one thing in common, the fact that we share in the earthly likeness of our common ancestor, Adam. The glorious hope for the Christian, however, is that we will one day be transformed and our bodies will be redeemed (Rom. 8:20). We will become in fact what we are in position now as Christians. While we are in Christ positionally at the present time, we will, on that day of resurrection, actually bear His likeness for eternity.
Devotional Thought
The hope of the Christian in resurrection is that we will have our natures transformed so that we will be animated by the Spirit of the living God. We will no longer be subject to temptation and sin. We will have natures that are incapable of sinning. How much does this motivate you in the present age? Take some time to today to think about the resurrection and what it means for us. Praise God for His incredible plan for mankind.
No comments:
Post a Comment