Context No. 2668 of 4322 · 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 15:35-41: in context

35But someone will say, “How are the dead raised?” and, “With what kind of body do they come?” 36You foolish one, that which you yourself sow is not made alive unless it dies. 37That which you sow, you don’t sow the body that will be, but a bare grain, maybe of wheat, or of some other kind. 38But God gives it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own. 39All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds. 40There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial differs from that of the terrestrial. 41There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.

When skeptics ask how the dead can possibly be raised, and with what kind of body, Paul answers with a farmer's image. What you sow, he says, does not come to life unless it dies. You do not plant the plant that will be; you plant a bare seed, and God gives it a body of its own, as different from the seed as the full grain is from the kernel that went into the ground.

The seed is the key. A seed buried in the dirt looks like an ending; it disappears, it dies. But that burial is not the last word; it is a sowing, and out of it God brings something far greater than what went in, a body he gives as he pleases. Paul wants us to see death this way. The body laid in the ground is a seed sown, not a story finished, and what God will raise is as gloriously different from the present body as the wheat is from the buried kernel. It reframes not only death but every burial-like loss. What looks like it is simply ending in the ground may be a seed God intends to raise.

Do I view death, and the losses that feel like burials, as simply the end in the ground, or as a seed sown that God will raise into something greater?

Sources

1 Corinthians 15:36: You foolish one, that which you yourself sow is not made alive unless it dies.
1 Corinthians 15:38: But God gives it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own.
John 12:24: unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.