Brothers and sisters:
Someone may say, "How are the dead raised?
With what kind of body will they come back?"
You fool!
Paul imagined an argument that against the idea of resurrection that is still common today, one that objects to the apparent logistical problems to reanimating bodies of the dead in the exact form they once possessed in life. Such objections include but are not limited too the fact that the matter that compromised one body may well have eventually decayed and been incorporated into others, and the seeming problem of space if the world was entirely filled all of the creatures who had ever lived. No wonder it seems as though the Corinthians and others in the early days of the church thought that it was too late for those who had already died, that the corruption of their decaying flesh was irreversible, and that only that living could look forward in hope to the coming of Jesus and the full establishment of his Kingdom on earth. But these problems with resurrection are only apparent problems based on a naively simplistic view of resurrection as resuscitation or reanimation. It is in fact much more. Death and decay is not only not opposed to this fact it is rather a necessary part of the process of transformation from a lesser kind of life to a greater one.
What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies.
And what you sow is not the body that is to be
but a bare kernel of wheat, perhaps, or of some other kind.
We should notice that there is still continuity between what is sown and what grows. Paul was not suggesting that the body was buried and that something entirely different was received instead. Rather he was suggesting a connection as real as that between the seed and the wheat that grows from it. It was to still be a body, but in a sense that transcended our current concepts of the limitations of physical reality.
So also is the resurrection of the dead.
It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible.
It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious.
It is sown weak; it is raised powerful.
"It" is the same thing that is sown and raised but "it" is not strictly identical, nor would we wish it to be. What is promised is more than the raising of the widow's son or the raising of Lazarus or the others during the earthly ministry of Jesus. For they were also raised corruptible and would once again undergo death. But those who die in Christ are raised incorruptible, glorious, and powerful. Our current conception of physical reality can't account for these attributes, any more than it could explain Jesus himself after he rose, and the glory that radiated from him. He was physical enough to be touched and to eat, but powerful enough that he could simply appear in rooms that he been locked. Before he rose he himself was subject to suffering and died in weakness. But he rose in strength, and could neither die no more, nor even suffer.
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.
This sort of language of natural versus spiritual might trip us up. It sounds as though Paul was in fact suggesting some distinction between material and immaterial, but that is not what the underlying Greek implies. Natural might be better rendered as soulish, in the context of the biblical idea of body, soul, and spirit. In this context, the body we now possess is animated by the individual soul as it's life principle. But without the Spirit this soul falls back on its own resources as fundamentally finite and mortal. When we live more from our soul than by the Spirit we have received we tend live selfishly, trying to fight against the inevitabilities of these limitations. Paul was suggesting that the new body will be so animated by the Spirit, so subject to God that it will be obedient to him rather than the decaying world. This Spirit-animated body will then possess attributes that could only come from God, given by Jesus who, because he himself poured out the Spirit was said to become "a life-giving spirit".
Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one,
we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.
We still bear in some measure the image of our fallen first parents. But we already share in the Spirit that will one day entirely suffuse even our physical bodies. Even now we can learn to more and more express the reality that we desire to one day entirely define us. By faith we can live with the resurrection power that the Spirit never ceases to make available to us.
There are seeds that are sown poorly that are not able to bear this resurrection fruit. We must beware the deceptions of the devil, the distractions of the world, and the resistance of that in us which is merely soulish and natural, and instead sow our seeds in the deep soil where God himself will make it grow. The seed needs priority, space, silence, and time, along with a fixed intention of will on our part. There is a real sense it which it needs death, the power of the cross, to open it to new life. But the seed itself comes from God, and he delights to give the growth.
For you have rescued me from death,
my feet, too, from stumbling;
that I may walk before God in the light of the living.
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