NOTES for 1Co 15:42-44
Speaking about the resurrection of the dead, Paul emphasizes that the matter is not a one-time event, but a process in which all humanity has been involved from the very moment the Savior came into the world. In fact, Matthew in his Gospel mentions that the first resurrected people were seen in Jerusalem on the day of the crucifixion. And if previously resurrection had been spoken of as something awaiting humanity in the future, Paul speaks of it as a spiritual process already underway. It is no accident that he speaks of sowing taking place in his time: the Kingdom too began to transform the world in his time, immediately after Pentecost. But the results of this process will become visible to all only when it is completed.
The apostle describes its essence and meaning as a change in the quality of human nature from untransformed to transformed. It is in this sense that he speaks of a "soulish" body and a "spiritual" body. In all probability, by "soul" Paul has in mind here not what one might think while considering the semantic connotations of the corresponding Greek word, but what its Hebrew equivalent implies: the vital force by which a person does not die, does not go into the world of shadows, but remains in the world of the living.
Such vital force, whatever it may be connected with in different Old Testament books, remains a purely natural principle, as all psychic life is as well. Speaking of the "soulish body", the apostle has in mind the natural, creaturely life of a person in all its fullness and in all its manifestations, both physical and psychic. This is the life that is "sown" by the witnesses of the Kingdom who carry it into the world.
The image of sowing is quite appropriate here: Jesus Himself, when speaking of the Kingdom, more than once resorted to the image of the sower and of sowing, having in view that entry of the Kingdom into the world which is impossible without the active participation in this process of its inhabitants. For it is they who become those very witnesses without whom there can be no question of any expansion of the borders of the Kingdom in our transforming but not yet transformed world. And as long as the world has not yet been transformed to the end, the matter can only concern natural life with all its limitations, so expressively described by the apostle.
The witnesses of the Kingdom are also transformed just like all other people, with the only difference that, having become part of the Kingdom already now, they have entered a process that still lies ahead for the rest, who are for now outside it. When the transformation of the world is completed, on the day of the return of the Savior, their transformation will also be completed, and then their new nature, having become part of the Kingdom revealed to the end, will become visibly and clearly apparent to all.