He’s Not Done With Me Yet
April 20 | Rick Thiemke
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1 Corinthians 15:35-49
The Resurrection Body
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is 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 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”;[a] the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall[b] also bear the image of the man of heaven.
In Jesus’ resurrection we see a picture of God’s ultimate future. We get a peek at the conclusion of the story. If we want to know where God is going in His redemptive plan and what is in store for us - we just need to look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The empty tomb tells us that God’s triumph over sin and death is total. History is moving toward nothing less than a fully-restored and glorified universe.
It is tough, for the Corinthians and for us, to comprehend the claim that He is going to raise from the dead those that belong to Him. But Paul gives us pictures and descriptions in our text that help.
The Best Version Of You Is Still Coming
We’re obsessed with glow-ups - body, career, mental health, relationships. But what if God’s resurrection plan is the ultimate glow-up? In verses 35-41, Paul uses visual imagery to show us that the resurrection of our bodies makes sense and is natural. Like the Corinthians, we do not have a category for the body living on indefinitely. Paul shows us that we do know change, transformation and variety in God’s creation.
A seed sprouts into something that looks completely different than it originally did. The seed undergoes burial and is later transformed. The DNA is the same, but there is transformation. Transformation is counterintuitive in our lives. Life transformation often happens at moments of crisis - life emerging from what feels like death.
God is the ultimate creator of bodies - and He has created all kinds of bodies and created each for their environment. The animal is created for land, the bird for the air and the fish for the sea. Paul is showing us that God is more than capable of creating a human body that is different in quality and kind than our present earthly bodies.
We cannot adequately know what our resurrection body will look like because it is outside the realm of our experience. It is also beyond our control.
Jesus Broke The Cycle
The resurrection of the body claims that Christians will be raised and the qualities of their bodies will be utterly transformed - from perishable to imperishable, from dishonor to glory, from weakness to power. Christianity affirms the longing that we have to overcome death, disease and decay. It does not do it with an escape from the body, but by transforming the body itself.
The transformation of the body will happen when it is infused and re-created by the life-giving Spirit of Jesus. It will move from natural to supernatural and from mortal to immortal - but the body will remain.
Our current bodies have been inherited from Adam, but we will inherit our supernatural bodies because we belong to Jesus. Jesus reversed the cosmic order and the curse for His people! If you belong to Christ, your future resurrected, supernatural body is just as certain as your present natural body. Christ is in us - we already have His DNA. We will be like a seed that has been planted and will sprout to unexpected new life.
Discussion Questions
How does Paul’s imagery of the seed help reshape your understanding of what happens to our bodies in the resurrection?
What does it mean to you that Jesus didn’t just teach resurrection—He embodied it?
Paul describes our future resurrected bodies as moving from perishable to imperishable, from weakness to power. What longing or hope does that stir in you?