Today is Palm Sunday, the day we remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the people were waving palm branches, and shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD” (Mark11:9). What a joyful day that was. In its OT context, from Psalm 118:25, Hosanna means ‘I beseech thee, O Lord, save now’ [1]
However, later that same week, by Friday, many of those who shouted “Hosanna,” “O Lord please save us,” were now shouting “Crucify Him, crucify Him” (Mark 15:13-14). It was then they crucified Jesus. Jesus, taking on the sins of the whole world, died for us. But that’s only the beginning. On the third day Jesus rose from the dead. This is our hope.
1 Corinthians 15:20 But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Christ is the firstfruits and we who are in Christ will one day, in like manner, rise just as Jesus did. But those who were in the church in Corinth, had trouble believing about the resurrection, of Jesus, and the fate of those who had died in Christ. They had questions, like, so how does this resurrection thing work? How is our bodies resurrected? And that is the point of today’s passage. Paul anticipates these questions and will attempt to explain them.
1 Corinthians 15:35–49
How many of you know someone that you are very careful when you ask how they are doing because they will take the next 30 minutes telling all the things that are wrong with them. Then there are those of us when asked, will always say “I’m fine” regardless of the shape we are in. People today are pre-occupied with their bodies. While some of us could take better care of ours, major industries have sprung up to help meet the concerns that people have with their bodies. Many spend hours in fitness centers making sure that their abs are tight and that there is not an ounce of fat to be seen.
Beauty products abound - each promising to make us look like movie stars or athlete or younger. Wrinkles must be removed, hair must be tinted to hide the gray and blemishes must made to disappear. Many spend hours in front of the mirror. We are looking for the perfect or ideal body, sometimes using extreme measures, liposuction, implants, face lifts and plastic surgery. We want our bodies to be perfect and to last a long time.
Yet our bodies were only made to last a short period of time before they die and are gone. We see it in the aging process, even though we try to hide or prevent it, or delay its onset.
Short of Christ’s return we will find ourselves facing death. I agree that we should be concerned about our bodies and take care of them, but the body we should be more concerned about is the body that we will have not just for a few decades but the body we will have for eternity.
Today we consider the fact that we, as believers, will have a resurrected body one day and we will consider what it will be like. And while we may learn a few things, we may even end up with more questions than we started with. There are many things we do not understand about our eternal bodies and many things God has chosen not to reveal. Even passages in 1 Corinthians 15 are hard to understand – we could go thru all kinds of technical explanations, but instead we will glean what we can from passage so we can better know what it is when we say "I believe in the resurrection of the body!"
The people in Corinth found it hard to accept the idea of the resurrection. One reason was they thought of body as evil, something to be discarded. Another is that they could not understand how it could be done. How can God take bodies which have deteriorated, burned, or been destroyed in different ways and reconstruct them again? What if a cannibal ate a person? There are all kinds of things that are hard to understand.
The most startling characteristic of the first Christian preaching is its emphasis on the resurrection. The first preachers were sure that Christ had risen, and sure, in consequence, that believers would in due course rise also. This set them off from all the other teachers of the ancient world. [2]
So the question, Paul assumes is raised:
1 Corinthians 15:35 But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?”
How does the resurrection happen? How does the resurrection work? What is the resurrected body like?
1 Corinthians 15:36 You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies;
Paul is calling foolish this imaginary questioner, so not to insult his readers. Don’t you know? Haven’t I told you? The fact is the resurrection is a miraculous, supernatural event. Isn’t it obvious?
Fool in the OT context is one who denies God. The verse we covered last week said:
1 Corinthians 15:34 Become sober-minded as you ought, and stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.
We lack a knowledge about God. The same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus up will raise those who are “in Christ” up as well:
Romans 8:11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
The world’s thinking is after life there is death, but to the believer in Christ, their thinking is different: after death there is life. So Paul illustrates with an example they all understand.
1 Corinthians 15:36b–38 That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies; 37 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. 38 But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.
To Paul, belief in the resurrection is like belief in seedtime and harvest – it is not completely understood, yet it is very real and it happens. Without the seed, you would have no plant. Yet the plant is not the seed, But it is according to the seed – you do not get corn from a bean seed, each seed produces its own plant. Now keep that thought, while Paul makes another comparison:
1 Corinthians 15:39 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.
Looking at earthly things, there are differences in flesh. Men, animals, fish, birds. We are different, but all flesh. Now Paul looks at things above:
1 Corinthians 15:40–41 There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. 41 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.
Heavenly bodies – the sun, moon, and stars. All are different. The earthly things are lower, below, and lessor. The Heavenly things are upper, above, and greater.
1 Corinthians 15:42–44 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
The natural body, the earthly body is fallen, weak, sick and diseased, temporary, and will die. The Spiritual body – the resurrected body eternal, perfect, powerful, and will never die.
2 Corinthians 5:1–2 For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven
We will get a new body. Our old body is like the seed, we will reap a new body that gets its DNA from the seed but very much unlike the seed.
Resurrection does not mean that the old body, the pieces and parts of the dead corpse is reanimated, rather the perishable body is transformed. It becomes something all together different. The spiritual body, is also quite the physical body, but different from the earthly body. So now Paul brings in another thought to illustrate what the new body will be like:
1 Corinthians 15:45 So also it is written, “The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
Paul is quoting from Genesis 2:7. We know about the first Adam – because we are like him. We sin because we are “in Adam.” The last Adam is Jesus Christ. The first Adam receives life temporarily. The last Adam, which is Jesus, gives life.
1 Corinthians 15:46–47 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. 47 The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven.
Adam was made from the dust of the earth
Genesis 2:7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
And Adam’s body returned to dust.
Genesis 3:19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
That is the fate of our natural bodies. We become worm food in the ground. We are like the first man Adam. But after the resurrection, we will become like the second man, “the second man is from heaven.” Jesus was resurrected with His heavenly body.
1 Corinthians 15:48 As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly.
In this life, we are like the first Adam. Frail, sick, and temporary. From dust we came and to dust we will return. But for those who are in Christ, we shall be like Him.
1 John 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
To know what we will be like, we need to only look at Jesus.
Philippians 3:21 who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
Jesus is not just a Spirit, He has and we will have a physical body. After the resurrection, Jesus’ disciples did not know what to think, they were clueless, so Jesus comes into their midst and explains it to them:
Luke 24:38–43 And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40 And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. 41 While they still could not believe it because of their joy and amazement, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; 43 and He took it and ate it before them.
We will be able to eat in our new bodies – not that we will need to do so. We will be more than like Christ – we will be in the image of Christ:
1 Corinthians 15:49 Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.
We need to realize what sin has done. Though man was made in the image of God:
Genesis 5:1b In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
However, looked what the Bible tells us in verse 3:
Genesis 5:3 When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.
Because of sin, we, as the descendances of Adam, reflect the image of Adam, rather than that of God. As Christians, believers in Christ, we are in the process of being conformed back to His image.
Romans 8:29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;
The beauty of the believer being resurrected is that we will regain the image of God in which we were originally created. We are spending our lives now reflecting the sinful nature that we inherited from Adam. Those that are in Christ will spend eternity reflecting the image of our Creator.
As we look forward to Easter we remember that Christ rose from the dead.
1 Corinthians 15:20 But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Because Christ is risen from the dead, we who are in Him, "in Christ," will be resurrected just as He was. We will be like Jesus in a glorified body that will never again see death. Are you in Christ? Are you in the process of conforming to His image?
[1] James Cooper, “Hosanna,” ed. James Hastings, A Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels: Aaron–Zion (Edinburgh; New York: T&T Clark; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 749.
[2] D. R. W. Wood and I. Howard Marshall, New Bible Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 1010.
