Introduction
Putting on Immortality is the name of our Resurrection Series for 2025. In it, we explore Paul’s description of the resurrection body. Our Memory and Meditation Verses for Celebrating the Resurrection over the next 6 weeks (April 20th–May 31st, 2025) are 1 Corinthians 15:35–49. The series aims to improve and guide our Christian meditation together.
Today, in Putting on Immortality Part 6, we will examine 1 Corinthians 15:45–47.
📚 Catching Up On the Series
In case you missed the first five installments in the series and would like to read them before moving on:
Putting On Immortality – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
The Skeptic’s Question
In 1 Corinthians 15:35–49, Paul answers, “How are the dead raised?” Specifically, he is answering the skeptical question, “With what type of body will they come (1 Corinthians 15:35)?”
To answer the question, Paul doesn’t turn to the Old Testament but to the created order. He says:
- Seeds provide a natural example of death giving way to new life (vs. 36–38).
- Distinctions between the flesh of creatures demonstrated God’s ability to create things that are qualitatively more (verse 39). Fish, birds, puppies, babies, ascending in moral value.
- Distinctions in heavenly bodies show that God gives a particular glory to each created thing, and that glory is fitted for its use. Example: the Sun is larger and brighter than all other stars because all life depends on it. The Moon, in turn, is larger and brighter than all other stars, “ruling over the night (Genesis 1:16-18). Polaris, or the North Star, on which people depend for direction, is the largest and brightest star (verses 40–41).
The conclusions we are to draw from nature are the following. First, that death is a door to becoming more. Second, God has the power to change our natural bodies into better bodies that are the same yet higher in quality because they are eternal. He did it in Creation and He will do it again in the New Creation. Third, we will be bodily glorified, having a strength and beauty of nature fit for eternity.
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it, we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Philippians 3:20–21).
From the Natural to the Spiritual
After surveying the natural world, Paul turns to the spiritual because “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:44).”
Paul lays the groundwork—moving from the natural world to the spiritual world—because that is how the Messianic Archetype moves through history. First, the natural man is created, Adam, and he subjects the world to sin. Then the Spiritual Man, the last Adam, is Incarnated, and He redeems the world in righteousness.
1 Corinthians 15:45–47
Thus, it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
Paul is paralleling his natural law revelation. Adam introduced sin into the world and began the process of death. However, he also believed God, as seen in Genesis 3:20, where he named his wife Eve, the mother of all living, not the mother of all dead. Adam was the first man to die in Faith and become “a righteous spirit made perfect (Hebrews 12:23).”
Planted in Faith
Adam died and, like a seed, was planted. He awaits the Day just as we do. He trusted in the blood God shed in the Garden. Remember, the first “shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9:22)” clothed Adam and his wife (Genesis 3:21) because they knew they were naked.
We trust in the blood of the Cross, the final, once-for-all shedding of blood (Hebrews 9:26) that covers the guilt and shame of our sin. By Faith, we, Adam, and all the Saints await the raising of our flesh–our bodies–to their final eternal form.
Our Future Glory
Most importantly, when we are raised, we will not only have a body like His glorious body but a nature like his glorious nature. We will reflect His image perfectly, humanly speaking.
“As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:48–49).
Longing for the Day
The believer longs to be perfectly good. The Apostle John tells us,
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2–3).
When Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that we will put on the image of the heavenly man, we at once long for the Day and relax into a peace of soul at the thought.
The Saints desire to put off the “O wretched man” that we are (Romans 7:7-12). We understand Paul perfectly well. He is tired of wanting to do one thing and doing another.
The Christian faints for sin and struggles in righteousness–he is hard pressed–even while living in the paradise of the modern West–especially while living in the paradise of the modern West.
Awaiting the Hope of Resurrection
O for the Day when we shall sin our last. O for the day when we shall be like Him. The Christian longs for the Day when Christ fulfills our hope in the resurrection of the dead at His return.
Before we move on to Celebrate the Ascension and investigate the further benefits of the Gospel found therein, let’s bask in the peace the knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus Christ brings. We await a sure hope, which is also a motivating one.
“That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10–11).
We await His return, the renewal of Creation, the resurrection of our bodies, and the transformation of our natures into His image without the taint of sin. Amen and Amen.
Even so, come Lord Jesus. Even so, come!
Putting on Immortality Series
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That’s a wrap on the series. Next week we will begin a new series Celebrating the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. We’ll see ya then!
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Additionally, if you enjoyed Putting On Immortality Part 6 you may also enjoy some of our other series’.
Christ, His Church, & Marriage (February 2025)
Forsaken For Us (March-April 2025)
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