Dear friends,
People’s attitudes towards their bodies can be quite diverse: from those who are embarrassed, to those who are proud; from those who hide their appearance behind excessive clothing to those who glory in their display of flesh. Within the ancient world, and still amongst ‘super spiritual’ people, there has been the desire to be free of our bodily limitations. Yet Christians boldly proclaim the resurrection of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and more than that, of our future hope of the resurrection of our own bodies. But the obvious question comes about the nature of our future resurrection bodies—will I still be limited by my imperfections, or at a geriatric age? Paul was addressing the doubters in 1 Corinthians 15 when he spoke of our glorious body which will be like unto Jesus. I hope you enjoy this discussion on this vital teaching of Christians about the resurrection.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: Peter, are you looking forward to your resurrection?
Peter Jensen: I am.
Phillip: That’s good, because today we’re talking about just that. This is the fourth episode of our mini-series in 1 Corinthians 15. We started off by looking at the first part of the chapter, where you see that the great basis for the resurrection lies in the history of the gospel itself. Then we went to the end of the chapter, thanks to your advice, where you see the great promise of eternity that flows from the belief in the resurrection. Last week, we looked at the problem raised in the middle section about people who profess to be Christians, but have difficulties with believing in the resurrection. The question raised last week was this: if you don’t believe in the resurrection, what are the consequences? If there is no resurrection, then Christ has not risen, and you are still in your sins. This is spelled out as Paul argues for belief in the resurrection.
But now, the people who were doubting the resurrection have come back with another question: what kind of body are you going to have in your resurrection? So again, Paul chastises them, but gives the answer to our benefit. I too have pondered what kind of age I would like to be in my resurrection body. Would I want a resurrected 80-year-old body, or a 20-year-old body? I certainly wouldn’t want to be a teenager again.
Peter: 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.
Phillip: That’s a fantastic passage. But is the question concerning what kind of body we will have still relevant for us?
Peter: I believe it is. Their question, which Paul quotes in 15:35, is not inquisitive, but scornful. In essence, they are saying, “You claim that there’s going to be a resurrection. Tell me what sort of body there is.” To my mind, it comes out of something which we still experience, that we are abnormally sensitive about our bodies. We’re often deeply dissatisfied and self-conscious with our appearance and our abilities. We think, “You’re not looking at the real me when you look at my body in the way it is.” It happens particularly as you age, of course. Ageing embarrasses and alarms us. We’re aware that people judge us by our looks. So the body matters, but it often disappoints us. Even people who glory in their bodies will one day have this sense that it’s not the real them. What does Paul therefore tell us about our future?
Phillip: He tells us of the resurrection of the body. Because of the way I was raised in biblical understanding, I’m never dissatisfied with my body. I think it’s got to do with the belief in the creation, that God has created our bodies to suit his good plan for this world. Though it is disfigured by an impending death, it is still a glorious thing that we have.
But the question here is about raising this body to a new life. The Corinthians are still questioning whether it can be done, but God is perfectly capable of raising the dead, even the long-ago dead, those who have turned back into dust and ashes. It’s like the rest of the Bible; it’s a celebration of the one true God and his power, for he is the creator of everything, even the creator of everything out of nothing. He sustains everything by his powerful word. So the idea that he could raise people from the dead does not seem far-fetched for the God who is the creator of all. He’s the Lord of nature and of history, and he created us for a purpose. Take the biological processes that we know: God takes an insignificant little seed and turns it into a glorious and huge tree. So he who is able to turn a little seed into a massive tree will have no difficulty turning our human body, in all its death, into a glorious body. In fact, the seed has to die in order to turn into a new life, and so as we are buried in death, so we are getting ready for that which God is quite able to do and does frequently: that is, bring us to a new bodily state which will be greater than anything that we’ve had so far. So what do we see about God’s power to achieve this? We know he does it from his wisdom.
Peter: He does. Paul talks about the world around us, remembering, as you’ve said, that the world is a part of what God has declared to be good. He is not against nature, or against matter; they are his creations, which he has declared to be good. If in the world to come, there is a body, we ought not to be surprised by that, for the body is what God declares to be good.
It’s interesting to see how we are connected with the seed and the tree. That is to say, it’s not as though our present body is just completely done away with. There is a connection between who we are and who we will be, but the connection is as similar as the seed and the fully grown plant. So by God’s power and wisdom, we see death transformed to life. The transformation into splendour and glory is what he calls a ‘spiritual body’. This is a rather puzzling phrase. What’s your take on the idea of the spiritual body?
Phillip: I don’t think that in saying ‘spiritual body’ he is referring to a non-body. That would make nonsense of everything that he’s been saying up until this point.
Peter: Yes; after all, Jesus was resurrected from the dead. He wasn’t a ghost.
Phillip: No—he went out of his way to point out he wasn’t a ghost in Luke 24. So what does he mean by ‘spiritual body’? It’s got to do with Paul’s use of this word ‘spiritual’. That is, this world is the natural world; the age to come is the spiritual world. So the body that we’re looking at now is the natural body of this world, but the resurrection body that is to come is the spiritual body: the body of the age of the Spirit that lies ahead. So our body will be both natural and spiritual. It is natural now, and it will be spiritual when Christ returns. The natural world is dominated by death, and so our natural bodies are dominated by death. That is, we are perishable. Our bodies are dishonourable and weak. It’s the nature of this world that we are indeed perishable. But in the age to come, the new body will be imperishable. Instead of dishonour, we will have glory. Instead of weakness, we will have power.
So the 2 are being contrasted. This happens elsewhere in 1 Corinthians, where Paul contrasts the natural body at the end of chapter 2 with the spiritual. In chapter 3, he mentions the fact that he can’t talk to the Corinthians as ‘spiritual’ because they’re still living as if they’re ‘natural’. There’s also a wonderful passage, 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.” It’s not that Christ’s body is dead, but he goes on in spirit. What he’s saying is that in this age, Christ was put to death; in the next age, he comes to life. So when he talks of the ‘spirit’, he is talking of the age to come. That’s why in Revelation, John says a few times that he was “in the spirit” when he had the revelation, because in the age to come, he sees what is taking place in this world now. So ‘spiritual’ does not mean ‘bodiless’; ‘spiritual’ means ‘the next age’.
Peter: It brings in eschatology, the doctrine of the last things: that there is an age to come, which we’re already in at one level. But we’re waiting for the age of the Holy Spirit, in which the Spirit will be fully operative, so to speak, in our lives.
Phillip: The coming of the Spirit into this age on Pentecost is the breaking in of the eternal age now, seen in the resurrection of Jesus.
Peter: Indeed. Eschatology, the idea of the last things, penetrates the whole New Testament. You must recognise it at all sorts of points to understand the New Testament properly.
So we’re dealing with God’s power and wisdom, but we’re also dealing with the overall plan of God in this passage. To teach someone, you move from what they know to what they don’t know, so Paul appeals to the natural world in order to explain the world to come, like the seed and the tree. He’s referring back to the great truths of the Christian gospel, with which they should be familiar; there’s the contrast between the first man and the last man. The first man, Adam, is a failure, and we are in Adam. He is called “the man of dust.” It’s an interesting description of humanity. As he’s said before, “In Adam all die.” But then comes the last man—the new first man, if you like. He is the ‘telos’, meaning ‘the end’—the one to whom everything is pointing—and he becomes the head of the new, redeemed human race.
Phillip: Is that why he’s called the last Adam?
Peter: Yes.
Phillip: It seems unusual to call Jesus ‘Adam’. He goes on to talk of the first man from the earth, and the second man from heaven. But he speaks in terms of the first Adam being “a living being” and the last Adam being “a life-giving spirit.” It’s the new Adam heading up the new humanity in the spiritual world.
Peter: God’s plan has always involved not just the removal of the entire human race, but rather the redemption of his people. And the head of that people is the last Adam. The last Adam, the real Adam, the one to whom the whole thing points, I would say. So the second man has immense victory, and we also share in this victory. 15:42, “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.” It is “sown in dishonour” because of sin, of course, which leads to shame and dust. “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” yet we are raised in glory.
So we are put to death in the natural body, then raised in a spiritual body. The first man, Adam, becomes a living being. The last Adam becomes the life-giving spirit. The first is from the earth, the ‘man of dust’; the second is from heaven. 1 Corinthians 15:48–49
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 a tale! So our future is not to be a disembodied soul, perhaps rising beyond the moon or being sent to Hades below, as in the ideas of that ancient world. Our future is to be resurrected in this extraordinary redeemed race of humanity of which the head is Jesus.
We can’t describe the resurrection body yet. I think words would not permit. He’s given us as much as he can to show us what it will be. First, he describes it as ‘glory’. It always reminds me of that wonderful phrase in 2 Corinthians 4:17, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” ‘Glory’ here is meant in the sense that the sun shining is glorious, but it’s also got a sense of weight, like gold.
He’s not just saying here that all glory belongs to God. That’s true, but God shares his glory with us. C.S. Lewis preached a sermon on this once, in which he pointed out the fact that if you could see yourself now as you will be when resurrected, you would bow. Yet it’s not as though the glorious creature is pictured as strutting the earth and achieving worship, because this glorious creature who we will be is shouting out, “Glory to God, from whom all glory comes!” We will be God-centred in the way that we were designed to be, and we will find our fulfilment in being God-centred.
In 15:49, Paul says something which I find to be deeply comforting and helpful: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” The image of the man from dust has brought us to dust. But the person I wish to be like is Jesus, and that’s our future. The first man is made in God’s image, of course, but the last man, Jesus, is the image of God, and we shall bear his image. The Apostle here is speaking about the unspeakable. Human words are not enough to describe what he’s talking about, but I think he’s given us enough to assure us, and give us confidence even in the face of the horror of our last enemy, death.
Phillip: Yes, because our bodies disintegrate as we age towards death. You don’t die of old age; you die of disease in old age. And the diseases disfigure and demolish our bodies into their weakness. So people can be dissatisfied with their bodily existence: aches, pains, sickness, frailty, that we may have convinced ourselves at 21 we didn’t have, but at 81 it becomes more difficult to continue to believe.
So are we to be satisfied with our bodies?
Peter: Yes, because they are what God has given us. But we have to see that this is only the mere beginning, and our true identity is that we belong to Jesus, the man from heaven. Our final goal in life is to be like him in body and spirit: possessed by the Holy Spirit, redeemed, and given this extraordinary body.
Phillip: There is this sense of our death, of weakness and frailty, yet the body that God knit together in our mother’s womb is pretty extraordinary. So if it is this magnificent now, how magnificent is the glory of which we’re speaking here? Running through the passage is this contrast: that everybody is ‘the man of dust,’ but some will be ‘the man of heaven.’ It raises the question of our own personal future. His victory in death and resurrection is our victory if we’re in Christ Jesus, not because we deserve it, but because of his grace and generosity. He has forgiven our sins. He has overcome our death. Yet death is still the wages for sin. But thanks be to God for the victory that is in Christ Jesus, that can free us from our sinful bodies of this world into the glory of our spiritual bodies in the next.
Peter: 1 Corinthians 15:50–58
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, check out this talk called The Man From Heaven.
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