1 Corinthians 15:42

6. With these differences in various bodies, the differences between the buried and risen bodies correspond, 1 Corinthians 15:42-50.

42. So also Similar to the difference in these contrasted classes of objects in nature is the difference between the buried and the resurrection body.

The words thrice produced sown, sown, sown can mean nothing but buried, buried, buried in the grave. And raised, raised, raised, can mean nothing but raised from the grave. And what is or can be raised but the material corpse there buried? And what can be “resurrected,” or immortalized, but that same material which is raised from the grave? And if the corpse is raised from the grave by the resurrection, what need of any other material? Obviously, indeed, both Jesus and Paul select the case of the buried only as the ordinary fact. But that ordinary fact is selected to declare the resurrection of the actually dead body. For what has any substituted body to do with the grave at all?

It… it The it is not expressed in the Greek, but necessarily implied. For as the subject of both verbs, sown and raised, is the same, so the same subject is buried and “resurrected.” But what is the grammatical antecedent of it? What is it that is sown? None is here expressed, but 1 Corinthians 15:44 shows that body is implied.

If Jesus, instead of reanimating the putrid corpse of Lazarus by restoring to it its soul, had enshrined his soul in a new body, it would have been, so far as the soul was concerned, a transmigration, and not a resurrection. And so far as the body is concerned, a substitution and not a resurrection. The resurrection, to be a resurrection, must be of the same body; and it must be the same body by being the same substance, particle for particle. But it destroys not the resurrection to endow the body with new properties, and arrange its molecules to a new model.

There are three qualities assigned to the present body corruption, dishonour, and weakness; and three to the resurrection body incorruption, honour, and power. Corruption is the quality that arises from the instability of the material particles, by which displacement, decay, and disintegration take place. Incorruption implies that the body, however flexible to every volition, suffers no displacement, disarrangement, or dissolution. Every part and particle retains its place with perfect indissolubleness, health, and durability. Flexible as gossamer, it is unyielding as adamant.