1 Corinthians 15:35-41

April 14, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 15:45 in the audio file.

Or, A Consideration of God’s (Re)Creative Flair

I know you know this, but knowing God makes a difference. Knowing what He says about Himself, knowing what He says about His works, knowing more about how He works as we listen to His word and look at His world, really does shape how we answer life and death and afterlife questions. Those who “have no knowledge of God” (1 Corinthians 15:34) will necessarily have a trapped view of what is possible. Idolators don’t have better and broader imaginations, it’s the ones who fear the Lord who made heaven and earth who are truly able to think big.

Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15 because there were “some” in the church who said that “there is no resurrection of the dead” (verse 12). After he reminded them about the historical and apostolic witness to the resurrection (verses 1-11) he began to work through the logical consequences denying the resurrection and also God’s promise of the future kingdom of the resurrected (verses 12-34).

In verses 34 through 49 Paul picks up not just on the fact of future resurrection but on the kind of resurrection Christians have coming in Christ. Instead of “some” Paul addresses a “someone” in verse 34 who asks about the “kind of body” that the resurrected will have. There are some fascinating answers which we’ll begin to find this morning and even more to celebrate next week on Resurrection Sunday.

For today in verses 34-41 we’ll see an objection to resurrection and the first two responses.

A Challenging Question about Bodily Resurrection (verse 35)

Whether or not Paul had a particular person in mind, he was familiar with this question. But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”

These two questions scratch at the same thing; the second question clarifies what’s meant by the first. How means more than what way it will happen, but more what state it will take once it’s happened. The problem is with the body. This is the first time that Paul has used the word body in the chapter, and it is a key word from here to the end (used twelve times from verse 35 to 53).

What kind of body, what sort of body, what form/mold will the risen carcass have? What make and model of moving corpse are we talking about? Are we really hoping for the decomposing dead to wake up and start walking around again? Best case scenario: the body parts broke down in one spot in the ground. But how does resuscitation help those bodies that were broken in pieces or burned? Don’t molecules get reused and make new bonds in other living things? How is that going to work? It’s a rotting mess.

The Greek wise-guys thought resurrection was crazy. When the Greeks in Athens heard Paul preaching resurrection they figured he was talking about some foreign god (Acts 17:18). It’s not that everyone denied that there would be any sort of existence after life on earth, but it was monstrous to consider that a crop of corpses would be revitalized, sort of Holy Spirit zombies. More than that, with such a serious gulf between earthly things and heavenly things, how could the earthly inhabit the heavenly? There is more about that explicitly in verses 42-49.

This debater assumes that there is no good answer. “Because the Corinthians could not fathom how this was possible, they had abandoned any trust that it was possible” (Garland).

A First Response Regarding God-Given Bodily Types of Change (verses 36-38)

Paul’s immediate response to the questions in verse 35 shows that he takes them to be scoffing questions not curiosity questions.

You foolish person! This person is lacking understanding, he is senseless. The Greek word for foolish (ἄφρων) nega[...]