This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “By Way of Reminder” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 15, 1996.

Tonight we are reading from 1 Corinthians 15. We will begin our reading at verse 35. Give your attention to God’s infallible word. But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?” You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 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. But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.

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. There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars. For star differs from star in glory.

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body. 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 also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthly. The second man is from heaven. As is the earthly, so also are those who are earthly, and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

Now I say this, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, at the sound of the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable has put on the imperishable, and this mortal has put on immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. Our Father, even after the pattern established in and by You, we rise to labor and we lift our hands to work.

And Lord, we are asking, even in the light of the coming glory of heaven and the promise of eternal life, that we would give ourselves completely and wholly to our tasks. Father, refresh us, not with natural strength, but with the very strength of the risen Christ, that we might be about the work you have entrusted to us and the vocations to which we have been called. Lord, may we labor energetically, being diligent, working as unto you. Father, may those who are called to service in your church give themselves completely to their tasks in the power of Christ. And may those of us who have labors in this world be strengthened by you, our God, with the power of Christ, to perform them well. Our God, save us from sloth, deliver us from laziness, and Father, may you yourself be our escape from apathy. This we pray, even through Christ, who gave himself completely to his calling, that we might be saved.

Amen. Tonight I want to take you one step further in this journey, which is intended to reinforce the perspective I have endeavored to declare from this pulpit over the years of my service and ministry here. In order to take that step this evening, I want to take you to 1 Corinthians 15, and to a passage that requires careful attention from us. I draw your attention to the latter part of verse 44. As it reads in the King James Version, there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. Or as the New American Standard Version has it, if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

Paul, in keeping with that latter interpretation or rendering, which is more accurate to the Greek, suggests that the one, which he has mentioned in the previous part of the verse, entails the other. The natural body entails the spiritual body, meaning that the natural body demands the spiritual body, and that the two are inseparably linked. In other words, Paul envisions a progression from the one to the other, one that is conceived of here as inevitable.

Now, in making this assertion, Paul openly operates from the vantage point of his faith, a faith which has made clear to him the purposes and intentions of God, a faith which embraces Jesus as the promised Christ raised from the dead. Jesus Christ himself, in his resurrection, is the proof of what he has just stated in this text. So it is in verse 45 of this chapter that Paul goes on to quote Genesis chapter 2, verse 7. “The first man was made a living soul,” so goes the quote. The apostle means this statement to correspond to the natural body that he has just mentioned in verse 44.

He then goes on, however, to complete his thought by speaking about a further Adam, the last Adam, who was made, according to the King James Version, or who became, according to the New American Standard Version, a life-giving spirit. I say life-giving spirit, deleting the article there intentionally. I also say life-giving spirit, meaning by that the capitalization of the word spirit, bringing into view the person of the Holy Spirit. Now, admittedly, what Paul has to say at this point is not easy to understand in every regard.

We may well recognize immediately, for instance, that the last Adam, of whom Paul speaks, is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. But what can the Apostle mean when he says that Jesus Christ, as the last Adam, became a life-giving spirit? This verse speaks as if a change has occurred in Christ himself, as if Christ, the Eternal One, has been subjected to change. But if Christ is eternally God, eternally the Son of God, one in union with the Father and with the Spirit, how then is Paul able to speak of him as undergoing a change? And further, if the Son and the Spirit are actually distinct persons of the Trinity, how then can Paul speak of Christ as if Christ has become the Spirit?

Setting these difficulties aside for the moment, we must be certain of this point. Paul intends the phrase about the last Adam in verse 45 to correspond to his statement at the end of verse 44, the statement about the spiritual body. In other words, Paul, now bold because of what God has done in Christ by raising him from the dead, declares with infallible certainty that there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body, and that the one follows the other according to a certain divine inevitability. If there is the one, then there is the other. Paul’s point is this.

The last Adam has made clear and certain the nature and the meaning of the first Adam. The last Adam has made clear and certain the nature and the meaning of the first Adam. The first Adam, in having been made a living creature by the breath of God, was constituted a natural body. However, the first Adam, in his created state and in his natural body, was intended from the beginning for something else, something more, something higher.

What Adam, in his natural body, was intended for, according to the argument of the Apostle Paul, was the spiritual body—moving from the natural to the spiritual. Adam, in keeping with the revelation in the early chapters of Genesis, was meant to move through the probation set before him with respect to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He was meant to move through that probation from the natural body existence to the spiritual body existence.

That was symbolized by the tree of life. Indeed, as Paul says in verse 46, the spiritual is not first, but rather the natural, and then the spiritual. The matter of Christ’s resurrection is the central point at issue. The matter of Christ’s resurrection is the major focus of this chapter, because according to the Apostle Paul, that resurrection is what accomplishes what God intended in the first place for Adam and his posterity.

Adam, by his fall, fails to achieve the spiritual body. Adam, because of his sin, fails to achieve the spiritual body. He fails to be brought into that spiritual body and the world to which that body belongs. Therefore, Jesus Christ, as the last Adam, gains what Adam forfeited. He gains what Adam failed to gain.

This means that the spiritual body is what is given to Christ in his resurrection. And for Christ to become a life-giving spirit describes the reality of what Christ has become and that world into which he has entered by way of the resurrection. It is a world from which he now dispenses life as the head of a new humanity. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 45, is therefore no evidence that Paul never professed a Trinitarian faith. Instead, it is evidence of a magnificent and full grasp of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ, effected in and through the resurrection of our Savior. The focus is not Christ’s divinity, but his humanity and his thorough identification with those for whom he gives his life.

He actually takes upon himself their life, for he, like them, is found in a natural body, a body which now, due to Adam’s fall, is subject to sin’s ravaging effects and to the decaying effects of death, or as it is spoken of here, corruption. But Jesus, our Savior, having been in the natural body, is raised from the dead, and as the last Adam gains in resurrection the blessed reward meant for humanity from the beginning, namely spiritual life in a spiritual body in a spiritual world. Spiritual life in a spiritual body in a spiritual world. This is, according to the Apostle Paul, what has always been the divine aim for humanity.

This is confirmed further by this text through a couple of additional considerations. First of all, there is a double movement in verse 45 that Paul subtly emphasizes. As we have already noticed, there is the movement from the created Adam to the resurrected Christ, or from the first Adam to the last, or from the natural body to the spiritual body of the risen Savior. But there is also the movement not just between these two figures and two states, but within them.

You see, even in Adam’s creation, there is a forecast of that which is preached by the Apostle Paul here, as he reflects on Genesis 2:7. Adam moves from dust formed by God to becoming a living soul, in-breathed by God Himself, in-breathed by the Spirit, if you will. The movement in Adam’s creation anticipates the spiritual state to which he is destined. Just as he is moved from dust to a living body, he is to move from a living body, that is, a natural body, to a spiritual body. The pattern of what is to be effected in Christ is forecast in Adam’s creation.

That which is accomplished in re-creation is anticipated in original creation. In confirmation, the last Adam—moving on to consideration of Christ himself—does not only contrast with the first Adam and stand over against him, but also differs from what he was formerly, by virtue of taking to himself a true body like ours. This means that the force of Paul’s argument is doubly powerful, driving home his point all the more. However, another point Paul is making here is this: the movement from the natural to the spiritual is independent of sin. Sin hinders and cuts off access to the spiritual, and effectively destroys any hope that a person, in and of himself, could achieve that goal.

But Paul’s quotation of Genesis 2:7 speaks of the first Adam before the fall. Paul’s statement about the natural first and then the spiritual in verse 46 establishes the fact that the order and progress of things as outlined by him here always was the order and the plan of God, and that this is independent of sin. This means that the spiritual body and the world to which it belongs are not the consequence of sin, nor were they made necessary because this world was ruined by the Fall. The spiritual body and the world to which it belongs were always the goal which God had in mind for humanity. This world and man’s natural body were never intended, even from the beginning, as humanity’s ultimate goal.

It is precisely here that much theology, and even much Reformed theology, has become profoundly confused. I say profoundly confused. Originally, Reformed theology taught adamantly and very clearly the Reformed doctrine of the fourfold estate of man. The Westminster Confession of Faith, for instance, was solidly committed to the doctrine of the fourfold estate of man. This doctrine views man in his successive states: first, in innocency before the fall; then, in sin after the fall; then, in redemption because of Christ; and finally, in glory and in heaven. The tendency has now become, even among Reformed thinkers and preachers, to compress the fourfold estate of man into the threefold estate of man, a position in which the third and fourth estates are blended into one, in which redemption and glory are merged and indistinguishable.

This is done in the interest of making man’s redemption merely a function of this world, merely an extension of what takes place in and to this world, so that what is achieved by redemption is merely the restoration of the created order, which eventually expresses itself in a perfected, this-world order and arrangement. This is perpetually and eternally. We are playing, despite our protestations of orthodoxy, with secularism. The Reformed Church is positioning itself for its own fall. And that is because it has developed a love affair with nature.

This position that merges the third and fourth estates—redemption and glory—goes on to suggest that heaven, the vocabulary of heaven in Scripture, and the vocabulary of glory, are simply the Bible’s way of speaking about a perfected, this-world order and arrangement of things.

Paul tells us that the second Adam is the Lord from heaven, verse 47, who stands over against the first Adam, not because of sin, but because of the resurrection. He stands over against the first Adam, who by his created nature is earthly, while the last Adam is heavenly. He goes on to tell us that the earthly is earthly and the heavenly is heavenly, verse 48, and that while we are earthly, we shall become heavenly in our own resurrection as we are conformed to the image of our Savior, verse 49. This is brought about by the Lord from heaven and the resurrection power resident in him. Yes, we shall be raised in our bodies, even as Christ was raised in his. But such is the radical nature of this transition for us, such is the radical nature of putting on the spiritual body and the heavenly world of the Spirit to which that body is suited, that Paul states his case in the most disjunctive manner, as if the one state is mutually exclusive of the other.

Indeed, as he says in verse 50, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Now, we all believe in the resurrection of the body. Paul believes in the resurrection of the body. This is a chapter defending the resurrection of the body. But in verse 50 of this chapter, Paul says that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

Why would he make such a statement? He makes this statement so that you will pause and understand what he is saying. Yes, there is continuity as you move from one world to the other, but there is also radical discontinuity. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Verse 50. That world of the Spirit, that heavenly order into which we, in our glorious spiritual bodies, shall be brought. Here is the plan and purpose of God for his elect. Here is their joy and their hope.

Now I want to test you to see whether you are true Calvinists. Did Calvin love heaven? I challenge anyone to prove that he did not. And if the advocates of the spinning earth who are currently in the Reformed Church still claim to be Calvinists, I challenge them to reread the third book of Calvin’s Institutes, where they will find that the man they claim as their champion was not the advocate of the spinning earth, but of the eternal heavens. In fact, I will go so far as to say: remove heaven from Calvin’s theology, and you have no Calvinism as Calvin preached and taught it. Period. Exclamation point. End of message. Amen.

Our Father, may we not be afraid of charges of Platonism or of world flight, or of being so heavenly-minded that we are of no earthly good. Instead, O God, may we stand firm in the proclamation of the Apostle Paul, not so that we might twist it to support our own preferred theology, but so that we might truly hear the inspired servant of God.

Oh Lord, we would plead with you for ourselves and for your church. That we would love your word, and that we would receive the fullness of that revelation which is set before us. Even in keeping with the plan and purpose which you intended for your people, even from the beginning. Namely, that we were destined.

For spiritual bodies in a spiritual world. And Lord, we would capitalize the S at the beginning of spiritual, meaning bodies appropriate to the Holy Spirit in a world in which the Holy Spirit reigns and rules. We plead with you, O God, that you will bless us even as we give ourselves to labors that are appropriate to us in this world, that we would not despise those labors, those responsibilities, the demands, and even the ethical challenges that are brought to bear upon us because of our place in this world. Instead, O God, with the light of heaven shining in us, even the glory of our hope, even the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the spiritual body and the spiritual world, the Holy Spirit himself, may we give ourselves to our labors in ways that please you, thus being transformed from a dark place to the glory of your name. We ask these things, looking unto you through Christ, who is risen in his spiritual body, who has gone into that spiritual world, who intercedes at your right hand.

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.