Scripture Daily

Context No. 1790 of 4322 · 1 Corinthians

Context · Reflection

1 Corinthians 15:42-50: in context

42So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown perishable; it is raised imperishable. 43It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is also a spiritual body. 45So also it is written, “The first man Adam became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46However, that which is spiritual isn’t first, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual. 47The first man is of the earth, made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. 48As is the one made of dust, such are those who are also made of dust; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. 49As we have borne the image of those made of dust, let’s also bear the image of the heavenly. 50Now I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood can’t inherit God’s Kingdom; neither does the perishable inherit imperishable.

Paul describes the resurrection of the body using the image of sowing and harvest. What is sown is not what is raised. The body is sown perishable and raised imperishable; sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. The first man, Adam, was of the dust; the last Adam, Christ, is a life-giving spirit. As we have borne the image of the man of dust, Paul says, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

The image Paul uses is a seed buried in the ground. A seed sown in the earth looks like the end of it, buried, hidden, dead; and yet from that buried seed rises something greater than the seed, transformed, alive. So it is, Paul says, with the body. What we lay in the ground at death is perishable, weak, dishonored by decay, like a seed buried; but what God raises is imperishable, glorious, strong. The buried body is not the end but the sowing; the resurrection is the harvest. This is the Christian hope in the face of death and of the body's decline. We watch our bodies weaken, age, fail; we lay our dead in the ground; and to the eye it looks like defeat, the perishable simply perishing. Paul says it is a sowing. The body sown in weakness and dishonor will be raised in power and glory, transformed, imperishable, like Christ's own risen body. The decline we experience and the death we face are not the final word for those in Christ; they are the burying of a seed that God will raise. This does not make grief unreal or the weakening of the body painless; the seed really is buried, and it hurts. But it changes what the burying means. The body laid in the ground is not discarded but sown, awaiting a resurrection in which it is raised imperishable and glorious. We who have borne the image of the man of dust, weak and perishable, will bear the image of the heavenly, in a body raised beyond decay. The Christian faces the decline and death of the body not as an end but as a sowing, in the hope of the harvest God has promised, when the perishable is raised imperishable.

As I watch my body weaken or face the death of those I love, do I see only the perishable perishing, or can I hold Paul's hope, that the body sown in weakness and dishonor is like a seed buried in the ground, to be raised by God imperishable and glorious, so that death for those in Christ is not an end but a sowing?

Sources