Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary 1 Corinthians 15:35

"But some one will say, How are the dead raised? and with what manner of body do they come?" — 1 Corinthians 15:35 (ASV)

Paul now answers the question some believers were asking: since a resurrection “body” (GK 5393) would be like the sinful mortal body we now have, how can the resurrection of such a body occur? Paul calls such questions foolish, and in replying to them he uses analogies from the physical life and world. His first analogy is the seed analogy (v.37), which teaches that through “dying” (decaying in the ground), a seed gives birth by God’s power to a new and different “body,” though one related to the seed it came from.

A second analogy involves the body of flesh that various forms of animal life have—the different kinds of flesh for humans, animals, birds, and fish (v.39).

A third analogy relates to inanimate objects of creation (vv.40–41), in connection with which Paul again uses “body.” These also differ. The “heavenly bodies,” such as the sun, moon, and stars, differ from “the earthly bodies,” and their “splendor” differs from “the splendor of the earthly bodies.” Moreover, the heavenly bodies themselves differ from one another in splendor and brilliance. So, Paul is arguing, God is able to take similar physical material and organize it differently to accomplish his purposes.

In vv.42–44a the apostle applies these analogies to the truth of the resurrection of the body. God can take the mortal body, perishable (Gal. 6:8), dishonored, humiliated because of sin , and weak (Mark 14:38)—a natural body like those of the animal world—and bring that body that “is sown” in death (cf. Jn 12:24) into a different order of life in a spiritual body. Such a body will indeed have immortality (2 Timothy 1:10), glory , and power. It will have a spiritual way of functioning similar to the way heavenly bodies function in contradistinction to earthly bodies. This spiritual body is an imperishable yet utterly real body—one of a different order and having different functions from the earthly body; it is a body given by God himself—a body glorified with eternal life.

Verses 44b–49 develop the distinction between the natural body and the spiritual body by bringing in two categories—one of Adam and his descendants and the other of Christ, the last Adam, and his redeemed ones. By “natural body” Paul means one such as Adam had when he was made of the dust of the ground and given the breath of life (cf. Genesis 2:7). By “spiritual body” the apostle means an imperishable body that has received eternal life from Christ, the life-giving Spirit (cf. Jn 5:26)—a body that will be changed, without either corruption or mortality, in order to live with God eternally , just as Christ in his resurrected and glorified human body went to heaven to be with the Father (cf. Acts 1:11; 2:33). There is, indeed, a real sense in which the accounts of the post-resurrection appearances of Christ in Lk 24; Jn 20–21; and Acts 1:1-9 shed light on the nature of the resurrection body (see also 2 Corinthians 5:1– 10).