1 Cor No.35 The Resurrection No.4

It's chapter 15, verse 35. But someone may ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come? How foolish, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else.

But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed, he gives its own body. All flesh is not the same. Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another, and fish another.

There are also heavenly bodies, and there are earthly bodies. But the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another, and the stars another.

And star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is 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. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being, the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.

The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that, the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth.

And as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. Now may God add his blessing to that reading from his word.

And I'd be glad if you'd have your Bibles open at 1 Corinthians in chapter 15. And we shall be looking at the teaching of the apostle Paul from the 35th, right through to the 49th verse of this passage. One of the things that was totally foreign to the Greek way of thinking was the concept of this body after death being brought together and going through a transformation that one might refer to as a resurrection.

It's difficult for those of us who've been immersed in Christianity almost since the day that we were born to appreciate the great problem that this was for the Grecian mind. You get some feel of this when you read in the Acts of the Apostles of Paul standing in front of Agrippa. You remember how there in the 26th chapter he gives some account of his own commitment to Christianity.

And in front of Agrippa and the Roman governor, he not only speaks of Jesus, but he speaks about the resurrection. And he sees the look of puzzlement on the face of Agrippa. And he recognizes by the retort of the Roman governor that what he has to say appears to them as nonsense.

Indeed, one of the two, the Roman says to Paul, you're mad, you must be absolutely insane to believe that when the body is disintegrated, it will be brought back together again and that there will be life emerging again from what has been a decayed corpse. But Paul makes that tremendous response in the eighth verse of Acts 26 when he says, why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead? And he spells out again his own testimony to the fact that Jesus not only died on the cross, but he was raised again to demonstrate his claim to be the Son of God. Now, it's that particular problem that's basic to Paul's thinking when you come to the 35th and onwards verses of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 15.

Here he's got some imaginary person putting through a question, a segment of the congregation at Corinth that are becoming heretical in their understanding of the doctrine of the resurrection. And Paul suggests what their reactions may be. How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come? Well, we're going to look into the way that the apostle deals with this.

And remember, he's not concerned with the resurrection purely as an academic thing. I tried to show you last week, and I believe by God's grace with some measure of success, that there are practical implications that devolve from our believing in the resurrection. If you literally have as a conviction that the end of this life, death, is not the full stop to your personality, but rather you go on and give an account for the way that you live.

If you have that conviction, then it's going to transform your whole approach to life here and now. That's the reason why the apostle Paul says in the 32nd verse, if there is no resurrection at all, well, let's eat and drink and be merry. Let's just live like the animal.

If there is no distinction between ourselves as human beings and the ordinary animals in the jungle, on the fields, then we may as well live at an animal level, at a bestial level. But if we believe that through death we pass, and on the other side we stand before a holy God, then that is going to be a controlling factor during the remainder of our lifespan. So you see the point.

Dealing with the resurrection is by no means a purely academic thing at all. It becomes a regulative factor in the way that you live your life. If you do believe that as Jesus was raised, so you too will be raised and will have to stand before a holy God.

Well, the apostle's working this out. And as I say, he does so in a brilliant fashion, as you would expect from a man whose mind is inspired by the Spirit. He also works it out as a pastor who has a concern for the people whom he is endeavoring to teach.

And as he comes to grips with these two questions in the 35th verse, you will discover that in his answer, he starts first of all to give an illustration which is perceptible. An illustration which is perceptible. Look what he has to say from the 36th through to the 38th verse.

He has in mind a grain of seed. And he says, let's put that in our hand and let's just examine it for a moment. Now, what can you say about that corn? What can you say about that grain? Well, it is absolutely lifeless.

And yet, you know, if you have any common sense at all, if your faithlessness, if your incredulity in nature is not such that you doubt everything, you know that when that seed is deposited in mother earth, something remarkable happens. What is dead springs to life. Now, immediately the Corinthians would recognize what Paul is referring to.

They see this every harvest. They recognize at every planting that ultimately there will be benefits for the farmer, for the agriculturalist. And this is what Paul has in mind then when he says what you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. You imagine the acorn in your hand. Now, when you plant that, you're not physically planting the oak.

You know because you have a knowledge of forestry that from the acorn will come a towering tree if you imagine years elapsing. But you take that seed, you take that acorn and you plant it. And you know that ultimately because of the miracle of nature, there will come growth.

This you recall was the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is nothing novel on the part of Paul in taking this miracle of nature and showing there the spiritual implications. Here our Lord in John's gospel in the 12th chapter and verse 24 is spelling out the benefits of his death.

He says in verse 23, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth. 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. Now, here is the apostle taking exactly the same teaching of our Lord Jesus. He's speaking about the resurrection and this is an illustration which is perceptible to all the Corinthian readers of his letter.

If it was not the case that a seed does not produce, having died in the ground, new growth and new life, then it would be absurd to engage in the planting. And that's the case with the resurrection. If Jesus has not been raised, if you're not going to be raised, then don't bother about the way in which you live your life.

It doesn't really matter at all. But if you see from this example of nature, this perceptive illustration, some idea of what is going to happen to the human body, if you recognize that Christ is the first roots of those who slept and you will follow in his trail, then you will live a completely different life as a result. How many a person would say, how many people would say, I don't believe in harvest because I don't understand the miracle of germination.

Now, that would be foolish. I know very little about gardening, I would confess. But I'm not daft enough to say that if I buy a packet of Sutton seeds, that simply because I don't understand the miracle of germination and growth, that those seeds, when planted, will produce nothing at all.

I'm not silly enough to say that. Now, says the apostle, if you're silly enough to say that when the body is sown in the ground in a corpse like a seed, that there could conceivably be no resurrection, then, says the apostle, you are an absolute fool. How foolish, verse 36, you are.

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined.

And to each kind of seed, he gives its own body. So there are three deductions that Paul makes from this miracle of nature. Three deductions that he makes when he applies it to our own circumstances.

A new plant will not appear until it dies. Neither will you have a new, a resurrection body until your original body has died. One cannot tell from the seed, necessarily, what future plant will be produced.

Neither can we have any exact idea of what future life we will live from our understanding of life now. We know that it's gonna be wonderful, but the apostle Paul says it strains human language to be able to describe it. You may have a shadowy idea, but eye has not seen, ear has not heard the things that God has in store for those who love him.

So if you have an unknown seed and you plant it into the ground, you can't know what sort of fruit, what sort of plant will be produced. So in a similar fashion, we have just a vague, shadowy idea that there is a resurrection life which will correspond in part, but transcend the life that we have here on this earth and enjoy in varying degrees right now. And the apostle teaches us thirdly that as there is continuity between the seed and the flower, so there will be continuity between the present body and the resurrection body.

Now that oak, for example, it continues from the acorn. There are certain things about the oak that stem from, so to speak, the acorn. There is some continuity.

Now that's as far as the apostle wants to go at this moment. In the new life that you and I ultimately shall have, the new bodies that will be given us to live out that life, there will be some continuity, there will be some resemblance. How it's all going to be worked through, well, says the apostle, I'm not clear in the way that I can express it fully, but there will be some continuity and there will be some discontinuity.

So when Paul talks about the resurrection body, he first of all moves to an illustration which is perceptible. He takes us to the realm of nature and he shows us from the seed that has to die and eventually springs forth and produces something that is absolutely outstanding. He shows us from that that we can pin our hopes as Christians on the fact that when we die, we will be as the seed that falls into the ground, but ultimately a new life, a more splendid life shall result.

But then from the 39th verse and through to the 41st verse, he develops his thinking just a little. Having given us an illustration which is perceptible, he makes a distinction that is perpetual, a distinction between the type of life that we will ultimately have in eternity over against the life that we have now. There are certain things that will be in common, but there are certain things that will be marvelously different.

Now, how does he argue this one through? Well, look what he has to say in the 39th verse and here it's just a human argument. He says, we know on this earth, on planet earth, that all flesh is not the same. Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another, and fish another.

And then he goes on possibly to refer to angelic beings, though it's not too easy to discern just what is in his thinking when he refers to heavenly bodies. But let's take it as referring to angels. There are celestial beings and they have a different type of body, if you put that word in inverted commas.

And then he refers back again to earthly bodies. And then he refers to the planetary bodies in terms of verse 41, the sun and also the stars. He says, all these things differ.

There is one glory of one star and another glory of another star. One star shines more brightly than the other shines. So in the world of human nature, in the world of this planet, in the realm of the universe, there are different forms of bodies.

Now, says the apostle, and this is his point in using that illustration, when you get to the 42nd verse, so will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable. And he goes on, it is raised, imperishable.

What is his point? Well, you see, it's simply this, and it's easy really to identify. There will be a special type of body for you and for me in the eternal age. There will be a distinction that is perpetual between the body that you and I shall receive and the one that we have now.

There will be something that smacks of a common denominator as the acorn has as a common denominator, the fact that it is related in some degree to the oak tree. But there are many differences between the oak tree and the acorn. Now, says the apostle Paul, with this new body, there will be distinctions that are perpetual.

And so in the 42nd verse, to make his teaching that much more clear, he takes us to the very grave itself. And he refers to the body being put into the grave in terms of seed that is sown. Now, what's the first thing he has to say about our body as it now is? Well, he tells us that it is perishable.

For those of you who are following from the authorized version of the Bible, it is a corruptible body. Now, you know that, don't you? The seeds of the decay, they're in your body right now. When you get to about your 18th year, you start producing the same number of cells as you used to have.

Death is a very prolonged process. Aging is caused by the fact that the cells are not manufactured by the body at the same rate as they used to be. And all the friends particularly will testify to the fact that their vision isn't as clear as once it was.

Their ears do not contain the same sensitivity in hearing as it did. There are seeds of decay within our body. And we know that shortly before we reach death, assuming that we die naturally and not by an accident, our whole physical frame slows up.

And the last few months, the last few years may be very painful and very frustrating years. Now, says the apostle Paul, that body which is so perishable will be raised imperishable. This is the first note of discontinuity.

There will be nothing that is perishing or perishable about the new body that you will receive when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back. There will be no more pain in your body. There will be no more physical frustration or limitation at all.

This will be entirely different from the body that you and I have at this moment. But then, says the apostle, emphasizing the discontinuity between our bodies now and the bodies then. He says, it is sown in dishonor and then it is raised in glory.

Death is a dishonorable thing in this sense. Well, we dress the corpse up in the best clothing and we select a fine casket and we have flowers and we try to make a memorial service as acceptable and as truthful as possible. But having witnessed this scene on dozens of occasions, I tell you that when I see the coffin lowered into the grave, I think how dishonoring to the body.

When I see the coffin being shot through, the curtains ultimately into the flames at the crematorium, I think how dishonoring to the body. But that's the sort of body that you and I now have. You have to face facts.

There is no other way to approach it. But, says the apostle, here is the element of discontinuity. It is sown in dishonor.

It is raised in glory. Paul, earlier in, or rather later, historically in the epistle that he writes to the Philippians, chapter three and verse 21, refers to our vile bodies. And they are vile.

There are many things about this body that I personally would like to change and maybe you'd have one or two suggestions you could make too. Maybe I could about yours also. But the point is this, that this dishonorable body that ultimately will be subject to the dishonor of interment or cremation will one day be raised in absolute glory.

And that, I think, is a marvelous factor on which to dwell in our minds, particularly some of us who get frustrated about our bodily limitations. Says Paul, and he's not through, he brings out another comparison. It is sown in weakness.

Now, again, you know this yourself. Your body gets increasingly weak. What is death but weakness at its most absolute state.

You can't get any more weak than when you are dead. It is sown in weakness, but it is going to be raised in power. That same power which brought Jesus back from the dead is going to be so exercised in the fragments of your mortal remains that you will know a resurrection in great power and in great glory.

The same spirit as raised Jesus from the dead shall ultimately be effective in the seed, your body, which has been interred in the ground. Now, says the apostle, making his fourth contrast, it is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body.

Now, when he says it is raised a spiritual body, he's not suggesting that it's going to be non-material. The apostle sometimes uses that word spiritual with a very much a material and physical sense. For example, even in this epistle in the third chapter, he speaks to the Christians at Corinth and he says, brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly, mere infants in Christ.

No, the idea that the New Testament teaches that our existence beyond the grave is just in terms of ghosts and spirits, classically understood, is a nonsense. Paul says it is sown a natural body with all its limitations, the same limitations as the animals have in as much as ultimately they die. That's our body now, but it will be raised a spiritual body, a body like unto the glorious body of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Why is that so necessary? Well, for this reason. If our bodies were not to be raised physically, then the devil would have ultimately triumphed over the purposes of God. When Adam fell and we fell in Adam, we took the seeds of death into human nature.

But the purposes of God are for those seeds of death to be eliminated. And if there was not to be a physical resurrection, the victory would be that of Lucifer, even though he is in hell during the whole of the eternal age. He was able to do what God could not undo.

But that, says the apostle Paul, is ridiculous. We have been sown a natural body. We shall be raised a spiritual body.

There will be correspondence in the same way as the oak corresponds to the acorn, but there will be a non-correspondence in as much as the new body will not be perishable. There will be no dishonor. There will be no weakness.

There will be nothing that we would perhaps use the word natural to describe about that body, which is yet to be. So you see how very, very practical Paul is. Later on, not next week, but when I come back to the final passage of 1 Corinthians 15, we'll see him actually peering into the grave.

And I love to think of Paul doing this. So many, many times up at Durrington Cemetery or at the crematorium, I've had Paul's cynical, mocking words in my mind. Oh, death, where is your sting? Oh, grave, where is your victory? The devil hasn't got the last laugh.

Death, which has felled every human being up to this point in time and will ultimately fell us unless the Lord comes. Death, with all the problems, is not the final enemy that cannot be thwarted through Jesus. Our Lord will raise our bodies and there will be correspondence and there will be an element of discontinuity between what is yet to be and what we now have.

So here is the apostle and he works it through very interestingly indeed. He gives us an illustration which is perceptible. He makes distinctions which are perpetual.

And then finally, from the 45th through to the 49th verses, here is a conclusion that is predictable, a conclusion that is predictable. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Now verse 45, so it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being, the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.

You remember how Paul earlier on in the chapter has made some sort of correspondence, some contrast between the work of Adam and the work of the Lord Jesus. He does that in the 21st verse and also in the 22nd. Well, now he's back in that contrast again and he's talking about the first man, Adam.

Adam was a living being that we know in Genesis 2. God breathes into Adam the breath of lives. And you and I, we're like Adam at the natural level. God has granted his breath to be breathed into us.

That's why we have life, naturally speaking. Ah, but that's not the end of the point. There's a conclusion that has to be arrived at and Paul will do it so very logically.

He takes you to the first Adam, but he's not content. What does he do next? Well, he takes you to the last Adam. And what does he say about the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, he is a life-giving spirit.

What does that mean? Well, Adam cannot give spiritual life to any man. He is a sinner. He's expelled from the garden of Eden.

And with Eve, he goes to face the consequences of his sin. As in Adam, all die. But that's not the end.

A second Adam to the rescue came. As in Adam, all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. And when Jesus came to this world, with a combination of his divine nature and his human nature, he has life in himself.

You remember how John's Gospel puts it in the fifth chapter and also the 21st and I think following the 26th verse. Jesus has come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. Here I am in Adam.

I can't in any way excuse myself from that category. I am in Adam, I am born an Adamic man and all the deficiencies of my natural heritage are with me. But blessed be God, I don't stay in that category.

I move from the ranks of the first Adam into the category of the last Adam because Jesus Christ is a life-giving spirit. I am come that you might have life. And this is the delightful experience of the Christian.

Look how Paul spells it out again in the 46th verse. He reminds us that the spiritual did not come first. No, we were born carnal.

We were born in the likeness of Adam. But the moment came in our life, as it did with the apostle on the Damascus road, when the spiritual took over, when we gave ourselves to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit came into our lives and we were transformed as a result. Now says the apostle, verse 47, the first man was of the dust of the earth.

The second man, Jesus, is from heaven. Now, verse 48, logically, as was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth. But as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.

What does he mean? Well, if you've put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, his life pulsates in you. Your Adamic nature is still with you in degree, but decreasing degree. Your natural body is still with you.

But there has been a marvelous transformation implanted into you, is none other than the life of Christ. When I look upon a Christian congregation, I see people who are reflecting to some degree the personality of Jesus. Some who are participating in his life.

Now says the apostle, gathering the whole thing together into a marvelous conclusion. Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. Adam was ultimately created in the image of God, but that image was shattered.

He sinned. And when he was expelled from the garden of Eden, as I mentioned, he went to face the consequences of his sin. Now you imagine Adam's problem, and your problem and mine, because we're in Adam, if things had just been left like that.

Here we are, we've got the image of Adam upon us. I sin, you have sinned, as he did. My body fails, his body fails.

Your body will fail. We bear the stamp of Adam on us. About that there can be no argument.

But, and this is the glory of the Christian gospel, as we were in Adam, so we're now in Christ. And the very image of Jesus is to be made more and more apparent in us. As we have borne the image of the earthly, so we must bear the image of the heavenly.

What was God's immediate purpose in creating man? I've answered it a few moments ago. To make him in his image. But that purpose was frustrated when man in Adam sinned.

But that purpose is realized in the Lord Jesus, who when he went to the cross, did away with the consequences of our sin, and makes you and me acceptable in the presence of the living God. In other words, Jesus restores the image of God in you and me. At the resurrection, the creator's purpose that man should reflect his image will be finally realized when we are conformed to him, who is the image of God.

So you see, as I bring my remarks to a conclusion, how marvelous is Paul's teaching here? He's talking about the resurrection, and he illustrates it from what is perceptible. You don't deny the fact of a harvest simply because you fail to understand all about germination. You recognize that within the seed, there is a potential for new growth.

Now, says the apostle, the same applies to the human body. And he goes on to make a distinction, or distinctions that are perpetual. In the new body that occurs, one day when Jesus returns, there will be discontinuity, areas where our bodies now will be dissimilar to the ones that we receive.

And yet there will be an element of correspondence as the acorn corresponds to the oak tree. And then the apostle goes on, and he makes his conclusion that is predictable when you think through the whole of his argument. The purpose of Jesus coming into the world was to undo the plight that Adam got mankind into.

Now, as you're born Adam's image, so you must bear the image of the second Adam, even the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you ask yourself specifically what your new body is going to be like, then the hint of an answer to that question is by looking to Jesus and the resurrection accounts and the descriptions there of the body of the Lord Jesus, because your body is going to be like his glorious body. Beloved, it does not appear what we shall be, but when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Now, the details of that statement and the rest of what Paul has to say in this chapter, we still have to work out. But the point of challenge remains at this. Are you in Adam, or are you in Christ? Do you bear only the image of the earthly, or are you responding to the fullness of the spirit, having confessed Jesus as Lord, and starting to bear marks that correspond to the image of the heavenly? How much of Jesus Christ is there in you? Amen.

♪ The Lord in all our hearts has said ♪ For just as a father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and now has come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the father has life in himself, so he has granted the son to have life in himself, and he has given him authority to judge because he is the son of man.

Father God, we look forward to that day when your son will have finished the new creation that he has commenced in us. And until that time, and during our earthly life and pilgrimage, we ask that you will keep us faithful to you, cooperating with the ministry of the Holy Spirit so that there becomes increasingly obvious in our varied personalities that Jesus Christ is reigning supreme. Help us now increasingly to bear the image of the heavenly as, alas, so very obviously we have borne the image of the earthy.

And this we pray for the eternal glory of Jesus the Christ, the second Adam, amen.