1 CORINTHIANS 15:35-49 - WEEK 5 - VICTORY OVER DEATH

WEEK 5 - VICTORY OVER DEATH

Wednesday

1 CORINTHIANS 15:35-49

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. 42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. 48 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. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.

ALL THINGS NEW

For some Corinthian believers, their denial of the resurrection was based on an aversion to the idea that the body could be reanimated after death. Paul was familiar with the growing belief in Corinth (and throughout the Roman world) that anything mortal is evil, but the soul (that IS immortal) is pure. A hundred years after the writing of this letter, this Hellenistic belief grew into Gnosticism and led the church into great theological foolishness. But the core question remains: How does the common Roman belief (the flesh being evil/corrupted and soul/spirit being good/ pure) line up with the truth of the gospel and the truth of the resurrection when God makes all things new?

QUESTIONS

Explain the illustration of the seed (15:36-38). What then is resurrection? How did Jesus demonstrate what resurrection involves?

According to Paul, how will our spiritual bodies compare with our earthly ones?

What nature did we receive from the first man (Adam), and what nature did we receive from the heavenly man (Jesus) (15:47-49)?