WWUTT 1633 Raised Incorrputible (1 Corinthians 15:42-45)

The Hope of a Spiritual Body in the Resurrection

Everyone who has a physical body also has a spiritual body, but where will your spiritual body go when you die? Hell or heaven? We can know the answer when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary that we may be equipped for every good work in Jesus Christ our Lord. Please tell others about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of 1 Corinthians 15. The section that we've been looking at this week has been verses 35 -45. I'm reading from the Legacy Standard Bible. This is the word of the Lord, the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth.

But someone will say, how are the dead raised, and with what kind of body do they come? You fool. That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else.

But God gives it a body just as he wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men and another flesh of beasts and another flesh of birds and another of fish.

There is also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one and the glory of the earthly is another. 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.

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a corruptible body. It is raised an incorruptible body. It is sown in dishonor. 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 also it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

Christ’s Incorruptible Body and Our Resurrection Hope

So as we pick up today in verse 42, so also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a corruptible body. It is raised an incorruptible body, just as Jesus' body. So his body died because he was fully human, very God and very man, God in human flesh.

As it says in John 1, God who put on flesh and dwelt among us. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us. So he died in that body. But then when he was raised from the dead, he has an incorruptible body.

He will never die again. And so the same will be for us. We will still die in these corruptible bodies, but we will be raised to have an incorruptible body. Romans 6, 9, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again.

Death no longer is master over him. He is master over all. And so we who are in Christ likewise have the same promise. In our corruptible bodies, we will die, but we will be raised again to have a body like his.

As we read in 1 John 3, 2, Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not been manifested as yet what we will be. We know that when he is manifested, we will be like him because we will see him just as he is.

And we also have this in Philippians 3, 20, our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly await for a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of his glory by his working through which he is able to even subject all things to himself.

Now that's a slightly different version than the way that I have that verse memorized. This is part of transitioning into a new translation as I am now reading, now teaching through the legacy standard Bible.

When I was in the ESV, because that's where I have most scripture memorized, that verse reads a little bit differently, but I do appreciate the wording here in the legacy standard as well. Christ will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of his glory.

Our lowly bodies will be like his glorious body, in other words, by his working through which he is able even to subject all things to himself. This is the Christ whom we worship. This is the Christ through whom we have been given these promises that though we will die in these bodies, we will be raised to be like him.

We will have incorruptible bodies just as he has an incorruptible body. In Philippians chapter two, beginning in verse five, Paul says this, have this way of thinking in yourselves, which also was in Christ Jesus, who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man.

He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God also highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name, which is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

And that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father. And so though Jesus was in a human body, he was without sin. As it says in the book of Hebrews, he was tempted like us in every way and yet was without sin.

So Jesus was in the likeness of human flesh of sinful flesh, but he himself was without sin, becoming that perfect sacrifice that he may die on a cross for us as an atonement. Whoever believes in him, he is the propitiation for our sins.

God's wrath has passed over us because we have been covered with the precious blood of Jesus. Jesus did this in his body in obedience to the will of the father. He died and has risen again so that we who are in Christ, we will also die and we will rise again to have bodies that are just like his.

These are our promises that we can hold on to. This is the promise that has been given to us here in first Corinthians 15. And so emphatically has Paul been laying this out that he says, if it's not true, we shouldn't even be Christians anymore.

We've been misrepresenting God. We've been calling God a liar because we have said that God raised him from the dead who he did not raise from the dead. If it's true that the dead are not raised from the dead, we must believe in the resurrection of Christ or there is no point to this Christian faith.

What is the point of being a Christian? If it is not true that the dead are raised and all who are in Christ will rise again, the very promise of Christ himself in John six and in elsewhere, I will raise him up on the last day.

Whoever is in Christ will be raised with him on the day of Christ. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. We are sown a corruptible body. It is our corruptible body that goes into the ground. We are raised an incorruptible body.

Verse 43, we are sown in dishonor. We are raised in glory. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. Let's kind of qualify that it there. We've been using the word it. That's what we see here in these verses.

But what is it? Well, let's go back a little bit further so we can be reminded of this. We're keeping everything in context, taking nothing for granted here. All right. So verse 35, but someone will say, how are the dead raised and with what kind of body do they come?

So what is it? It is the person who has been raised from the dead. It is this body that has been raised. With what kind of body does the person raised come with? What kind of body do they have? Paul says, you fool.

That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. Talk about a body here.

It's in reference to the dead being raised to life. Verse 38. Here's our first it. But God gives it a body just as he wished and to each of the seeds, a body of its own. Now, the nearest antecedent here to this word it is going to be wheat or something else, right?

Perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it the seeds, each individual seed, a body just as he wished, and to each of the seeds, a body of its own. So you have an acorn is one kind of a seed, a tomato seed is another kind of a seed, a mustard seed, another kind of a seed, a flower bulb, a tulip bulb, right?

That you would bury into the ground and becomes tulips. That's a different kind of a seed. Verse 39. All flesh is not the same flesh. So now we have the transition from the metaphor of the seed to the flesh.

All flesh is not the same flesh. There's one of men, another of beasts, another of birds, another of fish. There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. So we've got the comparison to seed, to flesh, to body, whether you're talking about a heavenly body or an earthly body.

But the glory of the heavenly is one and the glory of the earthly is another. Verse 41. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory.

So what have we been discussing here? We've got body, we've got flesh, we've got glory. Verse 42. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It, the dead, the body that goes into the ground, is sown a corruptible body.

It, the dead that are raised again, are brought back with an incorruptible body. It, the one who dies, is sown in dishonor. There is nothing honorable about death. Certainly not in the way that Paul is talking about it here in 1 Corinthians 15.

As we understand, death is part of the curse. Death is what we get because we have sinned. Romans 6 .23. The wages of sin is death. That's what we earn for our sin against God. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

That verse goes on to say, so everybody dies because all have sinned. But through Christ, death, the grave, is not the final resting place. We will be raised again. So death is the consequence of sin.

We are not to think of death as a friend or an honorable thing. For as we've been told earlier in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 26, the last enemy to be abolished is death. This is the last enemy that Christ defeats and then we are with him forever in glory, in eternity.

Christ destroys death. We will never die again. Just as he never dies again, so we also will never die again. That last enemy has been abolished. There will no longer be any death in the perfect, imperishable, incorruptible kingdom that we receive in Christ Jesus.

As death is being described as an enemy here, an enemy that is to be defeated, an enemy that's been defeated by Christ and will ultimately be defeated as his final conquering is complete with the ushering in of his perfect kingdom.

Then we should not think of death as something honorable. So when we die, we are sown, our bodies are sown in dishonor. But we are raised in glory. Again, that reference back to 1 John 3, 2. Our bodies will be raised to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.

Well, that was really Philippians 3. But in 1 John 3, we will see him as he is because we will be made to be like him. So we will be in the presence of his glory and we are able to do that because we've been raised with bodies of glory.

So we've been sown corruptible bodies. We're raised incorruptible bodies. We're sown in dishonor. We are raised in glory. We're sown with the earthly. Our bodies are sown in such a way that they will even see decay.

But no matter what state our body is in, whether it's ashes, whether it's dust pulverized into nothing, it's whatever it is that happens to our body. God is the one that has the power to make it into the glorious body that he has promised us in Christ.

The resurrection bodies that we are going to receive. So we're sown in dishonor, raised in glory. We are sown in weakness. Nobody can overcome their own death, no matter what the experts, no matter what the the sci-fi guys will say.

Who is it? Kurzweil. I can't remember his first name, but he has always made that claim that human intelligence is one day going to reach a certain singularity and you'll be able to download your conscience into a computer and re-upload it into another body.

And that's the point where we will have achieved immortality. Nope. Never going to happen. Every single person dies. It is appointed to a man once to die, and after that comes judgment. The only people we're told about in scripture who never died are Enoch and Elijah.

That's it. They got taken up into heaven so that they wouldn't have to see death. And my friends, that's you and me. All right. If Christ does not come back, that would be the one thing that would keep us from dying is if Christ returns before our day of death.

But otherwise, the statistics remain true for every single person. One out of every one person dies. You will die and I will die. Our bodies will be sown in weakness. We cannot overcome our deaths, no matter what.

But we will be raised in power. Christ has overcome death for us and will raise us on the last day. Verse 44. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. So these bodies that we have are natural.

They're the bodies that we were given from our birth. You came about through natural reproduction, right? So we have these natural bodies. Because by nature, we have come into this body and our natural bodies are going to go into the ground.

As Job said, naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I will return to the earth. In the book of Ecclesiastes, that the body goes back to the dust from which it was formed and the soul goes back to the one who gave it.

That will be God. So just as it says in Hebrews, it is appointed for a man to die once and after that comes judgment. So we are sown a natural body, we're raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

So nobody is just going to be annihilated and will no longer have any kind of existence. The Bible says nothing about that. Annihilationism is a very popular doctrine. There is a growing number of Christian apologists out there who want to argue for annihilationism, which is the idea that hell is really just the annihilation of the soul.

God destroys the person and they just cease to be. Those who are in Christ will live forever with Christ in glory, but those who are not in Christ will just go into a nonexistent state. It's not a conscious state, in other words, because they don't want to believe in the doctrine of hell.

So they'll just say that hell is annihilation. And of course, there's other religious faiths that believe the same thing. I believe the Jehovah's Witnesses do. I know the Seventh-day Adventists do believe in annihilationism.

But Paul is saying here that there is a spiritual body. Your natural body will die and the spiritual body will be raised, will go on. Where is that spiritual body going to live? Are you going to live forever with Christ in glory or are you going to live forever under the wrath of God in eternal punishment?

Those people in hell have spiritual bodies, too, but they are being punished forever in eternity. Again, everybody has a spiritual body. You're living in your natural body now. You're going to be raised in your spiritual body.

The soul doesn't get annihilated. It will live on forever. Where is it that you are going to live? Are you going to live in heaven or will you exist forever in hell? The very fact that Jesus tells of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke chapter 16 and that rich man is in a place of fiery torment, suffering, speaks to the fact that there will be a place of torment that those who are not in Christ will go.

They will be raised unto eternal punishment. Now that's not really talked about as being raised in the scriptures. That's talked about as being death and not life. It's only those who are in Christ who have eternal life.

But we must understand that everybody's going to live in one of those two places, either in heaven forever with God, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, or in hell forever under God's wrath, if you have rejected Christ and have gone the way of the devil and his angels.

So we're sown a natural body, raised to spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. And then this conclusion in verse 45 to this section we've been looking at this week.

So also it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam became a life giving spirit. So where we have it said in the Old Testament that Adam became a living soul means he had a living body and he had a spirit.

There was a soul even within Adam so that when his body dies, his soul goes back to the one who gave it. The last Adam is Christ, who fulfilled everything that the first Adam could not do. The last Adam became a life giving spirit.

So as Paul had argued earlier in 1 Corinthians 15, as in Adam all die, verse 22, so also in Christ all will be made alive. Everybody who remains in Adam dies and goes to eternal judgment. Everybody who is in Christ, who is born again in Christ Jesus, though the body dies, we will live forever.

He gives life. Everybody in Adam has death because that's what Adam brought to every single person in humanity. Everyone who is born of Adam dies. Everybody who is in Christ will be made alive again. The last Adam became a life giving spirit.

And so hold fast to Christ. We have this promise in Christ Jesus, he will raise you on the last day. Whatever is happening to you in your world now, as we see things in the news about natural disasters and threats of war and things of this, may that remind us of our mortality and our need for a savior.

And for those of us who are in Christ, may it bring us to cling to him all the more knowing that in Christ and only in Christ will we be raised from the dead. Have the promise that you have in Christ of eternal life and hold fast to it.

Never let it go. And I'll see you on the last day. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this goodness you show us in Christ Jesus. And may this gospel message be the things that sustains us all our days, no matter what happens to us in the body.

We know that this is but a light momentary affliction, as Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians chapter four and in the book of Romans saying that this does not even compare to the eternal glory that awaits us in Christ Jesus.

We will be rescued out of this present world that is coming into judgment, that is coming to destruction. And we will be brought into a place where there will not be any evil or sin or death or dying or sickness or decay or corruption anymore, for we will be raised incorruptible.

And may this promise continue to be the thing that gives us joy all our days. For Christ has died for our sake, for our sins, according to the scriptures. He was buried and he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

It is true. We can believe it and we can know with confidence we will be raised with him. It's in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.