NOTES for Co1 15:42-44

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.

Why does Paul call the questioner “foolish” in response to entirely reasonable questions (“How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?”, v. 35)? These were probably rhetorical questions. The person asking them did not expect an answer but was asserting: “The dead cannot rise in their former bodies; their bodies belong to others now. The dead person became grass, a sheep ate the grass, and a human being ate the sheep.” The idea of bodily resurrection was incomprehensible and foolish to Greek philosophers (cf. Acts 17:32; 1 Cor 1:22–23).

Of course, we will apparently be able to understand the “physics” of resurrection fully only after we ourselves have risen (cf. John 16:12). We do not understand simpler things either. How does a plant grow from a seed? Scientists can answer this childlike question only in general terms. It is significant that the Apostle Paul speaks of a new body by comparing resurrection to the sprouting of a grain.

His words fill the heart with joy and gratitude: our present bodies, which are destined to be laid in the earth, are perishable, that is, subject to decay, weak, and dishonored; but our risen bodies will be imperishable and strong. They will be like the “glorious body” (Phil 3:21) of the risen Christ.

Perishable bodies cannot enter the Kingdom of God (v. 50); therefore believers who live until Christ’s coming will receive new bodies. This will happen to everyone simultaneously, “in a moment” (Greek en atomō), literally in an “indivisible” (“atomic”) instant of time. Evidently the Apostle writes about this same event, the meeting of the risen and transformed children of God with the risen Savior, in 1 Thess 4:16–18.

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.