Resurrection
35 But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have when they come back?” 36 Look, fool! When you put a seed into the ground, it doesn’t come back to life unless it dies. 37 What you put in the ground doesn’t have the shape that it will have, but it’s a bare grain of wheat or some other seed. 38 God gives it the sort of shape that he chooses, and he gives each of the seeds its own shape. 39 All flesh isn’t alike. Humans have one kind of flesh, animals have another kind of flesh, birds have another kind of flesh, and fish have another kind. 40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. The heavenly bodies have one kind of glory, and the earthly bodies have another kind of glory. 41 The sun has one kind of glory, the moon has another kind of glory, and the stars have another kind of glory (but one star is different from another star in its glory).
42 It’s the same with the resurrection of the dead: a rotting body is put into the ground, but what is raised won’t ever decay. 43 It’s degraded when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised in glory. It’s weak when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised in power. 44 It’s a physical body when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised as a spiritual body. If there’s a physical body, there’s also a spiritual body. 45 So it is also written, The first human, Adam, became a living person, and the last Adam became a spirit that gives life. 46 But the physical body comes first, not the spiritual one—the spiritual body comes afterward. 47 The first human was from the earth made from dust; the second human is from heaven. 48 The nature of the person made of dust is shared by people who are made of dust, and the nature of the heavenly person is shared by heavenly people. 49 We will look like the heavenly person in the same way as we have looked like the person made from dust.
50 This is what I’m saying, brothers and sisters: Flesh and blood can’t inherit God’s kingdom. Something that rots can’t inherit something that doesn’t decay.
1 Corinthians 15:35-50
Written and Preached by Taylor Buckner
Scriptural Context
Over the past few weeks, we have studied a few sections of scripture from 1 Corinthians, so you might already have a bit of context for the scripture we’re looking at today. The book of 1 Corinthians is a letter written by the apostle Paul to the newly founded church in Corinth. Paul’s goal with this letter is to clarify some confusions of the Corinthians and help unify the early Church in it’s beliefs. Chapter 15 is where Paul begins to discuss the topic of resurrection, first addressing the resurrection of Christ and then the resurrection to come. Today’s scripture, beginning at verse 35, directs us towards the resurrection of the body. The Corinthians want to know what resurrection means for them in a physical sense.
Culture
35 But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? What kind of body will they have when they come back?”
For those of us who have grown up in the Christian tradition, resurrection is a familiar concept. Even if we don’t have a total grasp of what it means or how it happens, resurrection is a common topic of discussion--we have it in our minds and our vocabulary. But if you try to strike up a conversation with a stranger about resurrection, they might just think you’re crazy. That’s kind of what we see happening in today’s scripture with the church in Corinth.
Many of the church’s early members and apostles came from Jewish backgrounds where resurrection of the dead was a core doctrine, and the teachings of the early Christian church centered around Jesus’ resurrection. For the Corinthians, though, resurrection was an unfamiliar idea that they approached with confusion. The question “how are the dead raised?” could better be understood as the Corinthians asking “how is resurrection possible?”
Before digging too deeply into the idea of resurrection, I’d just like to talk about bodies--living bodies and dead bodies. Because the way we feel about physical bodies affects our openness to the idea of a bodily resurrection. Let’s consider the view of the physical body in the Jewish and Corinthian traditions:
Jewish Tradition
Body sanctification
Integration of body and soul
Law governing food, body, physical life
Religious community is highly involved in funeral and burial
Washing and preparation
Body wrapped in shroud (unfinished wood casket if necessary) and placed directly into the earth
Quick and natural return of the body to dust, no embalming or cremation
Corinthian Tradition (Hellenistic)
Mind-body dualism
Separation of mind and body
The body as a prison, mind good, body bad
Spiritual leaders were not involved in the funeral and burial process because they believed the spiritual world could become tainted by death
Tile and limestone for graves, sarcophagi, chamber tombs
Cremation was also common
“The view of radical dualism sees the body as corrupt and separate from oneself, while the view of sanctification sees the body as holy, worthy of respect, and integral to one's being.” (Jacobson) In simple terms, we could say that the Corinthian/Hellenistic tradition promotes body shaming while the Jewish/early Christian traditions promotes body positivity. The Corinthians’ struggle to accept the teaching of bodily resurrection is understandable. If they’re accustomed to viewing their bodies as prisons, as something bad that places limitations on their existence, death of the body offers freedom from imprisonment.
To be honest, sometimes a body can feel like a prison. Our bodies don’t always move the way we want them to, they get hurt, they feel pain. We spend time maintaining our bodies, cleaning them, and nursing them back to health only for them to fall ill again. At times, we might wish for an existence that didn’t include hauling around the meat bags that are our bodies.
Within Paul’s writings, there are suggestions that he feels similarly about his own body. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks of an affliction he has. He calls it a “thorn in the flesh,'' and scholars continue to debate about what this affliction might have been, whether it was a physical injury or some other hardship. Paul describes the torment caused by this thorn in his flesh and the weakness he has experienced because of it. Paul grew up in a Jewish family where he theoretically would have held the traditional Jewish view of body sanctification, but we also see him write about his body with disdain.
The thing we need to understand about Paul is that he serves as sort of a link between the Hellentistic and Jewish worldviews. Paul was born in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) to a family of Pharisees. It is believed that his first language was Greek, but he was educated in Jerusalem from a young age and spoke Hebrew as well. While on his missionary journeys, Paul learned from Hellenistic philosophers and drew on this knowledge to help new converts understand his teachings.
Here in today’s scripture, Paul is trying to help the Corinthians understand his teaching of the resurrected body. He starts out with a metaphor about seeds. You can find a more in-depth analysis of the first part of our scripture in the weekly email from Thursday if you’re interested. In my writing, I reframed the metaphor in the context of baking bread, but the premise remains the same. In Paul’s farming metaphor, we sow a seed, and although we anticipate its growth, we rely on God’s transforming power to turn it into a plant. In baking, we prepare a dough based on how we want our bread to turn out, but we practice patience, trust that our dough will rise, and rely on a transformative process that is out of our control.
After his metaphor, Paul continues:
“42 It’s the same with the resurrection of the dead: a rotting body is put into the ground, but what is raised won’t ever decay. 43 It’s degraded when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised in glory. It’s weak when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised in power. 44 It’s a physical body when it’s put into the ground, but it’s raised as a spiritual body. If there’s a physical body, there’s also a spiritual body.” (CEB)
Resurrection is an unfamiliar idea for the Corinthians. They can’t imagine what a resurrected body could be like, but Paul offers a few straightforward comparisons to consider. The Corinthians can agree that a dead body put into the ground is rotting, degraded, and weak. Paul contrasts this with the resurrected body that won’t decay and is raised in glory and power. He meets the Corinthians where they are in their beliefs about the physical body being a weakness. The fear of weakness is what makes the Corinthians hesitant about accepting the doctrine of resurrection.
Can we see the Corinthians' fear and skepticism reflected in modern times? According to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center, approximately 80% of Americans believe in some form of afterlife. We see a wide range of beliefs about the afterlife including heaven, hell, reincarnation, eternal spiritual existence separate from the physical world, and many more. Reincarnation is one afterlife belief that does revolve around the physical body, the process where the body returns to the earth to then become a new physical body. But most beliefs about the afterlife point to something separate from the physical world that we know. Even if we don’t necessarily view our bodies as prisons, humanity maintains a common thread of hope for something more than this physical life after death.
The Corinthians were not the only people hoping to escape the weakness of their flesh. Paul spoke personally about the weakness he’d felt, and he speaks to the weakness that we each experience. As I read Paul’s discourse here about the weakness of the physical body and power of the spiritual body, I can’t help but think also of Paul's writing about the thorn in his flesh. He explains in 2 Corinthians how he had pleaded with the Lord to remove his affliction but ultimately reframed his weakness into power:
“[The Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses...for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10, NRSV)
Our weakness, rather than being a separation between us and God, can be reframed as an opportunity to experience God’s power. Human weakness is the dwelling place of God’s presence. It’s only by recognizing weakness that we hope for something more.
Paul continues his explanation of resurrection to the Corinthians:
“45 So it is also written, The first human, Adam, became a living person, and the last Adam became a spirit that gives life. 46 But the physical body comes first, not the spiritual one—the spiritual body comes afterward. 47 The first human was from the earth made from dust; the second human is from heaven. 48 The nature of the person made of dust is shared by people who are made of dust, and the nature of the heavenly person is shared by heavenly people. 49 We will look like the heavenly person in the same way as we have looked like the person made from dust.” (CEB)
When Paul uses the terms “flesh” and “body” in contrast to “spirit,” we could assume that he is referring to literal flesh and the physical body. But some scholars argue that when Paul writes about “flesh” he means not the physical body but the sinful human nature inherited from Adam (Clark). Rather than discussing a body made of flesh, we might consider a body animated by flesh, or sin. For the one body is animated by the sin nature, and the other body animated by new life in the spirit. Paul says that “the nature of the person made of dust is shared by people who are made of dust” (verse 48a), and we can see sinful human nature reflected within ourselves. But these bodies animated by sinful flesh give us hope of a new body, one that reflects the heavenly.
I wonder what it might mean for our bodies to be animated by the Holy Spirit. Paul describes the last Adam, Christ, as a life-giving spirit. Knowing that the Holy Spirit is among us now might “open the way to a perception of the present realities of resurrection in the present age and in this mortal body” (Sloan) Resurrection will bring us into a new order, but “the transformation to the new order actually begins now by the power” of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us (Sloan). In our earthly, human weakness, the Holy Spirit makes its home. It stirs life and hope into us and begins transforming us. Our bodies retain their shape, but we are transformed with Christ in our hearts.
When we think about resurrection, we generally put our hope in the future, a transformation that is to come. But the truth is that we have already begun to be transformed. When we allow the Holy Spirit to guide our lives, our weakness becomes power, our degradation becomes glory, and our mortality becomes immortal. We hope in the glory of our resurrected spiritual bodies because we can already see the goodness of the Holy Spirit at work in our earthly bodies. If we can see the life-giving work of the Spirit dwelling in our human weakness, we can only imagine the possibilities of a new order with bodies fully animated by the Holy Spirit.
Paul concludes this section of his letter:
“50 This is what I’m saying, brothers and sisters: Flesh and blood can’t inherit God’s kingdom. Something that rots can’t inherit something that doesn’t decay.” (CEB)
Our weakness and decay cannot inherit God’s kingdom, but we have hope because we know that we are much more than our human frailty. Our bodies have reflected the image of the person made of dust, but our hearts have been transformed already to reflect the heavenly. We hope in the resurrection, not as a future escape from our weakness, but trusting in the transformative process of the Holy Spirit that is already at work in our lives now.
Gordon Clark, Thales to Dewey (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957). Quoted in Ronald H. Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World (Dallas: Probe Ministries, 1984).
Jacobson HL, Hall ME, Anderson TL, Willingham MM. Temple or Prison: Religious Beliefs and Attitudes Toward the Body. J Relig Health. 2016 Dec;55(6):2154-73.
Sloan, Robert B. "Resurrection in I Corinthians." Southwestern Journal of Theology , vol. 26.1, 1983, pp. 69-91.