This evening we are going to be focussing on our reading from 1 Corinthians 15. Before we focus on the details of this passage, let’s take a moment to draw back and consider the context.
If we flip back to the beginning of chapter 1, we see that this letter is written by Paul, to the church of God in Corinth. Acts 18 tells us about Paul’s first visit to Corinth. He came there on one of his missionary journeys, just after he’d been to Athens. He worked as a tent maker there, alongside Priscilla and Aquila.
As well as tent making, they also had church planting in common, and the three of them worked together, along with Timothy and Silas, to preach the good news of Jesus, and to start a new church. They went first to the Synagogues, to speak to the Jewish people, and then began preaching to the Gentiles. His ministry was fruitful, and a lot of people came to faith. He stayed there at least eighteen months, before setting off for Ephesus with Priscilla and Aquila, to continue the work elsewhere.
Paul didn’t just forget about the people in the churches that he had a hand in planting. He would stay in touch with them, and the Corinthian church was no exception. We don’t have any records of a return visit, but we do have letters that we wrote in the years afterwards, letters which aimed to keep the Christians in Corinth focussed on Jesus and on following him faithfully.
As we read through this first letter, we discover that things had not exactly been plain sailing in Corinth. There had been fallings out, and misunderstandings. Other teachers had come and brought confusion about different matters of faith. Some behaviours and habits from their old lives and the surrounding culture had continued and were causing chaos. There was conflict between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. The whole letter seems to be an exercise in fire fighting.
Having addressed all the issues he’s aware of, and put out all these fires, Chapter 15 is the finale of this teaching. Paul’s last word is a reminder of the original good news that the people in Corinth heard from him. It’s a reminder of the foundations on which everything else is built. It’s the first principles from which everything else he’s talked about have been derived.
Chapter 15’s introduction runs a bit like this:
“I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you … by this gospel you are saved … that Christ died for our sins …. was buried …. was raised … and appeared to many.”
If we go back to Chapter 1, we discover that Paul began his letter with the beginning of this chain. His starting place for addressing the issues that were facing the Christians in Corinth, and particularly their divisions, was the cross of Christ.
“we preach Christ crucified.”
Having started with the cross, Paul rounds off his argument with the resurrection, with the majority of chapter 15 being an extended reflection on the importance of Jesus’ resurrection to Christian faith and discipleship.
This chapter seems to have been shaped by the classical rhetorical techniques of the day. It would have been recognised by many of those who first heard it as a well thought out and deliberately constructed argument.
The first section of the chapter, which we’ve already touched on, verses 1-11, state the basis of Paul’s case and the common ground between Paul and the people he’s writing to. Everyone would have been nodding along as they heard this being read out.
Most of the rest of the chapter comes in two sections, which both begin with a question that Paul wants to address.
In verse 12 we get:
“But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is not resurrection of the dead?”
Verses 13 – 19 detail the negative implications of saying that there is no resurrection from the dead, culminating with the dramatic claim that if this is the case then,
“we are to be pitied more than all others.”
In verses 20 – 28 Paul makes the argument for all the positive things that are associated with believing that Jesus was raised from the dead – the demonstrating of the reign of God, and the destruction of death, all building to the conclusion in verse 28 – “so that God may be all in all.”
In verses 29-34 Paul summarises and reinforces there arguments, before moving on to the second main section, the one that we’re looking at in more detail tonight.
As with the first section, this second section begins with a question.
“But someone will ask ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they be raised?”
From the two questions that Paul addresses that there are two particular issues that have arisen in the Corinthian church.
The first is a flat inability to believe in the possibility of any sort of life after death. We know from the accounts of Jesus’ life that this was a live debate amongst Jewish believers. The Sadducees did not believe in life after death, whereas the Pharisees did. There were similar disputes and differences in the pagan religions and secular philosophies that would have been colouring life and culture in Corinth. We see the same debates in our own time and culture. Some people believe that there is something beyond this life, others clearly hold the opinion that this is it, once our life here an earth is done, there is nothing else.
The second issue is more nuanced. This may be a genuine confusion. It may be that people want to believe in a resurrection – in life beyond death, but can’t get their heads around how it would work, what it would look like, and that is proving a barrier to their trust in God. On the other hand, it may be that this is an objection thrown up by those who don’t believe in the resurrection to those who do. “How can you believe in resurrection – what would it look like?”
Whatever the root of this question, Paul shows a great deal of pastoral sensitivity and tact in addressing it.
“How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.”
There are echoes here of Jesus’ teaching in John 12:24
“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
Jesus said that in the Temple courts, a few days before he died. He was focussed on explaining to people that death is a necessary gateway to eternal life. His own death as part of the opening of the gate to life for all who follow him, and then each individual’s death as a way of going through that gate.
Paul’s focus is slightly different. His emphasis is more on the discontinuity between the seed and the plant that grows from it. There is a continuity – the seed leads to the plan, but for Paul the emphasis is on the discontinuity. You plant a seed and up comes a plant. They look very different, in fact the seed has died – there is nothing left of it – it has become the plant, which has its own body, a different kind of body to the seed.
This theme of discontinuity, of different kinds of flesh in the natural world continues. There’s the different kinds of body that birds, animals, and fish have. There’s the different kinds of body that earthly bodies and heavenly bodies have. Paul is hammering the point – we are all used to different kinds of flesh, different kinds of body in the natural world, the world that, most importantly, God created, so why would we expect the resurrection body to be of the same kind as our first body?
Why would we expect it to be the same? It makes just as much sense, if not more, for it to be different.
Having established this, Paul goes on to detail some of the differences, looping back to his initial image of the seed being sown to death and the plant being raised to life.
The first difference is that the body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable.
I wonder how old the oldest food in your cupboards is. Some of us are very disciplined at checking the best before dates, and disposing of food that has gone out of date. Some of us will employ a sniff test before deciding whether or not its safe to eat something. Many of us will have stories of finding decades old spices or food cans in the cupboards of elderly relatives when were helping them have a clear out. Whatever our stance on this, we all understand the idea of perishability. In the end most things go rotten, lose their strength, fall apart. They perish. We perish. This body is perishing. But my new body in the resurrection will not. It will not lose its strength, it will not fade, it will not wear it. It will be raised imperishable.
The second difference is that the body that is sown is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory.
This contrast takes a bit more thinking about to get our head around. We can start this work by exploring first the idea of glory or splendour. This is the weight of the presence of the majesty of God. It is the state that we are drawn into when we come to Jesus.
As Jesus prayed over his friends and followers in John 17:22
“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one”
This is where we will end up – with a splendid and beautiful body in the majestic presence of God, but we cannot get there on our own. As Paul writes in Romans 3:23
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
There are things that get in the way of our participation in God’s glory. Our sin. All the things that cause us shame and humiliation, the things of dishonour in our lives. These things can only be dealt with by death and resurrection. Jesus died and was raised to life to open up the way for us to die to them and be raised in a new and glorious body that is not mired in sin and its consequences.
The third difference is that the sown body is sown in weakness, the raised body is raised in power.
The body that we have now is weak. We’ve already talked about its physical perishability, and its moral failings. This idea builds on those, it’s not just that we are perishable and sinful, that that we can’t do anything about it. We can’t fix it. We can’t stop our bodies ageing and wearing out. We might be able to slow the process, but we can’t stop it. We can make progress in the battle against sin, but this side of heaven we are not made perfect. As Paul writes in Romans 7:24, describing his own battle with his sinful tendencies:
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The body we will have then will have the power to resist decay, to live a perfect and holy life, to resist evil. It will be delivered through death into a life of power.
These three contrasts are summed up by Paul in verse 44:
“It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”
Now, the connotations of the English word “spiritual” might lead us to think that a spiritual body is some kind of airy-fairy ghost type thing. This would be to misunderstand what Paul is saying. He is not writing about what the two bodies are made of -their substance – he is writing about the two different modes of life. The natural body exists in a mode of decay, humiliation, and weakness. The spiritual body lives a life of incorruptibility, glory, and power. One is natural, and one is spiritual, but both are still bodies. The resurrection body is not less than physical, it may be more, but it surely isn’t less. There is no Platonic disdain for the physical here.
So, if the resurrection body body is spiritual, but not in the sense of non-physical, what does it mean?
This is what Paul goes on to explain in the next section, where we pick up this reference to the first Adam and the last Adam.
The first Adam is fairly easy to identify. Paul quotes Genesis 2:7:
“Then the Lord God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
Drawing on the creation story at the beginning of the Bible, Paul identifies the natural body that we all have with our common ancestor, the first man to have a natural body. As we go through these verses we are reminded that the natural came first, that it was of the dust of the earth, and so we, who follow after are also of the dust of the earth, and bear the image of this first man in our fragility, our weakness, and in our rebellion against God’s rightful and loving rule.
What about the last Adam? If we read on we discover that this last Adam is a life-giving spirit, that he came after the first Adam, that he is of heaven, and that we will bear his image.
He isn’t named by Paul in this passage, but if we look back at 1 Corinthians 15:22 we read:
“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”
Jesus is the last Adam. Jesus is the one who breaks the inevitable inheritance for all descendants of Adam by giving us a new one. No longer are we stuck with our natural bodies. Now we have access to a new, spiritual body. Not spiritual in the sense that it is non-physical, but spiritual in the sense that it is filled with and empowered by the life-giving Spirit of Jesus.
In his commentary on this passage Tom Wright suggests that we imagine going to buy a new car. On one side of the showroom are the petrol and diesel cars. On the other side are the electric cars. And then the sales person takes you over to look at a car all on its own. They tell you that this car has a completely new kind of engine that runs on a new fuel that causes no pollution and it’s supply is unlimited. Because of the way the engine works it will never wear out or break down. Maybe it sounds too good to be true, just a fantasy, but it does provide a way in to think about the spiritual body. The question is not “what is made of?” but, “what does it run on?”
This is the sense in which our resurrection bodies will be spiritual. They will be saturated by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. That is what they will “run on”. This is what will imbue them with their durability, glory and power, all of which are in the image of the first-born from the dead, the risen and ascended last Adam. The human on the throne of heaven. Jesus.
We have a foretaste of this now. The Father has sent the Holy Spirit to be with us, to convict us, to encourage us, to empower us in our earthly lives. However, we are still living in our natural bodies, with all their limitations. When we die, when these bodies are sown, we will be raised to life in new bodies, that will not have those limitations, then we will truly experience the life in all its fulness that Jesus promised to all who follow him.
Having demonstrated the foolishness of the question “what sort of body will be raised.” by showing that the resurrection body will be different to our current bodies, Paul goes on in verses 50-57 to lay out the positive side, a beautiful and inspiring vision of what is to come – when we will truly see the reality of the defeat of death for ever and which comes to it’s glorious conclusion:
“Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Then, in v58 we get a brief summary and conclusion of Paul’s argument, with the out workings of the implications of all that Paul has said about the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, and what that means about our own resurrection.
“Stand firm – give yourself fully to the work – because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.”
This week in Morning Prayer, we have been reading our way through the beginning of the book of Ecclesiastes. It has been slightly hard going. One of the major themes in that book is Solomon’s contention that “all is vanity and a chasing after wind” and, in particular, toil is meaningless because after our lives of work and toil we return to dust, and all that fruit of that work goes to someone else and, in the end, is forgotten.
In Ecclesiastes 2:21 the writer asks a question,
“What do people get for all their toil and anxious striving with which they labour under the sun?”
To which Paul answers, “Because we know that Christ was raised, we can trust that we will be raised, and so the work we do now for him and his kingdom has eternal significance. We don’t have to be anxious or strive, but we are to stand firm and get on with the works that God has prepared for us to do.”
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