Sown in Mud, Raised in Glory: The Resurrection Body Text: 1 Corinthians 15:35-58
Introduction: The Materialist's Dead End
We live in an age that is terrified of death and yet has absolutely nothing coherent to say about it. Our secularist high priests tell us that we are nothing more than sophisticated animals, sacks of chemicals that fizz for seventy or eighty years and then go flat. They tell us to "seize the day" because that is all there is. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die and become fertilizer. This is the bleak, gray, and ultimately hopeless gospel of materialism. It is a philosophy that can build nothing, sustain nothing, and hope for nothing. It is a worldview with a corpse at the end of it.
Into this morgue of a worldview, the Christian faith walks in, throws open the windows, and announces the resurrection of the dead. Not the immortality of the soul, not some disembodied floaty ghost existence, but the resurrection of the body. Our faith is not ethereal; it is earthy. It is about God redeeming the whole man, body and soul together. The ultimate hope of the Christian is not to escape the body, but to receive a glorified one.
The Corinthians, living in a Greek culture that despised the body as a prison for the soul, were struggling with this. Some of them were denying the resurrection altogether. And so Paul, having established the absolute non-negotiable reality of Christ's resurrection in the first half of this chapter, now turns to answer the practical, and somewhat skeptical, questions. "How?" they ask. "With what kind of body?" These are not abstract questions. The answers to these questions are the fuel for Christian faithfulness in the here and now. What you believe about the last day determines how you live on this day.
The Text
But someone will say, "How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?" You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies; and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own... So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a corruptible body, it is raised an incorruptible body; 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... And just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly... Behold, I tell you a mystery: we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet... Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
(1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-44, 49, 51-52, 58 LSB)
The Fool's Question and the Farmer's Answer (vv. 35-38)
Paul begins by addressing the heckler in the back row.
"But someone will say, 'How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?' You fool!" (1 Corinthians 15:35-36a)
Paul does not suffer fools gladly. He calls the questioner a fool, not as a playground insult, but as a technical diagnosis. The man is a fool because he asks a question about God's power while ignoring the evidence of God's power that is planted in the ground every spring. The answer to his supposedly sophisticated, philosophical question is found in basic agriculture. You want to know how God can bring a glorified body out of a dead one? Go look at a seed.
"That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies; and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own." (1 Corinthians 15:36b-38)
The analogy is brilliant in its simplicity. There are two crucial points here: discontinuity and continuity. First, the seed must "die." It must be buried, and its outer shell must decay and fall away for the new life to emerge. Our current bodies must be laid in the ground. Death is a necessary part of the process. Second, what you plant is not what you get. You plant a hard, ugly little seed, and you get a glorious stalk of wheat, shimmering in the sun. There is a profound transformation. You do not sow the body that will be.
But there is also continuity. A wheat seed produces a wheat stalk, not an oak tree. The resurrected body will be your body, just as the stalk of wheat is organically connected to the seed that was sown. And notice the key actor: "But God gives it a body just as He wished." This is not a mere natural process. This is a sovereign, creative act of God. The same God who designed the process of germination has designed the process of resurrection. To doubt the one, when you see the other all around you, is indeed foolish.
A Universe of Different Glories (vv. 39-41)
Paul then expands his argument from analogy, piling up examples from God's creation to show that God is a master of creating different kinds of bodies with different kinds of glory.
"All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish. There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, 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." (1 Corinthians 15:39-41)
The argument is simple. Look around you. God has not created a monotonous, uniform world. He has filled it with a staggering variety of creatures and forms. The flesh of a man is different from the flesh of a fish. The glory of the sun is different from the glory of the moon. God is not a one-trick pony. If He can make all these different kinds of bodies, each suited for its own environment, why is it so hard to believe that He can make another kind of body, a resurrection body, suited for the environment of heaven and the new earth?
The skeptic's problem is not a lack of evidence; it is a lack of imagination. He has a small and boring view of God. Paul is stretching our minds, forcing us to reckon with the God who is an infinite artist, whose creative power is not exhausted by what we currently see and experience.
The Great Upgrade (vv. 42-49)
Having laid the groundwork with his analogies, Paul now applies it directly to the resurrection of the dead, using a series of four stunning contrasts.
"So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a corruptible body, it is raised an incorruptible body; 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." (1 Corinthians 15:42-44a)
This is the before-and-after picture. Our current body is corruptible; it gets sick, it ages, it decays, it dies. The resurrection body is incorruptible; it will never get sick, never age, never die. Our current body is sown in dishonor, humbled by the effects of sin and the indignity of death. It is raised in glory, shining with the reflected radiance of Christ. Our current body is sown in weakness; it gets tired, it needs sleep, it is limited. It is raised in power, fit for eternal service, tireless and strong.
The final contrast is the most important. It is sown a "natural body" and raised a "spiritual body." This does not mean we will be wispy, ethereal ghosts. The word for "natural" is psuchikos, from the word for soul (psuche). It means a body animated by our natural, created life. The word for "spiritual" is pneumatikos, from the word for Spirit (pneuma). A spiritual body is a physical, solid body that is perfectly animated, empowered, and directed by the Holy Spirit. It is a body whose every cell is perfectly submitted to God's will. It is not less physical, but more real, more solid, the way God intended physicality to be.
Paul then grounds this transformation in the two representative heads of humanity: Adam and Christ.
"So also it is written, 'The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL.' The last Adam became a life-giving spirit... The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven... And just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly." (1 Corinthians 15:45, 47, 49)
This is federal theology in a nutshell. We get our current bodies, our "natural" bodies, from our father Adam. He was made from the dust, and so our bodies are earthy, mortal, and corruptible. But in Christ, the last Adam, we have a new federal head. He is the man from heaven. He is not just a living soul; He is a life-giving Spirit. And just as surely as we have inherited the physical nature of Adam, all who are in Christ will inherit the glorified, resurrected nature of Christ. It is a covenantal certainty. We wore the image of the man of mud; we will wear the image of the man of glory.
The Final Trumpet and the Defeated Foe (vv. 50-57)
Paul now pulls back the curtain on the timing and the mechanism of this great change. He reveals a "mystery," something previously hidden but now made plain.
"Now I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God... Behold, I tell you a mystery: we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet." (1 Corinthians 15:50a, 51-52a)
"Flesh and blood" here is a technical term for our current mortal, corruptible human nature. It's not a statement against physicality itself. Our current hardware simply cannot run the software of the kingdom of God. An upgrade is required. And this upgrade will happen to every believer, whether they are dead ("asleep") or alive at Christ's return. And it will be instantaneous. Not a slow, gradual process, but in a flash, at the sound of the last trumpet, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and the living will be transformed.
When this happens, death itself is undone. Paul, filled with a triumphant spirit, begins to taunt the defeated enemy, quoting from the prophets.
"But when this corruptible puts on the incorruptible, and this mortal puts on immortality, then will come about the word that is written, 'DEATH IS SWALLOWED UP in victory. O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?'" (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)
Death, the last enemy, the great tyrant, is publicly mocked. He is a king with no kingdom, a warrior with no weapon. And why? Paul explains the logic of death's defeat. "Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law." Death's stinger, its poison injector, is sin. Sin gets its power, its legal force, from the law, which defines sin and pronounces a curse upon it. But Christ, through His perfect life and sacrificial death, satisfied the demands of the law and paid the penalty for our sin. He pulled the stinger out of death. Death still buzzes around, but for the believer, it has no venom. The victory is won, and it is given to us freely through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, Get to Work (v. 58)
This entire glorious chapter of doctrine comes to a sharp, practical point in the final verse. This is the "so what." This is where the rubber of eschatology meets the road of our daily lives.
"Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." (1 Corinthians 15:58)
Because the resurrection is true, because death is defeated, because we have a glorified body waiting for us, our work here and now is not meaningless. It is not futile. It is not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Every faithful act of service, every child raised in the fear of the Lord, every business run with integrity, every stand for truth, every prayer, every cup of cold water given in His name, it all matters. It is all part of the work of the Lord, and it is not in vain.
This is the Christian engine for civilization. We build, we plant, we work, we create, we labor, not because this world is all there is, but precisely because it is not. Our labor in the Lord is an investment in eternity. The resurrection of Christ guarantees the resurrection of our bodies and the resurrection of our work. It will be purified by fire, yes, but what is done in the Lord will last.
So, do not lose heart. When the world tells you that you are just stardust and your life has no ultimate meaning, you remember the empty tomb. When your body grows weak and your work seems fruitless, you remember the promise of a glorified body and a lasting reward. Because of the resurrection, we can be steadfast, not shaken by the lies of the age. We can be immovable, anchored to the bedrock of Christ's victory. And we can be always abounding in the work of the Lord, joyfully and tirelessly, knowing that in the Lord, our labor is never, ever, a waste of time.