Untitled Sermon
As God has willed that we should have bodies fitted for our life on earth, so he has willed that we shall have bodies fitted for our heavenly existence. Paul’s insistence on bodily life should not be overlooked. Those who held to the immortality of the soul, but denied the resurrection of the body, usually looked for nothing more than a shadowy, insipid existence in Hades. It is fundamental to Paul’s thought that the after-life will be infinitely more glorious than this one. This necessitates a suitable ‘body’ with which the life is to be lived, for without a ‘body’ of some kind there seems no way of allowing for individuality and self-expression
43. Paul continues to pick out those features of bodily life that seemed to the Greek to demonstrate the folly of the idea of the resurrection, and to show that they have no relevance to the resurrection body. Dishonour translates atimia, a word that applies in various ways. It is sometimes used of loss of the rights of citizenship; a corpse has no rights. Again, there are ‘less honourable’ parts of this body (12:23), and when dead the whole body lacks honour. Further, the Jews held that a dead body conveys uncleanness (Num. 19:11). Look at it how you will, there is nothing honourable about a decaying body as it is put into a grave. But that has no relevance to the way the body is when it is raised. The resurrection body is a glorious body, just as far surpassing the present body as the beautiful plant surpasses the seed from which it sprang. The Greek’s doubts arising from the dishonourable nature of the body that now is are groundless. The body that is to be raised will be a body in glory.
Again, the present body is characterized by weakness. Cultivate it as he would (and the Greek did cultivate bodily prowess), it still remains a weak instrument, far outspanned by the mind that is in it. And when it dies (the primary reference is to the dead body), it is the very symbol of powerlessness. But the resurrection body will not be limited as this body is. Just as surely as this body is characterized by weakness, so the body that is to be raised will be characterized by power.
Here it means that the body we now have is a body suited to the present life. It is adapted to the psychē, the rational principle of life. But such a body is ill-adapted to life in the world to come. For that a body is needed that is attuned to the spirit, in fact a spiritual body. This does not mean a body ‘composed of spirit’, but rather ‘which expresses spirit’, ‘which answers to the needs of spirit’. At the end of the verse the apostle argues that, just as there is a body related to the psychē, so there must also be a body related to the spirit. The spiritual body then is the organ that is intimately related to the spirit of man, just as the present body is intimately related to this earthly life.
We enter natural life first; it is only after that that we may enter into the spiritual
But Paul is surely not looking specifically at either. He is contrasting Christ’s heavenly origin with Adam’s earthly one.
There is no question in the minds of either Paul or the Corinthians (or of the Greeks at large) that all people are ‘earthy’. Our bodies are earthy bodies and they share in the corruption that is part and parcel of earthy things. But Christians are not only earthy; they are also ‘heavenly’ because of their relationship to Christ. This means that Christ’s people will be like him (cf. 1 John 3:2). The resurrection body of Christ shows us something of what life will be like for believers in that new world that their resurrection will usher in. Then he will change their ‘lowly bodies’ so that they will be ‘like his glorious body’ (Phil. 3:21).
Paul is saying, then, that just as throughout this life we have habitually borne the form of Adam, so in the life to come we shall bear that of our Lord. Just as surely as we have done the one, so surely shall we do the other. This is not a matter for doubt. For Paul the considerations adduced are decisive.