The resurrection of the body. 1 Corinthians 15:35-58. When the subject of the resurrection of our bodies comes up in conversations we have with people, usually, there are two questions they have: “How will it happen? And what will we be like? What kind of body will we have?” They are concerned with the manner of the resurrection, because it reveals the mind of the one who asks who denies the resurrection, and they wonder how can a disintegrated body be reconstructed. The scripture is plain that when we die, it is like a seed that dies and disintegrates but the One who gives life, our Lord Jesus Christ, is the source of life that comes from death. A seed can't bring life until it dies. That life process bears the characteristic of the Lord.
He was "the corn of wheat that fell into the ground and died." By His death, He has brought eternal life, His kind of life, to millions of people. The new life He had at resurrection was real life but in a far more superior way than the previous limitations He chose to put upon Himself as our representative substitute. We will still be known by our personalities as individual persons who began our life on earth in the natural sphere. In our new spiritual life after the resurrection, we will have spiritual bodies. We will not just be spirits, but spirits with bodies made like His body of glory.
“What body?” is asked because one cannot imagine resurrection. The apostle Paul makes it clear that our old bodies are not going to be reconstructed to be like they were before. It will be our body and there will be continuity so our identity will be maintained, but there will be fundamental differences. It will be raised in glory, not in dishonor as when we die. Weakness gives way to death but in the resurrection, the body will be raised in power far greater than anything we have known because of our sin-nature.
Two answers come from the two questions. One comes from nature: a new body comes from the death of the old body by the design of nature. Life comes from death. There are mysteries we can’t explain but we believe what happens before our eyes. Each seed has a body of its own. “God giveth it a body.” “How are the dead raised?” God giveth it a body. With what body? Just as there is variety in nature in seeds, animals, and stars, so there will be in our resurrected bodies. "We will know even as we are known." Incorruption, honor, power, spiritual, and heavenly are descriptions of the new resurrected bodies of the saints. With what body? Some things we are best to leave with God. “As it pleases Him.”
The coming of the Lord is both an assurance and a challenge. The “first fruit” is Christ; the harvest is the saints. The assurance is that we believe what has been revealed to us by God but it is beyond our finding out by the intellect. This we know: we shall be changed. As the seed is changed after it dies, so is the body of the believer. We know we shall continue to exist but we will be changed and we will have both a personality and a body. When the Lord comes for His own people, the believers who have died will first be resurrected and reunited with bodies that have been suitably changed to accommodate to our eternity with the Lord.
Living Christians will join with them in bodies that have also been instantly changed. We know not all Christians will sleep in death. Some will be alive when the coming of the Lord for the Church happens. Those believing saints who are alive at the rapture of the Church will be instantaneously changed. We are wise if we remember this can happen at any time, and we live daily on the edge of this event.
The challenge to believers is to not fear death – neither the action or the fact. We look beyond the grave and all that is associated with the whole region of departed spirits. For believers we are absent from the body and present with the Lord. The sting of death, the fear and foreboding caused by the strength of the law, which is caused by sin is not something to be concerned about.
The ultimate appeal of the whole letter is in verse fifty-eight and is the answer to verse nine of chapter one. The concluding events of the two aspects of the coming of the Lord will result in the reign of Christ The power and authority of our Lord Jesus Christ over death will be seen and experienced by everyone in the world. Even the results of sin on the creation will be removed and creation will be reconciled to God. Redemption will remove the consequences of sin and enduring peace will come.