The Real You
Tom Shrader works through 1 Corinthians 15:35-49, addressing the questions early Corinthian Christians had about what happens to the body after death and what form the resurrection body will take. Using Paul's illustrations from agriculture and astronomy, Shrader contrasts the perishable, dishonored, weak, and natural body with the imperishable, glorious, powerful, and spiritual body believers will one day receive. He closes by grounding the teaching in 1 John 3:2, urging listeners to let the certainty of this future reality provide perspective and encouragement for the hardships of present life.
“This earthly body will give way to a glorified body, this perishable body becomes imperishable, this body that's living with sin will become glorified, this body that's weak will become powerful, this natural body becomes a spiritual body.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: 1 Corinthians
Recorded: 2002 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 36 min
Themes: resurrection, life after death, hope, heaven, eternal life, death, encouragement, suffering, grieving a loved one, facing death, questioning the afterlife, new believer, struggling with doubt, attending a funeral, middle aged, dealing with hardship
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:12, 1 Corinthians 15:13-19, 1 Corinthians 15:20, 1 Corinthians 15:35-49, 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, 1 Corinthians 15:45, 1 Corinthians 15:46, 1 Corinthians 15:47-49, Ecclesiastes 3:20, Psalm 103:14, 1 Peter 1:3-4, 1 Thessalonians 4, Genesis 2:7, Philippians 2:5-7, Luke 20:36, 1 John 3:2, John 8, Romans 8:19
Theological Themes: resurrection body, bodily resurrection, eschatology, glorification, firstfruits, pneumatology, immortality, new creation
Full Transcript
Introduction: The Resurrection Chapter
First Corinthians chapter 15 is known as the resurrection chapter. Throughout these 58 verses, Paul is dealing with the issue of the resurrection. The tendency when we hear that phrase is to think of Christ's resurrection, and indeed there is some validity to that, but Paul is really trying to address a question that he himself raises in verse 12. He says this: "Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead?"
Here is what was going on in that church. They accepted that Jesus had been raised from the dead — if they had not accepted that, they would not be Christians at all. Their confusion was about what happens to us when we die. Gary mentioned we had three funerals, two in the church this week and another one next week. At every funeral there is this permeating question of what happens when we die. What Paul is writing to here are Christians who have a misunderstanding of what happens when they die, and so he is trying to correct them.
Christ's Resurrection: The Foundation
In dealing with our resurrection, Paul begins by talking about Christ's resurrection. He presents first the gospel — that Jesus died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He was raised again. Then he says there were eyewitnesses. He plays an interesting game in verses 13 through 19, asking what if Christ was not raised from the dead.
His conclusion is this: if Christ was not raised from the dead, then our preaching is a waste and our faith is a waste. We are liars by what we give witness to, we are stuck in our sins, those who have gone ahead of us are dead in their sins, and this life here has no meaning or purpose. But in verse 20 he gives us this information: "But now Christ has been raised from the dead."
We rejoice in that, but that is not all. He is the firstfruits. The Jews understood this imagery — just prior to harvest, you would bring to the priest a small portion of that harvest, as a picture of the fact that God owned it all and also as a promise that there was more to come. Jesus is the firstfruits. His resurrection is a promise, a pledge of more to come. Paul then emphasizes that we too will rise from the dead.
The Question of the Resurrection Body
Beginning in verse 35, Paul starts to really focus in on the resurrection of our body and what that body looks like. "Someone will say, 'How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?'" I like it that Paul uses that little phrase, "someone will say." These are fair questions, and I think Paul is writing this because he has already taught it and come to the realization that he is hearing these questions over and over again. Any good teacher or author does their best to anticipate areas of question or difficulty and respond to them.
He said somebody is going to ask how the dead are raised, because other than Jesus, we have never seen this. It is a somewhat understandable question — a legitimate question. You have never seen this; how can it be? And what kind of body are they going to have? What is that body going to look like?
It is one thing to think about somebody who has died of what we might call natural causes, whose body was prepared and buried. But even then, remember when they go to the tomb of Lazarus? Jesus says, "Roll away the stone," and Martha says he has been dead four days — surely he stinketh. The body has already started to decay. How is that body, which ultimately becomes just bones, going to rise? Or what about those who have been devoured by wild animals? Someone here in the valley, not long ago, was cremated and their ashes were taken up in a plane and sprinkled over a lake. What about that person? What kind of body is that person going to have? What happens when somebody falls into the sea and is eaten by sharks? What about that body? Those are real questions, and Paul said you are going to ask them — and now he addresses the answer.
The Illustration of the Seed
Verse 36: "You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies." The word "fool" perhaps indicates that these are not questions being asked in good faith looking for an answer, or it identifies someone who ought to know better. In other words, we have been down this before, we have talked about this before — you ought to know this.
Paul now uses a couple of illustrations, one from nature in terms of planting and harvesting, and then one from the world and universe around us. That which you sow must die before the new plant comes to life. The death here is not an obstacle to resurrection — it is essential for resurrection. The body has to die in order for this to take place.
And that seed which emerges has some link to what was sown. Verse 37: "That which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else." In other words, the body you plant is not the body that will rise. Just as I take a kernel of corn and drop it in the ground and from it comes a whole plant, there is a sense in which I get other kernels from it, but I get a whole different plant, a whole different structure. He says it is the same thing with us. There is some continuity, but there is some difference as well. We have an earthly body, but we will have a glorified body.
You can see this principle all around you. I do not plant a seed of corn and expect wheat. I do not plant a seed of corn and expect other seeds. I get the same in essence, but it is different.
The Resurrection Body: Similarity and Difference
God gives each seed its own body, just as He wishes. The body we see after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Himself is a great illustration of this. It had similarities to His earthly body — when He allowed it, those who saw Him recognized Him, and apparently there were scars or some residue from the nails that had pierced His hands and feet, and from the sword in His side. And yet it was a very different body. It passed through walls, and yet at the same time it ate. There is a similarity, and yet there is a difference.
Verse 39 says, "All flesh is not the same flesh." Paul is really dealing here with the second question: what kind of body are we going to have? We talk about flesh as a general category, but there is flesh of men, flesh of beasts, flesh of birds, and flesh of fish. They all look different, they function differently. You could go into Outback and order a porterhouse, and if they brought you salmon, the flesh would taste different. It all fits under the category of flesh, but there are all these subcategories — fish, beasts, birds, and men. There is difference, and yet there is uniqueness.
One author writes this: there are some 600 octodecinal decillion different combinations of amino acids — a number equal to one to the 108th power, that is, one with 108 zeros after it. He continues: amino acids are the building blocks of all life, and not only does each type of plant and animal life have a distinct pattern of amino acids, but individual plants, animals, and human beings have their own unique grouping of them. No two flowers, snowflakes, seeds, blades of grass, or people are identical. That same diversity is visible everywhere in the world around us.
Heavenly Bodies and Earthly Bodies
Paul then directs our attention to the universe in verse 40: "There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another." We have this planet we are on, and yet we are also in a solar system. Paul identifies the glory of the sun, the glory of the moon, and the glory of the stars — and yet all these stars are different from one another.
John MacArthur writes: "Not only are the heavenly bodies vastly different from the earthly, they are vastly different from each other. The sun is greatly different from the moon, and both are different from the stars. From astronomy we know that many of what we normally call stars are actually planets, therefore similar to the earth or the moon, and that there are also true stars that give off light themselves." Paul is not giving an astronomy lesson or an agriculture lesson. He is trying to answer the question: what kind of body will we have?
Four Contrasts: Earthly Body and Heavenly Body
Now he applies it in verse 42: "So also is the resurrection of the dead." There are similarities, to be sure, but there are differences. In verses 42 through 44, Paul gives us a direct contrast between the earthly body and the heavenly body: "It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body."
Paul wants us to understand these principles: death must precede life, and this natural body precedes the spiritual body. He outlines four contrasts, and you can pick them out easily because of the pattern in which he writes them.
Perishable Becoming Imperishable
The first contrast is perishable versus imperishable. The body you live in is perishing. Literally, moments after you are born, you begin the process of dying. Your body is decaying, your body is giving out. Ecclesiastes 3:20 says, "All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all returned to the dust." Psalm 103:14 says, "For He Himself knows our frame. He is mindful that we are but dust. As for man, his days are like grass, as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed it over, it is no more."
No matter how hard you exercise, no matter how correctly you eat, no matter how regularly you go to your physician, no matter how stringently you follow the regimen he gives you — you, my friend, are dying. There is a lady who comes to one of the PL studies, and when people's faces relax into neutral it is interesting to observe. Some people naturally relax into something of a frown, and they may be the nicest person in the world, but it does not look that way. But some people — and this is admirable — have these natural resting faces that simply smile, and she is one of them, with a big toothy smile.
She came into the PL study the other day, and she had someone older with her who was helping her. When that person left, she was asked who it was. She said, "That's my daughter, my youngest daughter — she's 68." She went on to say she has four children, 17 grandchildren, 32 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren. When asked how old she was, she said 94. Just a remarkable woman. But what she understood is that she is dying — and that is not unique to her. At every funeral, there is reason to point out that what has happened to the person in the casket is happening to everyone in the room. You cannot escape it. This body is perishing.
But the body we receive in the resurrection is imperishable. First Peter 3:4 says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born..."
The Resurrected Body
Again, into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, to obtain — he's speaking of us — to obtain an inheritance with an imperishable, undefiled body that will not fade away. This body gets traded in for a new body, a body similar to the body that Christ had. We sing about it, we anticipate it.
Many of you know Larry Wright. Other than my family, Larry is the most influential person that God has ever used in my life. When Larry was here for my 50th birthday, we had to wheel him out because his body was beginning to fail. They did some surgery and replaced some knees, and the next time he was here he could get up the steps by himself. But last October, he died — he died in a body that was just beat up.
I used to describe Larry as a 1999 Chevy with 448,000 miles on it, just a body that was all beat up. When he died, they came out and said, "Do you want to donate any of his organs?" It was a moment of great laughter, because we could not think of one organ he had that anybody in the world, no matter how sick, would want. Finally they said, "Well, how about retinas?" He couldn't see. There was simply nothing there.
That perishable body is gone, and at some point — and this is the question that many of you have been asking — he will get that resurrected body. When? I believe that is what we see in 1 Thessalonians chapter four. I believe he gets that body at the rapture. Until then, he is absent from this earth suit and present with the Lord in some form, and then he will be united with Him and spend eternity in a magnificent new body.
Sown in Weakness, Raised in Glory
This body that we have is sown in dishonor, but it will be raised in glory. This body is subject to sin — in fact, we can virtually do nothing perfectly, because everything is tainted by the flesh. When we get to heaven, we will do everything in glory. Everything we do here, we will do better in heaven.
Our worship and praise, as good as it may be — one of our goals is to remove every obstacle, every distraction — and yet don't you find yourself somewhere in the course of those twenty-five minutes distracted? A typo, something that doesn't get switched just right, or somebody claps in a certain way. Everything you do in this life, you will do in heaven, except one thing: aside from sin, that is evangelize. There is no evangelism in heaven. If you are an evangelist, you had better get it done right here, because you will not use that gift in heaven.
What is sown here — and he is still speaking of the body — is sown in weakness. I was watching yesterday the World's Strongest Man competition. Even the man who wins it lifts an enormous amount, but I have a jack in my car that will lift much more. Even the strongest man is weak.
When I was a young man, I said there were three things I had seen in my life that I would never see anything like again, and that has proven absolutely true over time. One is the Beatles. The second is one of the greatest athletes that ever lived: Secretariat. There will never be anything like Secretariat. The third was Muhammad Ali. Even if you are not a boxing fan, if you are flipping through channels and you see Ali in his prime — see him fighting Cleveland Williams down in the Astrodome — it is just an incredible picture of agility and strength. Those guys today could not touch him. Mike Tyson could not have gotten close enough to bite off his ear. He was the greatest.
But look at him now — frail, weak. It does not matter how strong you are or how healthy you are. Some small virus, a cancer we cannot even see except with a microscope, and it lays you right out. But the body will be raised in power. He does not tell us exactly what that means, but from this I derive one conclusion: in heaven, we will no longer be able to say the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
The Earth Suit and the Spiritual Body
This body is sown a natural body and it is raised a spiritual body. Larry used to use a phrase — and it is a great one — that we have here an earth suit. This body that you and I have is perfectly designed to function on the surface of this earth. But take us off the surface of the earth, take us down into the water, and this earth suit needs a wetsuit and it needs oxygen. Take us into space, out of this atmosphere and into the next, and this earth suit needs a spacesuit.
This body functions perfectly on the surface of this earth, but it is a natural body. When we get to heaven, what we need is a spiritual body. Jesus says in Luke 20 verse 36 that when we rise we will be like the angels. I think what He is saying is that we will have bodies perfectly suited for heaven — as perfectly suited as this body is for this earth, we will have bodies perfectly suited for eternity in heaven.
Adam and Christ: Two Prototypes
He teaches a little more in the next four or five verses. Verse 45: "So also it is written, the first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit." Genesis 2:7 tells us: "Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being." We were created. In Adam, the body we have became a living body. Jesus came and He gave us a living spirit — we are born again.
John MacArthur writes these helpful words: Adam's body was the prototype of our natural body, whereas Christ's body was the prototype of our spiritual bodies. All the descendants of Adam have natural bodies, and all who are in Christ will have spiritual bodies.
The Resurrection Body and the Order of Creation
The descendants of Christ have spiritual bodies. Christ's resurrection, therefore, was the prototype of all subsequent resurrections. That is the body we will have. We will have a body like Christ, like the body they saw as He seemed to move freely on this earth in that time between His resurrection and His ascension.
In verse 46, Paul gives us some helpful information about order. He said, "However, the spiritual is not first, the natural is first and then the spiritual." There are some — the Mormons, for example — who believe that we exist somewhere and then we come to earth. The only human being who has that pre-existence in a spiritual realm is Jesus. This verse, 1 Corinthians 15:46, eliminates that idea: first is the natural, then the spiritual.
Jesus is the exception, as we know from Philippians 2:5, where Paul writes, "Have this attitude in yourself which is also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but He emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of man." Jesus existed before that birth in Bethlehem. He pre-existed it. God is eternal — no beginning, no end.
He emptied Himself not of His deity. He remained God. He emptied Himself of His glory, setting it aside for a period of roughly thirty-three years, but not His deity. For Jesus: first spiritual, then natural. For all the rest of us in Adam: first natural, then spiritual.
Then Paul puts a bow on it. Verse 47: "The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven." Verse 48: "As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; as is the heavenly, so also those who are heavenly." And verse 49: "Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." Just as we, like Adam, have these natural bodies, we who are born in Christ, who are raised in Him, will become heavenly. We will have a body that is prepared and ready for heaven.
Children of God — Now and What We Shall Be
As I studied and prepared for this, I thought of 1 John 3:2, where John writes, "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be."
Notice that he emphasizes the present — now we are children of God. In earlier times we probably would not have had to spend much time on this point, but we need to at least make note of it today. I was watching television the other day and they were discussing the problems in the Middle East. The argument being made was essentially: why can't we all get along? We have Arabs and Jews, Muslims and Christians. Why can't we get along? After all, we are all children of God. There may be some very broad sense in which that is true, in that God created all things, but we are not all children of God in the way that John is using the phrase here.
When Jesus speaks to the Pharisees in John 8, He says, "You are of your father, the devil." You are either for Him or against Him. There is a narrow way and there is a broad way. Jesus is constantly bringing before us this point of distinction, and He removes any possibility of neutrality. There is no spiritual Switzerland where you can say, "Well, I'm in the middle — I don't really know, I wish I knew, but I don't." He takes that away. You are either for Him or against Him. You are either on the narrow way or the broad way. He says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" — either that is true for you, or it is not.
So the fair question is: are you a child of God today? As we took communion together, it appeared that every hand was pouring juice and eating the wafer. If that is truly the case, if you are genuinely a child of God, then what we are looking at here is your future.
Three Things We Know
I understand that in one sense we have no idea what the future holds. You could pull out of the parking lot today, a car could hit you, and your life would be radically changed. We simply do not know what the future holds in that immediate sense. But in another, more general sense, we do know what the future holds, because Scripture tells us.
John says, "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. But we know." There are things we know, and he identifies three of them.
The first thing we know is that He will appear. There is a day coming when He will come to redeem His church and His people. We know that. The second thing we know is that we will be like Him. Do not for a second think that means you are going to be a little god, or that deity will somehow reside in you. What it means is that we will be like Him in that resurrected, glorified body. We will be closer to Him than we are now — as close as we can possibly be, as close as any union can be between a Creator and a creature.
Being like Him also explains the third thing we know: we will see Him as He is. Right now we cannot. But we will have so much in common that our communion with Him will grow incomprehensibly deep. Communion is always based on our ability to communicate and to understand one another.
The Chasm Between Creatures
Let me illustrate that. Yesterday, Sarah was working, Haley was working, and Susan was here at the women's conference. I was home alone. There was a noise out front, and the dog was there. This is a low point in my life — I said to the dog, "Who's at the door?" And then I caught myself: what if the dog had said, "It's the mailman, Tom. That's who's at the door. He always comes at ten o'clock." The chasm there is so real. It is ludicrous — and yet we have all done it — because it absolutely breaks down. It is as senseless as walking up to the goldfish tank and asking, "Who's at the door?" We are two different species. There is simply no
The Limits of Communication — and the Promise of What's Coming
Our dog, whenever I walk in, will go and get a shoe and bring it to me with that shoe in its mouth. Apparently, that shoe is the entire basis for our communication — the point of connection between that dog and me. I come to God even now, even with His Spirit in me, and I am still limited in the same kind of way. I can begin to communicate with Him, but because one day I will be like Him, I will see Him as He really is, and all at once my communion with Him will be beyond anything I can fathom now. Everything here is tainted, dim — but there it will be as perfectly clear as it can possibly be between Creator and creature.
So why does Paul tell us this? First, he wants to answer a question — make sure you understand it. Second, now that you understand it, it ought to affect the way you live. There ought to be a hunger and a thirst in you for that future, a desire to be with Him. Romans 8:19 says, "The whole creation is looking forward to the day when the sons of God will be manifested, when we'll be with Him."
Who God Is Changes Everything
Here is what this does, and we say this so often that I hope it never loses its effect. In life, you need to understand who God is, because when you understand who God is, everything else makes sense. The only way you can understand who God is is from this book. You are not going to get it from Oprah, and you are not going to get it from Rush. You are not going to get it from CNN, ESPN, or MSNBC. The only way you can understand God is to read how He describes and identifies Himself — not what you hope He is, not what you believe He is, not what you think He is, but what He is.
When you understand who He is, you understand who you are. He gives us this information about the future so we know that is secure. That is what Paul says: "Momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." Now you are ready to live life.
Perspective in the Good Times and the Hard Times
All at once, those giant, exciting things have perspective. I watched this week as the Diamondbacks received their World Series rings — pretty cool, and it would be cool to have one of those. You ought to be excited, get balloons and firecrackers, celebrate. But that is not the purpose or meaning of life, and we need to put it in perspective. The same is true when you close the biggest deal of your life or land that big client you have been pursuing — terrific and exciting, but perspective is needed there too.
And in the hard times, perspective is needed just as much. I spoke this week with a woman I believe is representative of many women in this city and in this church. She is 41, a single mom with a teenager and a preteen, and she is exhausted — working two jobs, barely getting by, the father of her children neither cooperating nor contributing. She is very sad, under enormous pressure, with so little time. Every answer we seemed to arrive at together only complicated things further. She needs time to be mentored, and her question was, where do I find it?
Ultimately, I was able to say: let us do everything we can, but let us understand it is not going to be perfect. One day, He will appear and we will see Him as He is — in fact, we will be like Him. That is the future, and that is why Paul tells us this.
A Longing for That Day
I have said many times that Gary and I do not coordinate the worship time with the lesson — we let the Holy Spirit do that. But I was struck by how perfectly the songs today fit this lesson. At one point you sang these words: *My heart is burning for that day when I'll see you face to face. I'll keep watching and waiting, staying focused on your word. My heart is burning for that day when I'll see you face to face. There's a longing in my soul to hear you say, well done. I will see you, I will touch you, you'll hold me in that day.*
That is the future. That is the promise. That is what sustains, what comforts, what encourages — and Paul says, I want you to understand this is real. He does not give it all to us; there are still questions I cannot answer. But He gives us enough to say this: this earthly body will give way to a glorified body, this perishable body becomes imperishable, this body living with sin will become glorified, this body that is weak will become powerful, this natural body becomes a spiritual body. That is the promise. That is the future.
As Certain as the Saints Already There
We say this and it is not hyperbole: if you are a Christian sitting here today, you are as certain of heaven as the saints who are already there. And think of it this way — if you do not know Christ as your Lord and Savior, this moment, right now, is as close to heaven as you will ever get. If Jesus is my Lord and Savior, this is as close to hell as I will ever be.
Just because this is in the future, just because it comes after death, just because we cannot right now see it and feel it and touch it — do not for a second think it is not real. Your life needs to be driven by this reality. It gives you focus and perspective. And it is your future if you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior.
Do you know Him? Have you come to Him in repentance and faith? If not, we would love to talk with you about it. Call us at the church, or speak with the person who invited you. What does it mean to be a Christian? Next week, Paul closes out — we look at the last eight or nine verses of this chapter.
Closing Prayer
Father, help us see this truth. And God, as we see You as You are, we see ourselves for who we are. As we see this future, we understand that it is real and that it is true, and it provides for us encouragement and comfort in this life. God, we pray to You this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.