We are now on Episode 3 in Series 5, as we go through this amazing chapter, 1 Corinthians 15. 

Recap and Background  

I wonder what you would say if you were asked what is your favourite chapter in the New Testament. Many people say 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and I would be very much in agreement with that. It is a magnificent and wonderful chapter. It is the one place in the New Testament where we get a full explanation about the doctrine of the resurrection of the body; the resurrection of Jesus first, and then the resurrection of believers, when Jesus comes again. This goes against the thinking of many cultures, societies, and religions. Many religions will say that the soul continues in some form of life after death, but no religion, apart from Christianity, truly explains the fact that the body, the physical body that we live in, can be raised again from the dead. It is a wonderful part of the Christian hope, central to the gospel, and Paul is happy to spend time explaining this thoroughly to the Corinthians.  

His reason for doing so, as we saw in the last episode, is that there was some doubt in Corinth. People were beginning to say, ‘We are not so sure whether there is a resurrection. Maybe Christianity is just a message to help and support us with all the problems in this life.’ Paul said, ‘No, that is absolutely not the case.’ Jesus died for us so that we could be forgiven from sins. He was raised again from the dead by God the Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to prove that his death on the cross was an eternal act of power that can transform human life, and to show the hope that we can have for the future. Our hope, as Christians, is that one day we will be raised again from the dead in our bodies. It is a spectacular and wonderful hope that transforms our lives. But there is a question. How can this happen? What is the connection between my body now and my resurrection body, which I will receive on the day Christ comes again? It is a very natural question. In this episode, Paul is going to begin to address this and try to explain to the Corinthians, and also to us, what the connection is between our body now and our resurrection body in the future. 

Resurrection Follows Death  

“But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendour of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendour of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendour, the moon another and the stars another; and stars differ from each other in splendour. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.” 1 Corinthians 15: 35 – 49 NIV 

The explanation starts by using the example of a seed. This is a wonderful way of thinking about the difference between our life now and our life in eternity. Before I came this morning to speak to you and to deliver this episode, I stood in my garden. At the end of my garden is a beech tree with lovely green leaves on it, because we are in the spring of the year here in the UK as I am recording this episode. As I looked at the tree, I realised it was covered with hundreds of small branches and thousands of leaves.  I could hear the birds singing in the tree. But I remember, in the autumn, what do I see on the ground? Seeds. The seeds of the beech tree. Sometimes I collect those seeds and put them on a shelf. Those seeds are about two centimetres long and if that seed is thrown away, it just disappears, and nobody ever remembers it. It has no significance. But one day, somebody who lived in my house before I lived there, took one of those seeds, two centimetres long, and planted it at the end of the garden, very deliberately. When my wife and I arrived in the house, there was a little tree at the end of the garden, and it grew and grew and grew. Now, we have to cut the branches to keep it under control, because it has got so big. The seed produces something astonishing that seems so different from the seed. Yet it is connected to the seed. Within the seed is the power to create that amazing tree. Many other plants and trees are formed in this way. Paul says that is like the situation with the human body. Because the human body, as we experience it now, becomes like a seed - it has to die. The seed dies when it comes off the tree and goes into the ground. It is apparently dead but then, with moisture and warmth, the seed will germinate and produce the amazing tree that I saw this morning. From the natural world we see something that gives us a clue as to what God will do with our human bodies. The seed of the tree is so insignificant; it is powerless and can't do anything on its own. It needs to be planted in the ground, given resources and moisture, otherwise it will never germinate. It needs a suitable temperature and warmth to germinate. But when it has the right environment, it will produce an incredible result. With the human body, something similar will happen through the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit.   

Four Changes to the Body 

Paul goes on to explain that there are four major characteristics of the human body, your body and my body, that are limited, weak, and frail. 

These will be changed by God's miraculous power. Verse 42 onwards: “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 

What is our human body like now? There are four ways of describing it. It is perishable; it is prone to decay, decline, disease and death. Not so long ago, I was in a hospital with somebody who was dying. Then they died in my presence, lying in a hospital bed. I spent a few minutes sadly thinking about their life, looking at the man's face, his hands and his lifeless body, thinking back to his strength, his health and his abilities. They had all drained away through the passage of time. His body was perishable, there was nothing permanent about it.  

Secondly, our body is in ‘dishonour’. This means that our body is affected by sin: things we do; things other people do to us; things that happen in our emotions; physical attacks on our body; the damage to our body of wrong things that we have done to it, are evident in our body. Our body is infected by the power of sin. We can't separate our body from the fact that we have been sinners.  

Thirdly, the body is in weakness. It is limited in strength and capacity. Very recently I went for a bicycle ride with my grandson, who is nine years old, and at this point I can ride faster than him. But every time I go on a ride with him, he is getting faster, and I am getting slower. In a few years’ time, he will be faster than me because my body is in weakness, and I am getting older. We all know that experience.   

The fourth aspect of our body Paul describes as, ‘a natural body’. It is ordinarily physical. In other words, the body of a believer is no different from the body of an unbeliever. Our inner person, our soul, has been saved; we have a connection and a relationship with God, but our body is very similar to the person who is an unbeliever.  

There are four changes that are going to happen to the human body in the resurrection and we praise God for this wonderful hope, which Paul specifies and explains very clearly for us here. What was perishable will become imperishable. That means that our body will be permanently healthy and strong. That is amazing! Nothing will cause decline. No disease will come to our eternal resurrection bodies: aging won't take place; you won't look older year by year; your hair won't go greyer; there won't be wrinkles appearing on your face; you won'thave arthritis in your knees. It will be imperishable. 

Secondly, our body will be ‘in glory’ - no longer in dishonour, no longer connected to sin; our body is going to be filled with God's presence in a unique and wonderful way. That is the mysterious reality, which is hard to understand, but sometimes we get a glimpse of it when we see in the Bible accounts that the bodies of people are filled with a supernatural light, such as Jesus and Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, where their bodies glowed with a supernatural light. That is what Paul means here, the body will be in glory. You will look at somebody and you won't think, ‘They are a sinner, controlled by sin.’ You will think, ‘They are filled with God.’  

Our body will be also not in ‘weakness’ but in power. This is wonderful. With the resurrection body, we have enough strength to do everything we need to do. We won't suffer from excessive tiredness. We won't look at a hill or a mountain and think, ‘That is too big for me to climb’. We won't have a journey to walk and think, ‘That is too far for me to walk’. There will be strength in the human body.  

Finally, Paul says, it is not going to be a ‘natural’ body, it is going to be a ‘spiritual’ body, by which he means, filled with the Holy Spirit. The energy of God will be within us. These are truly wonderful realities. The Corinthians didn't understand this so Paul needed to explain it to them clearly. They were confused. They were drifting away from true faith.   

Not long ago, I was called to the house of a man who had only a few weeks to live. He had cancer. He was an elderly man. He was a true believer and a member of our church family. I thought to myself, ‘What shall I talk to him about?’ and immediately this passage came to mind. I said to him, “As you approach death, and you are going through this moment where you will depart this life, and you will enter into God's presence, and your body is declining because of this sickness and aging, let us see what our hope is.” I read to him these few verses and he smiled, and his eyes lit up, and he said to me, “That is what I believe. That is what is going to happen. One day this body filled with cancer will be completely transformed.” I said, “Yes, that is our faith.” I held his hand and we prayed. During the following weeks, he moved step by step towards the moment where he passed into glory, full of hope of the resurrection to come. 

 Jesus’ Second Coming 

Paul now concludes this incredible chapter with a triumphal statement about the moment of resurrection and the moment of the Second Coming of Jesus.  

“I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.” 1 Corinthians 15:50 – 58 NIV  

In this incredible passage, Paul goes back again to the fact that our human bodies as they are now, cannot enter into the eternal world. They are tainted with sin, weak, frail, and decaying. Something has to happen to our physical bodies. He describes this miraculous process as ‘a mystery’. Something previously hidden but now revealed through Jesus Christ. God has the power to transform our physical bodies from what they are now to what they will be - the resurrection body. He can do it in a second, in the twinkling of an eye. It doesn't take God a long time to do this. That is exactly what happened to the body of Jesus. In a moment, the body of Jesus went from being dead, inert, and cold in the tomb, to being raised up again. Jesus was alive, and he came out of the tomb and revealed himself to many people over a 40-day period. And so, with us. When we die, our souls, our inner person, the real you, goes to be with the Lord, and we experience the wonderful glory of being with him. Then we wait for the moment of Jesus coming again to this world, the Second Coming. Paul refers to that here as the last trumpet, ‘the trumpet that sounds’ which is a reference to Jesus coming again. When he comes again, there will be an amazing physical resurrection of all true believers, and their bodies will be made perfect, eternal and imperishable, for all time. Death will be finally defeated.  

There are two images here of the resurrection. One is the image of sleep. The body looks as though it is asleep when it dies, and the body will be woken up on the day of resurrection. The other image of the resurrection here is of clothing. We will, as it were, put on different clothes. On the day that I got married, in the morning I was wearing a t-shirt, some dirty casual jeans, to walk around the house. Then when the time came, I took off all those clothes and I put on the smartest clothes that I could possibly wear for the great day. That is a bit like what happens to us when we are raised. We put off the old body and now we are clothed in a new and wonderful resurrection body, which will look very much like our body now - will be recognisable as who we are - but it will have all those amazing characteristics of power, lack of sin, strength and God's glory within it. This will happen at the moment of the Second Coming.  

A Final Encouragement 

Paul ends this amazing chapter with a tremendous encouragement to all Christians. I want to leave you with this magnificent verse that has influenced my life very much. This is a verse to memorise and to repeat often, especially when times are hard in your Christian life.  

“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.”
1 Corinthians 15: 58 NIV

‘Stand firm’ in your convictions, says Paul. ‘Don't doubt what God is going to do for your salvation, including the salvation of your body, the resurrection of your body.’ Paul was motivated by this hope. In fact, he was even willing to risk his life and be injured by persecution, to be beaten and suffer all sorts of hardships. Some of you listening to this episode will be those who have experienced great hardships because of your Christian faith, maybe persecution, imprisonment, suffering, beatings and the fear of death. Paul says to you as he says to me, ‘Stand firm. Let nothing move you’ There is nothing that any spiritual power, or any people who are hostile to you, can do to take away the hope of the resurrection. Whatever happens to our body now, our resurrection is guaranteed by the death of Jesus and the power of his salvation.  

Paul says, “give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord”. See the future and then give yourself fully to the work of his Kingdom. If you have been discouraged in any way, if you have had a hard time, if you are suffering in any way, you should be encouraged by this chapter and particularly by this passage. 

Reflections  

This is the climax of the letter. We can forget for a moment all the terrible problems that Paul spoke about in the earlier chapters. We can lay them aside and we can now see Paul's focus on our eternal future. This gives us an eternal perspective. Reading 1 Corinthians 15 is rather like walking up a steep hill: you spend quite a lot of time walking up the hill, and then you suddenly get to the top and see a beautiful view that was previously hidden from you. We have reached the top of the hill, the climax. We have reached the ultimate reality of the gospel - the resurrection of the body. You see this beautiful view of the eternal world laid out before you by Paul in this chapter. This can transform our thinking, encourage usand build us up in our faith. 

It can also give us comfort concerning those who died in Christ. We grieve for them. Many people listening to this episode will have experienced significant loss through bereavement amongst your family, friends, in your community, or in your church. But we have hope. We need the full gospel in order to have hope.