Main news for 12 June 2024

Speaking about the resurrection of the deaths, Paul underlines that it is not about momentary event, but about process, in which is implied the entire humanity from the very moment of the coming to the world of the Savior. Indeed, Matthew mentions in his Gospel that the first people resuscitated were seen in Jerusalem the day of the crucifixion. And if before about the resurrection was spoken, as about something awaiting humanity in the future, Paul speaks about it as about a spiritual process which in progress. It is not by chance that he speaks about the sowing, which took place at his time: in fact, the Kingdom also began to transform the world in his time, immediately after the Pentecost. But the results of this process will be seen by all only when it will end. The essence and the sense of this process are described by the apostle, as the change of the quality of the human nature from the not transformed into the transformed. It is in particular in this sense that he speaks of the "natural" body and the "spiritual" body.

Probably, under the "natural" Paul has in mind in this case not what we could think, bearing in mind the semantic connotations of the Greek corresponding word, but what implies its Jewish equivalent: the vital force, thanks to which man does not die, does not go to the world of darkness, but remains in the world of the living. Such vital force, no matter with what it is associated in various books of the Old Testament, remains at the beginning purely natural, such as is it moreover also any natural life. As we see, speaking about the "natural body", the apostle has in mind the natural life of man in all its fullness and in all the demonstrations, physical, quite as natural. This life "is sowed" by the witnesses of the Kingdom, bringing it to the world.

The image of sowing is completely convenient here: because Jesus Himself, speaking also about the Kingdom, had repeatedly resorted to the image of the sower and the seed, meaning this entry of the Kingdom into the world, which is impossible without the active participation for this process of its inhabitants: because it is in particular they, who become these witnesses, without whom one can’t speak of any expand of the borders of the Kingdom in our transforming world, but not yet transformed. And as long as the world is not yet transformed till the end, we can speak only about natural life with all its limitations so expressively described by the apostle.

The witnesses of the Kingdom are also transformed in the same way as all other people, with this only difference that, having become a part of the Kingdom already now, they are involved in the process, which for the others, being again out of it, is still to come. When the transformation of the world will end, in the day of the return of the Savior, will also end their transformation, and then their new nature which became a part of the Kingdom revealed till the end, will become obviously and clearly visible for all.