But someone will say, “How are the dead raised?” and, “With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish one, that which you yourself sow is not made alive unless it dies. That which you sow, you don’t sow the body that will be, but a bare grain, maybe of wheat, or of some other kind. But God gives it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial differs from that of the terrestrial. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown 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. There is a natural body and there is also a spiritual body.
So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However that which is spiritual isn’t first, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the one made of dust, such are those who are also made of dust; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of those made of dust, let’s also bear the image of the heavenly.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv35, 36, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 Now that he hath proved the resurrection, he discovereth…
Now that he hath proved the resurrection, he discovereth their doltishness, in that they scoffingly demanded, how it could be that the dead should rise again, and if they did rise again, they asked mockingly, what manner of bodies they should have. Therefore he sendeth these fellows which seemed to themselves to be marvelous wise and witty, to be instructed of poor rude husbandmen.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv35–49 35 But some man will say, How are the…
35 But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
Ver. 35. But some man will say] Some epicure will object, and say, How can these things be? A privatione ad habitum non datur regressus. {See Trapp on "Act 17:18"}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv35–49 Some of your vain philosophers, who are resolved to…
Some of your vain philosophers, who are resolved to give credit to nothing upon the account of a bare Divine revelation, unless they can give a further rational account of it in the circumstances, will be ready to object and say: How is it possible, that those very bodies which are putrefied, and turned into dust, and that dust, it may be, scattered to the four winds, should be raised up? And if the same bodies shall not again rise, what kind of bodies shall the believers have in the resurrection? Shall they be bodies that will need meat, and drink, and clothes, as our present bodies do? Or what other bodies shall they be?
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv35, 39, 42, 44 Our apostle, having fully proved the doctrine of the…
Our apostle, having fully proved the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, in the foregoing part of the chapter, comes next to answer the objections that might be made against the body’s resurrection.
And first, That it seems impossible that the dead should rise: to this he answers, That it is as possible for the dead to rise, as it is for corn sown in the earth to be quickened after it dies in the earth; corn sown rots and dies, yet doth not perish by dying, but rises up green and fresh. Thus the body sown in the grave is not lost: though the parts of the body by death are dissolved, yet they are not annihilated; they are scattered, but they are not perished; they lose not their entity, when they part with their relation to humanity; whatsoever we lose at death, is not lost to God; his knowledge is infinite, and his power unlimited: it is as easy for God to raise our bodies out of the dust, as to make them at first out of nothing; therefore Christ told the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, that they erred, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God, Mat 22:29.
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The next objection against the body’s resurrection is this: Who, say the objectors, can describe with what bodies the dead shall arise? Our apostle’s answer is to this effect: That our bodies shall arise the same in substance and kind the same, but differs in qualities, coming up with blade and ear, and corn in it; it does not rise in the same figure in which it was sown, but it rises in the same nature in which it was sown; that which was sown wheat, rises wheat. Thus our bodies sown in the grave shall rise substantially the same, but different in qualities.
Here note, That those who did not believe the resurrection of the body, judged it not only an impossible thing, but an unworthy thing for God to raise the dead; they looked upon the body as the sepulchre and prison of the soul, and accounted it the soul’s chiefest happiness to be delivered from the body, esteeming it a real punishment to the soul to be again reunited to so great a clog as the body is.
Therefore to this objection the apostle returns a satisfactory answer, by showing the happy chanage which shall pass upon the raised body; declaring, that though it shall arise the same body in substance, yet vastly different in qualities; of a mortal body sown, it shall rise a spiritual body; of a vile body, be made a glorious body.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v35 The apostle comes now to answer a plausible and…
The apostle comes now to answer a plausible and principal objection against the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, concerning which observe the proposal of the objection: Some man will say, How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come? Co1 15:35. The objection is plainly two-fold. How are they raised up? that is, "By what means? How can they be raised? What power is equal to this effect?" It was an opinion that prevailed much among the heathens, and the Sadducees seem to have been in the same sentiment, that it was not within the compass of divine power, mortales aeternitate donare, aut revocare defunctos - to make mortal men immortal, or revive and restore the dead. Such sort of men those seem to have been who among the Corinthians denied the resurrection of the dead, and object here, "How are they raised? How should they be raised? Is it not utterly impossible?" The other part of the objection is about the quality of their bodies, who shall rise: "With what body will they come? Will it be with the same body, with like shape, and form, and stature, and members, and qualities, or various?" The former objection is that of those who opposed the doctrine, the latter the enquiry of curious doubters.
I. To the former the apostle replies by telling them this was to be brought about by divine power, that very power which they had all observed to do something very like it, year after year, in the death and revival of the corn; and therefore it was an argument of great weakness and stupidity to doubt whether the resurrection of the dead might not be effected by the same power: Thou fool! that which thou sowest is not quickened unless it die, Co1 15:36. It must first corrupt, before it will quicken and spring up. It not only sprouts after it is dead, but it must die that it may live. And why should any be so foolish as to imagine that the man once dead cannot be made to live again, by the same power which every year brings the dead grain to life? This is the substance of the apostle's answer to the first question. Note, It is a foolish thing to question the divine power to raise the dead, when we see it every day quickening and reviving things that are dead.
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II. But he is longer in replying to the second enquiry.
1. He begins by observing that there is a change made in the grain that is sown: It is not that body which shall be that is sown, but bare grain, of wheat or barley, etc.; but God gives it such a body as he will, and in such way as he will, only so as to distinguish the kinds from each other. Every seed sown has its proper body, is constituted of such materials, and figured in such a manner, as are proper to it, proper to that kind. This is plainly in the divine power, though we no more know how it is done than we know how a dead man is raised to life again. It is certain the grain undergoes a great change, and it is intimated in this passage that so will the dead, when they rise again, and live again, in their bodies, after death.
2. He proceeds hence to observe that there is a great deal of variety among others bodies, as there is among plants: as, (1.) In bodies of flesh: All flesh is not the same; that of men is of one kind, that of beasts another, another that of fishes, and that of birds another, Co1 15:39. There is a variety in all the kinds, and somewhat peculiar in every kind, to distinguish it from the other. (2.) In bodies celestial and terrestrial there is also a difference; and what is for the glory of one is not for the other; for the true glory of every being consists in its fitness for its rank and state. Earthly bodies are not adapted to the heavenly regions, nor heavenly bodies fitted to the condition of earthly beings. Nay, (3.) There is a variety of glory among heavenly bodies themselves: There is one glory of the sun, and another of the moon, and another of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory, Co1 15:41. All this is to intimate to us that the bodies of the dead, when they rise, will be so far changed, that they will be fitted for the heavenly regions, and that there will be a variety of glories among the bodies of the dead, when they shall be raised, as there is among the sun, and moon, and stars, nay among the stars themselves. All this carries an intimation along with it that it must be as easy to divine power to raise the dead, and recover their mouldered bodies, as out of the same materials to form so many different kinds of flesh and plants, and, for aught we know, celestial bodies as well as terrestrial ones. The sun and stars may, for aught we know, be composed of the same materials as the earth we tread on, though as much refined and changed by the divine skill and power. And can he, out of the same materials, form such various beings, and yet not be able to raise the dead? Having thus prepared the way, he comes,
3. To speak directly to the point: So also, says he, is the resurrection of the dead; so (as the plant growing out of the putrefied grain), so as no longer to be a terrestrial but a celestial body, and varying in glory from the other dead, who are raised, as one star does from another. But he specifies some particulars: as, (1.) It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown. Burying the dead is like sowing them; it is like committing the seed to the earth, that it may spring out of it again. And our bodies, which are sown, are corruptible, liable to putrefy and moulder, and crumble to dust; but, when we rise, they will be out of the power of the grave, and never more be liable to corruption. (2.) It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. Ours is at present a vile body, Phi 3:21. Nothing is more loathsome than a dead body; it is thrown into the grave as a despised and broken vessel, in which there is no pleasure. But at the resurrection a glory will be put upon it; it will be made like the glorious body of our Saviour; it will be purged from all the dregs of earth, and refined into an ethereal substance, and shine out with a splendour resembling his. (3.) It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is laid in the earth, a poor helpless thing, wholly in the power of death, deprived of all vital capacities and powers, of life and strength: it is utterly unable to move or stir. But when we arise our bodies will have heavenly life and vigour infused into them; they will be hale, and firm, and durable, and lively, and liable no more to any infirmity, weakness, or decay. (4.) It is sown a natural, or animal body, sōma psuchikon, a body fitted to the low condition and sensitive pleasures and enjoyments of this life, which are all gross in comparison of the heavenly state and enjoyments. But when we rise it will be quire otherwise; our body will rise spiritual. Not that body would be changed into spirit: this would be a contradiction in our common conceptions; it would be as much as to say, Body changed into what is not body, matter made immaterial. The expression is to be understood comparatively. We shall at the resurrection have bodies purified and refined to the last degree, made light and agile; and, though they are not changed into spirit, yet made fit to be perpetual associates of spirits made perfect. And why should it not be as much in the power of God to raise incorruptible, glorious, lively, spiritual bodies, out of the ruins of those vile, corruptible, lifeless, and animal ones, as first to make matter out of nothing, and then, out of the same mass of matter, produce such variety of beings, both in earth and heaven? To God all things are possible; and this cannot be impossible.
4. He illustrates this by a comparison of the first and second Adam: There is an animal body, says he, and there is a spiritual body; and then goes into the comparison in several instances. (1.) As we have our natural body, the animal body we have in this world, from the first Adam, we expect our spiritual body from the second. This is implied in the whole comparison. (2.) This is but consonant to the different characters these two persons bear: The first Adam was made a living soul, such a being as ourselves, and with a power of propagating such beings as himself, and conveying to them a nature and animal body like his own, but none other, nor better. The second Adam is a quickening Spirit; he is the resurrection and the life, Joh 11:25. He hath life in himself, and quickeneth whom he will, Joh 5:20, Joh 5:21. The first man was of the earth, made out of the earth, and was earthy; his body was fitted to the region of his abode: but the second Adam is the Lord from heaven; he who came down from heaven, and giveth life to the world (Joh 6:33); he who came down from heaven and was in heaven at the same time (Joh 3:13); the Lord of heaven and earth. If the first Adam could communicate to us natural and animal bodies, cannot the second Adam make our bodies spiritual ones? If the deputed lord of this lower creation could do the one, cannot the Lord from heaven, the Lord of heaven and earth, do the other? (3.) We must first have natural bodies from the first Adam before we can have spiritual bodies from the second (Co1 15:49); we must bear the image of the earthy before we can bear the image of the heavenly. Such is the established order of Providence. We must have weak, frail, mortal bodies by descent from the first Adam, before we can have lively, spiritual, and immortal ones by the quickening power of the second. We must die before we can live to die no more. (4.) Yet if we are Christ's, true believers in him (for this whole discourse relates to the resurrection of the saints), it is as certain that we shall have spiritual bodies as it is now that we have natural or animal ones. By these we are as the first Adam, earthy, we bear his image; by those we shall be as the second Adam, have bodies like his own, heavenly, and so bear him image. And we are as certainly intended to bear the one as we have borne the other. As surely therefore as we have had natural bodies, we shall have spiritual ones. The dead in Christ shall not only rise, but shall rise thus gloriously changed.
5. He sums up this argument by assigning the reason of this change (Co1 15:50): Now this I say that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor doth corruption inherit incorruption. The natural body is flesh and blood, consisting of bones, muscles, nerves, veins, arteries, and their several fluids; and, as such, it is of a corruptible frame and form, liable to dissolution, to rot and moulder. But no such thing shall inherit the heavenly regions; for this were for corruption to inherit incorruption, which is little better than a contradiction in terms. The heavenly inheritance is incorruptible, and never fadeth away, Pe1 1:4. How can this be possessed by flesh and blood, which is corruptible and will fade away? It must be changed into ever-during substance, before it can be capable of possessing the heavenly inheritance. The sum is that the bodies of the saints, when they shall rise again, will be greatly changed from what they are now, and much for the better. They are now corruptible, flesh and blood; they will be then incorruptible, glorious, and spiritual bodies, fitted to the celestial world and state, where they are ever afterwards to dwell, and have their eternal inheritance.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv35–49 But God giveth it a body, as it hath…
But God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased him,.... It is not the husbandman, nor the sun, nor the rain, that give the grain of wheat, or any other, its verdure and beauty, the form in which it springs up, its stalk, blade, and ear, but God by his own power, and of his sovereign will and pleasure; and he does not create this new form, but gives it; and does not barely give it, but gives the body to it: to the selfsame grain, and not another: so the resurrection of the dead is God's work; it is an instance of his power, and of his sovereign will; and is to his people a branch of that eternal life, which is his pure gift through Jesus Christ; all that glory in which the body will arise springs from his free grace, and is bestowed upon the selfsame body, which was carried about here, and laid in the grave: and to every
seed its own body; which is suitable and natural to it, according to its kind; see Gen 1:11 as cummin to cummin, anise to anise, wheat to wheat, barley to barley, and not on the contrary; showing, that it is the same body that is raised that dies, though it is in a more glorious, and with more excellent qualities; which is manifest from express passages of Scripture; see Job 19:26 from the signification of the word resurrection, which is a raising up of that which is fallen and if the same body that falls by death is not raised, but another is given, it will not be a resurrection, but a creation: and also from the figurative phrases by which it is expressed, as here by the quickening of seed cast into the earth, and elsewhere by awaking out of sleep; now as it is the same seed that is sown that springs up again, and the same body that sleeps that awaked out of it, so it is the same body that is interred in the earth, and falls asleep by death, that will be quickened and awaked at the resurrection: and it is clear from the places from whence the dead will be raised, the repositories of them, as death and hell, or the grave, and the sea; for none but the same bodies that are laid in the grave, or cast into the sea, can be said to come forth out of them, or be delivered up; by them: and from the subject of the resurrection, the bodies of men, their vile and mortal bodies, which can be no other than their present ones; and from the end of the resurrection, which is that some may come to life, and others to damnation; and from the justice of God, which requires that the same bodies Christ has purchased, find who have served and suffered for him, should be glorified; and the same that have done evil against him, and abused themselves and his people, be punished: this might be argued from the translations of Enoch and Elijah in their bodies to heaven, in which they were on earth; and from the resurrection of the bodies of the saints at Christ's resurrection, and the change that will be on the bodies of living saints at the coming of Christ; for it is not reasonable to suppose, that some of the saints shall have their own bodies, and others none at all, or not the same they lived in here: this may be further confirmed, from the resurrection of Christ's body, which was the same he had before; it was not changed into a spirit, but consisted of flesh and bones, as it had done; and had on it the very print of the nails, and spear in his hands, feet, and side; and to this the bodies of the saints are to be fashioned: add to all this, if it is not a resurrection of the same body, but new ones are created, to which the soul will be united, it will not be a resurrection, but a transmigration of souls into other bodies; but as every seed has its own body, so will every soul have its own body, though greatly different as to its qualities, and much improved for the better, as in seed sown: and this is the sense of the ancient Jews (q),
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"says R. Chijah, , "that that selfsame body that was shall rise", is clear from what is written, thy dead men shall live, Isa 26:19 and it is not written, shall be created; from whence it is evident that they shall not be created, but shall be quickened:''
and again (r),
"in the time to come, the holy blessed God will quicken the dead, and raise them "out of their own dust", that they may not be a building of dust, as they were at first, when they were created out of dust itself, a thing which is not stable, according to Gen 2:7 and at that time they shall be raised out of the dust, out of that building, and shall stand in a stable building, that they may have stability, or duration.''
So on those words, "I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal", Deu 32:39 they observe (s), that
"as wounding and healing are "in one", (and the same body,) so death and life are "in one and" the same.''
(q) Zohar in Exod. fol. 12. 3. (r) Midrash Hannealam in Zohar in Gen. fol. 81. 1. (s) T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 91. 2.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49 But some one possibly will say, How are the…
But some one possibly will say, How are the dead raised up, after their whole frame is dissolved? And with what kind of bodies do they come again, after these are mouldered into dust?
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv35–49 Verse 35. But some man will say] αλλα ερει…
Verse 35. But some man will say] αλλα ερει τις. It is very likely that the apostle, by τις some, some one, some man, means particularly the false apostle, or teacher at Corinth, who was chief in the opposition to the pure doctrine of the Gospel, and to whom, in this covert way, he often refers.
The second part of the apostle's discourse begins at this verse. What shall be the nature of the resurrection body?
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1. The question is stated, 1Co 15:35.
2. It is answered: first, by a similitude, 1Co 15:36-38;
secondly, by an application, 1Co 15:33-41;
and thirdly, by explication, 1Co 15:42-50.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv35, 36, 39, 42, 45, 47 1Co 15:35. But some man possibly will say, How…
1Co 15:35. But some man possibly will say, How are the dead raised up — After their whole frame is dissolved? And with what kind of bodies do they come? — From the dead, after these are mouldered into dust. By the apostle’s answer to these inquiries, it appears that he considered the inquirer as not so much desiring to have his curiosity satisfied, respecting the nature and qualities of the bodies raised, as suggesting the impossibility of the resurrection in question taking place. He therefore begins with proving the possibility of the resurrection, by appealing to the power of God displayed in raising grain from seed which is rotted in the ground, and in giving to each of the kinds, when it is grown up, the body proper to it: also in making bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial, each having its own properties by which it is distinguished from all others. And from these instances of the power of God, he infers that the resurrection of the dead is possible, 1Co 15:36-42. As to the inquiry, with what kind of bodies men will be raised, his answer is given from the middle of 1Co 15:42-54. But what he advances respects only the properties of the bodies of the righteous, which he contrasts with the properties of the bodies which were laid in the grave. And with respect to the righteous, who are found alive on the earth at the coming of Christ, he declares that their bodies will be changed in a moment, and rendered incorruptible and immortal, because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv35–49 But some man will say - An objection will…
But some man will say - An objection will be made to the statement that the dead will be raised. This verse commences the second part of the chapter, in which the apostle meets the objections to the argument. and shows in what manner the dead will be raised. See the Analysis. That objections were made to the doctrine is apparent from 1Co 15:12.
How are the dead raised up? - (Πῶς Pōs.) In what way or manner; by what means. This I regard as the first objection which would be made, or the first inquiry on the subject which the apostle answers. The question is one which would be likely to be made by the subtle and doubting Greeks. The apostle, indeed, does not draw it out at length, or state it fully, but it may be regarded probably as substantially the same as that which has been made in all ages. “How is it possible that the dead should be raised? They return to their native dust. They become entirely disorganized. Their dust may be scattered; how shall it be re-collected? Or they may be burned at the stake, and how shall the particles which composed their bodies be recollected and re-organized? Or they may be devoured by the beasts of the field, the fowls of heaven, or the fishes of the sea, and their flesh may have served to constitute the food of other animals, and to form their bodies; how can it be re-collected and re-organized? Or it may have been the food of plants, and like other dust have been used to constitute the leaves or the flowers of plants, and the trunks of trees; and how can it be remoulded into a human frame?” This objection the apostle answers in 1Co 15:36-38.
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And with what body do they come? - This is the second objection or inquiry which he answers. It may be understood as meaning, “What will be the form, the shape, the size, the organization of the new body? Are we to suppose that all the matter which at any time entered into its composition here is to be recollected, and to constitute a colossal frame? Are we to suppose that it will be the same as it is here, with the same organization, the same necessities, the same needs? Are we to suppose that the aged will be raised as aged, and the young as young, and that infancy will be raised in the same state, and remain such for ever? Are we to suppose that the bodies will be gross, material, and needing support and nourishment, or, that there will be a new organization?” All these and numerous other questions have been asked, in regard to the bodies at the resurrection; and it is by no means improbable that they were asked by the subtle and philosophizing Greeks, and that they constituted a part of the reasoning of those who denied the doctrine of the resurrection. This question, or objection, the apostle answers 1Co 15:39-50. It has been doubted, indeed, whether he refers in this verse to two inquiries - to the possibility of the resurrection, and to the kind of bodies that should be raised; but it is the most obvious interpretation of the verse, and it is certain that in his argument he discusses both these points.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv35–36 How do the dead rise again? He now answers…
How do the dead rise again? He now answers the objections these new teachers made against the resurrection. St. John Chrysostom reduces them to these two questions: how is it possible for them to rise? and in what manner, or with what qualities, will they rise? To shew the possibility, he brings the example of a grain of wheat, or of any seeds, which must be corrupted, and die as it were in the ground, and then is quite changed, comes up with a blade, a stalk, and an ear quite different from what it was when sown, and yet comes to be wheat again, or to be a tree that produces the same kind of fruit: so God can raise our bodies as he pleaseth. He also tells them that there are very different bodies, terrestrial, and celestial, some more, some less glorious, differing in beauty and other qualities, as God pleaseth. As the sun is brighter than the moon, and as one star is brighter than another, so shall it be at the general resurrection. But all the bodies of the elect shall be happily changed to a state of incorruption. (ver. 42.) Here the bodies even of the just are subject to corruption, to decay, liable to death, but they shall then rise to a state of incorruptibility and immortality: And so he answers the second question, that here every one’s body is a weak, sensual, animal body, clogged with many imperfections, like that of Adam after he had sinned; but at the resurrection, the bodies of the saints shall be spiritual bodies, blessed with all the perfections and qualities of a glorified body, like to that of Christ after he was risen. --- St. Paul also, comparing the first man (Adam) with Christ, whom he calls the second or the last Adam, (ver. 45) says that the first Adam was made a living soul, (i.e. a living animal, or a living creature, with a life and a body that required to be supported with corporal food) but that Christ was made a quickening Spirit: he means, that though he had a true mortal body by his nativity of his Virgin Mother, yet that by his resurrection he had a glorified body, immortal, that needed no corporal food, and that he would also give such spiritual and immortal bodies to those whom he should make partakers of his glory. --- But not first that which is spiritual, &c. (ver. 46) that is, both in Adam and in us, and even in Christ, the body was first mortal, which should afterwards be made spiritual and immortal by a happy resurrection. --- The first Adam (ver. 47) was of the earth, earthly, made of clay, and with such a body as could die, but the second man (Christ) was from heaven, heavenly: not that he took a body from heaven, as some ancient heretics pretended, but he was heavenly not only because he was the Son of God, but in this place he seems to be called heavenly even as to his body, after his resurrection, his body being then become spiritual and immortal. --- Such as is the earthly man, &c. (ver. 48) that is, as the first man, Adam, was earthly by his earthly and mortal body, so were we and all his posterity earthly; but such as the heavenly man, Christ, was heavenly, and rose with a heavenly and immortal body; so shall all those be heavenly, to whom he shall give a spiritual, a heavenly, and an immortal body at their happy resurrection. --- Therefore, (ver. 49) as we have borne the image of the earthly man, (that is, have been made mortal, and also by sin subject to the corrupt inclinations of this mortal body) so let us bear also the image of the heavenly one, by a new life imitating Christ, by which means we shall be glorified with him, both as to soul and body. --- Now this I say, and admonish you, brethren, (ver. 50) that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God; i.e. those that lead a sensual and carnal life, nor the corruption of sin, deserve the state of incorruption in glory. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v35 C. Refutation of the denial of the resurrection of…
C. Refutation of the denial of the resurrection of the dead, in reference to its mode; and the constitution of the resurrection body
1Co_15:35-50
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35But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what [kind of, ποίῶ] 36body do they come? Thou [om. Thou] fool,31 that which thou sowest is not quick ened, except it die: 37And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain [ of some of the other grains, τινος τῶν λοιπῶν]: 38But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him [he willed, ὴθέλησεν], and to every seed his own body. 39All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh [om. kind of flesh]32 of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes33 [another flesh of birds], and another of birds [fishes]3.40There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial Isaiah 41 one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and 42another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. 43It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: 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 [an animal, φυχικόν] body, it is raised 44a spiritual body. There Isaiah 34 a natural body, and there is [if there is an animal body, there is also] a spiritual body. 45And so it is written, The first man35 Adam was made [became, ἑγένετο εἰς] a living soul; the last Adam was made [om. was made] a quickening spirit. 46Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural [animal]; and after ward that which is spiritual. 47The first man is [was] of the earth, earthy: the second 48man is the Lord36 [om. the Lord] 37 from heaven. As is [was] the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. 49And as we have borne [wore, ἐφορἐςαμεν] the image of the earthy, we shall also bear [we will wear, φορέσομεν, or, let us wear, φορέσωμεν the image of the heavenly. 50Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit38 corruption.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1Co_15:35-38. After having established the belief in the resurrection of the dead, on the ground of Christ’s resurrection—a fact well attested and lying at the foundation of the whole Christian salvation—and, besides, having exhibited the untenableness of the contrast on other grounds, he next proceeds to encounter those objections which related, partly, to the process itself, and, partly, to the result.—But some one will say,—He here introduces his opponents speaking in the character of persons who, not satisfied with the argument hitherto, now, for the first time, come in with their own reasons for doubting. [These persons are not to be confounded with sincere inquirers; rather, they belong to the class of mockers, such as Paul encountered at Athens. As Calvin says, “nothing is more at variance with human reason than this article of faith;” and, hence, there is hardly one which provokes such ridicule and calls out so many cavils].—How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come ?—The present tenses are not to be explained as setting forth the future in the form of the present because of its certainty, [Stanley]; but as exhibiting the case simply as a matter of thought. “Ερχονται=‘Come into manifestation.’ Two distinct objections are here introduced, yet standing in close connection, as is seen from the copula δέ. [The first originates in a sense of the impossibility of the resurrection, and so asks for the “how,” as a demonstration of the possibility of it; and the other seeks to puzzle by asking for the details of new organization, which, when given, it hopes to prove absurd. Alford resolves the two into one, regarding the second as only stating specifically what is involved more generally in the first. But certainly the mode of the Apostle’s reply implies two distinct points here]. The answers to both these questions now follow, so as to illustrate, first, the process of the resurrection by analogies drawn from vegetable life, and, next, the peculiarity of the resurrection body in its distinction from the present, partly, though analogies taken from the several spheres of creation, and, partly, from the difference between the first and the second Adam. He begins with an address to the deniers or the doubters of the resurrection, expressive at once of strong disapprobation and contempt.—Fool!—By this epithet he characterizes as irrational those who are inclined to boast of a high degree of rationality, inasmuch as they ought to have convinced themselves at once respecting the matter in question by an analogy so obvious. [The term does not necessarily express any bitterness of feeling, for our blessed Lord used the like to his doubting disciples (Luk_24:15). It was the senselessness of the objection that is here attacked; for it was folly to say, the body could not live again because it died. The case of the seed showed that disorganization was the necessary condition of organization. If the seed remain a seed, there is an end of it; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. (Joh_12:24. So with the body (Hodge)] What thou sowest—Σὑ, thou, belongs not to fool, as if it were an emphatic addition to the vocative; but it belongs ‘to the relative clause, and it is placed first to show that the readers ought to understand from their own experience the unreasonableness of the objection (Neander). [It is the pointed finger aiming at the objector present to the author‘s mind.—‘Thou.’] The human sowing is here contrasted with that of the divine in the implanting of human bodies in the grave (as Klopstock sings: “The seed by God is sown, To ripen till the harvest day”), but not the work of God in the development of the seed (ζωοποιεῖται)—is not made alive, unless it die:—What he means is, ‘From the fact that the seed sown by man is not made alive without having first passed through a process of death and corruption, thou oughtest to infer that it is just so with the human seed—that dying and corruption furnish no ground for asserting the impossibility of the resurrection.’ By the use of the verb “is made alive,” instead of ‘springs up’ (ἀνατέλλει) the type is brought closer to the antitype.—After this reply to the first question, he turns to a more extended explanation of the nature of the new body, in answer to the second. From the process itself, he passes over to its contents and results by showing that, as in the process, there was a contrast in the development (first, death, and then life); so here there was a contrast, between the seed corn and the plant which sprung from it. The former is brought prominently to view in the construction of the sentence since it is set before us at the first in an absolute clause.—And what thou sowest,—i.e., ‘as to that which thou sowest.’— not that body which is to appear dost thou sow,—In view of the fact of which he is treating, the plant is here designated as a physical organism by the term “body;” and in contrast with this he calls that which is sown as, naked corn;—γυμνὸν,i.e., either undeveloped, or separated from its proper covering and from the life of the plant; the former explanation is better suited to the context,—it may be—ςἰ τύχοι. Comp. on 1Co_14:10.—of wheat or some of the others:—τῶν λοιπῶν, sc., σπερμάτων. In opposition to a gross identification of the present body with the resurrection body which lies at the ground of the objection urged, he here asserts a distinction between the two—a distinction, however, which does not exclude the identity of the fundamental substance or the germ. [That which springs up differs in outward form from that which is sown; yet it is so far the same, that we can say that that which is sown is precisely what springs up. The analogy here, therefore, is sufficient to destroy the force of the objection raised.]39 Müller interprets 1Co_15:37 of the intermediate state between death and the resurrection. He remarks “Just as the old seed corn which is sown into death retains a sort of corporeity in ever changing forms (in the germ, in the blade, in the stalk) all through an intermediate state, until it, as it were, attains to its resurrection and glorification in the fresh, green corn, so also do human souls pass through their intermediate state, not without a certain sort of corporeity. But as the old appears again in a rejuvenated form, only when it has attained to a new and perfected kernel, so also, do those who sleep come to their full and glorified state in the resurrection of the body, which will take place at the end of the world.” he next proceeds to show the divine causation in respect to the future body, thereby showing wherein all development, even the resurrection of the dead included, ultimately rests.—But God giveth it a body—“The Holy Scriptures know nothing of an independent development of nature without God, about which modern philosophy has so much to say.” Bisping.—as he hath pleased,—The past tense here points back to. the original determination of the Creator, in accordance with which He goes on perpetually giving to each seed or germ a body, after its own fixed kind, or conducts it onward to the development of the same. [In all the continued processes of nature, the Creator abides by the primitive constitution of things. The uniformity of His operations should not lead us therefore, to ignore His perpetual free agency, and to regard the universe in the light of a dead mechanism. Nature is a live with an ever-present, ever-active God].—and to each of the seeds—σπερμάτων, lit., sperms, not only of fruits, but also of animals—a gradation to 1Co_15:39. (Bengel).—its own body.—ἴδιον, own, i.e., suited to the species, peculiar to the individual, produced from the substance of the seed. The argument here is this: that inasmuch as this is the way of God’s working, we may expect something of the like sort in relation to the germ of the human body, and that it is absurd to dispute this. [And still further; inasmuch as we cannot infer from looking at a seed what the plant is to be, so it is very foolish to attempt to determine from our present bodies what is to be the nature of our bodies hereafter. (Hodge)].
1Co_15:39-44. The diversities of organization in the several spheres of creation, and also the diversities in their glory, are next exhibited as analogous to the diversity between the present and the resurrection body, as that of a new and higher organization. He starts from the animal life, where man occupies the first position. With the unity of the genus (σάρξ, flesh,) there exists a striking difference in the species.—All flesh is not the same flesh;—[De Wette explains “flesh” as the animal organism].—but one is of men, and another flesh of beasts,—κτῆνος, κτέανον, κτῆμα properly, animals owned by man, such as sheep and oxen; but here in distinction from what follows, the word denotes quadrupeds in general.—and another of birds, and another of fishes.—The difference predicated here is not as to substance, but as to quality (Calvin); and this is manifold and marked. [If, then, we see such a variety in the organization of flesh and blood here, the inference is that we may find a still greater variety of organizations existing in other spheres. God is not limited in His power and wisdom, so that He must make all bodies a lake.]—(There are) also bodies celestial:—It is not agreed whether the apostle here means the bodies of angels, or heavenly bodies, such as the sun, moon and stars. The first interpretation, taking the expression to mean ‘bodies found in heaven,’ is maintained by Meyer and de Wette (comp. Mat_22:30); the second is the more common one, followed by Osiander and Neander, [Hodge and Alford]. The latter has no support in the usage of antiquity, and is vindicated, partly on the ground that the heavenly bodies were regarded by Plato, Plutarch, Galen, and others, as animated beings; and partly on the ground that in 1Co_15:38, the term “bodies” is applied to plants; and to this it may yet be added, that not only the clearness and the beauty with which the stars shine, but also the interest attached to this whole treatment of the idea of corporeity, explains this rare use of the word σῶμα, body, as denoting a material whole bound together in unity of being. But it may be asked, whether the contrast between the stars viewed as heavenly bodies and the world of men, animals and plants, viewed as earthly bodies, is a suitable one? Perhaps, indeed, not so suitable as that between the bodies of angels and those of men and beasts. The latter “would also touch and explain far better the distinction between the earthly body of death and the supramundane body of the resurrection” (Osiander); and nothing unsuitable, nothing disturbing to the symmetry of the whole analogy, can be found in it. Moreover, we are led to the supposition that angels have bodies, from what our Lord says in Luk_20:35-36, of the equality between angels and the children of the resurrection in the future world. So far as the unfitness of this analogy to meet the case of the skeptics is concerned, it must be remembered that the apostle has not so much to do with these, as with a congregation established in the faith, to whom such a view of angels would be neither strange nor incredible.40—This comparison between the two kinds of bodies is followed by an exhibition of their diversity in respect to glory. In the one case it is a heavenly radiance; Mat_28:3; and in the other case it is strength, beauty, grace, artificial culture, in their several manifestations (Meyer).—There is one glory of the sun, etc.—Not only do the heavenly bodies differ from the earthly in glory, but there is great diversity among the heavenly bodies themselves. The sun has one degree of lustre, the moon another, and even the stars exhibit a wonderful variety of size and brilliancy among themselves. The allusion here might naturally lead us to think of the various degrees of glory in the resurrection bodies, as compared with each other; but the context does not point to this, and all the allegorical deductions, such as we find in Tertullian and others, must be pronounced erroneous. [So Calvin:—“A mistake is here commonly fallen into in the application; it is supposed that Paul meant that, after the resurrection, the saints will have different degrees of honor and glory. This, indeed, is perfectly true, and is proved by other declarations of Scripture; but it has nothing to do with Paul’s object.” Paul is arguing here from existing diversities in the various organizations found throughout the universe, to prove that there may be still other and greater varieties yet to appear—that neither the wisdom nor power of God has been exhausted in the production of different kinds of bodies, and will be made more signally manifest in providing for saints a vesture suited to the glory of Christ’s coming kingdom]. In the next verse we have the apodosis of the comparison.—So also (is) the resurrection of the dead.—The connection is this: as we see so great a variety of forms above and below, there is abundant room for modifications of every sort in the human body, and it indicates only great narrowness of mind to infer from the condition of the dying human body that it could undergo no transformation. (Burger). The general proposition to which the comparison leads, viz., that there is a distinction between the constitution of the earthly body and that of the heavenly, is now more fully carried out.—(It) is sown in corruption.—The subject of the sentence is indicated by the connection. Instead of saying, ‘it is buried,’ as pertinent to the case of the human body, he borrows his expression from the analogy above employed. [The bodies of the saints are as seed sown in the ground; and, hence, every graveyard or cemetery is most aptly termed, in German, “God’s Acre.” The dissolution that is there quietly going on, out of sight, is but preparing the way for a more glorious appearing, when the winter is past, and the millenial spring breaks upon us.] As the antithesis we have—(it) is raised in incorruption:—’Εγείρεται, is raised,—the expression is not inconsistent with the figure. For we may take it in the middle sense, ‘it raises itself,’ or, ‘it rises,’ just as the plant does out of the seed corn. On account of what is said in 1Co_15:36, Neander interprets the sowing, not of burial in the grave, but of the development of life upon the earth; [and so Hodge: “it is now a corruptible body, constantly tending to decay, subject to disease and death, and destined to entire dissolution.” In this case the whole earth must be taken for God’s seed field, and our present condition must be regarded as, in some sort, an underground one]. The preposition “in,” in both clauses, expresses the condition in which the body is found in the two stages; in the first, the elements hitherto organically united are dissolving and scattering; and in the second, we are raised above all corruption and harm, above all pain, and disease, and suffering, into a state imperishable and fixed.—It is sown in dishonor,—‘Ατιμία, not simply denotes the unseemliness of the earthly body, and the humiliating infirmities of its corruptible state, by reason of which Paul elsewhere calls it “our vile body” (Php_3:21), but also, since he is speaking of burial, the foulness of the corpse, which is a reminder of the disgrace incurred in the penalty inflicted by death.—it is raised in glory:—By this he means the revelation of the dignity of the children of God in the resplendent brightness of their resurrection bodies, pervaded and glorified by the divine life. It is to be fashioned like unto the glorious body of the Son of God.—it is sown in weakness,—’Ασθέυεια does not refer simply to the feebleness of the earthly body when living [Bloomfield], but also to its perfect powerlessness as a corpse, its inability to resist corruption.—it is raised in power:—Δύναμις denotes a fullness of strength, energy and elasticity, which a renewed vitality will confer on the resureection body, enabling it to execute all the purposes and volitions of the spirit with the utmost ease and readiness.—All that is implied in these contrasts is condensed into the final one. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.—Respecting the term “natural,” [or, more properly, ‘animal,’ ‘psychical,’] comp. on 1Co_2:14. The expression, “natural body” (σῶμα ψυχικόν), denotes, in general, an organization that corresponds to the soul (ψύχη); and “spiritual body” (σῶμα πνευματικόν) one that corresponds to the spirit (πνεῦμα). The former is one which carries the impress of the soul; the other, the impress of the spirit. The soul is that by means of which our spiritual part is linked to a physical life—a life of impulse and sensation, dependent for its nourishment upon a world of sense. The corporeity corresponding to this and determined by it, is precisely on this account made dependent upon this outward world, and is affected by it; and by reason of it, it is exposed to all that which has just been expressed by the words “corruption,” “dishonor,” and “weakness,” of which death is the catastrophe. The nature of the spirit is, on the contrary, a free, supermundane life of light and love in God; and the spiritual body is an organization suited to its character, being lifted above all dependence on the outward world, and the consequences following from it, and displays itself in incorruption, glory and power. The antithesis to the animal or natural body forbids our explaining the epithet “spiritual” here, as though it meant ethereal, or refined, [“much less made of spirit, which would be a contradiction.” Hodge].—According to the ordinary reading, the following sentence would be simply a short and emphatic confirmation of what has already been said. But the better authenticated text, which we are by no means justified in setting aside as an easier reading, or as a correction, presents us here with two clauses—the second conditioned upon the first, which is supposed to be conceded.—If there is an animal body,—which the soul has as its corresponding organism—a thing perfectly obvious—there is a spiritual body.—i.e., the same must hold good also of the spirit; this likewise must have its corresponding organ as its means of expression, and as the instrument of its operations, [suited to the new order of things introduced by the coming of Christ], The emphasis here lies upon the word “is.” [If the one exists, so does the other].
1Co_15:45-49. According to Ewald, the sense and connection of this passage may be given thus: ‘This order of succession in the whole course of the world’s history, it is impossible should be otherwise. The finer forms always follow the grosser; those more spiritual succeed the more sensuous. Christ could appear only after Adam; and the purely heavenly Christ, as an external manifestation, is yet to be looked for. In like manner, the entire glorified humanity can only follow upon the present.’—And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul,—The citation is from Gen_2:7, with the addition of the qualifying words “first” and “Adam;” [ἐγέντο εἰς ψύχην ζῶσαν, from the LXX, being a literal rendering of the Hebrew לְּנֶפֶשׁ חיָּה, lit., for, or, unto a living soul; and to this the following expression is accommodated: εἰς πνε.ῦμαζωοποιῦν—The expression living soul, as used in Genesis, is often taken to indicate an order of being superior to the brute, and is the text of many an argument to prove the immortality of the soul. The incorrectness of this assumption will be readily seen by referring to Gen_1:20-21; Gen_1:24 and elsewhere, in which passages the words translated “living soul” are applied also to the entire lower creation. They are used indifferently of man and beast to express animal life in general; and it is in this light that the apostle uses them as the very course of his argument shows. Adam is spoken of as a living soul, not to prove his immortality, but rather his mortality. It is by means of the soul that he and all descended from Him, are linked to this changing and corruptible world, and so become the heirs of corruption. The only superiority ascribed to man in the history of creation, is found in the fact that ‘God breathed into him the breath of life,’ and in this it is intimated that in the act of becoming a living soul, man at the same time was endowed with higher capacities, which brought him into relationship with God, and made him capable of communing with Him, and so of rising to a spiritual existence. But the possibilities here involved for leading a true, spiritual life, could only be carried out by his abiding in fellowship with God and partaking of the Divine Spirit. And had this been maintained by obedience, there is every reason to believe that the higher life of the spirit would have glorified the lower and made it partaker of immortality without the intervention of death. But by reason of the Fall, this possibility was cut off, and man becoming animal (ψυχικός) or as our version renders it “natural” in the very elements of his character, or in the springs of his existence, became at the same time mortal. Herein lay the necessity for the new creation through the intervention of a Redeemer who shall be nothing less than a quickening spirit]. That the Apostle wished to have the following clause also, regarded as a scripture quotation, is an assumption as groundless as that the whole was taken out of the Apocrypha. That which was affirmed in scripture respecting the first man Adam, suggests to his mind the thought of Christ, the antitype of Adam; the lower plain upon which Adam was said to stand, points to the higher. Already by the addition of the epithets “first” and “Adam,” the apostle gives us to recognize the significance of the scripture language, and introduces the contrast which he wished to set up.—the last Adam, a quickening spirit.—“He attaches his own words directly to the passage from Scripture, as if to intimate, that the latter as necessarily followed from the former, according to its typical significance, as though it had been already spoken. He, therefore, merely gives expression to the inference which is implied in the passage itself, without any intimation that it also did not belong to the language of Scripture—it being a self-evident result plainly contained there. (“Let a person read the first clause,” and man became a “living soul,” dwelling thoughtfully upon the expression “living soul,” and then repeat, “the last Adam, a quickening spirit,” somewhat less slowly and loud,” Meyer, Ed. 3.) The whole sentence, however, is by no means, to be regarded as a logical parenthesis, as though 1Co_15:46, were to be connected immediately with 1Co_15:44; but it enters directly into the whole course of thought, and was designed to be a confirmation of the preceding statement (1Co_15:44) from Scripture, which, by its declaration in regard to the first Man, that he became a living soul, from whence the soul-body or animal organization proceeded, points directly to that higher state which was first realized in the last Adam, viz., to the quickening Spirit on which the spiritual body was founded.—The adverb “so” introduces the scripture text a-corresponding to that which had just been asserted and likewise confirming it. Adam’s becoming “a living soul” is represented as the effect of God’s breathing into him “the breath of lives,” נִשְׁמַת חַייִם. This is the term used to express the principle of life taken absolutely, which has its source in the divine Spirit, of which the soul of man is the efflux forming the bond or nexus between his body and his spirit, [See Delitzsch, Ed. 2. Part II. Sec. 3, and Heard, Tripartite Nature of Man, p. 36—45]. The man, however, is נֶפֶש חַיָּה, living soul, wherein body and spirit meet in living union. By means of this union is he constituted and made capable of a spiritual life; or in other words, herein consists the foundation of his moral and intellectual culture and final glorification into a divine life (Beck, Seelenl., p. 9.) “This life of the spirit as it increases in intensity is destined to make the soul, and by means of it the body likewise ever more and more, the proper image and exponent of itself, so that the two-fold life of man, as in a natural and necessary way it has the soul for its uniting bond, so also in an ethical and voluntary way it has the spirit as an all-pervading and controlling principle.” [See Delitzsch, Part 2. Sec. 5]. The first man, not as yet having transcended the character of a living soul (with which, however, sin must not as yet be supposed, nor even the necessity of its occurrence, but only the susceptibility for it, Meyer, Ed. 3,) since his personal life, by a free act of his own, had not appropriated as it should the Divine life of the spirit, but had apostatized from it through sin, which ran its fatal course in subjecting man more and more to the power of death, required now a new beginning which should actually lead to that glorification for which he was originally intended. This was to be achieved by such an appropriation of the Divine life of the Spirit that the result should be a quickening spirit. And this is just what we find in the other and second Adam who winds up the history of the race; since soul and body are in Him thoroughly pervaded by the Divine life and He as the perfected and glorified One, has the power continually to beget this same life in others, and so by renewing and transforming them, actually to develop the original capacities and intent of our common nature. “But for the very reason that this quickening Spirit was obliged to assimilate every thing to itself, there arose a necessity for its bursting this earthly covering in order to fashion for itself a new and glorified organ.” Neander.—Now, it is evident, that the point of time from which Christ became this “quickening Spirit” was, not His birth, but His resurrection; for until that moment He was in the likeness of sinful flesh and had an animal body; and it was not until after He had solved the problem of maintaining the original sinlessness of the spirit through all the stages of His natural life in a world of sin, that He, who, by a living resemblance, was the representative of a humanity that had become flesh in all its natural susceptibility to sin and death, became in like manner the representative and head of a humanity spiritually and divinely glorified, by virtue of having glorified human nature through the power of the Spirit, and in the maintenance of a perfect obedience, and of thus having overcome the curse of sin (Beck, Lehrwiss., p. 465 ff. 472), The point of transition from the one to the other stage is His resurrection. Through this, in the very might of that love which led him to incur judgment and lay down His life for the deliverance of the lost, He became henceforth in His newly quickened and glorified corporeity the divine organ for that life-renewal, that quickening of the dead, which reaches its perfect realization at the resurrection, and so, “a quickening spirit” (comp. Rom_8:11). The verb to be supplied is not ἐστίν, is, but ἐγέντο, became. While it belongs to the soul to be only “living,” and that through the spirit; so, on the contrary, does it belong to the Spirit “to make alive,” to impart the divine life-power which it has in itself, or which it is in a personal way (Osiander and Meyer). As the expression, “the first man,” designates the founder of the human race whose type is impressed upon all who spring from him, so does the expression, “the last Adam,” designate Him from whom issues the second final development of humanity that leads on to perfection.
And now, since it were natural to wish that the perfect had existed from the beginning, he proceeds to state the law of the divine order.—Howbeit, not first the spiritual, but the animal; afterward the spiritual.—Such is the established order in the development of humanity; and this order he means to set forth as something necessary, [founded in the very plan of the entire creation, the analogies of which were to be seen everywhere. Nature, through all the stages of existence, forms an ever-ascending series. In all the realms of life we mount from the lowest organizations to those more refined and complete. Why this was so ordered the apostle does not pretend to say. The reason for it is deeper than science can go, and is among the hidden things of the Eternal Wisdom. Al i that Paul means to assert here is, that such is the order required by the general constitution of things]. First, the earthly nature must needs manifest itself in Adam, and then only could it attain afterwards to a higher development (Neander). The adjectives, “spiritual” and “animal,” had better be taken here in a general way, as designating different stages of life, without supplying the noun “body.”—That the natural is first, and then the spiritual, is shown in the instances of the two great heads of humanity.—The first man (is) of the earth, earthy;—By the epithet “earthy,” which relates to the body, and not to the whole man as imbued with earthly affections, he designates that physical conformation which corresponds to his origin as taken from the earth. With this is connected the animal state. But the inward quickening of the body, which proceeds primarily from the spirit, does not take place directly; but through the operation of the soul, which, in man, by virtue of the breath of the Creator; is, as it were, formed out of the essence of the spirit in the body (Beck, Seelenl., p. 31). Now, inasmuch as in the creation of the first man there existed, first of all, a body fashioned out of the dust of the earth, this, at the start, could only bear the impress of the soul, which mediated the quickening power of the spirit. And such a body carries in itself the possibility of death, which, however, is only realized through sin (Gen_3:19; Comp. Rom_5:12 ff.), i.e., the alienation of the soul, which determines the condition of the body, from the Divine Spirit-life. Apart from this, however, it has the possibility also of not dying, which might have been realized through the perpetual appropriation of this spirit-life by means of which, as the soul advanced in spiritual glorification, it would become ever more qualified for the progressive quickening and glorification of the body (comp. Osiander, p. 777). As the antithesis we have—the second man is from heaven.—The fuller reading of the received text, “the Lord from heaven,” is opposed by an overwhelming balance of authorities; and the rejection of the words “the Lord” is not to be explained on the ground that it did not seem to suit as the proper contrast for “earthy.” It is far more likely that some transcribers attempted to fill out what appeared to be an imperfect antithesis, by adding “the Lord” in the margin by way of a gloss, and that this afterwards crept into the text. By the term “Lord”; (which would belong not to the subject, but to the predicate, and as the nobler designation would be put before the other), there would be exhibited the divine glory, the supramundane exaltation and power of the second man coming from heaven, in contrast with the earthly imperfection and weakness of the first man springing from the earth; and this certainly would not simply refer to his bodily life, but to his entire personality, which carries in itself the fulness of the spirit, and of divinely quickening power; from which, then, it might be inferred in regard to the expression “earthy,” that it denoted the earthly constitution and characteristics of the entire person of the first man.—In the case of the shorter reading, however, the question arises whether it means the heavenly origin of the second Man, in relation to His human life; which, then, in case the term “earthy” refers to the body of the first man, might be referred in like to manner to Christ’s corporeity (hence the heretical assumption that Christ’s body was from heaven); 41 or whether it means the final appearing of the second man, His second advent, for the perfection of His work, of which the resurrection of the dead is a part. The whole context appears to imply the latter (comp. 1Co_15:22-23; 1Co_15:45; 1Co_15:49). 42 What is here meant, therefore, is His coming from Heaven at His second Advent, which will take place in celestial, glory and in His transfigured humanity. And this presents to us the real antithesis to the earthiness of the first-man.
The following verses express the fact that the peculiar qualities of each of these two heads are reflected in those of the persons who belong to them severally, viz., in respect to the natural body on the one side, and the spiritual body on the other. This is what is meant by ὀ̓ιος and τοιοῦτοι.—As the earthy, such they also that are earthy:—By the latter are meant those who have descended from Adam, and like him are of an earthy nature.—and as the heavenly, such they also that are heavenly.—By the latter are meant those belonging to Christ in their state of heavenly perfection, or those who are taken up with Christ, the glorified, in the fellowship of His glorified life in heaven. Comp. Eph_2:6, “and hath made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus;” and Php_3:20, “Our citizenship is in heaven;” to which may be added still further, 1Co_15:21. “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.” The latter is here carried out in 1Co_15:49, in the same antithesis as in 1Co_15:48.—And as we bore,—namely, during our earthly life,—the image of the earthy,—i.e, the animal body (Php_3:21, “the body of our humiliation”)—we shall bear—namely, at the time of His appearing, from the resurrection onward,—the image of the heavenly.—i.e., the spiritual body which is made like unto His glorious body. In the verbs ἐφορέσαμεν and φορέσομεν, he places himself and his readers at the turning point of the second Advent, when they will have the life which they led in their earthy state behind them, and that of their heavenly state just before them.—Φορεῖν,—an image taken from dress. It means to wear as a garment; it occurs also in tragedy in relation to bodies (φορεῖν δέμας), and particular parts of the body, such as the hair. The more feebly attested reading φορεσομεν, we shall bear, corresponds to the entire connection and force of thought. The other, φορέσωμεν, let us bear, would introduce a. paranesis, which would constrain us to take the word “image” in an ethical sense. So Chrys., and Theoph.: “By the image of the earthy he means evil deeds, and by the image to the heavenly, good deeds.” It is in connection with this reading also that the following verse is interpreted in an ethical sense, which, however, is in contradiction with the uniform usage of the words “flesh and blood.” Perhaps, however, it was the ethical interpretation of 1Co_15:50, that gave rise to the reading. [Stanley, in obedience to the preponderance of authority, gives preference to the hortatory form of this sentence, which he acknowledges to be in no connection with the context].
1Co_15:50. He here winds up the whole of this exposition respecting the body in which believers should come forth, and confirms the declaration, “we shall bear the image of the heavenly,” by a solemn asseveration.—Now this I say,—It is a formula for emphasizing a subsequent statement, and implies no concession to his opponents. ὀ̓τι, as in 1Co_7:29, not ‘because,’ but,—that
1Co_15:49 rests on 1Co_15:45, not on that which here follows.—flesh and blood—By these words, according to Theodoret, are intended [not our sinful, fallen nature, as some, like Chrys., understand it construing the words in an ethical sense; but] our mortal nature, which, as such—cannot inherit the kingdom of God;—or, as Lange, “the constitution originating in natural birth.” It is the animal body in its present organization. “Flesh” denotes the earthly substance of the “body and blood,” the animal element in it, according to its corruptible nature. That this corporeal constitution cannot enter the kingdom of God without change, is still further shown from the incompatibility between the two.—neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.—Corruption, not as distinct from flesh and blood, as the dead are distinguished from the living; but the word exhibits to us prominently a characteristic of our present state, which sets it in marked contrast with the constitution of the kingdom of God, as that of an imperishable life—φθόρα is here the abstract for the concrete φθάρτον. The present κληροναμεῖ expresses a constant relation (Meyer), and an established truth. The idea of time is not here taken into account.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Skepticism would fain wear the aspect of an enlightenment that transcended the ordinary scope of faith, of a more comprehensive and loftier view of the world which was justified in looking down upon a belief in the doctrines of revelation as a sign of narrowness and bigotry. But, regarded rightly, the narrowness will be found on its part. It is skepticism that betrays a lack of sound reason, which, at the same time, includes a lack in the higher moral constitution. There lies at the foundation of it a dullness of thought, a dislike for the labor of profound contemplation, a disposition to be readily satisfied with what is most obvious, and to abide within the wonted circle of human notions. Nay, still more there is at the bottom of it a pride of understanding which delights in the supposed discoveries of truth, and is opposed to the acknowledgment of a wisdom surpassing its own range of thought and opinion—even a wisdom to which it is the business and duty of the human under standing to submit, cordially accepting its doctrines and endeavoring to understand them more, and more, if it is ever properly to come to itself, since it here enters upon its own proper ground, the Spirit of God, and in the light of truth is enabled to recognize more and more, on every side, the nature and laws of Divine providence, and the manifold ways of God, and the correspondencies which exist between the natural creation in its varied developments and the kingdom of grace or the work of redemption in all its rich unfolding.
2. The resurrection of the dead, stands in close analogy with various phenomena which constantly present themselves to our notice, and in which the creative omnipotence of God displays itself from year to year. In these death, dissolution, and corruption, are seen to be the conditions of a new life—stages of transition to new forms of existence. The kernel contained in the ripened fruit, conceals a vital germ, which, when the kernel is planted in the soil and there dissolved, bursts forth and springs up into a new growth in conformity with the constitution originally given it by the Creator, and by means of His ever-present, everywhere active, power. Essentially the same process occurs in the resurrection of the dead. Corruption is only the dissolution of that which was the result of a previous vital development, in order that the germ of a new body which was included in the inmost kernel of the old, may break forth and unfold itself into a new and living organism. But the new is not [as some suppose, the restoration of the old, a recomposition of the same particles that existed in the old body,] but of another and nobler quality [and better suited to be the organ of a perfectly sanctified spirit]. In the resurrection body we enter upon a distinct and higher stage of life than that occupied by the body which has been laid in the earth. [The apostle calls it “a building of God, a house not made with hands” in contrast with the former, in which, as the seat of pain, and suffering, and sin, we groaned being burdened. What its particular attributes and peculiarities are, it doth not yet appear. It is sufficient for us to know, that it will be like unto Christ’s glorious body; and from the hints afforded us in the account given of His several appearances to His disciples, we may obtain some idea of its superior adaptation for the service of the spirit]. It must be understood that we are here speaking only of those who have been taken unto a fellowship with the new divine life in Jesus Christ, and have come within the sphere of His redeeming grace; or, in other words, who belong to that new development which proceeds from the last Adam. [What the condition of those will be who are to come forth to the resurrection of damnation, we are not here informed, and on this point to offer conjecture would be to go beyond our province].
This higher stage of corporeal existence has its analogies in the broad range of creation; since here also, we behold manifold distinctions and degrees of organization, as well in the sphere of animal life as among the higher orders of being, including man and angels, and also among the celestial bodies shining with varied glory. Somewhat corresponding to the distinctions here observable, will be the superiority of the resurrection-body in the comparison with the earthly body—a superiority, which viewed in the contrasts presented at the time of death and of resurrection, is expressed in the antithesis between corruption and incorruption, weakness and power, dishonor and glory.
3. The resurrection as illustrated by the account of the divine plan in man’s creation. Much light is cast upon the great distinction between the present and the resurrection-body, by the divinely revealed economy of the Creator, or, in other words, by the divinely ordained development of the human race, as set forth in Scripture. The all-quickening Spirit of God first produced a creature with a living soul. The soul, as the vehicle and instrument of his life-power, by which being quickened, the earthly body prepared for it by God becomes animal or psychical, i.e. conformed to the character of the soul, is the organism of a personal life which is capable either of appropriating to itself ever more and more that divine spiritual life in which it is rooted, or of apostatizing from it. In the case of apostasy, such as actually occurred, instead of a progressive glorification of the earthly, physical body into a heavenly, spiritual one, there would ensue a progressive mortality and corruption. And such man has already incurred. Nevertheless, that condition for which he was originally constituted and destined, was still bound to come to pass. Through a Divine act of love, a new process of development was introduced into the human race, which, as in the first instance, entered into life through the quickening power of the divine Spirit, and in the like manner, involved the possibility of a free self-determination in both directions, i.e., a true human life according to soul and body. But by a style of conduct opposed to that pursued in the first stage of development or by its head, the first Adam—by the perpetual appropriation and maintenance of the divine, spiritual life amid all the temptations of our lower nature, and amid all the difficulties, struggles and necessities which attended upon a loving entrance into the accursed state of the first Adamic humanity, this reached a height upon which the animal nature, glorified into a truly spiritual condition, becomes the principle of a like glorification for the earthly animal race of man (in so far as this enters into the fellowship of the second Adam), so that everything which had been corrupted by means of sin is again restored, and aims at rising to the highest stage of life which had been ordained from the beginning as the proper goal of all human endeavor, but which had become unattainable after the apostasy. Now after that we have become incorporated into the second Adam by faith, by means of which His Spirit as an inwardly sanctifying power takes possession of our personal life, and delivers it from all selfishness, and all entanglement with our earthly sensuous being, and attracts it with all its powers and entire organism into the service of the Divine life, and assimilates it to that; there then follows, as the natural completion of this process, an unfolding of the germ of this Divine spiritual life that has been implanted in this organism (after the process of dying which belonged to the old Adamic state, has been gone through with) into a new organism which corresponds to the glorified body of the second Adam.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Starke:
1Co_15:35. Hedinger: Shall I rise again out of the grave, the dust, the fire, the abyss of the sea, and appear in beauty and glory? Reason says, No. Oh, blindness! Ask the beautiful fruit-bearing stalk, what and where it was a short time ago.
1Co_15:36. “Thou fool.” Paul here calls conceited reason by its right name, in order to rebuke unbelief (Gal_3:1). To him who believes in the infinite knowledge, wisdom and power of God, and in the creation where God brought all things out of nothing, it will not be hard to believe that God knows where every little particle of dust of this or that body or member is, and how that which has been mingled in with the seeds of other bodies is to be again separated from them, and how each particle is to be brought again to its place, so that each body may be the same body. 43 If it is possible that a corrupted little seed of corn shall spring up to new life and verdure, and bring forth new kernels, although thy reason cannot comprehend how this can happen; then it is not impossible that God should quicken again the bodies that have been dissolved.—There is such a depth and breath in the works of God, that our feeble understanding becomes lost in them, even as a little drop of water is swallowed up in the great sea.
1Co_15:37 f. That the nature of every plant, with all its peculiarities is included in the little seed-corn, and springs from that, is certainly a work of God’s wisdom and omnipotence. If He now produces from the buried kernel a particular plant which bears upon its stalk many other like kernels, how can we doubt that God would be both able and willing, according to His own infinite power, to bring forth out of the seed of a decaying human body a like result once more? (Luk_18:27.)
1Co_15:43. The most beautiful of mankind, during their whole life, are but dirt, and are obliged to conceal much that they have both upon and in themselves; but the resurrection will glorify all that, and render our bodies perfectly pure vessels.
1Co_15:45. We must carry about with us this mortal body in humility, endure it with patience, and let it die with fresh courage. In this way we rightly labor towards transforming it into that glorious and spiritual body which we expect from the second Adam.
1Co_15:47. Hedinger: Since the earthly Adam, endowed with earthly attributes, came first, and the second spiritual Adam followed after, so must that body which we inherit from Adam first be earthly and born, ere it become spiritual according to the image of the second Adam.
1Co_15:48. Every thing in its own time—the body must first lay off its earthly qualities through death, and after that spring up anew.—What at last is born anew at the resurrection—should not this be glorious? 1Co_15:49. Here upon earth the glory of the divine image mirrors itself in believers to some degree; but at the resurrection they will possess all this glory in its perfection.
1Co_15:50. Perhaps thou wouldst gladly journey on to heaven with thy body and soul without dying, and so inherit its glory (2. Cor. 1Co_5:4); but that which is to live there must first perish, ere it be made anew.
Berlenb. Bibel:
1Co_15:35 f. Man takes too much upon his phantasy, and means to see every thing thereby. Happily such are first pointed to the operations of Nature. For the lower and the transient world is an image of the higher and the enduring. If such wise spirits would investigate more exactly the operations of Nature, this would enable them to read in living characters, what follies they, with their wisdom perpetrate before God. Even in natural things we do not succeed in understanding how one thing and another transpires; and how much more will this be the case in heavenly mysteries (Wis_9:16).—It is a folly which emanates from the pool of our corrupt hearts to be always inquiring—‘how? how?’ If we take our reason only with us and use it beyond its proper limits, it turns to unreason. We should learn to understand that things come from a higher hand, and abide in the way of faith.
1Co_15:37. The outer hulls do not germinate, but are sloughed off from the inner germ, decay and mix with earth; but the germ itself springs up again in living green. Accordingly it is not precisely the same body with all its dust that is to rise again. Yea, even during this life, this mortal body is subject to a perpetual change, so that in a short time not one particle of that which we once were, remains in us, [so it is not necessary in maintaining the identity of the body to preserve the same material particles of which it was at any one time composed]. Though our bodies are in continual flux, yet no one says that we become new men every quarter of a year.
1Co_15:38. The best is concealed in order that we may not confound Nature with God. Nature hides itself. There God alone is master, and has the key. If we do not go to Him we shall bring nothing out.
1Co_15:44. We must not draw our conclusions from one body to another, and say: A body is a body. No; great distinctions exist among bodies. There is a spiritual body which is through and through like pure spirit, as well as a natural and beastly body.
1Co_15:45. God has created men not purely spiritual, in order that they may not exalt themselves, but ever be mindful of their dependence. The natural life is, in respect to the other life, only as a field; but in the field a spiritual seed is sown which shall hereafter spring up through the power of the second Adam.
1Co_15:46. The state of weakness comes first: otherwise, we would not know how to esteem that of highest glory, nor yet to distinguish between the two. Hence, this order is good; and he who takes it into account will avoid the miserable snares which are spread by reason.
1Co_15:47. The first and the second man—these two are as wide asunder in their nature as heaven and earth, yea, as God and the creature; and yet one has come to the other, so that we have share in both.
1Co_15:48. We must not become more earthly than Adam was. The Heavenly Adam was provided in order that we may and should again erect ourselves upon Him. In this way, then, do those that are heavenly spring from Him by a new birth and life in Him. But if this is to happen, our old earthly man, must and will, in thought, word, work, become united to Christ, in his sufferings and death, and the new man arise in us.—This is the great mystery, on account of which God became man, and proposes now to exhibit us as the children of God through His incarnation.
Rieger:
1Co_15:35 ff. In inquiring after the exact ground, how any event comes to pass, every thing for the most part turns upon the intention of the inquirer—whether he inquire from a desire of learning, and a delight in the truth, or from doubt and pleasure in mocking; whether he does it from faith and for the sake of advancing in knowledge, or simply to find pretext for unbelief. The difficulty in respect to the resurrection is the dying and the dissolutton; but this, indeed, in a thousand cases, is the only way to new life and verdure, and fruitfulness. This thou wouldst question, if thou hadst not seen it so often.—It is enough that now the way through death to life is so pictured before our eyes. What God does daily and yearly in the realm of Nature, this He does in the kingdom of His Son, for the destruction of the last enemy. Let the change and expansion and manifold increase in the seed that is sown be what it may, yet all this has had its ground and cause in the seed itself. Even so the resurrection is but a quickening and up-springing of that very thing which has died.—What else is the denial of the resurrection but an ignoring of the power of God, which can produce out of its inexhaustible fulness just what it will. 1Co_15:42 ff. Precious foundation for our patience,—to suffer under the body of this death, because the germ of a future spiritual body exists therein! How deep down into the inheritance of Adam: until thou returnest again to dust! How highly exalted in the inheritance of Christ: until we shall become like unto His glorious body! Lord Jesus, prepare me that I may bear thy heavenly image.
1Co_15:50. The natural life which we have in common with other living creatures upon the soil of earth, is not fit for the kingdom of God; it would be far too weak to sustain the powers in exercise there.
Heubner:
1Co_15:35. All question after the how in the mysterious doctrines of religion must be asked with modesty, with a recognition of the limits of our knowledge, with the design of warding off unbelief and strengthening faith; and hence, not in those cases where all comprehension on our part is absolutely denied. Close reflection, strictly carried out, will never stumble at revelation.
1Co_15:37. The present and the future life are related as germ and fruit; hence, the resurrection is not the creation of a new organism. The study of nature should help revelation, and should lead us to the Lord of Nature and the Giver of Revelation Especially does the ever-recurring change from death to life, which we see in nature, assist a Christian’s faith in the resurrection.
1Co_15:39 ff. The inexhaustible manifoldness of the kingdom of God opens to our contemplation an unfathomable sea.
1Co_15:42 ff. The fundamental stuff remains, but development gives it another body. We know nothing of the innermost, finest parts of the body, and it is from these that the main stuff of the future body is formed. Since the heavenly body will not be like the earthly, it will be no burden to man. Finite spirits also must necessarily have an organ (contrary to Kant).
1Co_15:45 ff. Christ, the Regenerator of man, gives the spiritual life—He creates in us not only the new life of regeneration, but His spirit and His power will directly quicken our bodies.
W. F. Besser:
1Co_15:47. Great is the miracle of creation, by which God called the first man out of the earth into a natural life; but greater still is the miracle of Redemption, by which God has created a spiritual body, of which the sinful, earthly children of the sinful, earthly Adam were utterly destitute. Although now the work of redemption is greater than the work of creation, yet is it not more difficult to believe that the Lord will make our natural body a spiritual body, according to the likeness of His perfected spiritual body, than it is to believe that He made our natural body from a clump of earth?
1Co_15:49. The true Christophori, or Christ-bearers, are Christians, here, in faith; there, in sight.
1Co_15:50. The flesh and blood of the lost may and will rise, not to the inheritance of the kingdom, but to suffer the pain of eternal fire. But, in order that flesh and blood may rise to the inheritance of the kingdom, the present form of flesh and blood must be done away; first, through spiritual regeneration in baptism, and then through the physical change in the grave, in order that a spiritual flesh and blood may spring therefrom, according to the fashion of the flesh and blood of Christ.—The Christian burial is the blessing of the body to be redeemed from corruption (Rom_8:23).
[Robertson:— 1Co_15:46-49. The natural precedes the spiritual. I. The universality of this law, as seen: 1. In the order of creation; 2. In the progress of the Jewish nation; 3. In the progress of the human race. II. The spiritual instances of this law: 1. Our natural affections precede our spiritual; 2. The moral precedes the spiritual. III. The stages through which we pass: 1. Through temptation; 2. Through sorrow].
Footnotes:
[31]1Co_15:36.—The Rec. has ἀ̓φρον instead of ἀ̓φρων. It is however feebly attested, and is a correction. [The more infrequent nominative was more likely to be altered, as in several instances it has been, into the vocative. It is however found in A. B. D. E. F. G., Sinait. and some cursives, while the vocative is given only in K. L., many cursives, Orig., Epiph., and some others.—C. P. W.].
[32]1Co_15:39.—The σάρξ which some [Rec. et al.] have put before ἀνθρώπων is thrown out [by Matth., Lachmann, Tischendorf, Alford, and Bloomfield], on the authority of the best MSS. [A. B. D. E. F. G. K. L. Sinait., 60 cursives, Syr. (later) Copt., Aeth., Greek and Latin Fathers, and indeed is sustained by no important MS.]. The same word before πτηνῶν is better sustained [B. D. E. F. G. Siuait., several copies of the Vulg., Copt., Theophyl., Text., Ambrst.], but it is rejected by Meyer as a mechanical addition.
[33]1Co_15:39.—The position of ἄλλη δὲ δὲ ἰχθυῶν before ἀ̓λλη δὲ σ. πτηνῶν is not so well attested as the reverse order. [It has for it only F. G. K. L., the larger number of cursives, the later Syr., Theodt., Oecum., hut against it A. B. D. E. Sinait, 6 cursives, 3 Latin MSS., the Vulg., Copt., Syr., (Pesch.), Chrys., Dam.. Theophyl., Orig., Tert. The order of the words in this verse appears much deranged in many MSS., though the general sense is not thereby affected.—C. P. W.]
[34]1Co_15:44.—The Rec. has ἐ̓στιν σῶμα ψυχικόν, καὶ ἒστι σῶμα πνευματικόν, but a better attested reading is ἐι ἔστιν σῶμ. ψυχ., ἐ̓στιν καὶ πνευματικόν. [The uncials A. B. C. D. F. G. Sinait., 9 cursives, the Ital., Vulg., Copt., Aeth., Arm., are all in favor of the latter reading, which is adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Alford and Stanley. It was natural from the similarity of the preceding and the commencement of the succeeding clauses that a transcriber should omit εὶ. It must however be conceded that the internal evidence is against Lachmann’s reading, for as Reiche aud Bloomfield remark the sentiment thus becomes jejune and hardly like Paul’s usual style. The whole sentence is omitted in several cursives and Chrys., but Meyer accounts for the omission by the homœoteleuton.—C. P. W.].
[35]1Co_15:45.—According to the best MSS. ἀ̓νθρωπος is to be retained. Its omission in some [B. K. 3 cursives, Did. Iren., (Lat.) Tert., (once)], may be explained by an attempt to conform to the contrasted ὁ ἐ̓σχ. ̓Αδαμ.
[36]1Co_15:47.—The Rec. has ὁ κύριος, after ὁ δεύτ. ἄνθρ., but according to the best MSS. it should be thrown out as a gloss. [It was suspected by Griesbach, and erased by Lachmann, Tischendorf and Alford, following B. C. D. (1st hand) E. F. G., Sinait., (1st hand), 17, the Ital., Vulg., Copt., Aeth.. Arm., and many Greek and Latin writers. In the Dialogue against the Marcionites printed among Origen’s works, and in Tertul. against the same the insertion of ὁ κύρ, is ascribed to the heretics. Comp. Tisch. N. T. 7th edit.—C. P. W.].
[37]1Co_15:49.—The evidence for φορέσωμεν instead of φορέσομεν is strong, but the word does not seem suitable in this place. See Exegetical Notes. [The documentary authoity for the subjunctive (adopted by Lachmann and Stanley seems absolutely decisive (A. C. D. E. F. G. K. L. Sinait. above 20 cursives, the Ital., Vulg., Copt., Goth., Slav., Theodt., Orig., (de la Rne), Cyr., Macar., Caes., Bas., Meth., Chrys., (in expos.), Max., Epiph., pseud-Athan., Damasc, Iren., (Latin), Tert., Cypr., Hilar., Jerome). The Rec. however has for it, the important testimony of B., a number of cursives, the Syr., (both), Arab., Aeth., Arm., Orig.. (other editions) Cyr., (giaph. and nest.), Theodt., Theophyl., Oecum. These two last especially mention and explain both readings. (See their remarks in Tischendorf’s N. T.). The subjunctive certainly seems untenable, as an ethical exhortation at this point would appear wholly out of place, and was adopted only to avoid making the apostle contradict what he had said in 1Co_15:50.—C. P. W.].
[38]1Co_15:50.—Lachmann reads κληρονομήσει, but it is not satisfactorily attested [C. (1st hand) D. (1st hand) F. G. Ital. Vulg., Copt., Syr.,(Pesch). and the Latin writers. Meyer thinks it was occasioned by its similarity in sound with κληρονομῆσαι.
[39][But it may be asked, wherein consists the identity between the natural and the spiritual body? Certainly not in the material particles of which the two are composed, nor yet in the sameness of structure. All suppositions of this sort, which find a picture of the resurrection in Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, are set aside by the force of the analogy which the apostle uses. Not even during our earthly state can it be said that the identity of our body in the several stages of existence, consists in the identity of the particles which compose it. These, as science teaches us, are in continued flux day by day. By some mysterious process of life, are we gathering to ourselves new material and passing off the old; and as to the matter of our composition we are no more the same in two successive moments than is the river that we call by the same name and yet is ever passing. Yet, no one thinks of questioning the identity of our persons, or of our bodies. Amid this constant change there is something fixed which makes us recognizable as the same from the cradle to the grave—something which gives form, and feature, and organization, to this ever moving current of matter which is momentarily condensed into what we call our bodies. And what is this but the plastic principle of life which is ever shaping the materials which nature gives it for its own uses, and in accordance with an inward law which moulds us after our kind? Here then we have the true substance of the body—that which stands underneath the outward phenomenon of a corporeal form and imparts to its sole reality. And if this be so, it is easy to see that when by death the materials of our present structure are all dissolve and scattered abroad, this vital, organiflc principle, abiding still in connection with the spirit, and in the presence of Christ, may, by the viwer which He, through His eternal Spirit, worketh in oiu spirits, at the resurrection gather to itself and assimilate new materials of a wholly different kind, suited to that new condition of things which shall be ushered in at the glorious appearing of our Redeemer. How far this new form may resemble the old, so as to enable us to identify acquaintances and friends, is a matter on which Scripture gives us some faint hints. At our Saviour’s transfiguration Moses and Elias seem to have been recognized for what they were: and after His resurrection. His disciples were enabled to know their Lord. And there is nothing unreasonable in supposing that the resemblance between our present and glorified bodies will be sufficiently strong to enable ns to know our old associates again and so keep up a continuity between our earthly and heavenly state. It is at any rate, a pleasant thing to think such an identification possible].
[40][But with all these arguments in favor of regarding the apostle as meaning angelic bodies, Kling prefers the other acceptation. And so Calvin, Bloomfield, Henry, Poole, Barnes, Hodge who, while speaking of it as doubtful, gives it the preference. But one naturally inclines to go with Meyer, De Wette, and Alford, Stanley, in supposing angelic bodies to be meant. All the accounts given of the angels imply the possession of a material vehicle, more subtil and glorious than that of man, capable of visibility or invisibility, at the option of spirit within; and Paul speaks of being ‘clothed upon with his house, which is from heaven’ (2Co_5:2): and certainly this view suits the case in hand far better].
[41][“This passage was used by the early heretics of the Gnostic to sustain their doctrine that our Lord was not really born of the Virgin Mary, but was clothed in a body derived from Heaven; in opposition to whom the early creeds declare that Ho was as to His human nature consubstantial with man, and as to His divine nature consubstantial with God.” Hodge.
[42][This is the view given by Meyer and other commentators, both ancient and modern. But Bloomfield, and Alford, and Hodge, and de Wette, and many others, prefer the reference to the heavenly origin of His entire personality as the God-Man. This view is ably supported by Bp. Bull, in his Jud. Eccl. Cathol. 1Co_5:5, and is also rendered probable from Joh_3:13, where the Son of Man is spoken of as “He that came down from Heaven.”]
[43][This comment is founded on the false assumption once so prevalent, that the identity of the present and the resurrection bodies was to consist in the identity of the material particles out of which the present body is composed].
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv35–49 How--It is folly to deny a fact of REVELATION,…
How--It is folly to deny a fact of REVELATION, because we do not know the "how." Some measure God's power by their petty intelligence, and won't admit, even on His assurance, anything which they cannot explain. Ezekiel's answer of faith to the question is the truly wise one (Eze 37:3). So Jesus argues not on principles of philosophy, but wholly from "the power of God," as declared by the Word of God (Mat 19:26; Mar 10:27; Mar 12:23; Luk 18:27).
come--The dead are said to depart, or to be deceased: those rising again to come. The objector could not understand how the dead are to rise, and with what kind of a body they are to come. Is it to be the same body? If so, how is this, since the resurrection bodies will not eat or drink, or beget children, as the natural bodies do? Besides, the latter have mouldered into dust. How then can they rise again? If it be a different body, how can the personal identity be preserved? Paul answers, In one sense it will be the same body, in another, a distinct body. It will be a body, but a spiritual, not a natural, body.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv35–49 5. By the contrasts in the glory of various…
5. By the contrasts in the glory of various classes of material bodies is illustrated the contrast between our bodies, mortal and immortalized, 1Co_15:35-41.
Paul now, through the remainder of the chapter, answers the Gnostic opponent who denies the possibility of the resurrection, based on the vileness of corporeal matter. He shows (1Co_15:35-41) that there are varieties of body, contrasts the mode of our present body with the mode of the future same body, (1Co_15:42-50,) and furnishes an apocalyptic picture affirming by revelation a glorious resurrection of the same body.
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35. Some man—One of the some of 1Co_15:34; 1Co_15:12. Both questions deny the possibility of the resurrection (of our present body, note Act_8:9) by asking the how and the what kind. They fully believe that it is no how and of no kind; for matter is immutably corrupt, and they have no conception that body can be made, even by divine power, any otherwise than corrupt—just because it is matter.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv35–49 35. But some man will say, How are the…
35. But some man will say, How are the dead raised up?] We now proceed from the fact of the resurrection to its manner, a question which the Apostle discusses as far as 1Co_15:54, where he begins to treat of its result.
and with what body do they come?] It was the doctrine of the Resurrection of the body which was the stumbling-block of many hearers of the Gospel. Estius remarks that the Pharisees taught that men would rise again with bodies possessing in every respect the same functions as those in which they were laid in the grave. This was a difficulty to many, especially to the Sadducees. See St Mat_22:23-33. To remove these difficulties St Paul now explains the nature (ποίος) of the Resurrection body, and of the process whereby it is brought into being.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49 (35) But some man will say, How are the…
(35) But some man will say, How are the dead raised up?—The proof of the truth of the doctrine of the resurrection is concluded in the last verse. The truth of it is, in the early part of this chapter, maintained—(1) by the historical fact of Christ’s resurrection; (2) by a reductio ad absurdum, showing the consequences logically involved in a denial of it; (3) by an argumentum ad hominem. The former two arguments are still those on which we must rest our belief in the doctrine. The latter is, like every argument of that nature, only of force to those to whom it was actually addressed. The Apostle in this verse turns aside to another line of thought. He assumes that his previous arguments are conclusive; there still remain, however, difficulties which will suggest themselves. The difficulty is expressed in two questions, the second being an enlargement of the first—a more definite indication of where the suggested difficulty lies. “How are the dead raised up”—that is, not by what power? but in what manner? as is further explained by the next question, “In what body do they come?”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv35–49 Vers. 35-49. Material objections answered.
Vers. 35-49. Material objections answered.
But some man will say. The objection is that of some philosophical materialist. The resurrection of the body was a difficulty alike to Sadducees and Gentiles. St. Paul meets this difficulty by natural analogies, which are intended to show that the resurrection body, though identical with the mortal body so far as the preservation of personal identity is concerned, is yet a glorified body, so that the objections urged on the ground that it is impossible to preserve the same material particles which have passed into dust, are beside the mark. St. Paul gives no sanction to the coarse physical conceptions of the resurrection which described the human being as rising (to use the words of the Christian poet Prudentius) "with every tooth and every nail." How are the dead raised up? This question is one which, of course, admits of no answer. And with what body do they come? literally, with what kind of body? St. Paul, while he only answers the question indirectly and by analogy, implies that the resurrection body is the same body, not so much by way of material identity as of glorified individuality.
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Vers. 35-44.
The resurrection body.
what body do they come?" The question which Paul puts into the mouth of the ancient sceptic assumes the fact of a general resurrection of mankind. And why should we not assume this fact? "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?
Incredible! Has not he who has engaged to do it all sufficient power? Scepticism parades the difficulties connected with the work of the resurrection. Let them be a million times more than the fancy of the infidel can figure to himself, will they amount to anything as an argument against its accomplishment? Nay, the difficulty of a work should always be estimated by the capacity of the agent engaged to perform it. What is impossible for one being to perform, can be achieved by another with the greatest facility. Where Omnipotence is the agent, the talk about difficulties is manifestly absurd. What would baffle and overmaster the combined power of all created existences, Almightiness can effect by a single fiat. "Is there anything too hard for the Lord?" Incredible! Changes are constantly going on in the creation bearing some resemblance to the event. Spring is a resurrection of buried life. Unnumbered graves, some that have been sealed for centuries, are opened every hour by the warm touch of the vernal ray. Incredible! It meets the universal longings of the human heart. The cry of all generations is this: "We would not be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up in life." The world"s heart waits "for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." Incredible! It is unmistakably stated in that gospel which has been demonstrated Divine. To the question, "If a man die shall he live again?" we have in the Bible replies the most varied, expressive, and full. The subject of the general resurrection is a very extensive one; it has many branches, and touches a vast variety of truth. In the light of the apostle"s statements, I infer the following answers to this question:
I With a body not IDENTICAL WITH THAT WHICH DESCENDED TO THE GRAVE. "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die," etc. Not a few of the advocates of the doctrine of the resurrection have exposed it to the ridicule of the sceptic and the contempt of the philosopher by representing the resurrection body as the literal reorganization of the buried dust. To work upon the passions of the unreflecting and the vulgar, the sensuous poem and the declamatory pulpit have given representations of the resurrection most extravagant in their materiality and their grossness. The particles of the buried body, which through the course of centuries have undergone innumerable transformations, and been separated from each other wide as the poles asunder, are described as coming together in the last day to take the very same place in that very same body as was conveyed to the grave. In poetry we have an example in such lines as Blair"s
Now monuments prove faithful to their trust, And render back their long committed dust; Now charnels rattle, scattered limbs, and all The various bones, obsequious to the call, Self moved, advance: the distant head, the feet Dreadful to view, see, through the dusky sky Fragments of bodies in confusion fly; To distant regions journeying there to claim Deserted members and complete the frame.
Science, of course, laughs all this to scorn. It tells us how the human body, as to the particles that compose it, is in a state of perpetual flux; that portions of it are streaming off every moment from every pore; that at the end of seven years not one atom shall be found in the body which was there in the beginning, and that at the end of seventy years a man will have had no less than ten different bodies. It tells us how that no sooner is the body dead, than the various particles begin to liberate themselves from each other, and in the course of time mix themselves up as parts of other existences; how they form the grass upon which the cattle browse, flow in the stream, and become the fruit and flesh on which their children live. So that, in the course of ages, the same particles might have formed the frames of a thousand different men. It tells us, moreover, that millions of men have had no graves. In some of the Oriental nations the dead are not buried, but burned, and in the process of combustion the greater portions of the body pass into invisible gases, and are lost in the immensity of the atmosphere, while the handful of ashes that remain are borne away on the four winds of heaven. Now, it is our happiness to know that not on this point, any more than on any other, does the Bible teach what true science repudiates. "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be." There is a difference between the dead seed sown, and the living plant that springs from it. You drop into the earth a bare grain, and what comes up? Not a bare grain, but a green stalk, which grows, perhaps, to a tree with many branches, rich foliage, lovely blossoms, and delicious fruits. There is not a particle on that tree of the bare grain that you buried. It will be thus with the resurrection body; it will not be the bare grain that was put into the earth, but something else, that will come up. The resurrection body will be no more identical with the buried one than the majestic tree of the forest is the same in particle or bulk as the acorn from which it sprang. "With what body do they come?" The apostle enables us to reply further
II With a body that WILL HAVE SOME ORGANIC CONNECTION WITH THAT WHICH WAS DEPOSITED IN THE DUST. The plant, though very dissimilar to the bare grain, has a vital connection with it. It grows out of it, and is of the same order; there is an unbroken continuity. If the resurrection of the body from the grave means anything, it must mean that something from the old body comes up and takes a fresh form. What else is meant by such expressions as this: "All that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man and come forth"? It is true that this connection between the buried and the raised body is far more inexplicable than the connection between the buried grain and the up growing plant, or between the chrysalis and the moth. In neither of these cases is life really extinct; death is only apparent. There is an unbroken continuity traceable from the smallest seed to the mightiest tree, from the embryo in the shell to the monarch of the air. But no continuity is traceable between the raised and the buried man; there seems an awful break. Still it exists. Whatever theories are accepted as satisfactory, we hold to the scriptural fact that the new body will have an organic connection with the old; otherwise, the resurrection of the body is nothing but a pure fiction. Further, in answer to the sceptic"s question, "With what body do they come?" the apostle"s language enables us to give another reply.
III With a body WHICH GOD IN HIS SOVEREIGNTY WILL BESTOW. "God giveth it body as it hath pleased him.
1. That God clothes life. "To every seed his own body." There is no doubt that in the universe there is life unclothed by matter. It may be so with the angels: it is so, I trow, with God himself. It is true we know nothing of life only by its clothing. Around us there may be immeasurable oceans of naked life, but we only know something of the embodied. No science has yet told us what life is.
2. That God clothes life with the fittest body. "All flesh is not the same flesh." Life has boundless varieties, but God gives to each its fitting body. Paul points to the life of "beasts" and "fish," and "birds;" to each he has given bodies. The hare and the elephant, the wren and the eagle, the minnow and the leviathian, all have bodies fitted to the peculiarities of their distinctive life.
3. That God clothes life according to his own pleasure. "Giveth it a body as it has pleased him." He chose the form, the hue, the gait of each life. Our resurrection body will be as it "hath pleased him." Then it will be beautiful, for he is the God of all taste, the Fountain of all beauty, the Standard of all Aesthetics. Then it will be useful, for he is the God of benevolence. Exquisitely suited to our present sphere are the bodies through which he streams into us the most exquisite sensations, and through which we convey and work out the best things within us. It will be glorious. "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars:" so also with the resurrection of the just. Once more, to the question of the sceptic the apostle answers
IV With a body THAT SHALL BE A VAST IMPROVEMENT UPON THE OLD ONE. "It is sown in corruption." Between the buried body and the resurrection body we have a series of antitheses, showing the vast superiority of the one to the other.
1. The one is corruptible, the other is incorruptible. "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption." Our present frames are frail and dying. The resurrection body will be incorruptible; it will be deathless as the immortal spirit itself.
2. The one is degraded; the other is glorious. Our present corporeal system is dishonoured, but it is raised in glory. How great the difference between the corrupting seed and the stately plant and full-blown flower!
3. The one is weak, and the other is powerful. How feeble is our present body! It is not like the oak that can stand the storms of centuries, but like the frail flower that withers in an hour. It is raised in power power that shall never fatigue with labour or wear out by time.
4. The one is natural; the other is spiritual. The present body is called a "natural body," probably because it is more the organ of the animal than the spiritual; and the future body the spiritual, because it will be the organ of the intelligent and immortal mind. Man has in him two principles of life the animal, which connects him with the material and local, and the rational, which connects him with the spiritual and the infinite. The body of the one falls at death, and will be required no more; the perfected body of the other will be taken up at the resurrection, and will be continued forever. What is death to him who has this hope? Not the king of terrors, but the angel of immortality bearing to him the passport of an ever blessed future.
Vers. 35-50.
Objections to the resurrection; replies thereto; conclusions involved.
How far has St. Paul come on the path he has been treading? Beginning with the "many infallible proofs" of the forty days, and adding the appearance of the Lord Jesus to him, he had convicted those of an absurdity who denied a general resurrection. On various grounds, the view they held was incredible. The moral consequences of their belief were set forth. True logic and pure morality condemned their departure from that "righteousness" which only exists by virtue of "the knowledge of God" If the one class of thinkers whom he had answered had etherealized a fundamental, historic fact into a sheer fiction, so that a great truth was utterly lost, another class of thinkers stood arrayed against the doctrine itself, and refused its acceptance on the score of its unreasonableness. Nature, they claimed, was on their side. Nothing that died lived again. The whole economy of the material world was opposed to it. A grave was a grave forever. Heaven and earth bore witness that death was death, and could never be other than death. Now, the body is a part of the physical kingdom, and, as such, has well known properties, and is subject to certain laws. Well, he will discuss it on their ground. In the previous branch of the argument, the basis was "according to the Scriptures," and he had constant occasion to say, Christ, Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus our Lord, Christ as the Firstfruits, Christ in contrast with Adam, Christ as Mediator, Christ as the second Person in the Trinity. But there is a change, a noteworthy change, now, and for some verses Christ is not named. According to nature, or by analogy, the argument has to proceed if the objectors are met. The new standpoint is promptly taken, and St. Paul and the philosophical critics are face to face. Who are these that have gathered before the eye of his imagination in that humble room in Ephesus, the proud and lordly city, whose commerce connected it with every land, and whose wealth was the wonder and envy of the world? Near by was the magnificent temple of Artemis, renowned over Ionia and far beyond, safe too in its renown, since no art of man could surpass its pillars of Parian marble, its doors of cypress wood, its roof of cedar resting on columns of jasper, and the great masterpieces of painting and sculpture by which it had been enriched. Likely enough, one who could quote from Menander, Aratas, and Epimenides, knew something of Anacreon, Thales, Heraclitus, and others associated with Ionia and Ephesus. Would not some of these illustrious thinkers rise before his vision when he began to meditate on the questions growing out of the relations between soul and body, questions on which Greek intellect had expended its subtlest power of investigation? And would not that memorable day in Athens flash back upon him from Mars" Hill, when he confronted the philosophers with the doctrine of the resurrection, some mocking, others saying, "We will hear thee again of this matter"? However this may have been, it is certain that St. Paul understood perfectly the objections made by Greek philosophy to the resurrection, as to the "how" and "with what body the general and the specific bases of Greek hostility to the doctrine so near his heart. To answer the two interrogatories how? and "with what body? is the work now in hand. St. Paul had just closed an appeal by the sharp cry of "Awake to righteousness," as if intent on arousing the Church from stupor. Now, however, he begins with "Thou fool," or rather, "Fool," expressing no harshness, but simply the want of wisdom. The analogy is stated at once: "That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die reminding one of similar words spoken by the Lord Jesus. (Joh_12:24) The seed you sow has to die, to pass into decay and dissolution, its component parts separated, before the germ can disengage its life and begin to sprout. Like that seed, your body dies. Like that, your body by dying enters on a condition preparatory to living. If life thus proceeds from dissolution, the general question "how" is met by the likeness between the decay of the seed and the body. The body of the seed dies, but it has a principle of life which springs thereby into active existence. Then, the contrast having been first presented between death and life, he advances to the second point: "With what body do they come?" Not the old body; nothing can be clearer than that, for the destruction of the former body supplies the conditions for the process of deliverance from decay, and institutes the work of quickening. And what is the issue of the new process? It is a new body, for "thou sowest not that body that shall be;" if thou didst, what reality would be in the sowing; what foundation for the hope of the husbandman; what work for the providential agency of nature? On the supposition of the same body in the seed-grain dying and growing, the resemblance would be to sleep rather than death, and, consequently the analogy as here used would break down at the start. Hence the statement so essential to the parallelism: thou sowest not the future body, but a body for transformation. It is "bare grain" which is put into the ground. This is your work as a husbandman; but God is there to perform his part., and "God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him." Admitting that God gives the new body according to his pleasure, does it follow that this act is arbitrary because it is sovereign? Is nature set aside? Are the former laws that made that seed the kind of seed it was, overthrown under the sod? Is it death to the economy of production, or is it production for reproduction? And he answers, God giveth "to every seed his own body." On the one hand, the continuity of nature is preserved, the particular character of the seed is not lost; and, on the other hand, the new growth is something unlike that which dies, for God has given it a different body. Similarity and contrast are both maintained. Is the identity destroyed? Nay. Is there a distinction between the body that dies and the body that lives? Yea. Identification must not conflict with dissimilarity; dissimilarity must not antagonize identification. Seen in this light, the change is one of form. Before death, there was body living; in death, body decayed and resolved into its elements; after death, body reconstructed. The identity lies in the fact of body; the difference in the substance, properties, and form of body.
If so, what is there incredible in the resurrection? By analogy, it is a possible event. Nature authenticates a principle which may find application to the human body; and if you ask, "With what body do they come?" the reply is that it will be a new body, one of a higher form, one from him who "giveth to every seed his own body." Observe, then, the fact of the resurrection is not rested on analogy. The use of the analogical argument here is not for that purpose. Christ"s resurrection establishes the fact of a general resurrection. But this having been assured, analogy is employed to show the consonance thereof with reason, by pointing out a correspondence between it and the germination of seed. And how beautiful as well as truthful is this use of nature! Enlightened from another source, even by the Spirit of God, St. Paul is in a position to see the God of nature as the God of the resurrection. He goes to nature and asks, Have you anything like this? And she points him to the growing harvest, a few months ago "bare grain," and says, So shall thy dead live!" Our heavenly Father has not been content to give us great facts alone, but has superadded images, analogies, illustrations; and the grander the truth, the more clear and copious its kindred associations. That sense of correspondence which exists in us all, and is a mainstay of our convictions, is continually addressed by him, and by thousands of ties he binds together his Word and his works. Inspired teachers exhibit their wisdom in the way they read and interpret nature. Scripture is not written for minds shut up in themselves, the order and grace of the universe hidden from them. Sensational consciousness is just as much a part of religion as spiritual consciousness, and, accordingly, an eminent teacher like St. Paul honours his office by appealing to nature. He wrote for the senses no less than for the spirit, and hence we find him (1Co_15:39) widening the scope of analogy. And whither shall he tend? What is the objective point aimed at? The identity of the resurrection body with the dust and ashes of the grave is that the goal of his thought? Nay and yea. Look on the gross side of identification, on the interminable disputes about bones and material particles, and the answer is nay. Look on the higher and far truer side of identification, and the answer is yea. As to the first, had the advocates of the dust and ashes theory existed in his day, he would perhaps have said, "Fool!" Happily for us, we know that identity as applied to the body means the persistent adhesion to the same idea in the plan and purpose of organization, so that while the particles of matter in the corporeal structure are ever coming and going, and are as short lived as the ephemera of a summer day, such is the law of constancy beneath this variation that identity is no wise disturbed.
St. Paul first takes up diversity of animal organisms. To show that the question is not about the retention and revivification of former constituents of the body, but a question solely of body and its capacity to assume such a form as God might be pleased to give, he states, "All flesh is not the same flesh." Men, beasts, fishes, birds, differ in flesh. It is all flesh, but very unlike. What then? If body be capable of such variety in bodies, if you have such an interval as appears between man and bird, what limit will you put on body as to organization? Creative power is manifested in matter as matter; creative power makes its most wonderful manifestation in the countless shapes and adaptations of matter. And, accordingly, St. Paul"s meaning is that you cannot argue from the structure and particles of the body here to the organization of a spiritual corporeity. But you can believe in new and higher forms, since "all flesh is not the same flesh." How far, then, has the argument progressed? To this landing place: body here, body hereafter, body capable of a nobler type of existence. But he proceeds to use another illustration. Hitherto he has been mundane in his view; now he enters on the upper realm. Celestial bodies, bodies terrestial, exist in the universe, and do they present contrasts on a far broader scale than those we see in the flesh of men and other animals? Ay; the diversity now is one of glory. Celestial and terrestrial bodies share different degrees of glory. The sun is a sun in its glory, and its splendour is its own. Moon and stars have their glory, and by this unequal distribution of radiance they impress us when we gaze on the firmament. Just here, then, the movement of the apostle"s mind takes a sudden spring It bounds afar, and it is no longer form, no longer seed and harvest, nor animal organisms, but it is the splendour of form that absorbs his contemplation. Long ago the royal psalmist had poured forth his wonder and adoration in the nineteenth psalm, that sublime hymn which chants "the glory of God" in the firmament and keeps the throbbing pulses of the human heart in the rhythm of the universe. And now the eye dilated and the resplendency full upon it hearken to the instant utterance: "So also is the resurrection of the dead." "Sown in corruption earth and its earthliness; "it is raised in incorruption earth and its earthliness left in the grave. "Sown in dishonour its humiliations all upon it, and demanding speedy removal from sight and commitment to darkness lest it be loathsome; "it is raised in glory," and bears a likeness to him whose "countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength." "Sown in weakness always in a state of infirmity and as a corpse, "powerless and unable to resist corruption" (Bloomfield); "it is raised in power," and made capable of receiving plenitude of energy from the will of the spirit and answering all possible uses of mind. "Sown a natural body as in life so in death, a part of the material order, and subjected to its conditions, and never able to escape its limitations, so "natural" that this very apostle, "caught up to the third heaven," had to suffer "a thorn in the flesh" that he might not be "exalted above measure, is raised a spiritual body," and, if once a body that represented the soul, now a body that is in perfect sympathy with spirit as the highest organ in man for communion with God. The last antithesis is so important as to demand restatement: "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." Notice that the term "body" as used here derives its import as to its character or quality, not from anything in itself, but from its subsidiary relations, in the one case being "natural," "psychical," as connected with the soul, and, in the other, as contradistinguished from the "psychical" or "soul body," represented as the "spiritual body." What does the clear discrimination made by the apostle between the two forms of body require of us? A primary recognition of the difference between soul and spirit as determinative of the difference between the body natural and the body spiritual. Without entering into metaphysics, we may remark that the soul is that form of mind which connects man with the senses and the outer world of the senses, while the spirit is that form of mind which connects man with unseen and eternal objects. If this distinction were not real a distinction that often develops in the feeling of most painful contrariety how shall we explain our consciousness; how understand the amazing inconsistencies into which we fall; how give any account of moods and transitions, reactions, and rebounds? The fact of difference is plain to every student thinker: the nature of it is difficult, perhaps impossible to make obvious in language. Is there not a poetry that finds access to the innermost life, and a poetry that goes no further than the external intellect and its correlated sensibilities? And of painting, sculpture, music, eloquence, are there not everywhere two vividly marked divisions, so that while the one kind is very palpable to the soul, the other is felt rather than known, and works by hints and intimations more than by communications actually defined? Still more as to persons: who has not known some individuals that always called forth by their presence the best within him? whereas there were others whose tones and looks were solicitations to evil? Only a few consciously note these experiences, and still fewer analyze them, but assuredly they are facts of life, and life would be barren of its most advantageous suggestions, were it otherwise, Now, it is this difference between soul and spirit which St. Paul employs to give the contrast in the verse: "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." In this world, the body is so organized as to correspond to the soul; in the resurrection, the new corporeity will represent the spirit. Would you see how a great Christian thinker weaves into one pattern thoughts from nature and from Scripture? Ver. 45 presents St. Paul in these words: "It is written." Nature, though prolific of types, shadows, parables, cannot long detain him, and now he returns to the Mosaic account of the creation in the first and second chapters of Genesis. "Adam was made a living soul" (ch. 2:7). Animal he was in corporeal organization, placed at the head of the animal kingdom, sovereign over all creatures and things, and, moreover, much else, for he was the image of God in his reason, intelligence, and moral nature. He had a soul in him, and, it was God"s breath. It was therefore God like. It was a capacity for whatever was good about him, and for whatever was best above him, in the order of creation to which humanity belonged. But he was put on trial, and he failed; his capacity sank instead of rising; it narrowed and shrank within the body, and then and there ended the possibility of the "living soul" having as such a Divine history of progress and perfect development. We are leaving St. Paul, however, who remarks, in juxtaposition to the statement touching Adam, "the first man," that "the last Adam was made a quickening life giving spirit." How intimately associated in his mind were the two, Adam and Christ, is seen in the fact that he is the only Biblical writer who calls Christ by the name of Adam; while, at the same time that they stand in such close connection with humanity, the contrast between them is forcibly given. What Adam was is expressed in "living soul" as the starting-point or initiation of human nature, the designation expressing the predominant aspects of his earthly position and his candidacy as a being in God"s image for a much loftier development. By the "life-giving spirit," we understand Christ in the power and glory of his resurrection, when "he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men," chief of which was the Holy Ghost. The "natural" precedes the "spiritual;" and what a philosophy of the universe opens in this single idea! The natural in law and government, the "do this and live," the special rule and the special test, the appeal to the senses and the sense intellect, and the primal guardianship of conscience by means of fear over moral interests the natural in social relations the natural in the motives to obedience and the uses of God"s grace and the offering of worship must lead the way, since by no other method apparent to us could humanity attain its high destiny. "Afterward that which is spiritual." First the natural, afterward the spiritual, this is the order in everything that concerns man. Every one of his attributes, such as perception, reasoning, volition, faith, love, obeys this paramount law.; and the miracle of life is, whenever the Divine plan is carried out, that man is seen, as Milton describes the lion in Eden, extricating himself from earthly entangle merits and winning his freedom. St. Paul multiplies the forms of this idea. "Of the earth, earthy," was Adam; "the second man is of heaven;" and as we bear here "the image of the earthy" in body and soul, so shall we bear "the image of the heavenly." Slowly the likeness of Adam fades even now under the fashioning band of God. Natural law is made subservient to spiritual law, so that while the senses decay and the other animal functions abate more or less, the diviner sensibilities acquire the vitality thus disengaged and expand with new vigour. Providence cooperates with grace. And thus, line after line, lineament after lineament, disappearing from the "living soul," and also from the lower functions of the body, there comes out in its stead "the image of the heavenly." Our growing years, if we are consecrated to God, are all on the side of Christ, and are all helpers and auxiliaries to prepare us for the fulness of spiritual life in a spiritual body. L.
Vers. 35-41.
The resurrection of the body.
This doctrine has presented the greatest difficulties to many minds. Here faith has frequently found one of its severest tests.
I BUT WE OUGHT NOT TO BE STAGGERED BY ANY FACT WHICH IS THE SUBJECT OF DIVINE REVELATION. God will assuredly justify himself and fulfil all his promises. Though we do not see how he will do so, he does. He sits higher than we do. When Ezekiel was asked, "Can these bones live?" he did not reply, "It is utterly preposterous and absurd," but "O Lord God, thou knowest;" and when God asserted that they could and should, Ezekiel obediently prophesied upon and unto (Eze_37:3) Our Lord"s words should ever ring in our ears, "With God all things are possible". (Mat_19:26)
II CONSIDER THE IMPERFECTION OF OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE. HOW very little we know! Our knowledge is extremely superficial; we know no one thing thoroughly. Our knowledge is extensive in this sense, that we know a very little about a great many things. How ignorant we are of the nature of matter, spirit, life! How unfit to dogmatize! yet how ever ready to do so! Like children, we say, "It can"t be;" and we speak with infinite confidence because we cannot understand how it can be. The theory cannot be made up out of our superficial information. The mountain won"t go into our bucket!
III THE LIMITATION OF OUR FACULTIES. Our powers are very great viewed in one aspect, very little indeed viewed in another. As long as we possess only our present faculties we shall do well to guard against the flippant use of "impossible.
IV HOW SOME DIFFICULTIES CONNECTED WITH THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY MAY BE REMOVED. We have two indicated in this passage.
1. How can the dead live? If our bodies die, are placed in the grave, dissolve, mix up with surrounding earth, is it not incredible that they should live again? "How can these things be?" The apostle has a very pertinent retort. He directs the objector to a very familiar operation and result. Seed is sown in the ground, a living plant springs up. The seed placed in the ground apparently perishes. As placed in the earth it is seen above it no more. Much of its substance decays and unites with the ground in which it lies. And yet there is the plant of the same nature, and called by the same name. There is here death and then life. In fact, only as the seed is sown, only as it seems utterly to perish, decompose, and be hopelessly lostonly thus is the beautiful result attained. So the death of this body may be necessary (speaking after the manner of men) to the beauty and glory of the resurrection body. That which seems to be a difficulty may be an essential link in the chain essential, that is, unless a special miracle is wrought, as may be in the case of those alive at the coming of Christ. (1Co_15:52) They will be "changed" suddenly we know not how, through what process. Christ"s body, which saw no corruption, was evidently changed. Paul does not assert that sowing seed and its result are parallel in all points to the death and resurrection of the body. He uses it as a helpful
2. illustration. If our experience did not cover the sowing of the seed and the upspringing of the plant, perhaps our faith would be as greatly tried, if we were called upon to believe in its possibility, as we are now in the case of the resurrection of the body.
3. With what body do they come? One common form of this difficulty is how is it possible for us to have at the resurrection the same particles inour body which we now have? Apart from the dissipation of these particles in the earth or sea, they may actually belong to the bodies of a great many different people! Amongst cannibals, for example. And amongst civilized people as well; for animals and plants receive in various ways particles which once helped to constitute human bodies, and these animals and vegetables being eaten, the particles in question become constituents of other human bodies. How can this apparently insuperable difficulty be met? Simply by saying that it is a difficulty originated by the objector, and has no basis in Divine revelation. We are not told that the earthly body and the resurrection body shall consist of the same particles. In fact, the apostle seems expressly to combat such a notion; for he says, Thou sowest not that body which shall be, (1Co_15:37) and in 1Co_15:50, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." But then, if not the same particles, what particles? what form? The apostle meets this by reference to the Divine power as now seen in creation: "All flesh is not the same flesh." There are celestial bodies the organisms of angels bodies, yet greatly differing from the terrestrial bodies. The light of the "lamps of the firmament" greatly varies in glory and beauty. So there will be great contrast between the body now and then. God by what he has done shows what he can do, and so this part of the difficulty vanishes. But the greater part remains. If the resurrection body has not the same particles now possessed, how can it be the same, and how can there be any fitness in speaking of the resurrection of the body? Our experience supplies a sufficient answer. Sameness of particles is not essential to identity. The particles in our present body are in constant flux. At no two moments do we possess precisely the same: we are always throwing off some and taking on others; and, separated only by the interval of a few years, science leads us to conclude that the body has lost all the old particles and is constituted entirely of fresh ones. Yet bodily identity does not disappear. The resurrection body will be identified with our present body. As with the seed, to each a "body of its own". (1Co_15:38) Identity is in this life a great mystery to us; we cannot tell now what is necessary to it. But there is nothing in our partial knowledge of it which should lead us to doubt the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. With larger knowledge apparent difficulties doubtless would disappear. The resurrection body will be very different to the present whilst identified with it. God will give a body as it shall please him. (1Co_15:38) Note: It is no mark of wisdom to deny the resurrection of the body. The inspired apostle addresses the denier as "Thou fool." Many priding themselves in wisdom tumble into the morass of folly. H.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv35, 36, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47 But some man will say, How are the dead…
1Co_15:35-44
But some man will say, How are the dead raised up?
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and with what body do they come?
How are the dead raised up?
I. These words meant, How can the dead be raised up? Let us try to find an answer to it.
1. If any man really believe in the existence of a Great First Cause, his answer would at once be, With God all things are possible. He who built the house, and allowed it to be pulled down, can rebuild it. But we should not rest the answer upon this.
2. What has been done can be. Now, we affirm--and it is the subject of this chapter--that there is now passed into the heavens a man who was once dead--Christ. And this fact rests upon the irrefragable evidence adduced in this chapter; and this evidence is such that when a great infidel went to work to prove Christianity untrue, it ended in his being convinced, by the candid examination of it; and Gilbert Wests book is a standing evidence of the truth of the resurrection. We answer the question, How are the dead raised up? by saying, It has been done. What God has done He can do again.
II. But the question may mean the curious inquiry as to the manner of the resurrection. With what body will they rise? Will it be the same body that was buried? Will all its particles be the same? Will the ashes of Wickliffe, e.g., that, after the body was dug up and burned, were thrown into the river, which carried them into another river, which carried them into the sea--will all those ashes be brought together? Now I shall answer this by showing that when we shall be raised--
1. We shall know that we are the same persons that lived. It is a fact well known that our bodies are continually changing. Unless there were particles being continually taken up, how would the meals that we regularly take to repair the waste, increase the size of the body? The boy of seven, the youth of fourteen, the young man of twenty-one, and the full-grown man of thirty, has really and truly had a fresh body every seven years. Yet which of us is not conscious that we are the same persons that we were as little children--not the same pieces of matter, but the same persons? And this is necessary for the judgment. It is a principle of English law that it is the person that did the offence that must be tried for it. Twenty years may have elapsed since the murderer did the deed; the hand that shed the blood may have been changed in that time; yet he is the same man, knows that he is the same, and is answerable for the crime that was done twenty years ago. We shall, in this sense, be the same, and have to give account of the things done in the body.
2. Others will know us to be the same. The great missionary Moffat, in one of his journeys, fell in with an African king, and began to tell him of the resurrection; and as he went on he saw that iron mans face begin to work convulsively; and when the king could speak he said, trembling all over, What! do you say that I shall see the men whom I have slaughtered in battle? He seemed as if he saw before him the victims of his courage, as he had thought, but of his cruelty, as he now began to think. At the great day others will know us, however changed we may be. Seducer, you shall recognise the woman whom you have flung heartless on a cold world, and left to vice, misery, and an early death. Tempter of youth, you shall recognise the thoughtless boys you enticed from duty, and they shall know you. Infidel, you shall recognise those whose little faith you sapped by specious arguments, whose little hope you took away. Hume is related to have shaken the faith of his mother, and when that mother was dying, finding that his arguments would not support her, she sent for him to tell her again what he had told her before, for she found she was sinking into eternity with nothing under her feet. Hume shall meet his mother, and his mother know her son that did this unfilial work upon the soul. And you who are really Christians, you shall recognise every one of those whom you lead to Christ.
3. And yet we shall be changed.
(1) From corruption to incorruption. Decay is sown in our blood, and when we are laid in the grave we are sown in corruption; when we are raised we shall be incapable of decay.
(2) From dishonour to glory. It is sown in dishonour. Who of us does not know that? But when the body is raised it will be in the glory of Christ as He shone on the Mount of Transfiguration.
(3) From weakness to power. How soon are we tired! How soon does our mind exhaust our body! How soon are we wearied with work and with pleasure too! But when these bodies are raised they will be incapable of fatigue, and capable of exertion such as we cannot dream of now. They rest not day nor night.
(4) Suddenly--in the twinkling of an eye--at the last trump. Conclusion: They that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of condemnation. (W. W. Champneys.)
The resurrection body
(with Php_3:21):--When the fact of the resurrection has been established, there remains a number of very interesting and important questions concerning the manner and the time of the resurrection, and the relation of the resurrection-body to the present one. These questions are not simply for the delectation of our curiosity, because clear views of the nature of our future life and of the transformation which our present life is to undergo through the energy of the power of Christ cannot fail to influence our present life and to inspire us with enthusiasm for the Lord whose glory we are to share.
I. What, then, are the principles of the resurrection as given in the words before us?
1. Take first of all the passage in Philippians, and you will find it assert the following principles--
(1) In the resurrection the spirits of the just will appear not in a disembodied, but an embodied, state.
(2) Between these two bodies there is a relation of continuity.
(3) The transformation is effected through a spiritual energy within us. The word here translated working has an intensely inward significance. It means in-working, a working in the heart of things, and particularly in the spiritual processes of life. The working of the power by which Christ subdues all things to Himself is the spiritual force with which He floods the centre of things, and so leavens and transforms the whole. So the power that forms the new body must be sought in spirit.
(4) The complete resurrection-body is not existent until the final appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ.
(5) The power and principle of this resurrection have their type and origin in Christ.
2. Now, if you turn to the passage in Corinthians, you will find several of these principles over again, with some supplementary matter.
(1) The transition from the body of humiliation to the body of glory is effected through a development which is in the truest sense natural, that is, in accordance with the laws of ideal human life.
(2) The natural and the spiritual body are not to be conceived as consisting of identical particles, but as different stages in a process of development, which are said to be identical owing to the continuity of the life that fills them.
II. Having these definite principles to check and to direct us, we wish to examine in the light of them such conceptions as are, or may be, formed of the manner in which the resurrection-body shall come into being and be united to the spirit to which it belongs. The Scripture-phrase, the resurrection of the dead does not refer either to spirit or body in separation from one another, but to the reappearance of the complete human life in a state of glory. The theory that flings the body away as a temporary fetter, and denies it a share in the resurrection-life is clearly and emphatically condemned. It is in violent opposition to the whole genius of Christian thought. It is foreign to all that we know of the mind of Jesus Christ and His apostles. The ego of Christs conception is certainly not an independent spiritual essence, whether embodied or disembodied. It is always the entire life in its association of soul and body. Whether He directs his attention to this life or the next, the human unit is always a complex one. How, then, is the resurrection-body produced, and what is its relation to the body which is placed in the grave? If we turn to our principles we shall find that they clearly contradict the resurrection of the identical particles laid in the grave. The whole spirit of the passage in Philippians is in opposition to it, for instead of the idea of an inert mass being indued with life again after a long period of death, the passage glows with the conception of a continuous energy, and a great transformation effected by an informing process of life. The passage from the epistle to the Corinthians is still more explicit in its testimony. For the two principles we found there, viz., that the resurrection-body is produced by a development in accordance with true laws and processes of life, and, that it does not reproduce the identical particles of the earthly body--are both in direct contradiction to the commonly received theory of the resurrection. Probably the misconception has arisen through mistaking the bearing of Pauls beautiful series of antitheses respecting the resurrection. When Paul says, It is sown … It is raised, he is not speaking of the body only, but of the entire man as be appears first in the earthly, and afterwards in the heavenly, state. It is this earthly life of ours that cannot be quickened except it die, and that through death shall inherit incorruption. The transition, therefore, is one of spirit and life. It is a living transition from the present living association of soul and body to a higher form of such association, the development of the higher body requiring as its necessary condition the death of the lower body, as the living seed flings off its old body that a higher embodiment of the life of the seed may take its place. Some obscure questions remain, which may become clearer to Christian thought by and by. They are such as these: Does the new body co-exist at any period with the earthly body, and has it already reached any stage of development at the hour of death? Or is it at death only a latency, ready to leap into full development and activity at the appearing of Jesus Christ? If so, how will this non-development affect the present life of the blessed dead? These questions open up a vast field of thought that has scarcely been entered except by one here and another there. But we may lay down one thing more as clear and certain, namely, that the full development of the body of glory will not take place until the Lord appears.
III. I trust that this discussion will have impressed upon you that the Scripture-teaching concerning the resurrection-body trenches upon great questions of Divine power and glory, and embodies great principles of transformation and development that may well impress our imagination, and, even though but obscurely understood, may profoundly inspire our life.
1. One result of this faith is, that it gives fulness and substantiality to our future life. The human body is no encumbrance fastened upon the spirit, like a fetter on powerful wrists, so that the spirit would be more complete without it. God never loaded a life with a useless encumbrance of that kind. Rather, the body is necessary for the complete life of the man, to give it individuality and fulness. We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed--such an anticipation would be too shadowy and ghostly.
2. Belief in the resurrection-body is ultimately bound up with faith in the foundations of Christianity. I do not say that disbelief in the full resurrection of the dead is at once and always attended by disbelief in the central truths of Christianity. Fortunately or unfortunately, men are not always consistent, and may for a time hold together beliefs that are destructive of one another. Yet I have no doubt that disbelief in a resurrection-body is a logical denial of the foundations of Christianity, and must be constantly exerting an influence that tends to draw away a man from the heart of Christian truth. For it must be noted that the distinguishing feature, the very soul of Christianity is belief in a person. Jesus is infinitely more than a mark in history to suggest noble ideas. He is life, and the certainty of life for us. In Him we see, in full view on the stage of human life, the battle of humanity fought and won. If any one attenuates the saints future life into an intangible ego he cannot heartily believe in that living, I may almost say earthly, portraiture of immortality which Christ gave. Generally you will find such an one attach ever lessening importance to the earthly life of Jesus, until His Christianity is a philosophic rationalism, with the name of Christ meaninglessly attached to it.
3. The Christian view of the resurrection sets great value on our present life, even on its physical relations. Therefore, it is able to say with an authority of its own: Give to God the full service of body, soul, and spirit, for eternity shall glorify you in the whole range of your life. (John Thomas, M.A.)
The resurrection
To the sceptical question, With what body do they come? Pauls answer is--
I. Not in the same as that which was deposited in the grave. The old body is destroyed. The death of that seed from which the plant springs is the mere destruction of its husk. Its hidden life, something altogether distinct from its clothing, germinated and broke through its husky garb, which dissolved in the earth. So flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. The gross is gone for ever.
II. With a body that will have an organic connection with the buried one. The oak, though it has not a particle of the old acorn in it; the butterfly, though it has not a particle of the grub egg from which it sprung in it; the stalwart man, though he has not one particle of that matter which he had when an infant on his mothers knee, has an organic connection with it. So Paul virtually says of the resurrection body, though it has nothing in it of the old materials, it has a casual connection with it. What is that mystic thing which connects the acorn with the oak, the man with the infant? Tell me that, and I may perhaps tell you that which connects the resurrection body with that which was buried. We know that seeds that have been buried in darkness for thousands of years, will, when brought into the genial air and sunbeam, break into life; may it not be that in the human body there is an invisible, indestructible germ--what the old Jew called the immortal bone, and Goethe the monad--that will spring to life when, by the interposition of Heaven, all the graves of the world shall be thrown open? Is there an undying embryo in this gross body of ours out of which will spring one day a glorious body?
III. With a body which God in His sovereignty will bestow.
1. God clothes life. To every seed his own body. There is no doubt that in the universe there is life unclothed by matter. It may be so with the angels; it is so with God. Around us there may be immeasurable oceans of naked life; but we only know something of the embodied. No science has as yet told us what life is.
2. God clothes life with the fittest body. All flesh is not the same flesh. Life has boundless varieties, but God gives to each its fitting body. The hare and the elephant, the wren and the eagle, the minnow and the leviathan, all have bodies fitted to the peculiarities of their distinctive life.
3. God clothes life according to His own pleasure. Giveth a body as it hath pleased Him. He chose the form, the hue, the garb, of each life. Our resurrection body will be as it hath pleased Him. Then--
(1) It will be beautiful, for He is the God of all taste, the Fountain of all beauty, the Standard of all aesthetics.
(2) Useful, for He is the God of benevolence. Exquisitely suited to our present sphere are the bodies we now have.
(3) Glorious. There is one glory of the sun, etc.; so also with the resurrection of the just.
IV. With a body that will be a vast improvement on the old one. Paul attributes three predicates to the present body--corruption, dishonour, weakness: to the resurrection body, three predicates--immortality, glory, and power. What an improvement! (D. Thomas, D.D.)
The resurrection body
I. This question we have all asked.
1. At death something goes out of the body--that which vitalised it, that which we could not touch, nor weigh, nor measure. No sooner has this something gone, than the body immediately begins to return to its dust. Nothing can arrest it. We may make a mummy of it, but a mummy is not a body. In the British Museum are many specimens of mummies. They excite no human interest, only appeal to curiosity and create aversion.
2. The necessity for this material body of ours arises from the fact that we belong, temporarily at least, to a material world. Without such bodies we could not see, or feel, or touch, or recognise this world. It would not exist for us.
3. Recall what Paul says elsewhere in other parts of his letters about the body. Writing to Roman Christians, he calls it a body of death. To the Corinthians he speaks of it as a wild beast to be kept in subjection. To the Philippians he speaks of this body of our humiliation. And yet, when we have said everything to its disadvantage, we cannot withhold a recognition of the wonderful way in which the body sympathises with and serves the purpose of the mind and spirit. The old Greeks recognised its lines of beauty in their Dianas and Apollos. They lived intelligently and artistically for the body. But they proved to the world that the service of the body, even when artistically pursued, issues in enfeeblement, effeminacy, and corruption. Art refines to a degree, but only to a degree. They who talk of regenerating men by opening art museums and multiplying picture galleries must be people with but little reflection. In Athens of yesterday, and in Paris of to-day, we have the most salacious of all populations. When, however, we study the body under the influence of the mind and spirit, how admirable it often is--revealing and concealing the thought of the mind--the feeling of the soul! suggesting to us how possible it is to elevate even this body, and treat it as if it were a temple--a temple of the Holy Spirit of God.
4. This body is a body of humiliation, and yet it suggests a body of a very much higher and nobler kind. As the mind develops, as the heart enlarges, this body becomes more and more unadapted to it. Age is not of the mind and heart; it is of the body only. Spiritually-minded men do not become in feeling and spirit old, like men of the world. There is nothing that preserves juvenility like true piety. There is nothing ages men and women like the opposites of the graces of the spirit. Envy, hatred, jealousy, un-charitableness--these bring the wrinkles into the face, and the age into the soul.
II. But the body that is, is the only forerunner of the body that shall be. All the way through this chapter the apostle is fighting the thought that we ourselves put into the phrase disembodied spirits.
1. He goes to nature and finds a suggestion there. Why, even in nature, he says, you sow not the body that shall be, only a bare grain--the vital element that rises above the earth takes to itself a body suited to it. Every vital thing has in it a tendency to gather to itself a bodily form suited to its necessities and conditions. The grub in its grub state is embodied in one form and way; by and by, as it advances in its life, that body is no longer suited to it, but a new body is developing: soon it seems to die into its chrysalis state; but, lo, an entirely new creature, no longer with the limitations of the grub body, emerges; a creature that now sports in the air, and no longer crawls on the earth. It has its own body, but how different from the grub body; yet there is a vital connection between the one and the other. Each stage in it has been preparing for the next. And everything has its own body suited to its state and environment. And not sameness, but variety, is the order of creation. There are terrestrial bodies--bodies that belong to earth. There are celestial bodies--bodies that belong to the heavens. And each and all of these have their special glory and beauty. A star is of one order, a sun of another, but each has its own glory. And so with bodies. There is a body that belongs to man in his state of dishonour. Another which belongs to him in his state of glory.
2. The natural body is the type and promise of the spiritual body, but it is not the spiritual body. It has the same relation to it as the terrestrial has to the celestial, as corruption has to incorruption, etc. Everything lower points to a higher. Man is never disembodied; all through time he is an embodied spirit, and when he has sloughed off his time body, his earth body, he has still a body, but one suited to him in a way and to a degree to which this body has never been suited (verses 48, 49). All earth forces and powers and laws have been in our earth body. Like the earth, it has been subject to the law of gravitation and decay, to constant change. We have borne the image of the earthy. We shall also bear the image of the heavenly. The one is not complete without the other. The spirit of man in its next stage of being will have a body suited to it. Not a body subject to all the diseases, infirmities, neuralgias, aches, and pains to which this is subject. Every one shall have his own body, the body suited to express his inward character; but it shall be as superior to this present material body as the body of the butterfly is to that of the grub. (Reuen Thomas, D.D.)
The resurrection of the body
Note--
I. The difficulties in which that fact seems involved. The resurrection is exhibited in the Bible, not as a speculative truth, but as so intimately bound up with our salvation, that to prove it false were to prove the human race unredeemed (verses 16, 17). It were useless, then, to adduce proofs from revelation, seeing that we have it explicitly declared that, unless the dead rise, Christianity would be reduced into fable. The question, then, is whether there lie such objections against the resurrection as make it incredible, and thus justify us in rejecting the testimony of Scripture.
1. Can we demonstrate that the resurrection falls without the limit of possibility, and that the effecting of it would overpass Omnipotence? If we are not prepared with such a demonstration, it is childishness to argue against the resurrection from its difficulty. If the Bible had ascribed it to a finite agent, reason might fairly have argued that the disproportion between the thing done and the doer furnishes ground enough for rejecting the statement. But will any one declare that the resurrection exceeds the capability of Him who is to achieve it? No man who admits that God created everything out of nothing should hesitate to admit that God can raise the dead.
2. We allow, however, that this general demonstration is scarcely sufficient for the case; and we proceed, therefore, to consider certain difficulties which still suggest themselves. We begin by warning you against the idea that, provided the soul be hereafter united to a body, it will matter nothing whether it be the same body which it tenanted on earth. The grand use of the resurrection is that the same beings may stand in judgment as have here been on probation; but they are not the same beings unless compounded of the same body and soul. But our bodies, it may be said, are here perpetually changing. Yes, but such change in no degree interferes with the thorough sameness of the person. Suppose a man to have committed a murder, and that after thirty years the guilt is brought to light, and the assassin put on trial, what would the judge and jury say if the criminal should plead that, because in thirty years his body had been often changed, he was not the same person as committed the murder? And supposing, that in place of being discovered by his fellow-men, the murderer had remained undetected till arraigned at the judgment bar of Christ, in what body must he appear in order that the identity of the man may be rigidly preserved? Certainly it will not be necessary that he appear in the very body which he had when he took away a fellow-creatures life; nothing is necessary but that his soul be clothed in matter which had once before clothed it. It is unquestionable that the same matter must enter at different times into the construction of different bodies; nourished by seed, which seed is itself nourished by the earth, which earth is the receptacle of the dust of human kind: it is indeed possible that there are component particles in the arm which I now lift which have entered successively into the limbs of men of bygone generations, and that the portion wrought up into the members of the men of one age will yet again be moulded into flesh. And if the same matter may belong successively to different men, to whom shall that matter belong in the resurrection? We observe on this that the man is the same man if his future body be composed of particles which at any time have made up his present. It is not necessary that all the dust which hath ever been wrought into his corruptible members should hereafter be wrought into his incorruptible: indeed, we know not how small a portion of the same matter may suffice for the preservation of identity: this we know, that the man is the same man in the vigour and efflorescence of health, and when wasted by long sickness into a skeleton: the abstraction at one time, and the addition at another, of large masses of animate matter, interfere not at all with personal identity. Hence it is evident, that, even if much which now belongs to my body belonged at other times to the bodies of other men, there may yet be enough belonging exclusively to myself, and kept distinct by the omniscience and omnipotence of God to cause, when wrought into a dwelling-place for my soul, that I shall be the same individual who now pleads in the earthly sanctuary, and tells his fellow-men of re-opened graves and quickened generations.
II. What answer may be given to the questions of the text? The grand characteristic of our resurrection bodies is to be likeness to the glorified body of Christ (Php_3:21). Now there is every reason for concluding that Christ when transfigured appeared in that glorified humanity in which He now sits at the Fathers right hand. And if Christ, when transfigured, exhibited humanity in its glorified condition, we learn that our bodies, though made wondrously radiant, shall be distinguished, as now, the one from the other, by their characteristic features. The Saviour was not so altered as not to be known. And if we would examine more minutely into the change which shall pass upon our bodies, enough is told us in this chapter.
1. It is sown in corruption: the principle of dissolution is in this framework of matter, and, whatever for a time its comeliness and vigour, it is the heir of death, and must say to corruption, Thou art my father, etc. But it is raised in incorruption, imperishable and unchangeable.
2. It is sown in dishonour. Here the body is a degraded thing, and the grand business of a Christian is to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts. But it is raised in glory: no longer the seat of unholy propensities, no longer furnishing inlets by its senses and appetites for manifold temptations.
3. It is sown in weakness. Who feels not how the body is now a clog upon the spirit, impeding it in its stretchings after knowledge, as well as in its strivings after holiness? But it shall be raised in power: no longer needing rest, no longer subject to waste, the body shall be an auxiliary to the soul in all her searchings after truth.
4. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. The body of the risen Redeemer, though certainly material, yet it had in a high degree the attributes of spirit, for it could be made invisible, and could enter a chamber with closed doors, thus proving itself no longer subject to the laws which matter now obeys; and so matter shall partake much of the independence of spirit, and the body be fitted for accompanying the soul in all her marchings over the area of the universe, and in all her divings into its most secret recesses. The natural body is a structure which belongs fitly to the natural man who receiveth not the things of God. Conclusion: We are told nothing of the body with which the wicked shall come. The natural body may remain the natural, and if the resurrection consigns this to be sown a natural body and to be raised a natural body, you reach the summit of all that is terrible in conception; when you suppose the grave thus sending up the drunkard thirsting for wine where there is no wine, and the miser always hankering for gold where there is no gold, and the sensualist to be galled by the impress of voluptuousness where there may exist the sense, but not the objects, of concupiscence. Seeing, then, there is no escaping the resurrection, ought not each one of us to ask himself solemnly the question, With what body shall I come--with the natural or with the spiritual? (H. Melvill, B.D.)
The resurrection, credibility of
How are the dead raised? This Paul answers by arguments from analogy.
I. The nature of the argument. Analogy is probability from a parallel case. We assume that the same law which operates in the one case will operate in another if there be a resemblance between the relations of the two things compared. Thus, when Christ said, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground, etc. As in nature life comes through death, so also is it in the world of spirit. The law of sacrifice, which accounts for the one fact, will also explain the other. Thus St. Paul shows that the life of the seed is continued after apparent death in a higher form, and argues, that in like manner the human spirit may be reunited to form.
2. How far this argument is valid. It does not amount to proof; it only shows that the thing in question is credible. It does not demonstrate that a resurrection must be, it only shows that it may be.
3. Now, it is in this way that St. Paul concludes his masterly argument. He proves the resurrection from the historical fact, and by the absurdity which follows from denial of it, and then he shows that so proved, it is only parallel to the dying and upspringing corn, and the diverse glories of the sun, and moon, and stars. But it is not on these grounds that our belief rests. We fetch our proofs from the Word of God, and the nature of the human soul.
II. The credibility of the resurrection.
1. There are two difficulties advanced.
(1) The question, How are the dead raised? may be a philosophical one. We are told that the entire human body undergoes a complete change every certain number of years, and that it is dissolved in various ways. Those who are wise in such matters tell us that there is not a single portion of the globe which has not, some time or other, been organic form.
(2) The other question is merely a sneer, With what body do they come? It is as if the objector had said, Let there be nothing vague: tell us all about it, you who assert you are inspired.
2. Now, to these objections Paul replies. He discerns in this world three principles.
(1) That life, even in its lowest form, has the power of assimilating to itself atoms: he takes the corn of wheat, which, after being apparently destroyed, rises again, appropriating, as it grows, all that has affinity with itself: that body with which it is raised may be called its own body, and let it is a new body.
(2) The marvellous superabundance of the creative power of God. There is one glory of the sun, etc.; and yet there is a difference between them. There are gradations in all these forms--bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial. Now, are we to believe that Gods wisdom and power should be insufficient to find for the glorified spirit a form fit for it? We simply reply to the objection, With what body do they come? Look at the creative power of God!
(3) The principle of progress. The law of the universe is not Pharisaism, the law of custom stereotyped. Just as it was in creation, first the lower and then the higher, so (verse 46) at first we lead a mere animal life, the life of instinct; then, as we grow older, passion succeeds, and after the era of passion our spirituality comes, if it comes at all. St. Paul draws a probability from this, that what our childhood was to our manhood--something imperfect followed by that which is more perfect--so will it be hereafter.
3. St. Paul finds that all this coincides with the yearnings of the human heart (verse 54). This is the substance of two prophecies, one in Isaiah, the other in Hosea, and expresses the yearnings of the heart for immortality. No man, in a high mood, ever felt that this life was really all, ever looked on life and was satisfied, ever looked at the world without hoping that a time is coming when that creation which is now groaning and travailing in bondage, shall be brought into the glorious liberty of the Son of God. And this feeling, felt in a much greater and higher degree, becomes prophecy. And when we look around, instead of finding something which damps our aspirations, we find the external world corroborating them. Then how shall we account for this marvellous coincidence? Shall we believe that God our Father has cheated us with a lie? (F. W. Robertson, M.A.)
The natural resurrection
The day dies into night, and is buried in silence and darkness; in the next morning it appeareth again and reviveth, opening the grave of darkness, rising from the dead of night: this is a diurnal resurrection. As the day dies into night, so doth the summer into winter; the sap is said to descend into the root, and there it lies buried in the ground; the earth is covered with snow or crusted with frost, and becomes a general sepulchre; when the spring appeareth all begin to rise; the plants and flowers peep out of their graves, revive, and grow, and flourish: this is the annual resurrection. The corn by which we live, and for want of which we perish with famine, is notwithstanding cast upon the earth and buried in the ground with a design that it may corrupt, and being corrupted, may revive and multiply; our bodies are fed by this constant experiment, and we continue this present life by succession of resurrections. Thus all things are repaired by corrupting, are preserved by perishing, and revive by dying; and can we think that man, the lord of all these things which thus die and revive for him, should be so detained in death as never to live again? (Dr. John Pearson.)
The resurrection possible
To understand the apostles reply to the question we must lay firm hold of these two things: first, that he is speaking of the man, who is dead, not of the mass of matter undergoing dissolution in the earth; second, that his purpose is to point out analogies to the fundamental conception on which his proof rests, viz., the conception of a progress that is not checked but realised through death.
I. In the relation of the seed to the plant we recognise--
1. That death is, in some cases at least, necessary to the perpetuation of life.
2. That this perpetuation involves a development.
3. That this development is not automatic, but the consequence of a creative and beneficent act of God.
4. That in this act God appropriates indefinite material to produce the development of definite kinds.
II. The analogy of the various kinds of flesh teaches us that this limiting of the limitless in the formation and development of kinds consists in differentiating their physical constitution.
III. The analogy of the various glories in sun, etc., intimates that such a differentiation of nature implies a difference also in sphere of action. Conclusion: To apply all this to the subject in hand, it means--
1. That the believers relation to Christ involves development.
2. That this development implies death as one of its conditions.
3. That this development is brought about through Gods creative and beneficent act.
4. That it is a development within the limits of kind.
5. That it involves a change in mode of existence.
6. That it necessitates and secures transference of the entire man into another sphere. (Principal Edwards.)
The analoqies of nature
Note--
I. The death is often a condition of new and higher life. Paul first teaches us the parable of the seed (verses 37, 38). Is that which thou sowest the body that will be? No: a new body springs from the corruption of the old, more complex, beautiful, and adapted to the higher region in which it has its life. But though the form of the grain be changed its identity is not lost. To each of the seeds God gives its own body. It you sow wheat, you reap wheat; if you sow barley, you reap barley, etc. The form is changed, but the identity is preserved. We draw no proof from the analogy; but we feel that it is not so difficult for us to conceive the resurrection of the body now that this natural resurrection of the seed is brought home to our thoughts. We see, e.g.--
1. That dissolution does not inevitably imply destruction, nay, that it affords no clear presumption of it even. Nothing sown is quickened except it die. And therefore, it may be that the dissolution of the body is not its destruction: it may pass through death to a form more comely and perfect, to a more fruitful service, to more life and fuller.
2. When form is changed identity may be preserved. The grain rots and dies that the vital germ may be quickened and fed, and each grain takes its own new body: wheat remains wheat, and rice, rice. And so if we ask, How are the scattered and vapourised particles of which our bodies are composed to be recovered and compacted into a new organism? Nature replies, That may not be necessary. Much may die and yet the vital germ may live. If we say, We do not care simply to live, but to be ourselves, Nature replies, To each of the seeds God giveth its own body, not anothers. And therefore, though your new form may differ from the old, it may be that you will remain the same, and find the same friends about you, each in its own likeness, though enlarged and glorified. You may have exchanged the winter of seed-time for the golden splendours of an eternal summer; but nevertheless you may still be what you were.
II. The same substance may take various forms.
1. Earthly bodies differ from each other (verse 39). Men, beasts, fish, birds are all composed of flesh and blood. Yet this one flesh--how infinite its variety of forms!
2. If then of one flesh God can weave these infinite varieties of animal life, each exquisitely adapted to its peculiar element and conditions, can we suppose that His power is exhausted by the forms now visible to us? Is it not in accordance with all the teachings of Nature that, if at death men pass into a new element and new conditions of life, God should adapt their organism to its new conditions, that He should develop in it new faculties and powers?
3. Heavenly bodies differ from earthly (verse 40). There is one matter as there is one flesh. Compare sun, moon, stars, planets, comets with the various orders of beasts, fish, birds, or with mountains, streams, trees, flowers; and how immeasurable is the diversity! Yet God made them all and made them of the same substance, and if it please Him, He can mould the identical substance of which all physical nature is composed into new forms. Nay, more; the matter of the heavenly bodies is in each case adapted to its conditions, and varies as these vary. And therefore the presumption is strong that if death should greatly change our conditions, our physical organism will change with them, and be adapted to them. If death should lift us to heaven, we may well believe that, as we were here adapted to an earthly lot, so there we shall be adapted, for a heavenly lot.
4. Heavenly bodies differ from each other (verse 41). It is not simply that each of the heavenly bodies had its own light: it has its own glory, its peculiar characteristics, its proper excellence. From the earliest ages, when men tilled the fertile plans of Chaldaea, they have distinguished differences of light even in the planets--the blue ray of Mercury, the golden lustre of Venus, the red and bloody portent of Mars, the deep orange gleam of Jupiter, the leaden hue of Saturn. And these differences of light speak of differences of place, magnitude, structure. The one glory of the heavens is a complex of many different glories. And if of one substance God has woven the infinite and differing globes of light, how incommensurate our thought of Him, did we suppose that He could not out of the one substance of this mortal body weave many different bodies, each perfect in its kind and for its purpose, each answering to its conditions and rising as they rise! (S. Cox, D.D.)
Harvest sermon
It is evident that St. Paul had not walked in the corn fields in vain. Nor let us do so. Note--
I. The sentiments and feelings with which we should contemplate the corn fields, as they grow ripe unto the harvest.
1. Devout reverence and awe. I sympathise with Dr. Johnson, who uncovered his head whenever he passed a church, and worshipped with bare head in the corn fields. What a manifestation of the living God, in quiet, ceaseless, beautiful, benign energy!
2. Joyful gratitude. In everything give thanks, for a bad as well as a good crop; for thus God teaches us that man does not live by bread alone.
3. Practical brotherly kindness. The heart can scarcely fail to expand at the sight of the exceeding bountifulness of the great Father, into some joyful sense of oneness with all our brethren of mankind.
II. The analogies which the corn fields supply; or rather the lessons which these analogies teach.
1. That much in the moral and spiritual world which appears to perish wholly, still lives, at least, in its issues and results. It is thus with our sins--thus with words and works of truth and charity.
2. That in order to the preservation and reproduction of life, there must be change, dissolution, death. This is true of institutions, forms of thought and doctrine, generations, persons, illustrated in the solemn law of self-sacrifice adduced (1Co_11:24-25.)
3. That in preserving and developing truth and holiness in successive generations, and bringing all high and benign purposes to their issue, God does far more than man, operates more powerfully and constantly. God gives it a body (Mar_4:26-27). It belongs to man to hope and quietly wait, as well as to work, and to remember that all great changes wrought in man, either in the community or the individual, resemble rather the processes and results of agriculture, than those of manufacture.
4. That results often little accord with, and far surpass our designs and expectations: as it hath pleased Him. Illustrated in Protestantism, in the Divinely shaped result of Luthers attack on indulgencies; in the United States, in the result of the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers; in what will be probably the issue of those efforts many are now making for church reformation. Let us be true to principles and trust in God for their future embodiment.
5. That, nevertheless, results are appropriate and fixed. God acts by law and not with caprice and fickleness. To every seed his own body. Apply to individual conscience. Whatsoever a man soweth, etc.
6. That the harvest of the world shall come. Gods purposes ripen to their accomplishment as certainly as grain, in spite of exceptional eases, ripens for the sickle. Be patient, therefore, brethren, etc. (J. Glyde.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv35–48 35–41. But some will say. But two difficulties are…
35–41. But some will say. But two difficulties are raised: How are the dead raised up? What kind of a body do they have?
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v35 (1) Emphasis on “the dead,—the DEAD!—the DEAD!”
CRITICAL NOTES
1Co_15:35.—
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(1) Emphasis on “the dead,—the DEAD!—the DEAD!”
(2) “With what (kind of) body?” See Homiletic Analysis.
1Co_15:36.—Emphasis on “thou” (so R.V.); answers
(1). (Joh_12:24)
1Co_15:37.—
(2) is answered in 1Co_15:37-54. Not the body that shall be.—I.e., as the argument requires, quâ its physical constitution; “not the (kind of) body that,” etc. Bare.—I.e. “naked”; “a grain not yet clothed with that body that shall be” (Ellicott), 2Co_5:3; “the resurrection body shall be clothed with glory” (Evans).
1Co_15:38.—“The Apostle … uses the argument of analogy, not to solve what he leaves a mystery, but to obviate objection. The present world furnishes abundant analogies, but no resemblances of the future resurrection. Nothing in the buried flesh germinates as the life in a seed-corn; the new life is a direct creation. ‘God giveth,’ etc. Not that the disembodied spirit will form for itself a new vehicle, but that in the resurrection the spirit will have a spiritual—psychical—organism given to it, which in the wonder of Divine power will be to it the same organ it had in time.” (Pope, Compend. of Theol., 3:408.) “A body of its own (kind);” query, any more than this, here?
1Co_15:39.—There is room, then, for another kind of body than that which makes the difficulty of 1Co_15:35.
1Co_15:40.—Nothing to do in this verse with the astronomical “celestial bodies.” See Homiletic Analysis (Whole Chapter).
1Co_15:41.—Here, indeed, these come in, but only for a comparison in point of “glory” not of physical constitution.
1Co_15:42. So.—Wide diversity between old and new, boundless possibilities of variety, in kind and in degree of glory. It.—Must not be made too emphatic, so as to carry the weight of the Identity of the body. The nearest to a nominative to the verb is “the resurrection” (1Co_15:42).
1Co_15:43. Dishonour.—“Funeral pomp is but a mask biding the truth that the body carried to the grave has lost the rights of humanity. Instead of the kind attentions rendered to it a few days ago, it is left alone in the dark and silent grave, as the meanest living body would not be.” (Beet.) In power.—All “bodily” faculties intensified, perhaps with new faculties added.
1Co_15:44. Natural … spiritual.—As throughout, e.g., chap. 2. If there is a body for the πνεῦμα, as in fact there is, then the presumption is also that there will be a body for the ψυχή. A body in both cases adapted
(1) to its tenant, and
(2) to its world and environment; and further—
1Co_15:45.—Congruous with
(1) The living soul, Adam, and
(2) the life-giving spirit, the Last [not the Second] Adam (Gen_2:7; Joh_5:21; Joh_6:63; Joh_11:25; Joh_14:6). Distinguish between the Old Testament historic quotation here and the New Testament prophetic supplement.
1Co_15:46.—A principle, perhaps as broad as creation, holding good in, e.g., 1Co_15:47.
1Co_15:47.—Note the true reading (R.V.). Of heaven.—As in the Litany: “O God the Father, of heaven,” where notice the comma.
1Co_15:48.—“The earthy (Adam, or man); the heavenly (Adam, or man).” (Sing. masc.)
1Co_15:49.—Rom_8:29; Php_3:21; 1Jn_3:2; 2Co_3:18; 2Co_4:11. Notice the margin (R.V.), but prefer the text. Paul is not dealing with ethics, but with physiology (Evans).
1Co_15:50. This.—Viz. what follows. Flesh and blood.—Cf. “flesh and bone,” Luk_24:39
(but very little beyond the historical fact can safely be made out from that verse). Doth not.—Present tense, another (cf. 1Co_15:46) broad, general principle, fixed and enduring, as true morally as physically.
1Co_15:51. Tell, rather than “show.” A mystery.—A fact hitherto kept a secret, but not necessarily inapprehensible when, as now in this case, it is disclosed.
1Co_15:52.—“By a process not like the slow corruption and decay of death, but sudden, rapid, Divine” (Stanley). “In the midst of this world’s busy life, and without any previous warning, Christ will lay His hand upon the wheels of time, and they will stop at once and for ever” (Beet). Trumpet.—Cf. Exo_19:16; Psa_47:5; Zec_9:14; Isa_27:13. Also 1Th_4:16; Mat_24:31 (Revelation 8-9 :), (Stanley). Or, perhaps, “He shall sound the trumpet”
1Co_15:53. Put on.—2Co_5:4; Isa_25:8 quoted.
1Co_15:55.—Hos_13:14 quoted, or, more correctly, forms the mental starting-point of an (imitated) outburst of triumph. Hosea suggests, Paul sees (as it were) in prophetic prevision, a day of deliverance of the race from the power of death and Hades.
1Co_15:56.—As Rom_5:12-21 is a parallel in the experimental life to 1Co_15:12-19 and 1Co_15:45-49 in the physical, so Rom_7:7; Rom_8:4 is expository of this 1Co_15:56. [N.B.—This the earlier-written passage.] Sting.—Same word as goad (Acts [1Co_9:5] Act_26:14).
1Co_15:58.—Observe “vain” again, and how “in the Lord” [“in Christ”] runs through the chapter. [“We look, not as theorists, but as believers, for a future life” (Isaac Taylor).]
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—1Co_15:35-58
I. Two categories appear:—
1. The First Adam—
The last Adam—
The first man.
The second Man.
Of the earth.
From heaven.
Earthy.
[The Lord (but note the better text).]
A soul.
A spirit.
A living soul.
A quickening Spirit.
Natural.
Spiritual.
2. His race—
Bear the image of the earthy.
Bear … of the Heavenly.
Wear natural bodies.
Wear spiritual bodies.
3. Their bodies are correspondingly—
Sown
Raised
Corruptible.
Incorruptible.
Dishonoured.
Glorified [glorious].
In weakness.
In power.
Natural [psychic].
Spiritual.
II. The second of these is not inconceivable, for
1. Death and dissolution form no “insuperable” barrier.—“You clever objectors—wonderfully clever!—how is it when you (emphatic) sow your seed? Are its death and dissolution an ‘insuperable’ barrier to the springing of the grain you hope to reap? This does not ‘prove’ the resurrection; but it is good enough to turn the edge of your objection. A reply as good as your difficulty. A reply just of the calibre of your thought, and of yourself.”
2. “ ‘What kind of bodies?’ How do I know? How can I tell? Can He Himself tell me, until I wear one, and my spirit finds its ‘spiritual body’ a vehicle congruous to its nature, flexible to its will, an instrument fitted for its every purpose? ‘Cannot conceive of such a body?’ What of that? If you were an intelligent fish, could you understand, think you, the body, the flesh, of a bird, or of a beast? Your experience and your imagination are not the measure of the possibilities, or even of the facts. Why not one more, one new, kind of material, where there are already so many used to make bodies? Do you really sweep the field, and know all that God can invent in variety of bodily organisations? See glory differing in kind from glory—celestial from terrestrial. See glory differing in degree from glory, as between star and star. ‘Cannot conceive with what kind of body?’ Perhaps the Maker of them all can, nevertheless. Better to wait and see what reserve of resource He has by Him. Cannot conceive does not equal Cannot be.”
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—1Co_15:50-54
“This corruptible,” “this mortal.”—These words raise the question of The Identity of the Resurrection Body.
Introduction.—The one point which is most distinctly the peculiarity of Christian teaching as to the future state is the Resurrection of the Body. The Identity the one question perpetually interesting to the great mass of hearers and readers of Christian doctrine in regard to the Resurrection. [Some oldest creeds said expressly, “Of the Flesh.” Christianity the only religion which takes serious account of the body, or does it any honour, or regards holiness as possible in connection with it.] All is pure matter of revelation. Pure question of faith: “we believe in the Resurrection of the Body.” Now that the truth has been announced, various natural analogies may be imagined and pressed into the service of it. But certainly they never suggested it; the chrysalis-butterfly fact, for example, barely gave an uncertain suggestion of another after-life for man, but not for his body. Reason never dreamed of this unaided; now that it is revealed, it puts a tax upon faith beyond what is demanded by most truths of Christianity. At the mention of it the Athenian gentlemen and scholars on Areopagus burst out laughing, and would give no serious attention to anything further.
I. Wherein the identity consists.—A very difficult question to determine.
1. Study the identity of the body with which we are familiar. Spite of all incessant and manifold physical changes, every man would say that he has “the same body” to-day which he had as a boy twenty, fifty, years ago. For
(1) There has been an unbroken continuity between stage and stage of its growth and change. The successive stages have overlapped; there has been what in brickwork is called “a bonding” of the successive stages; old material has always co-existed with new. At no point has the soul’s house been pulled down entirely and entirely rebuilt de novo. The cottage of boyhood has been altered and enlarged piecemeal into the mansion-sized house of manhood. Even if the material of the early stages has all disappeared, yet at no point has there ever been a distinctly “new house.” “Same house” all along. And
(2) The home of the same tenant all along. The organism has been in unbroken connection with the same indwelling Man. The continuous instrument of the same immaterial part.
(3) There has been a persistent form impressed upon it. Age, disease, accident, natural decay and recuperation, incessantly going on, have made great changes in size, height, etc. Yet many early marks, whether from birth or accident, have persisted through all stages. Something has remained unaltered or merely modified, which is peculiarly the man’s own. Like the man’s signature, the body has an individuality which perhaps, like it, expresses the man. Both change as the man changes, with years, and, to some extent visibly, in character. Seen most, this last, in the face. But the man has often had from the first a gait, a carriage, which has always been his own, individual and recognisable. [
(4) Analogies to these changes, and to the incessant motion and flux amongst constituent parts, whilst an identity of the whole remains unaffected, may be discovered. “New blade, new handle. Same knife?” may be trivial, and a quibble. But also: Perpetually renewed water in “the same river.” Constant change of the men in a regiment, by losses, retirements, recruiting, whilst the commanding officer remains the same, and in command of “the same regiment.” (Also the regimental “life” is continuous; the traditions, and the esprit de corps, keep up the regimental identity.) “The same Board,” “the same Body of trustees,” empowered to fill up vacancies in their number as they occur, till at last none of the original members remain.]
II. Considerations which require an identity of some kind.—
1. The whole man is redeemed. The body is an integral, indispensable part of manhood. A man is not made up of Soul and Spirit, to which the body is merely one of a number of vestments,—“coats,”—natural or artificial; it is not a mere accident of our earthly state. The Redeemer of Man wore, and took with Him into glory, an entire Humanity, its body with the rest. The body has its future, because it has its place in the redemption. It is the lowliest part of the threefold human nature; it waits longest for, and will receive last, its share in the glory secured for redeemed manhood in the eternal world; but it has its claim upon the Redeemer. On the body was set the Abrahamic form of the seal of that covenant between Jehovah and His “friend,” which is the surest basis of hope for Abraham’s immortality (Mat_22:31-32, and || s). [There is a physical reception by the body of the seals and signs of the new, the Gospel, form of the same covenant and its contents of grace; the body is baptized with the physical element of water, it eats and drinks of a real supper of bread and wine.] The resurrection of an “identic body” is a necessary part of the greater fact of the resurrection and after-life of the whole man. To “raise” the same immaterial part and to provide it with a new body, would not be the restoration of the same man, the same person, after the dissolution wrought by death and the grave.
2. Christ’s identic resurrection body.—The great, palpable, popular stumbling-block and difficulty is no doubt the physical, chemical dissolution of the corpse into its primary elements, which again enter into new combinations in other organic structures. Christ’s body “saw no corruption.” The process which had set in, in the purely natural order, with His friend Lazarus, or with David (Act_2:29-31), was not permitted to begin. He brought out of Joseph’s tomb a body which, whatever marvellous changes in the conditions of its life took place when it was reunited to Him in His risen life, was the same undissolved thing which had been reverently, lovingly deposited there on the Friday evening. In the body’s organised existence between death and resurrection there had been for Him no such break as death makes for us. Whatever, then, identity carries, and does not carry, in the case of His body, will be the facts about the identity of the resurrection body of His people. Further—
3. The “mystery,” the hitherto hidden and unknown fact, is here (1Co_15:51), authoritatively published by the Prophet Paul, that at the Lord’s coming the believers then living will be “changed” without previous death. [Or, as the speculations of some would require us to say, without any such perceptible or extended interval between the death and the “change” of the body as creates the popular, practical difficulty in connection with the raising of the bodies of the mass of human kind.] In their case, therefore, there is no break, even as brief as in their Lord’s case, in the continuity of the union between the same man and his physical part. In bodies which they have never quitted, but which undergo some transformation unknown as yet to us, they stand forth in that eventful Easter morning of the whole Church.
(2) and
(3) enable, and require, us to expect that the believers who “fall asleep” in the ordinary course, and whose bodies are dissolved by death and “see corruption,” shall be put into the same condition as their brethren who are changed without dying, and with bodies like their Lord’s risen and glorified body. Whatever He and those are, without the parting of soul and body, or the physical dissolution of the body, to that they who die must be elevated or restored. In whatever sense He wears to-day “the same body” which trode the fields of Galilee or the streets of Jerusalem; in whatever sense the “changed” saints will wear “the same body” which they never for an instant lost; in that sense do we require that our Resurrection body shall be “the same body” which we wore on earth, and for a while left behind in the moment of our dying. It was part of our Self; the whole, same, redeemed self must be forthcoming, when “God brings, with Jesus, them that sleep in [through] Jesus” and are now somewhere a precious deposit in His safe keeping, “hid, with Christ, in God.” More than this we cannot with confidence assert. How much this carries with it we do not know, and have hardly sufficient experience of anything analogous to guide us even in conjecture. The meaning and mode of the “change” are quite unknown to us. Paul speaks of being “clothed upon” in 2Co_5:2, just as here he speaks of “putting on incorruption.” In Rom_8:11 he is express that “our mortal bodies”—like Christ’s mortal body—are to be quickened, as here he says “this mortal must put on.” But the mode is no clearer for all this. The fact, both of the change of some and of the resurrection of the body of most, is matter of revelation on God’s side and of faith on ours. The fact cannot be ruled out as “impossible.” “Christ is risen;” there is no intrinsic impossibility, therefore, to bar the way of belief. The connection between the second, “the last, Adam,” and the new, regenerate human race of which He is the Head, removes any intrinsic improbability; indeed it makes it probable that His people shall rise, in soul and body sharing with, conformed to, the conditions of His own risen life.
III. Difficulties in the way of belief of the “identity” of the buried and the risen body.—These are to a large extent occasioned by a faulty statement of the doctrine which is demanded and established as above. In the endeavour to grasp or to imagine the mode of the body’s resurrection, and, still more, to present the fact clearly and vividly to the ignorant, the young, the new convert, or the heathen, a crude, literal restoration of the same particles, and even of the same hair, nails, bones, etc., has been insisted on. But this was only the over-elaboration of popular rhetoric and of undisciplined imagination. [As to the difficulty presented on that theory in the case of a body eaten by a cannibal, whose body also must rise again, it would be only fair to say that there would be no absolute “unthinkableness” or “impossibility,” unless on the supposition that some or all of the particles composing one body at the moment of its death were also the components of another body at the moment of its death; so that they would be wanted at the resurrection for the restoration and completion of two bodies at the same time. An eventuality against which, if He were pleased to make that one of the conditions of the resurrection, He could guard. It was a fair reply to say, “He can do whatever He wills, and whatever He says He will do.” But the underlying supposition which occasioned the objection was extreme in statement. N.B.—The cannibals of Fiji never found the “cannibal” argument an insuperable barrier to belief in a bodily resurrection. “What does God say He will do? That He can and will do.”]
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—1Co_15:55-58
Triumph; Theology; Duty.
I. Does that seem a descending series, with a step yet lower to 1Co_16:1, “the collection”? If it be the stone-like drop of the lark, after her soaring, singing, jubilant ascent into an upper world of light and freedom, it has nevertheless her justification; she drops to her nest, her young, her motherly duty. No surer sign of a healthy spiritual life than the simple, easy, natural transition from level to level of thought and talk. Such a life indeed lifts all up to the spiritual level. In the Great House of the soul’s Life, it does not go downstairs, from the Chapel to the Study, or to the Dining-room or the Kitchen. These, it may be, are less stately and less richly adorned than that; but the soul passes from one to the other all on the same floor.
II. The connection between Triumph and a true Theology on the one side, and between a true Theology and Duty on the other, is very close, “Faith” lies very near to “The Faith.” Religion and dogma are very intimately connected. If religion be the Art of holy living, then is theology its Science. Theology is only the orderly statement of the facts and truths presupposed, whether in the hopes and joys, or in the duty and service, of religion. [Newton said he liked his Calvinism as he liked his sugar in his tea—in solution. Most men’s “ism” is to-day in solution in their teaching; and always was very much in solution in the thought of the bulk of Christian people. But Newton’s “sugar” distinctly “flavoured his tea”; it was unmistakably there, to anybody who knew the taste. Perhaps could have been extracted, weighed, exhibited in separate, orderly, crystalline form.] If, for instance, an earnest man is accustomed, as the very foundation of much of his religious life, to address himself in prayer to Christ, let him be asked and helped to express, in precise and ordered language, how he supposes that this “Christ” can hear his words and, much more, his unuttered thoughts; also, supposing that He can hear, how, and how far, he expects that Christ can help him in answer to his appeal; when he says at the end of his praying to the Father “for Christ’s sake,” what relation there is between Christ and the Father, and between Christ and himself, that “for Christ’s sake” should be a plea and a reason with God;—the answers will be a very important contribution to a Christology, whether a new one of his own or that of some other man or of some Church. Indeed, to answer Christ’s own question fully and precisely, “Whose Son is Christ?” goes down to some of the obscurest depths of Divine thought. Every saved sinner has an informal, unformulated, working “theory of the Atonement,” according to which he has laid hold of salvation; just as every preacher or Sunday-school teacher has an unformulated “theory of Inspiration,” which determines his treatment of the Word of God, and even his selection of texts. So here the shout of triumph will be thin and hollow, as the dying saint says, “O death, … thy victory?… thy sting?” if he have any misgiving whether, after all, death is not going to be the conqueror; whether, after all, he is not still “in his sins”; whether, after all, his Christ be not a mere great name of the past, the name of a man who long centuries ago yielded to death just as others do, and left His body to dissolve into dust, like other bodies.
III. So a right or wrong Theology will affect Duty.—(Discussed in part under 1Co_15:32; here needs only to be added:) No doubt as matter of high-level, theoretic virtue, men “ought” to be righteous and diligent and all that is good, for the very intrinsic rightness and betterness and nobleness of Good. So the children at school “ought” to do their lessons well for the reason that it is right, and duty, and the like; prizes or no prizes, they “ought” to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in their work. But the prizes, if illogical as a motive, and indefensible, are a very practical incentive to diligence, and a very real help to even a diligent scholar, when the lessons are hard and the play is tempting. God knows His scholars in the High School of life; and, grown men and women though they be, it will make a difference to them whether or not there are to be any marks and any rewards. He knows that average men and women will not go on year after year pitching the fruit of their labour into a moral Chat Moss, unless like George Stephenson they have the confident assurance that there is a bottom, and that by and-by there will be some solid result to show for their patient toil. They will, like the engineers of a Portland Breakwater, be content to see load after load of solid “labour” disappear beneath the surface of the ocean, if they too may hope that some day their toil will appear in solid result above the waters, none really lost. It is of the very essence of death’s “enmity” (1Co_15:26) that it cuts off abruptly, inopportunely, often disastrously, the plans and labour and hope of the man who is only “of the world,” and whose aims and desires go no further than the horizon whose radius is the thirty, forty, fifty years which may happen to be the probable remainder of his earthly sojourn. The Christian man has “hoped” that “in Christ” (1Co_15:19) death will only help forward the attainment of all his hopes and bring him a stage nearer to the fulfilment of the new and larger meaning he now sees in “Life,” besides putting him into more favourable conditions than were possible here for both growth and service. But if death is going to break off in mid-course all his plans also, and to frustrate all his hopes and purposes as it does those of the worldling; if he is going to find the first moment of eternity the first also of an eternal disillusion; or, worst of all, if Eternity is to be nothing, because he passes away into Nothing himself, and there is for him neither resurrection nor after-life,—well, then “the game is not worth the candle.” Who will “after the manner of men” fight with the beasts? Who will in ascetic gloom refuse to “eat and drink”? Why should not he take such pleasure as it is, seeing there is nothing better? Nothing at all at the end of all! Rom_7:13-24; Rom_7:7-12, are our 1Co_15:56 in résumé. Plant 1Co_15:56 in mind and heart; let prayer bring upon it the quickening Spirit; let experience develop and record the living germ of truth; it will grow into Rom_7:7-24. Death has no “sting” unless it borrow one from a guilty conscience. Sin finds its condemnation, and its provocation, in a positive commandment. “In Christ” death is only dying, and behind dying there is no proper death. “In Christ” the heart runs in the way of the commandment; it no longer conflicts with it, only to its own hurt and condemnation. And “labour in Christ” is the labour of Christ Himself in His member. It is really His own “labour.” How can His labour be “in vain”?
SEPARATE HOMILIES
1Co_15:38. “God giveth it a body.”
Introduction.—In regard to the special topic discussed in this chapter, this remark of Paul lifts the believer over the stumbling-block of the “How?” by referring him to one of the twin bases upon which the Saviour, more than a quarter of a century before, had set the doctrine of the Resurrection in His memorable discussion with the Sadducee scoffers of His day. “Ye do err,” He had said, “not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God,” i.e. His power makes it certain that He can, if He will, raise the dead. [It is not a thing incredible that God—God—should raise the dead (Act_24:8).] And the Scriptures make it certain that He wills to do it (Mat_22:29). All preliminary talk about “impossibility” is swept away so soon as in any real, operative sense God is taken account of; and any further question as to fact or probability is met if there is a positive declaration which is unquestionably from His mouth. But the words are suggestive of what belongs to a much wider field of discussion. To a Christian Theist it is as true of the universal natural order as of the spiritual, that “in all God is all” (1Co_15:28).
I. God gave man his present body.—The little child learns to say its catechism: “Q. Who made you? A. God made me.” And all he may afterwards learn of the physical processes of nature need not take the child’s answer out of the man’s mouth. Creationism or Traducianism, apart, as far as regards the immaterial element in us, it very soon becomes matter of obvious knowledge that a man’s body is no absolutely new beginning, no thing de novo fashioned and moulded by any literal “hand” or “fingers” of God; but that, on the other hand, there are many intermediate physical links of successive or predecessive generations of parentage between any individual of the race to-day and the body of “the first Adam.” If a man’s special line of study makes him acquainted with the minutiœ of the physiological processes between the primal cell and the new-born infant, if he come to know how very closely many of the earlier stages mimic or are allied to those of the starting into growth in the case of a vegetable germ; yet all his added detail of knowledge has made it no more difficult for him to say “God made me” than it is for the grown child or the man who merely sees, as far as all see, the physical organisation of the parents interposed between God the Creator and the new product of His power. What difficulty exists is to both men the same in kind. Merely to be able to follow the intervening links of the process into fuller detail, to be permitted to follow the Great Worker into the inner secrecy of His workshop, and understand better how exceedingly complex and beautiful are the methods He follows, is not to alter the nature of the question at all. It is merely breaking up the one obvious physical link into many, very many; but to see the simple fact that our parents have “given us” our body is as great or as little a difficulty, or as completely no difficulty at all, in the way of saying “God made me,” as to see the manifold, multiplied details and physical instruments of the Great Maker’s work. And so, too, if all that is claimed for what is popularly called “Evolution” were demonstrated; if the order of developed scheme and idea which it is manifestly possible to arrange out of the multiform creatures of earth’s geological and historical ages, an order leading up to, and at every stage more and more frequently suggesting, Man,—if this were demonstrably physically and historically a genealogical succession; if thus between the first living thing and his body of to-day the Christian man of science interposed an unbroken chain of physical antecedents and consequents, not even interrupted at an “Adam” of a “Genesis”;—he would still with full intelligence and reasonableness reply to his catechist, “God made me.” He again would know that his fuller acquaintance with the details of the process, and his belief that there had been no interposition of the power of God, de novo and ab extra, in the physical succession since the first living cell was endowed with Life, had made no difference in the essential shape of the question. The first modification from the simplicity of the child’s idea of a direct and immediate “making” by God to the necessary knowledge that the “making” had been mediate through human parentage, is the only modification in kind; all else is matter of completeness of understanding the mediating term. Between the Maker and the product there is more elaborate machinery; the thing is not so simply and directly “hand-made” as the little child supposed; but that is all. “God gave me my body: God made Me.” This leads further afield.
II. God is active, operative, everywhere, always in His creation.—“My Father worketh hitherto,” said the Son of God, in vindication of His own beneficent Sabbath labour. “Why should not men let healing alone on the Sabbath, and neither the patients come, nor the physician attend to them if they do come? Why not? Why should not I cease such work on the Sabbath? Because my Father does not. The healing of a woman, or the setting of a bone, or the growth of a body, does not cease on the Sabbath, and in all the ‘natural processes’ which are thus ceaselessly and continuously proceeding, He is at work. They are full of God. They are God at work, Sabbath and weekday.” And the Christian takes his view of God in Nature from His Master. [He does not shut Him out of history. He does not believe that when Bible history was completed, and the lives of Bible saints were ended, God ceased to work altogether, or to work as really and effectively in the history and the lives of our times. He uses the specimen cases of the Bible, authentically opened up and expounded, to show him how to believe in, and to look for, and to see, God in his own life, or in the history of which each morning’s newspaper is the latest chapter of continuation. “Worketh hitherto.”] The mind and heart of man can never be permanently satisfied, under normal conditions, to think of the glorious kingdom of the visible universe as without a throne or a Monarch, or with only an absentee or indifferent one; it postulates a Father and Head for such a family and such a home. It wants God near. The many shades and phases of Pantheistic thought find their charm and their strength in the answer to this demand. But they overdo it, and bring Him too near, confounding and identifying Work and Worker in one undistinguishable Subsistence. The phrase, at any rate, of another school, which spoke of an Anima Mundi, a Soul of the World, was nearer the truth, imperfect as all creaturely and human analogies must be. The Christian thinker does not confound his soul with his body. He can only speak of either in negations of the other; but he knows them distinct. And he asks himself whether all this great, this vast, physical frame of things stands in any similar relation to God as his own physical part does to his thinking, feeling, willing part. The only force of which he knows anything directly and really is will force, the force of his own will; and though the midmost meeting-place and link of connection between mind and body is veiled from him under thickest darkness, yet he knows how Will in him wields, and moves, and can mould, his physical part, and through it the physical around him. And then he asks whether he can say or think anything truer or wiser, or at any rate more probable, than that the One Will wields and moulds and moves all this vast physical frame of things, and that all the “forces” which we count and calculate and measure and use are but many variations of the putting forth of the One Force, that of the Will of Him who long ago made the matter of His universe, and from that time to this has never taken His hand off the thing He made. In the case studied above, suggested by Paul, he does not conceive that he is really any farther away from God because he sees the thing “machine-made” rather than directly “hand-made.” His Father “Who worketh hitherto” designed the machine, and made it, and works it, and has His hand upon it at every intermediate point between Himself and what He produces by it. The “design argument” loses none of its force to him, if even he should think that “natural selection” or any other combination of physical forces proves to be the method by which the Designer has effected His purpose. The Design is there. The “natural” is of God as really as the “supernatural”; the “miraculous” is the special for the purpose of Revelation; the “natural” is the ordinary, orderly method by which He chooses to proceed in Creation and Providence. If the Idea of Creation gets a physical embodiment, it is because “God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased Him.”
III. God gave Adam a body.—Did even the early Italian painters, of the simplest ages of faith, really believe literally in the grand, bearded, old-man-like Creator Whom they represented bending over a newly made body moulded with His literal fingers out of dust? After the days of his childhood, no simplest, most old-fashioned believer in a distinct creation of Adam’s body ever so conceived of it. They knew and believed that “no man hath seen or can see” God. Even they, believing in a direct and immediate new beginning with the body of “the first Adam,” did not seriously and literally think that if they had been present at its formation their eyes would have beheld any visible Modeller, with literal hands shaping “the dust of the earth.” If they had at all pursued the matter so far, they would at most have expected to see a body growing into shape before them, in similar fashion to that so vividly described by Huxley. “Of all the perennial miracles [Nature] offers to the student’s inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo. Examine the recently laid egg of some common animal, such as a salamander or a newt. It is a minute spheroid in which the best microscope will reveal nothing but a structureless sac, enclosing a glairy fluid, holding granules in suspension. But … let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid, and yet so steady and so purposelike in their succession, that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeller upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by the spinal column, and moulded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due salamandrine proportions, in so artistic a way that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed with the notion, that some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic, would show the hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work.” (Huxley, Lay Sermons, 260, 261.) The Christian scientific observer believes that under the lens of his microscope he actually is beholding Creative Power and Will mysteriously meeting, touching, moulding, Matter. God is there giving the salamander a body.
IV. God giveth the risen man His body.—We thus return to our starting-point. There is no real difficulty in the question, “How can the dead—the dead, the dead! do you see them?—be raised? With what (kind of) body do they come from their grave?” That they will come forth—all of them, and not only those “in Christ”—is for His disciples conclusively settled by one word of the Master. They “know this Scripture” (Joh_5:28-29) [where “in the graves” is in very precise and defining contrast with “the dead” of “the hour that now is” in 1Co_15:25]. “How?” What need to ask “how”? The closest students have not exhausted yet the whole range of the variety of His methods, nor seen any suggestion of a limit to many and startlingly novel possibilities of new methods, or of new exertions of the old, the one, power. As He gave the buried body, so He must, and will, give the raised-up body. Whether working on His accustomed lines or in His sovereign freedom and mastery striking out new ones for Himself, it is but the One Worker. And as there has never yet arisen a demand for which He has not made adequate provision, so for the new demand of the new life, and the new environment of the new world, He may either make a new thing altogether, or modify the old thing and the old type, “as it pleases Him.” That is all that can be said. To the intellect or the heart which does not know our God that is to say nothing. To the intellect that acknowledges Him, and to the heart that believes in and loves Him, that is enough. “God giveth” to the seeds of His human sowing “their body,” “their own,” appropriate “(kind of) body,” “spiritual bodies” for spiritual men, who are to dwell in a spiritual world, for ever one with Him who “was made a quickening Spirit.”
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS
1Co_15:26. The Sub-final Act in the Drama of Human History.
I. “The last enemy” met and subdued by—
II. “The last Adam.”—Sentence of deposition was long ago passed against the usurping power. [Cf. Joh_12:31; couple with it the Temptation in the Wilderness; and Luk_10:18.] It has struggled to keep its hold on the race; but every soul “fallen asleep,” “not seeing death,” has been a blow to its prestige, a defeat in detail. Now Death shall never seize another individual of the race; this shall no longer be a mortal stock. The other Death—the only real “Death”—shall still hold its captives, and shall hold them eternally, for there shall be no more dying hence forward.
1Co_15:31. “I die daily.”
I. Physically.—From the first moment of life we begin to die. For thirty or forty years the forces which make for life and recuperation outweigh and hold in check the forces which make for waste, decay, death. But after that point the balance turns against life; life fights a losing battle. Dying daily, dying from the first, we die at last.
II. Voluntarily.—For Christ’s sake Paul held life as not worth more than a day’s purchase. “Always bearing about the dying,” etc. (2Co_4:10; observe the forcible Greek word).
III. Experimentally.—Gal_6:14. What does the world matter to a crucified man hanging there in death? It can do no more for him; he cares no more for it.
IV. Believingly.—In hope of a better life.—Suggested by J. L.
1Co_15:31-32. “When will you die?”
I. The ignoble life says, “Tomorrow we die!”—This is the reckless temper which makes men take their full fling of riot and carouse, when the city is swept with the plague [Athens, London]; or when the enemy is at the gate [Babylon (Daniel 5), Jerusalem beleaguered by the Assyrians (the original of this quotation, Isa_22:13)]; the carouse and gambling in the condemned cell on the morning of the execution. “We die to-morrow; so ‘go it’ to-day!” Or at best the temper which adjourns unpleasant things till “to-morrow.” The characteristic word of the Spaniard is Man̄ana, “to-morrow.” The “natural” heart in man says “To-morrow” in regard to the claims of Christ (Act_24:25), to difficult duties, to preparation for death. It shirks the irksome, the serious, the religious. “We must die; then let it be to-morrow.”
II. The noble life says, “I die daily—to-day.—The nobler type, even in regard to natural character and to secular matters, faces at once the un-pleasing, the difficult, the obligatory; to “shunt” things into to-morrow’s “siding” is no manly discharge of today’s life-work. There are Christian “shufflers” as well as secular; or “happy-go-lucky” souls, who never fully face the Cross in their religious life. Souls like Paul—and he is like the Master—“take up their cross daily.” When the hardest, sorest trial to nature is thus met and dealt with, character has then gained in manliness and strength. There is a subtle paralysis in having a vague terror in the background, or an unfulfilled, outstanding obligation hanging over one’s head. How many lives are noble because of a daily crucifixion of self and of all evil! None but their Crucified Lord knows how keen is the anguish as they hang upon the daily Cross within, for His sake. Themselves driving in the nails, waking every morning to the Cross they find prepared for them, which they accepted long ago. “Mortify your members,” etc. (Col_3:5). [Also observe how Paul almost ventures to parallel with that of Christ his own daily dying in its effects to others. “Bearing about … the dying … in order that the life … in you.”]
1Co_15:32. “What advantageth, it met?”
I. Seeing that the dead do rise, then what advantageth it? Principally there is a future life for me. For this stands or falls with the resurrection of the dead. So then, as Dean Alford said, in a letter printed in his Life: “When we have one moment said ‘Good night!’ here, the next we shall be met with the welcome, ‘Good morning!’ ” Then (as 1Co_15:58) I do not labour or suffer with the paralysing fear that all my labour is “putting money into a bag with holes,” “grinding the wind,” “ploughing upon the rock,” or whatever be the illustration of useless, fruitless labour.
II.
1. If the dead do not rise [though for the moment, in “most miserable,” and “Let us eat and drink,” Paul may adopt the tone, and speak with the verdict, of mere natural men, careless or desperate, yet even he would say, “Profitable for the life that now is”], if virtue is better than vice, benevolence than selfishness, truth than falsehood, then there is yet, as even a few noble heathen felt, still an advantage.
2. But this will not stand the “hard wear” of the world, of the poor, or tempted, or evil-disposed. A man soon sinks below the level where there is any advantage in being righteous for its own sake. He may easily sink low enough to escape the scourge of conscience, and to enjoy the “eating and drinking” of the sensuous, sensual life.
3. Yet if our faith be a delusion, it is one that serves well the purposes of life. Faith in God and Immortality and a Saviour has wrought, as nothing else has done, for thousands whom nothing else would have touched, peace of conscience, righteousness of life, confidence in face of the future, victory over fear of death.
III. Conclusion.—
1. “Try our way, sinner!”
2. “Try your way, sinner? No. Listen to another ‘What advantageth?’ (Luk_9:25).” [Loyola won Xavier, the teacher of philosophy at Paris, by an incessant repetition of his question, “What shall it profit a mam?” etc. Threw himself into his every pursuit; into disputations, into amusements; accommodated himself to every merriest mood; went with him for long walks; and every conversation led up to the refrain, “What shall it profit?” etc. Xavier lost his money and his pupils by his self-indulgence and folly. Loyola regained for him pupils and popularity, and came back amidst all the applause and excitement with his burden, “What shall it profit?” Again Xavier squandered all. Loyola begged for him, and brought him a purse, and again pressed his question, “What shall it profit a man?” Read this fully, and the account of Xavier’s death on the shores of China, in Stephen, Eccles. Biogr. “If the dead rise not,” what did it all advantage Xavier?]
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv35, 40, 44, 45, 47 1Co 15:35-39
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE RESURRECTION
1Co 15:35-39
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35. “But one will say: How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?
36. “Thou fool, that that thou sowest is not quickened except it may die.” Does not Paul contradict Jesus when he says “Thou fool,” for He said, “Whosoever shall call his brother a fool is in danger of Hell fire”? Suffice it to say there is no contradiction, because though the E.V. has them use the same word, yet they did not. Jesus said mooros, which means a natural fool who is inevitably irresponsible. Hence it is wicked to reproach your brother for natural disability which he can not help. Paul said aphroon which means a spiritual fool, i. e., a fool in spiritual things because he rejects the Holy Spirit.
37. “That which thou sowest thou sowest not the body which shall be, but naked grain, if it may happen of wheat or of some one of the rest.
38. “And God giveth to it a body as He wished, and to each one of the seeds its own body.” You sow your wheat. It is dry dead grain. The beautiful green blade grows up, bearing a nice flower. There is no similitude whatever between the latter and the former. Yet there is perfect identity. It is not only wheat, but it produces the same kind of wheat. If you sow bearded wheat it will produce the same species. Hence we see from this illustration that while the resurrection body will be perfectly identical with the body I have had in this life, i. e., it will be the very same body, yet there will be no similitude whatever, no more than there is between the dead grain and the beautiful green blade and flower.
39. “All flesh is not the same flesh, one flesh of men, another of beasts, another of birds and another of fishes.” This verse does not argue the resurrection of animals.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv35–49 But some one will say, How are the dead…
But some one will say, How are the dead raised? and with what manner of body do they come?
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v45 was made
was made
Omit italicized words "was made."
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv35, 42 The nature of the resurrection:
The nature of the resurrection:
v. 35. But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?
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v. 36. Thou fool, that which thou sows is not quickened except it die.
v. 37. And that which thou sows thou sows not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or of some other grain.
v. 38. But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body.
v. 39. All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.
v. 40. There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.
v. 41. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.
v. 42. So also is the resurrection of the dead.
Not to know, not to believe in, the resurrection of the body, that is a shame and disgrace for a Christian; but the manner of the resurrection is a secret which at best may be illustrated by analogous processes in nature. In this way Paul meets the question: How are the dead raised? With what kind of body, moreover, do they come? The lurking ideas of the impossibility and inconceivability of the resurrection of the body are both taken up; for the apostle realizes that someone might argue: The resurrection as proclaimed by the apostles is absurd; how can anyone conceive of a new body that is to rise out of a corpse that has been eaten by worms or has fallen into dust? As far as the first argument is concerned, Paul does not hesitate for a moment to charge its defender with mental stupidity, since all nature teaches that death is only a transition to further life: What thou sows is not made alive unless it die. The mystery of the resurrection is contained in every sprouting seed. The hull which serves as a covering, as a carrier for the seed-germ, will rot away and die, while the contents of the kernel, by a chemical process which only the Creator can explain, under the proper condition for germination, will rise up into new life.
To the argument that it is impossible to conceive of such a process, Paul answers with the analogy of the same picture: And what thou sows, not the body that shall be sows thou, but the naked grain, there being no difference whether it is of wheat or of one of the other grains. What we see before our eyes year after year may be impossible for us to comprehend, but it can no longer be said to be unreasonable. In placing the seed into the ground, the farmer or gardener knows that he is not planting a new body, which would but have to grow. He puts the naked, unclothed grain of any seed into the ground and does not permit himself to be deterred by the objection of some stupid person that has never seen things sprout, that his seed will merely rot in the soil. Experience has told the farmer that the grain of wheat, though in itself lifeless as a grain of sand, will yet, under the proper conditions, produce a new body. It is God that gives the sprouting seed the power and the plant its body, in accordance with His decree in creation, by which the continuance of life by this form of reproduction was determined. And He gives to each seed a body of its own. It is His miraculous working throughout, but that same power is able to return our bodies at the resurrection.
Paul now uses a second comparison to show with what form of body the dead will come: All flesh is not the same flesh, but different is that of men, different that of beasts, of four-footed animals, different the flesh of winged creatures, different that of fishes. All these creatures have flesh in their body, and yet it is not the same; there is variety not only in organization, but also in composition, as both the sense of feeling and of taste can testify. The God that exhibits such wonderful power in producing this variety will surely be able to provide a body for every person in the resurrection. Again, the apostle argues: And there are bodies heavenly and bodies terrestrial; but the glory of the heavenly bodies is one, and that of the earthly bodies another. The stars and all the heavenly bodies, by God’s creation, have a glory which differs from that of the bodies in this world, though the beauty of the latter in the manifold miracles of nature can well compare with them. Finally, the heavenly bodies differ among themselves in beauty and brightness, the sun, the moon, and the stars exhibiting a variety of glory which must be recognized at once: all are glorious, but in degrees. And the same God that produced all these miracles is fully able to produce bodies for His saints at the time of the resurrection which will be altogether suited to the glory of Christ’s coming kingdom. Paul therefore sums up all that he has advanced in the entire passage: So, indeed, is the resurrection of the dead. It is as reasonable as the recurring miracle of germination and new growth, and the bodies which it will make necessary can be provided by the same God that calls all the marvelous creatures before our eyes into existence. Simply because our bodies are now grossly material, it would be a mistake to conclude that they cannot, at God’s command, exist, in an entirely different and far higher state.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv35, 37, 40, 42, 45, 47 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Paul gives some specifics about how the resurrection of the believers' bodies will take place. He gives a picture of natural and spiritual bodies and compares the first man Adam with the last Adam, Christ.
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But someone will say, "How are the dead raised, and with what kind of body will they come?"
Possible meanings are 1) The person is asking sincerely or 2) the person is using the question to mock the idea of a resurrection. AT: "But some will say that they cannot imagine how God will raise the dead, and what kind of body God would give them in the resurrection." (See: Rhetorical Question)
someone will say
"someone will ask"
with what kind of body will they come
That is, will it be a physical body or a spiritual body? What shape will the body have? What will the body be made of? Translate using the most general question that someone who wants to know the answers to these questions would ask.
You are so ignorant! What you sow
Paul is speaking to the Corinthians as if they were one person, so both instances of "you" here are singular. (See: Forms of You)
You are so ignorant
"You do not know about this at all"
What you sow will not start to grow unless it dies
A seed will not grow unless it is first buried underground. In the same way, a person has to die before God can resurrect him. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
die
body
plant
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv35, 36, 37, 40, 42, 45, 47, 48, 49 15:35-58 Paul discusses the nature of resurrection bodies, perhaps…
15:35-58 Paul discusses the nature of resurrection bodies, perhaps responding to skeptical questions. In the Greco-Roman world, belief in the immortality of the soul was common, but not belief in the resurrection of the body.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.