What Kind of Body?

Series on I Corinthians

VII Manner of the Resurrection

C Explanation of the Resurrection, Text:15:35-49

Title: What Kind of Body?

Introduction

In I Corinthians 15 Paul has established the resurrection of Christ as of unparalleled importance, and reminds us that the resurrection of our bodies is so tied to Christ’s resurrection that to deny one is to deny the other. Such a denial will leave us without hope and without any reason to love God or do his will. Verse 32 says, If the dead are not raised let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. The Greek name for this philosophy is hedonism. Did you know that there are resorts now named after this philosophy? You can visit the “Hedonist.” it’s a popular creed! Paul says if you don’t believe in the resurrection of the body this is probably your creed. He never says, if you believe your soul will survive you have hope, or if you believe your spirit will live on then you have a reason to live for God. He says if you don’t believe that the body which you brought this morning and seated in the pew is going to live forever through Christ, then you might as well go home. Don’t anybody leave, because today in our text Paul is going to explain how the resurrection of your body is possible. It would be a shame to miss out on the preservation of something so fearfully and wonderfully made. You would hate to see a painting by Rembrandt, or a sculpture by Michaelangelo, or a Bach cantata wasted, wouldn’t you? How much more this amazing body? Our bodies are endowed with amazing sensory abilities. We can see a candle’s flame 30 miles away on a dark, clear night, and smell a single drop of perfume diffused in a three-room apartment or taste 4 one hundredths of an ounce of table salt in 530 quarts of water. The sense of touch can detect a pressure that depresses the skin 4 one hundred thousandths of an inch on the face or fingertips. And we can tell where a sound is coming from even when it arrives at one ear 3 ten thousandths of a second before its arrival at the other ear. It would be a pity to waste such a work of art. The rationalistic question of the doubters in Corinth is quoted in verse 35, How are the dead raised and with what kind of body do they come? In other words, how is this possible? Paul now explains the possibility, the potential and the proof of the bodily resurrection.

I The Possibility of the Bodily Resurrection

From verse 36 through verse 41 the Apostle exposes the shortsightedness of those who denied the resurrection of the body, How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 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. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. They have not considered the wisdom and the power of God. He answers their question, How are the dead raised? They are raised in exactly the same way that God raises a plant from a seed, by His power. Paul knows nothing of forces resident in mother nature, and neither should we. For us, each seed that sprouts is the work of an omnipotent creator. God counts the grains of sand on the seashore, the stars of heaven, the hairs on your head, and the seeds! the wonders around us are God’s work not nature’s. Does the death of the seed mean the end of the line? By no means, for this is how God’s power is constantly shown in the world around us. A few years ago, when archaeologists began excavating in the courtyard of a medieval monastery, they found seeds that had been dormant for more than 400 years that had begun to grow. King Henry VIII had closed the monastery in 1539, and herbs tended by the monks died. But they sprouted to life again after the archaeologists disturbed the earth. Paul also answers their second question, With what kind of body will they come? The same God who powerfully germinates the seed, has wisely designed suitable bodies for all of his creation including plants, animals, insects, fish, and all things both animate and inanimate. Notice the word Paul uses to describe these bodies, “splendor.” It is a translation of the Greek word glory which means a manifestation of God’s wisdom in all that he has made. We see the splendor of God himself in the mind boggling variety of his creation, but we see it most of all in the creation of man, body and spirit. Paul’s point here is not obscure. He just wants you to see that if God can manifest his glorious power and wisdom in all lesser creation, He can do it in a new body for you. This should not be a problem.

II The Potential of the Bodily Resurrection

Paul now draws a conclusion in verses 42-44 from his discussion thus far, specifically our bodies will be raised, So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised 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. He proceeds to explain what the potential is by giving us four contrasts between the body we have now and the body we shall have. These contrasts remind us of the continuity of the earthly and heavenly bodies. A seed dies, it is perishable. a seed is not a glorious thing, but the flower and fruit that come from it by comparison are extraordinary to the senses. How such glory could come from a seed astonishes us. Likewise a seed is a weak thing, it just lays there, but when it germinates the power is remarkable it defies gravity and earth, sometimes even rocks. In a cemetery in Hanover, Germany, is a grave with huge slabs of granite and marble cemented together and fastened with heavy steel clasps. It belongs to a cynic who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead and mockingly directed in her will that the grave be made secure against the resurrection. The marker says, “This burial place must never be opened.” In time, a seed, covered over by the stones, began to grow and slowly pushed upward. As the trunk enlarged, the great slabs were gradually shifted so that the steel clasps were wrenched from their sockets. A tiny seed had become a tree that had pushed aside the stones. The dynamic life force contained in that little seed is a faint reflection of the tremendous power of God’s creative Word that someday will call to life the bodies of all who are in their graves. This is no problem to the One who made something out of nothing when He spoke the universe into existence. Finally in the fourth contrast, Paul says our bodies will be spiritual, not natural. Please understand that spiritual does not mean immaterial, or insubstantial, spectral or ghostlike, unreal or unsubstantial. Remember that Jesus invited Thomas to touch Him and He said, A spirit has not flesh and bone such as you see me have. In fact the dictionary defines the immaterial kind of spiritual as bodiless which is the opposite of what Paul is saying. Spiritual means renewed and governed by the Holy Spirit, as opposed to the mere perishing earthly body. Just as there is an earthly body, so as a consequence, says Paul in verse 46 there must be a spiritual body. “First the natural then the spiritual,” precisely because the natural body or seed was only created with a view to being glorified. As man has gained increasing mastery over nature through science, he gradually has lost his sense of helplessness and with it his need to believe in the supernatural. He has become more and more this-worldly and can say, quite readily “This world is all that there is and it is enough. However, God’s plan from the beginning was the perfect new heavens and new earth wrought by the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world, and he now proceeds to explain this in his proof of our bodily resurrection.

III The Proof of the Bodily Resurrection

In verses 45-49 Paul explains that we all have one father, Adam, as the Old Testament says, but there is a last Adam, Jesus Christ, So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 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. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. The last Adam became incarnate, was born of the virgin Mary in order to save Adam’s children. He became another Adam. This in itself tells us that there is to be a new creation. This new world will be tangible and material, but it will not be like the present world. First comes the natural and then the spiritual. This, Paul says, is proven by the fact that there is another Adam. He is the token of a new world. In the second place, Paul tells us here that the last Adam, Jesus Christ is unlike the first in two ways. First he is not deriving his life from another, he is the source of life, and secondly, he is not from earth but from heaven. Now I personally believe that these words are describing Christ in his exalted state. It is of course true that he came from heaven and that he was the source of all life, but what Paul is enabling us to see here is that Jesus became man and took that human nature and transformed it into a source of heavenly life and power which he communicates by faith to his people in a manner analogous to the way in which the first Adam imparted physical life to his descendants. Thus there is now a new Adam who has triumphed in the body over sin and death so that he is a whole new man. So, not only does he prove there’s a new world but he proves that it is a tangible world, just as real and material as he is. Finally Paul states in the concluding verses what should be obvious to the Corinthians and to us. He says, what was the point of all this except that we should be part of that new world just as our new Adam is. We shall be like Him, glorified in body as well as spirit.

Conclusion

What is your hope and expectation? These bodies decay. They are subject to death, but we need not cling to them in their present state as if this were our last chance. Leaving our bodies is life’s greatest trauma but as believers, according to II Corinthians 5:1-4, we know with Paul, Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Let us remember that the extent of redemption reaches to my body. The result of redemption is that my body should be a temple, not a dump. The purpose of redemption is to glorify God in my body.