Live like Jesus-1 Cor 15:35-49

1 Corinthians, New Testament, Sermons

Video of Sermon on 3/21/2021. “I‘m not perfect” is a lame excuse and a cop out for a Christian. Jesus says “Be perfect” to his people, his church (Mt 5:48). Paul says, “let us bear the image of the man from heaven” (1 Cor 15:49), who lived a perfect life. Thus, to follow Jesus is to reflect him. Therefore…

Conform to the “man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:49) by the way you live is a nonnegotiable imperative. A Christian should not bear the likeness of the “man of the earth” but bear the likeness of the “man of heaven.” The Corinthian Christians claim to have already attained the heavenly existence that is yet to be. But their present immoral unethical shameful behavior (1 Cor 5:1; 6:6, 12, 15, 18; 8:11; 10:14; 11:21) contradicts their claim. To them their physical body will be destroyed when they die (1 Cor 6:13a). So they deny the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor 15:12) and regard the resurrection body as disgusting and repugnant (1 Cor 15:35), while claiming to be very spiritual [pneumatikos] Christians.

This disturbing disconnect shows that they are NOT fully spiritual [pneumatikos] now. Worse yet, they will NOT be fully spiritual at all if they presently do not “bear the likeness of the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:49). This is the “already/not yet” eschatological framework. They must become what they are by grace. Yet what they presently are by grace will not be fully realized until the corruptible puts on incorruptibility and the final defeat of death is realized (1 Cor 15:26, 54).

Your present body and your future body. There’s both continuity and discontinuity, OR continuity and transformation. What’s the answer to their question, “what kind of body” (1 Cor 15:35)? As with Christ, it’ll be the same yet not the same. It’s still this [decaying] body, but adapted to the new conditions of heavenly exeistence. It is sown one way. It is raised another way. But it’s the same body that is is sown and raised.

  • What do you think of a corpse being resurrected from the dead (1 Cor 15:35)?
  • What about your dead body being reanimated one day?
  • Have you considered a continuity between your current decaying body and your future resurrection body?
  • What does the resurrection of your dead body mean for your present bodily existence?
  • Is the resurrection of Christ the resuscitation of a corpse (Phil 3:21)?
  1. Why are some repulsed by the dead rising (1 Cor 15:35)? What does Paul call them (1 Cor 15:36; Ps 14:1)?
  2. What 3 analogies did Paul use to describe the nature of our resurrection body (1 Cor 15:37-38, 39, 40-41)?
  3. How starkly different is our present body compared with our future resurrection body (1 Cor 15:42-44)?
  4. What are the distinct differences between the body made for earthly dwelling [“natural“–psychikos body] and the resurrected body [“spiritual“–pneumatikos body] made for heavenly dwelling (1 Cor 15:42-44)?
  5. How should we regard our present earthly bodily existence?
  6. Have they/we Christians already assumed the heavenly existence?
  7. Contrast our psychikos [natural] body and our penumatikos [spiritual] body (1 Cor 15:45; Gen 2:7).
  8. What are the differences between what is pneumatikos and what is psychikos (1 Cor 15:44-49)?
  9. Is there continuity? Discontinuity? Transformation?

What kind of body is the resurrection body? (15:35–49). Paul now addresses the root causes of their skepticism about resurrection. They scoffed at anastasis nekron (standing up of the dead). But it wasn’t based on scientific doubts about the possibility of supernatural events, since they believed themselves to be infused with divine power to speak in tongues of angels and to work miracles (ch. 12–14). Rather, it was based on an aversion to the idea that the body could be reanimated after death. This is utterly undesirable to Hellenistic thinkers whose ideal of spirituality was to transcend corporeality.Paul confronts their disdain of a resurrected body. He uses the standard rhetorical device—particularly for teaching discourses called diatribe—of putting a hypothetical objection in others’ mouth so that he can explain: “But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ ” (1 Cor 15:35). The 2nd rhetorical question specifies the 1st. “How are the dead raised?” doesn’t mean “How is it possible?” or “By what agency?” (Paul and others claim that the dead are raised by God’s power). Rather, the pressing question here is, “In what form (what kind of body)?”“Fool!” is Paul’s scornful response (1 Cor 15:36; Ps 14:1; well known to Paul, who quotes Ps 14:2–3 in Rom 3:11–12). His stern rebuke states that they, not he, are the ones guilty of crude literalism. The “resurrection of the dead” is NOT the resuscitation of corpses, but the transformation into a new and glorious state. Any fool knows that! Redefining the meaning of “resurrection of the dead” is not subject to those seeking to debunk it.

  • Paul argues his point by using analogies from nature (15:36-41).
  • The central point is that the resurrection body is a spiritual body, free from the decay and weakness in the present life (1 Cor 15:42-44).
  • Finally, Paul supports this claim by an appeal to Scripture and the Adam–Christ typology (15:45-49).

Silly, small–minded questions is how Paul characterizes their skeptical queries (1 Cor 15:35). The answer is obvious in the transformation of a seed (1 Cor 15:37) into a plant: “God gives it a body just as he has chosen [kathos ethelesen]” (1 Cor 15:38a). We don’t understand how this transformation occurs (Mk 4:26–28), and no one can predict the final shape and texture of the mature plant from looking at the seed. God chooses what sort of body to give, and it’s presumptuous to suppose that we should know in advance the answer to the question, “With what kind of body do they come?” We must wait for the harvest to find out. Such answers confound our finite understanding—like the paradoxical expression “spiritual body.”The analogy of the seed walks a fine line, asserting both the radical transformation of the body in the resurrection AND its organic continuity with the mortal body that precedes it (1 Cor 15:37-38). This delicate balance between continuity and discontinuity characterizes this discussion. To the deniers of the resurrection Paul says, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50), yet he insists that our future life will be embodied. That’s why he argues that the “body” is not all the same; there’re many different kinds of bodies, including the endless diversity of animal life, and the diverse “heavenly bodies” of sun, moon, and stars (1 Cor 15:39–41). “Different bodies” imaginatively infers a different kind of human body, a body raised up by God with a glory like that of the heavenly bodies—a “spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:42–44), which is outside our present experience (except as we know something about it through the body of the risen Christ), but it is a body.The reference to heavenly bodies (1 Cor 15:40) could help the philosophically inclined to make sense of the resurrection body. A belief in the ancient world was that the human soul and/or mind was made of the same ethereal stuff as the celestial bodies and that the soul would return to the stars after death (Martin, Corinthian Body). This isn’t Paul’s view, but by describing heavenly “bodies” that possess varying degrees of glory could help them conceptualize a future glorified body unlike the bodies we now know. Such analogies are also found in the Jewish apocalyptic tradition, from which Paul’s own understanding of resurrection came. 1 of very few passages in the OT prefiguring belief in the resurrection of the dead: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever” (Dan 12:2-3). In Daniel, as in Paul, the risen righteous ones don’t become stars, but it suggests the glorious state they’ll enjoy when they rise from the dead. All the analogies (36–41) lead up to 1 Cor 15:42.

The pivot point: “So it is with the resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor 15:42). The binary contrasts that follow, affirm that the resurrected body transcend the limitations of earthly bodies, and the seed/plant metaphor (“sown/raised”). Our present bodies are “sown” (in this life) perishable, dishonorable, and weak, but the resurrection body will be raised (in the next life) imperishable, glorious, and powerful (1 Cor 15:42–43). This impressive piece of visionary preaching, extols the glories that await us. He makes the resurrection of the dead seem appealing rather than appalling to them.The crux of his argument: “It is sown a natural body [psychikon soma], it is raised a spiritual body [pneumatikon soma]” (1 Cor 15:44) is where Paul is driving. This last contrast vexes translators (1 Cor 2:14–the same contrast occurs). “Psychikon soma” is difficult to translate into English. “physical body” (NRSV) is unfortunate, for it reinstates precisely the dualistic dichotomy between physical and spiritual that Paul wants to overcome. “Psychikon” doesn’t mean “physical.” “Pneumatikon soma” is easier to translate, but “spiritual body” sounds like an oxymoron. What’s its meaning?The Jerusalem Bible best conveys the meaning: “When it is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit. If the soul has its own embodiment, so does the spirit have its own embodiment” (1 Cor 15:44). That is Paul’s point: our mortal bodies embody the psyche (“soul”), the animating force of our present existence, but the resurrection body will embody the divinely given pneuma (“spirit”). It is to be a “spiritual body” not in the sense that it is somehow made out of spirit and vapors, but in the sense that it is determined by the spirit and gives the spirit form and local habitation.Paul’s argument is clear in Gk, where “psychikon” (1 Cor 15:44) is explained by the reference to psyche in the creation of Adam (1 Cor 15:45) [but hard to follow in translation]. Paul’s use of psychikon soma is citing Gen 2:7 (LXX) to say, “The first man, Adam, as scripture says, became a living soul [psyche]; but the last Adam has become a life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor 15:45, JB). Psyche linked with Adam is the initiator of decay and death, but Christ, by his resurrection, becomes a “life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor 15:22), the initiator of a new order of humanity. The body associated with Adam (psychikon) is mortal and bound to the earth from which it came. But the body associated with the risen Christ (pneumatikon) will be immortal and stamped by the image of “the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:48–49). As in 1 Cor 15:21–22, our salvation entails embodying Christ and being transformed into his image (Rom 8:29). A similar point made more clearly: “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control [1 Cor 15:23–28], will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Phil 3:20-21).

The transformation of our bodies is an eschatological event, a future resurrection associated with the parousia of Jesus Christ (as in Phil 3:20-21; 1 Cor 15:42-49). This future eschatological orientation distinguishes Paul’s use of Gen 2:7 from the creation story of Philo [Jewish philosopher, b. 25 B.C.], who finds both the archetypal heavenly man (Gen 1:27) and the earthly man (Gen 2:7) within the text of Genesis (Allegorical Interpretation 1.31–32). For Paul, the heavenly man is Christ, manifested in his resurrected body, who will come from heaven (Dan 7:13–14; 1 Th 4:16–17) at the end to raise his people and transform them into his likeness. It’s why Paul says, “It is not the spiritual that is first [not in Gen 1:27], but the natural/soulish [i.e. Gen. 2:7]; then the spiritual [i.e., in the resurrection]” (1 Cor 15:46). This subtly rebutts an interpretation of Genesis that influences those who thought themselves as pneumatikoi, with their reading more like Philo connecting “the heavenly man” with their own exalted knowledge and wisdom. So Paul contrasts Adam and Christ to reshape their understanding and to beckon them to look to the future transformation of their bodies.“Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, let us also bear [phoresmen] the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:49). [The better reading in ancient manuscripts–a textual difficulty in the final verse of this unit.] Modern translations opted for the more weakly attested reading, “… we will also bear [phoresmen] the image of the man of heaven.” Translators chose the latter, for it seems to fit better with Paul’s future eschatological emphasis. The other reading, “let us bear,” suggests that it’s an ethical choice, as though we could by our own efforts conform ourselves to the image of Christ. But this isn’t incongruous with other conclusions in 1 Cor 15 (e.g., 1 Cor 15:33–34, 58). Also, Paul wrote “let us bear the image of the man of heaven” as an exhortation to look to the coming one, Jesus Christ, as source and hope of transformation, rather than looking to their own wisdom or to some alleged primal divine image within.

Reference:

  1. Richard B. Hays. First Corinthians. Interpretation. A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1997.
  2. Gordon D. Fee. First Corinthians. The New International Commentary on the NT. 1987, 2014.
  3. Charles Hodge. 1 & 2 Corinthians. 1857, 1859.
  4. Richard B. Hays. The Moral Vision of the N.T. A Contemporary Introduction to N.T. Ethics. 1996.
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