About this sermon
Some ask how the dead are raised and with what kind of body. Paul answers that a seed must die before it grows, and God gives each kind the body he chooses. The body is sown perishable, in dishonor and weakness, and raised imperishable, in glory and power. God who turns a caterpillar into a butterfly will transform his people’s lowly bodies to be like Christ’s glorious body.
Sermon transcript
Well, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15. This morning we’ll be reading verses 35-44. 1 Corinthians 15 verses 35-44. Please hear God’s word. But someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? You foolish person. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body, for not all flesh is the same. There is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. But the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another.
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is 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. Well, praise God. Please be seated. Let’s begin with prayer. Our God in heaven, we thank you for your word. And now, as this word is expounded, we pray, God, that you would be ever-present, that your spirit would take our hearts and mold them by your word. We ask God that you would make our minds attentive to your word.
Not just that we might be good students. No, that we would be those who are being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. And we ask that you would use even this, even this sermon, even right now, even today, as a means of transforming us into the image of Jesus Christ, a means of grace. We pray it in His name. Amen. Perhaps one of the most amazing transformations in nature is that ugly little caterpillar that hides itself in the cocoon and then emerges shortly thereafter. as a beautiful butterfly. And of course, all of you perhaps are familiar with this very one. It’s an amazing, amazing transformation that we find in nature. How does it happen? Well, I can bore you with a talk of enzymes and the chrysalis, metamorphosis. But instead, what I’ll do is I’ll simply remind you that the amazing transformation as part of God’s creative design.
It’s part of God’s wonderful handiwork. That’s what we want to think about this morning. You see, if God could transform this homely looking caterpillar into a majestic butterfly, is He not able to raise us up from the dead? To transform our lowly bodies? at the resurrection. That’s what we want to think about this morning. Here as we begin in verse 35, what you find are two questions. If you cast your eye down on verse 35, you’ll see them. How are the dead raised and what kind of body do they come? Here in the text that follows, Paul answers these questions for the Corinthians and for us. His answers are rich. He roots them in the nature of God Himself, of Christ, and man, and salvation, and eschatology, or the end times. So much richness in His answers.
And His answers provide for us instruction and encouragement. And this morning, I pray that you would walk out of here being instructed and encouraged by the words of God. Trust in the Lord. and in His glorious resurrection work. Trust in the Lord and in His glorious resurrection work. Paul is going to help us this morning to do that very thing. He’s going to direct our attention to three gracious yet powerful actions of God. You think about the work of God, the actions of God. Here Paul gives us three. They’re gracious. but they’re powerful. So let’s dive right in. The first gracious and powerful action of God that we find in the text is this. God brings resurrection life from the dead. God brings resurrection life from the dead, verses 36 and 37. How is it that we’re raised from the dead?
How is it that we can be resurrected? Well, God is the one who brings that resurrection life from the dead. If you look back at those questions in verse 35, you see there are two questions there. And here Paul begins, he’s going to begin in reverse order. He’s going to answer that second question first. With what kind of body do they come? But before he even does that, what he’s going to do is he’s going to dismantle some of the presuppositions that the Corinthians have that are false presuppositions, the things that their neighbors, their culture are telling them that are mixing up their ability to understand the truth. And so this section here of God bringing resurrection life from the dead, verses 36 and 37, Paul is really dismantling these presuppositions to get ready to answer that question with what kind of body do they come?
And if you remember from last week in the evening when I was here, their issue is really an issue with the bodily resurrection. Not the bodily resurrection of Christ, but the bodily resurrection of themselves. See, they live in the midst of a Greek culture, and this Greek culture had a dualistic mindset. Dualism. You say, what does that mean? Well, simply that the spirit is good and the body is bad. And you see, if you have this dualistic mindset, spirit is good, body is bad, well then how can you raise up, or how can God raise up this bad body? How’s that going to work? And apparently they didn’t understand how the material bodies These bodies that we have, subject to sin, subject to sickness and death and decay, how could these bodies, these weak bodies that we live in, we just prayed about that very thing, how could these weak, decaying bodies be raised up and live eternally?
See, the problem is, they were thinking that the bodies that are raised up are gonna be the exact same bodies that we’re in now. And if you were thinking that way, you would be confused too. You’d say, well, I don’t want this body for all eternity. Because it’s weak. It’s decaying. And maybe if you’re young, you might say, I’m good. But you won’t always be. That’s going to get older. It’s going to get weaker. Remember when I turned 40, I was thinking, hey, I’m pretty good. But it wasn’t long afterwards where I think I feel a little difference. It happens. They assumed that the future bodies would be the same as they are now. And what does Paul do? Look at verse 36. He says, you foolish person. He calls them fools. Why? Well, Ephesians helps us out.
In Ephesians 5.17, he says this, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Just think about that for a second. Do not be foolish. Okay, what does it mean not to be foolish? He says understand what the will of the Lord is. So to be foolish is to go and to listen to those voices of the culture and those people around you who are telling you all these things. But to not be foolish is to understand the will of the Lord. In other words, start with the Scriptures, the importance of the Scripture. That’s our beginning point. That’s our foundation. That’s our rock. That’s where we begin and hear the truth of God. And we ground our understanding and we solidify our convictions, not what the people of the world tell us.
This is a good reminder for us that we must begin with the Word of God. What are the things that you believe? How is it that you live your life? And what is the root of those things? Is it based on what the culture is saying? Or what you’ve heard by some guru or scientist or expert or self-proclaimed expert? Or is it derived from the Word of God? Well, here Paul is going to now, again, dive in. We said he’ll be dismantling their presuppositions. I want us to see how he does that. Let me begin by sharing with you a quote by a commentator. He says this, he says, that of the seeds in verses 36 through 38 illustrates both the genuine continuity of the future body with the present one and the reality of its transformation.
So Paul’s gonna use this botanical illustration, the seed illustration, And the seed illustration’s a really good one because it emphasizes both continuity and discontinuity. And I want us to see both of those. So let’s think about them in turn. Let’s begin with continuity. See, this was their concern, continuity. Problem was they were thinking 100% continuity. I’m gonna be the same then as I am now. But what Paul does is he begins by affirming continuity. There is some continuity. In other words, our current bodies are not the exact bodies that will be resurrected, but they are still our bodies. There’s continuity. It’s not like that body’s gonna be completely, it’s not like that’s not gonna be you anymore. It’s not gonna be somebody else. It’s still you, there’s continuity. Look at verse 36, he says, what is sown is what comes to life.
It’s not something different that’s sown, it’s something completely, 100% different that comes to life. Verse 37, what is sown is a kernel of what is raised. It’s not exactly the same. We’re gonna look at the discontinuity in a minute, but it is a kernel of what is raised. There is continuity. You can even go back to the opening illustration of the caterpillar and the butterfly. They’re vastly different, but it’s not a completely different being. The seed and the plant are not exactly the same. there is some continuity. You can think about that idea of germination, but it’s enough just to say that there’s continuity between the seed. I wouldn’t expect to plant an apple seed and have a pear tree emerge. There’s a continuity between the two. The same is true for our bodies throughout our lives.
Think about your body throughout your life. You’re born And then perhaps so many number of years later, you die. And that body undergoes many changes. And if you study biology, they’ll tell you that these cells die and new cells grow and all these sorts of things. Nevertheless, it’s still you. you’re still you from conception all the way to natural death. And I think this is a good thing for us to stop and ponder for a minute, the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, because there’s continuity. That child that is conceived and that is formed and fashioned in the image of God, Psalm 139, all the way to that person who dies, the natural death, there’s a sanctity there because there is no change at some point where this begins to be a person or this ceases to be a person.
And you see, these are the sorts of things from the scripture that energize our worldview and that are in direct conflict with some of the voices that we hear around us in our culture. Continuity was their issue. However, there was also the discontinuity. And this is where Paul really pressed in to the Corinthians. The discontinuity. Because remember, they believed continuity. They just had a little too strong of an opinion about continuity. So let’s hear what Paul has to say in these two verses about discontinuity. First, I want you to see this. that Jesus used a similar illustration. John 12, verse 24, listen to what Jesus said. He said this, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.’” See, the body sown is not the exact body that will come up from the ground in every single way.
There’s a difference. There’s a transformation between our current bodies and our resurrection bodies. Verse 37, he says, what is sown is not the body to be. Yes, there’s a continuity, but it’s not exactly the same in every way. Charles Hodge in his commentary gives a very helpful comment. He says this, In what sense is a sprouting acorn the same as a full-grown oak? Not in substance, not in form, not in appearance. It is, however, the same individual organism. The point of the illustration is that what comes up is very different from that which is deposited in the ground. You sow a seed and a plant appears. Isn’t that amazing, right? What a wonderful illustration. I have a hard time not looking at Bruce as I think about his garden through all of this. What a wonderful illustration.
My wife actually said this morning, make sure you tell him how good those tomatoes are. What an amazing thing though, that you can plant a seed in the ground and by the work of God it comes up different. Same organism. different in appearance, different in form, different in substance. And as we get down to verses 42 to 44, Paul’s going to emphasize discontinuity between the present corruptible bodies and the future immortal, incorruptible bodies. We’re going to get there in a few moments. But remember, Paul prepares to answer the question, with what kind of body do they come? He greases the skid, so to speak. He sets the stage. He says there’s discontinuity and there’s continuity, and you’ve got to understand that with God. But now he’s ready to answer that question, with what kind of body do they come?
So we said that God brings resurrection life from death. through both continuity and discontinuity. But let’s see how he answers that question now. The second gracious and powerful action of God that Paul wants us to see is that God molds the resurrection body. God molds it. God is the one who crafts and forms that resurrection body. Verses 38 through the beginning of verse 42. God molds the resurrection body. And that’s the first thing I want you to see and really digest and really, really just meditate upon this in your hearts and minds, even as we’re thinking about it right now. Verse 38, but God, but God gives. it a body as He has chosen. But God gives it as He has chosen. You see this. The resurrection body is a product of what? Not of natural processes.
Not of something that we do or think or say. No, it is a product of the sovereign God. But God gives. God affects the transition between seed and plant. God is the one who gives. And he does it by his sovereign choice. And when you think of that word give, you could turn it around and say what is given is what? It’s a gift. This is a gift from God. The body is a gift from God. Our current bodies are gifts from God. Our resurrection bodies will be gifts from God. So think about your body even now. Consider how it is that you view your body even now. How is it that you take care of your body? How do you steward your body even now? It’s a gift from God. I want you to see in verse 39 that God’s creative work is not limited to a single ingredient.
It’s not as if God had one ingredient. And He made all the creatures, the birds, and the animals, and the fish, and us, and we’re all the same thing. Same ingredient. That’s not the case. His creative work isn’t limited in that way. Here Paul answers that question with what kind of body do they come? And I want you to pay attention to that word, kind. Because he uses it three times in the first three verses of this section. And what he’s saying is there are different kinds. even now, before the resurrection takes place. And this, again, illustrates to us how the resurrection body can be a different kind, continuity at this continuity, but be a different kind from our current bodies. And so he illustrates and says, even now there are different kinds. Humans are different from animals.
Animals are different from birds. Birds are different from fish. These are different kinds. You go back to Genesis in the creation and he creates them as kinds. And you take this idea, you combine it back with verse 38, God has given it a body as he has chosen. And we see that humans are clearly distinguished from animals as a result of God’s sovereign design. You want a strong biblical argument against macro evolution, Darwinian evolution, this is it right here. God has made us according to our kinds, and he says there are different kinds. We are not the same. Birds don’t turn into animals, and fish don’t turn into birds, and animals don’t turn into people. God decreed and God made them differently. But I want you to see in verses 40 to 42, the beginning of 42, that God assigns glory.
Paul says God gives heavenly glory and He has earthly glory. There are different categories of glory here. You have heavenly and you have earthly. We just talked about the earthly. There are different categorizations even within the earthly glory. The birds, the fish, the animals, the humans. And now He gives us a second one. There are heavenly bodies and heavenly glory as well. So there’s differentiation within each category. Within the earthly, there are different kinds. And within the heavenly, there are different kinds. And yet the earthly and the heavenly, both are different as well. I have humans and animals and birds and fish over here. I have moon and stars and heavens over here. And he distinguishes between the two and he distinguishes within the two. Look at verse 40. there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies.
But the glory of the heavenly is of one kind and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and so on.” So God is creative in His handiwork and I want you to think about the implications for us. Our current bodies and our resurrection bodies belong to two different categories. That’s what Paul is driving at. Yes, there’s a continuity, but there’s a discontinuity, and praise to God for that. They belong to different categories. One is earthly, and one is heavenly. Not heavenly in the same way as the stars and the moon and the planets. Heavenly in a very spiritual way. Look at verse 44, for example. He says this, It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there’s a natural body, there’s also a spiritual body.
Verse 49, just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. So you see there’s this contrast between the dust and the heaven, the natural and the spiritual. And he’s saying here, our bodies now are a different glory, a different kind than our bodies that will be raised. They both are consistent with the glory assigned to their kind. Since the Corinthians recognized that heavenly bodies differ from earthly bodies, they should not expect the resurrected body to be a recycled earthly body. Think about that for a minute. They get it that there’s differences in the sun and the moon and the animals and the birds and all that stuff. And so they should understand by way of illustration that, hey, This makes sense.
It’s not just a recycling of the same old earthly body. God chooses and God gives the body. God assigns the glory. Now you might be saying at this point, well I don’t understand how that all works. How does God do it? And let me just say this, it’s enough to understand that God does it. We don’t have to understand exactly how God does it. And let’s take another illustration. One commentator I think had a really good illustration there. He said this, the farmer does not know how the seed grows in the earth. And you actually see that in Mark 4, 27. The Bible actually says that very thing. The farmer does not know how the seed grows in the earth, but only trusts that God is active and will bring it to pass. I may not have to know or understand exactly all the things that are happening under the soil, but if I know, I can know and I can trust that if I plant that in the soil, that if God, by his good kindness, desires for that thing to grow up, to full growth, he’ll do it.
He’ll do it, and I can anticipate that. And that’s encouraging for me with the resurrected body. How does that exactly work? I’ve had a friend of mine ask me questions before, well, but you have certain molecules in your body and the cells and all these things, and how does that work? Who cares? I mean, it’s neat to think about, but ultimately, God can do it. If God can make it in the first place, God can do it the way that he said he would do it. How’s that all work? I don’t know, but I’m glad that God does it. So we need to trust in the sovereignty and the promises of God, regardless of whether we can get our minds around it. At the end of the day, it’s foolish to question God. If God tells us how something’s done or why something’s done, then fine.
If not, we trust what He told us. And we know here this, that God brings resurrection life from the dead. We said that was our first point. We also know that God molds the resurrection body. That was our second point. But there is a third gracious and powerful action that we must see in this text. And that is that God transforms us from humility to glory. He transforms us from humility to glory. And what a crescendo in the text. Verses 42, the end of 42 through verse 44. Remember the two questions in verse 35. With what kind of body would they come? That was actually the second question. He just answered that. And now verse 35, the first question, how are the dead raised? Here, Paul is going to take up the answer to that question.
How will the dead be raised? That word raised is significant. One of the things I like to do in studying the Bible is to pay attention to repetition of words, because repetition typically indicates emphasis. And this word raised is found four times in these three verses. There’s an emphasis on this idea of being raised. Brothers and sisters, we get so caught up in our earthly lives. Sometimes we forget, oftentimes, perhaps too often, we forget that we will be raised up and it will be glorious. We ought to be reminded to look forward to the coming of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead. We ought to yearn for it. Oh, we we need to be awakened. And may this text do that very thing. Here in this section Paul uses a series of contrasts to show that our new body will differ from the present one.
While our current bodies are sown natural and they’re sown perishable, they’re sown in dishonor, they’re sown in weakness, Paul says that our resurrection bodies will be raised spiritual. imperishable in glory and in power. So you have these four sets of contrasts. It’s sown natural and it’s raised spiritual. it’s sown perishable, it’s raised imperishable, it’s sown in dishonor, it’s raised in glory, it’s sown in weakness, and it’s raised in power. And let’s just quickly look at those four together and consider those. First, he says it’s sown perishable and it’s raised imperishable, or your translation might say in corruption and in incorruption. In other words, imperishable. It’s corruptible. That’s what we talked about earlier, that there’s decay, there’s sickness, there’s death. And when it’s imperishable and it’s incorruptible, there is no more sickness. There is no more decay.
There is no more death. Think about even the pictures that God paints for us in the Old Testament. Oftentimes, the Old Testament’s like a picture book, and you see little pictures of this. For example, Jonah’s life. In Jonah 2.6, when he’s under the sea and he’s drowning, it says his life is brought up from the pits. You think about Daniel 3, the men who are in the fiery furnace, and they’re found to be without harm. You see, this is a picture of the fact that we will be imperishable. We will be incorruptible. Listen to this, 2 Timothy 1, verses 8-10. Wonderful New Testament passage assuring us of this very thing. Paul writes this, Now listen to this, which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, here it is, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
Immortality, imperishability, incorruptibility. And Paul is tying in there all the same things that we’ve been tying in here. He says this was given to us in Christ Jesus by the will of God. Remember we talked about Him giving it as a gift. And he says Christ has brought this to us. And therefore, we can suffer for the gospel, he says. We can live our lives in ways that have meaning and purpose and value, because we know these truths. We’re convicted of them, and they drive us to live according to them. You know, your actions will reflect your convictions. So he says, first of all, from perishable to imperishable. Secondly, he says, we are sown in dishonor, and we are raised in glory. In other words, there is no more shame because of sin, that dishonor, that shame that we have.
Even today, we confess our sins to God. He says there is no more shame because we’re sown in dishonor, but we’ll be raised in glory. There will be no more sin. There will be no more temptation to sin. Thirdly, he says what’s sown in weakness is raised in power. We’ve prayed about those who are weak, frailty. We’re frail physically, but we’re also frail in some ways via our temptation. What’s sown is weakness. We’ll be raised in power. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13, verse 4, I love this passage, he says about Christ, for He was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. We also are weak in Him, but we will live by the power of God. You see that we’re united to Christ in His death. And we are united to Christ in His resurrection.
Therefore, we can live by the power of God. 1 Corinthians 6.14, if God raised the Lord, He will raise us up by His power. Not only are we raised spiritually and regenerated by the power of God, we will be raised to newness of life for all eternity in resurrected bodies by the power of God. The fourth one, he says, is what is sown is natural. what is raised is spiritual. There will be no more limits in this time and space sphere. The natural limitations that we face are gone. Again, another one of those things, it’s hard to wrap your mind around exactly what that means, but it will be a different kind, in a sense, a different glory, and God will do that. We’ll look at that a little bit more tonight, what it means to be natural, and we’ll see this phrase, flesh and blood, and we’ll consider that together this evening.
But what’s sown, flesh and blood, or natural, is raised spiritual. There’s an already and a not yet sense. In a way, we have these things in a seed form now. There’s already a seed planted in us if we are in Christ. and that seed will grow, and that seed will sprout, and that seed will come to fruition on the last day. And we’re gonna talk about that more this evening, so please, please be here as we hear that word together this evening. Aren’t we thankful? Aren’t we thankful that God is at work? God is at work in wonderful ways, even more wonderful than the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. God is at work in you, brothers and sisters. Philippians 3, verse 21 says this, He will transform our bodies to be like Christ’s glorious body.
Let that soak in. He will transform our bodies to be like Christ’s glorious body. He is at work. He is at work and we see his gracious yet powerful actions. God brings resurrection life from the dead. God molds the resurrection body. God transforms us from humility to glory. Are you clinging to, are you relying upon God’s gracious and powerful work? Trust in the Lord and in his glorious resurrection work. Trust in the Lord and in his glorious resurrection work. Let’s pray. Our God, we thank you so much for your powerful word and your goodness and your grace. We pray, God, that you would truly impress this into our hearts, that we would trust in you. and in your powerful work, that we would know the continuity, the discontinuity, we might not understand all of the details about it, but that we could at least understand that it’s true.
That it will be me. It’ll be all of us, not somebody else, who will be raised from the dead, and yet we will be gloriously transformed. And not at all because of anything that we do, but only by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. So may we be humbled. And may we know that in your time we will be exalted. In Christ Jesus’ name, amen. Please turn in your Trinity Psalter hymnal to Psalm 113, selection A. Psalm 113, selection A. Please stand to sing. Remain standing for the benediction.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.