NOTES for Co1 15:35-50
Continuing the discussion of the general resurrection, Paul, as if arguing with some unknown opponent, places special emphasis on the fact that resurrection is impossible without a qualitative change in human nature, which in biblical language is called transfiguration. Apparently, many of the recent converts to Christ from paganism still viewed resurrection in a pagan way, and they had a quite reasonable question: would resurrection be something unnatural, a kind of backward movement, as if, for example, a river suddenly flowed back toward its source instead of toward its mouth (v. 35)?
Answering this question, the apostle points out that death is not the end of the path and the beginning of degradation, but only one stage of the spiritual movement that ends in the complete transfiguration of a person who follows Christ and has joined himself to the life of the Kingdom (vv. 36-38). The whole world created by God has to do with what is called "glory," by which the Bible means the presence of God, though each creature has its own measure of this "glory" (vv. 39-41). Everything can be transfigured and will be transfigured at the end of time, and the measure of glory will determine the place and quality of each creature of God in the new, transfigured world. But for the human person there is a special path in the Kingdom. Human transfiguration presupposes passing through death and overcoming it (vv. 42-44).
The human path in this respect is like the earthly path of the Savior Himself, who also passed through death so that the Kingdom could enter our still untransfigured world. Speaking of a "natural body," the apostle evidently means the untransfigured human nature damaged by sin, which lives mainly a natural, creaturely life that pushes the life of the spirit into the background. But this human condition is temporary, for from the beginning God created the human person in order to give him the Kingdom in all its fullness. The fall delayed and slowed the resolution of this task, but did not cancel it, and a person's earthly path has meaning only when it is directed toward the Kingdom and ends in it (vv. 45-49). And the transfiguration of human nature is a necessary stage of this path, for nature, including human nature, in its present state is not suited for the Kingdom and will not enter it (v. 50). The Kingdom is not some special Christian form of postmortem existence, as some Christians in Corinth probably thought, but the fullness of life opened to a person at the end of the path after transfiguration and renewal. It is a life accessible to everyone already in this transfiguring, though not yet fully transfigured, world.