From One Body to Another

Based on 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50

“I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” This is the last line of the Apostles Creed, one of the oldest statements of what Christians believe. We say the Apostles Creed every time we have a baptism, as is part of the tradition that has been handed down for generations. This Creed is a straightforward and succinct statement of what are the core beliefs of the church. The last line makes it clear that we believe in the resurrection of the body and of life everlasting. But what does the resurrection of the body look like? When will we experience this resurrection?

These are some of the questions that were being asked among the Christians in Corinth. They need more information about exactly what resurrection of the body is. Which body? What kind of body will it be? Paul’s response to the questions are not very tactful. Maybe in all caps he first answers their questions by writing the word “Fool!” Like I’ve said before, Paul really takes seriously belief in the resurrection. He won’t tolerate those who question the promise of the resurrection of the dead. It matters that much to him.

It’s still a fair question, however. We want to know, what kind of bodies will the dead have when they are raised? Will they be resuscitated corpses? Say, someone lived their whole life blind or during the course of their life they had their arm amputated. When they rise from the dead will they still be blind or have a missing arm? Or, what if someone was eaten by a pack of lions or their house caught on fire and they were burned up. What kind of body will they have when they rise from the dead? I have heard people who are opposed to cremation based on this concern that they won’t have a body to rise with. When we rise from the dead will we still be the same age as when we died? I’ve heard people suggest that since Jesus died around the age of 30 that our resurrected bodies will have the form of what we looked like when we were 30. Who knows? Whether out of genuine concern or as a way of mocking the idea of bodily resurrection, these questions were being asked in Corinth and it got a rise out of Paul.

It is too much in a sermon to break down what Paul is arguing in this passage from 1 Corinthians. He uses a lot of terms that have to be explained, like physical body, spiritual body, the flesh, first man, second man, image of the man of dust, image of the man of heaven. It’s a lot. Paul uses the image of sowing seeds and compares Adam and Jesus. He gives a nuanced and complicated argument that would be a fascinating Bible Study but way too deep to digest in a sermon.

So, what I want to do is focus on the central point that Paul is making, which is that the resurrection of the dead is the end result of a process of transformation. We are going to focus in on what that transformation is, what is being transformed, how is this transformation occurring, and when this transformation will be complete. My hope is that by focusing on this theme of transformation that this will not be for us interesting information but inspiration for how we live our lives. Because the lives we live now in Christ is part of that transformation process. Let’s jump into it.

The first image Paul uses to describe what the resurrection of the dead means to him is one that would be familiar to everybody, the sowing of seeds. It’s a great image to make his point that resurrection has to do with transformation. Take a radish seed and plant it in the ground. In about a month, you will see the sprouting of leaves. The growth of the plant continues until it’s time to harvest when you pull up the plant and have a fully developed radish. The radish plant looks nothing like the radish seed. In fact, the seed is gone. It now has a new “body” in the shape of a radish.

In the same way, when we die our bodies we have been living in disintegrate but we will rise out of the ground with new “bodies” as God has determined. Paul doesn’t answer the question directly about what kind of body is the resurrected from the dead but he makes his point that the body will not look like the former body, as a radish seed does not look like a radish. So, when we rise from the dead, experience the resurrection of the body, the body we inhabit will not look like the body we have right now. We will have a body but it will be different. A transformation takes place.

Paul then compares Adam with Jesus. Specifically, he compares Adam who is the first man with Jesus who is the second man; Adam, who is the man of dust, and Jesus, who is the man of heaven. It is like Paul is contrasting two kinds of humans. There is the human from the earth and the human from heaven. There is the earth human who became a living being and a heaven human who became a life-giving spirit. I guess you could say that Adam is like the turnip seed and Jesus is like the turnip. And here is the key to what Paul is getting at in vs.49, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” In other words, we are currently earth humans. But one day we will be heaven humans. There will be a transformation, from one kind of human to another kind of human. Wow! 

I hope you are following me how transformation from one kind to another flows through Paul’s explanation about what the resurrection of the dead is about. It’s like a seed transformed into a plant. It’s like an earth human being transformed into a heaven human. There’s one more example of transformation I want to talk about.

Do you remember what happened in the story of Adam and Eve when God shaped Adam out of the dust and formed him into a physical body? The next thing God does is breathe into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, a life-giving breath, and in that moment Adam became a living being. We can call that life-giving breath soul. We have a soul. It is our soul that is the source of our living. It’s what animates us as opposed to a chair that does not have a soul. Our soul is embodied. We are ensouled bodies. 

But there’s something else within our bodies than just our souls. When we were baptized, the Holy Spirit took up residence in our bodies. We read in the Bible of how we are temples of the Holy Spirit. We have within our bodies a soul and the Spirit of God.

Now, what is the Spirit of God doing in our bodies? The Spirit of God is at work within us, purifying us, healing us, shaping us, transforming us so that we more and more become like Jesus. We are being sanctified by the work of the Holy Spirit in our bodies. The Spirit of God is transforming our souls. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we have a soul, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven, we have the Spirit. Paul says that we were sown a physical body, an ensouled body. But we will be raised a spiritual body, an enspirited body. Our souls, just as our bodies, will be transformed into spirits…enspirited bodies. 

I know, this is deep and confusing. But the main point I’m making is that from this moment until we experience resurrection we are in a process of transformation. In our day to day living, as we strive to live our lives that reflect the way of Jesus and reject the way of sin and death, we are being transformed from the inside, made holy, sanctified, purified. Something is happening inside of us. The Spirit of God is working on us day by day, moment by moment. And it is all a process of transformation that is leading up to an end point, when we will be raised as spiritual bodies, whatever that looks like.

This is where I find hope and why I think belief in the resurrection of the body is so important for Paul. It is that hope and faithful expectation that one day we will inhabit bodies that enable us to fully express the spirit of God in our living. One day we will be whom God has always intended us to be. As God intended that radish seed to become a tasty, fresh radish to garnish a salad, so God intends us in our frail ensouled bodies to become fully human, complete and perfect images of God. This is our destiny, the completion of the process of transformation we are experiencing right now, today, in this moment.

How are the dead raised? We don’t know. With what kind of body do they come? We don’t know. But we have faith and place our hope in this belief held by Christians from the beginning, this belief in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Glory be to God who has determined this to be so.