1 Corinthians 15:35-44 - Homiletics

The resurrection body.

"With what body do they come?" The question which Paul puts into the mouth of the ancient sceptic assumes the fact of a general resurrection of mankind. And why should we not assume this fact? "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?" Incredible! Has not he who has engaged to do it all sufficient power? Scepticism parades the difficulties connected with the work of the resurrection. Let them be a million times more than the fancy of the infidel can figure to himself, will they amount to anything as an argument against its accomplishment? Nay, the difficulty of a work should always be estimated by the capacity of the agent engaged to perform it. What is impossible for one being to perform, can be achieved by another with the greatest facility. Where Omnipotence is the agent, the talk about difficulties is manifestly absurd. What would baffle and overmaster the combined power of all created existences, Almightiness can effect by a single fiat. "Is there anything too hard for the Lord?" Incredible! Changes are constantly going on in the creation bearing some resemblance to the event. Spring is a resurrection of buried life. Unnumbered graves, some that have been sealed for centuries, are opened every hour by the warm touch of the vernal ray. Incredible! It meets the universal longings of the human heart. The cry of all generations is this: "We would not be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up in life." The world's heart waits "for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." Incredible! It is unmistakably stated in that gospel which has been demonstrated Divine. To the question, "If a man die shall he live again?" we have in the Bible replies the most varied, expressive, and full. The subject of the general resurrection is a very extensive one; it has many branches, and touches a vast variety of truth. In the light of the apostle's statements, I infer the following answers to this question:—

I. With a body not IDENTICAL WITH THAT WHICH DESCENDED TO THE GRAVE . "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die," etc. Not a few of the advocates of the doctrine of the resurrection have exposed it to the ridicule of the sceptic and the contempt of the philosopher by representing the resurrection body as the literal reorganization of the buried dust. To work upon the passions of the unreflecting and the vulgar, the sensuous poem and the declamatory pulpit have given representations of the resurrection most extravagant in their materiality and their grossness. The particles of the buried body, which through the course of centuries have undergone innumerable transformations, and been separated from each other wide as the poles asunder, are described as coming together in the last day to take the very same place in that very same body as was conveyed to the grave. In poetry we have an example in such lines as Blair's—

"Now monuments prove faithful to their trust,

And render back their long committed dust;

Now charnels rattle, scattered limbs, and all

The various bones, obsequious to the call,

Self moved, advance: the distant head, the feet

Dreadful to view, see, through the dusky sky

Fragments of bodies in confusion fly;

To distant regions journeying there to claim

Deserted members and complete the frame."

Science, of course, laughs all this to scorn. It tells us how the human body, as to the particles that compose it, is in a state of perpetual flux; that portions of it are streaming off every moment from every pore; that at the end of seven years not one atom shall be found in the body which was there in the beginning, and that at the end of seventy years a man will have had no less than ten different bodies. It tells us how that no sooner is the body dead, than the various particles begin to liberate themselves from each other, and in the course of time mix themselves up as parts of other existences; how they form the grass upon which the cattle browse, flow in the stream, and become the fruit and flesh on which their children live. So that, in the course of ages, the same particles might have formed the frames of a thousand different men. It tells us, moreover, that millions of men have had no graves. In some of the Oriental nations the dead are not buried, but burned, and in the process of combustion the greater portions of the body pass into invisible gases, and are lost in the immensity of the atmosphere, while the handful of ashes that remain are borne away on the four winds of heaven. Now, it is our happiness to know that not on this point, any more than on any other, does the Bible teach what true science repudiates. "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be." There is a difference between the dead seed sown, and the living plant that springs from it. You drop into the earth a bare grain, and what comes up? Not a bare grain, but a green stalk, which grows, perhaps, to a tree with many branches, rich foliage, lovely blossoms, and delicious fruits. There is not a particle on that tree of the bare grain that you buried. It will be thus with the resurrection body; it will not be the bare grain that was put into the earth, but something else, that will come up. The resurrection body will be no more identical with the buried one than the majestic tree of the forest is the same in particle or bulk as the acorn from which it sprang. "With what body do they come?" The apostle enables us to reply further—

II. With a body that WILL HAVE SOME ORGANIC CONNECTION WITH THAT WHICH WAS DEPOSITED IN THE DUST . The plant, though very dissimilar to the bare grain, has a vital connection with it. It grows out of it, and is of the same order; there is an unbroken continuity. If the resurrection of the body from the grave means anything, it must mean that something from the old body comes up and takes a fresh form. What else is meant by such expressions as this: "All that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man and come forth"? It is true that this connection between the buried and the raised body is far more inexplicable than the connection between the buried grain and the up growing plant, or between the chrysalis and the moth. In neither of these cases is life really extinct; death is only apparent. There is an unbroken continuity traceable from the smallest seed to the mightiest tree, from the embryo in the shell to the monarch of the air. But no continuity is traceable between the raised and the buried man; there seems an awful break. Still it exists. Whatever theories are accepted as satisfactory, we hold to the scriptural fact that the new body will have an organic connection with the old; otherwise, the resurrection of the body is nothing but a pure fiction. Further, in answer to the sceptic's question, "With what body do they come?" the apostle's language enables us to give another reply.

III. With a body WHICH GOD IN HIS SOVEREIGNTY WILL BESTOW . "God giveth it body as it hath pleased him."

1. That God clothes life. "To every seed his own body." There is no doubt that in the universe there is life unclothed by matter. It may be so with the angels: it is so, I trow, with God himself. It is true we know nothing of life only by its clothing. Around us there may be immeasurable oceans of naked life, but we only know something of the embodied. No science has yet told us what life is.

2. That God clothes life with the fittest body. "All flesh is not the same flesh." Life has boundless varieties, but God gives to each its fitting body. Paul points to the life of "beasts" and "fish," and "birds;" to each he has given bodies. The hare and the elephant, the wren and the eagle, the minnow and the leviathian, all have bodies fitted to the peculiarities of their distinctive life.

3. That God clothes life according to his own pleasure. "Giveth it a body as it has pleased him." He chose the form, the hue, the gait of each life. Our resurrection body will be as it "hath pleased him." Then it will be beautiful, for he is the God of all taste, the Fountain of all beauty, the Standard of all Aesthetics. Then it will be useful, for he is the God of benevolence. Exquisitely suited to our present sphere are the bodies through which he streams into us the most exquisite sensations, and through which we convey and work out the best things within us. It will be glorious. "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars:" so also with the resurrection of the just. Once more, to the question of the sceptic the apostle answers—

IV. With a body THAT SHALL BE A VAST IMPROVEMENT UPON THE OLD ONE . "It is sown in corruption." Between the buried body and the resurrection body we have a series of antitheses, showing the vast superiority of the one to the other.

1. The one is corruptible, the other is incorruptible. "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption." Our present frames are frail and dying. The resurrection body will be incorruptible; it will be deathless as the immortal spirit itself.

2. The one is degraded; the other is glorious. Our present corporeal system is dishonoured, but it is raised in glory. How great the difference between the corrupting seed and the stately plant and full-blown flower!

3. The one is weak, and the other is powerful. How feeble is our present body! It is not like the oak that can stand the storms of centuries, but like the frail flower that withers in an hour. It is raised in power—power that shall never fatigue with labour or wear out by time.

4. The one is natural; the other is spiritual. The present body is called a "natural body," probably because it is more the organ of the animal than the spiritual; and the future body the spiritual, because it will be the organ of the intelligent and immortal mind. Man has in him two principles of life—the animal, which connects him with the material and local, and the rational, which connects him with the spiritual and the infinite. The body of the one falls at death, and will be required no more; the perfected body of the other will be taken up at the resurrection, and will be continued forever. What is death to him who has this hope? Not the king of terrors, but the angel of immortality bearing to him the passport of an ever blessed future.