1 Corinthians 15:37 - Exposition

Not that body that shall be. This deep remark should have checked the idly and offensively materialistic form in which the doctrine of the resurrection is often taught. But bare grain. Wickliffe, "a naked corne." In this passage, almost alone in all his Epistles, St. Paul, who does not seem to have been at all a close observer of external phenomena, uses metaphors drawn from natural life. His usual metaphors are chiefly architectural and agonistic—derived, that is, from buildings and games. That he was not a student of nature arose, no doubt, partly from his Semitic cast of mind, but chiefly from his being short sighted, and from his having spent most of his early life in large cities. It may chance; if it so happen, (see note on 1 Corinthians 14:10 ). The English word "chance" occurs but four times in the whole Bible ( 1 Samuel 6:9 ; Ecclesiastes 9:11 ). In Luke 10:31 the words rendered "by chance" mean rather "by coincidence."