God Gives it A Body of Its Own - 1 Corinthians 15:35-39

Devotional Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 15

Week 7
 
God Gives it A Body of Its Own - 1 Corinthians 15:35-39

35 But someone will say, "How are the dead raised?  And with what kind of body do they come?"  36 You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies;  37 and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else.  38 But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.  39 All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish.
. 


We are foolish if we do not pay attention to the evidence all around us in what is usually referred to as “nature.”  The “natural” may not be spiritual, but it functions as it does because of God’s creative work.  Paul was concerned about answering the questions of those who thought they were wise, but were fools, concerning the resurrection.  

Many Greek philosophers were convinced that the body and the spirit (or the flesh and the immaterial) were incompatible.  The immaterial part of a human was effectively trapped in the body and was free only when the body in which it was located died.  The idea of reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, found in many religions, was founded upon this concept.  The immaterial soul or spirit lived on to be reborn into another human body, or that of another creature.  Karma added the twist that rebirth up and down the chain of being was based upon the activity of the soul in each of its birth forms.
Based upon the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and the evidence of nature, Paul argued that return to life through transformation of the whole person, including the body, is the goal of resurrection.  

Paul used the seed as an illustration of this point.  The “bare grain,” the seed, of wheat, barley, or any other grain, is planted, and it “dies.”  That is, it ceases to exist in the form in which it was planted.  The seed will not become the plant it is intended to be unless it gives up the form that it had as a seed and develops into the form it is to become.  God has designed another body for it; each plant sown has a body appropriate to it, and that body is different from all other bodies.  

It would be foolish to walk along a series of planted rows in a garden, observe the various plants, and say, “there is a cabbage,” “that also is a cabbage,” “oh, look, there is another cabbage,” when in fact one is a cabbage, one is lettuce, and one is a watermelon.  The wise farmer learns which plants produce which seeds, and which seeds produce which plants!  

Paul moved to the next phase of his argument by pointing out that not only are the bodies of the plants grown from the seeds different, but it is also true that there is variety in the flesh of the other living creatures the Creator made.  “All flesh is not the same flesh.” Humans, various animals, birds, and fish, all have their own “flesh.”  

This argument is adequate for Paul’s explanation of resurrection, but of course it is simplified.  It is simplified in that there are some species not mentioned, and many species within each of the categories of “flesh” mentioned.  Just as the kind of seed is not important in this explanation, the breakdown of the varieties of species within each category is also unimportant.  In that sense, Paul’s explanation is like that of Moses in Genesis 1 concerning the “kinds.”  
The connection between the thought of the variation in flesh between one creature and another builds on the first part of Paul’s argument.  That the “seed” of each creature produces the creature, and the change of the form of the seed (sperm, egg, etc.) into a different form while the creature is becoming what it is meant to be is a crucial point in this argument.  The Lord told us through Moses that the life of the flesh is in the blood, and the joining of the genetic characteristics of the male and female ensures that the resulting creature will develop from and into the appropriate kind of living flesh.  The life of the creature that is to come is in the combined “seed” of the parents, and the infant that is born is changed in form from the seed, but has the characteristics of its parents.

Obvious in this argument, and crucial for what follows, is the fact that Jesus had to die to be raised in His resurrection body.  So much of what He was before He died was still there, but He was gloriously changed.  In our case, dying is the preparation for our being raised in resurrection bodies, bodies that will be capable of and appropriate for living with God through eternity future.  For those who are alive at the time of Christ’s coming, there is the promise of an instantaneous change into that form.  Paul will have more to say about that later in this chapter.  For now, perhaps it is enough for us to enjoy the thought that the God who designed us for life in this world has also designed the whole person each of us will be when we are raised at the coming of the Lord Jesus (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18).
.