and God gives to it a body as he has pleased, and to each of the seeds its own body.
An objector has just asked how dead bodies can rise, and what kind of body they will have. Paul answers with a handful of seed and one short sentence about God — and that sentence carries the whole hope.
The objector wants the method explained before he will believe. The verse answers with God Himself.
"God gives it a body as He has chosen" (1 Cor. 15:38) is enough for faith when resurrection is in question.
Paul answers sharply. The doubt behind the question refuses what God has said, because the "how" is beyond it.
This is how sharply the apostle rebukes man's curious mind. He does it above all here, where people doubt or deny God's clear revelation because they cannot grasp the process — the how — of the resurrection, or the character of the risen body. Yet God does not hold back the weightiest information. The apostle's reproof here would cut deep into those who prided themselves on their wisdom, and were still foolish enough to overlook the pictures of nature right before their eyes.
A seed goes into the ground before anything grows. That order matters.
"Fool, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies." The sower here is not God only, but the feeble objector himself. So death was no barrier to the resurrection. Death is not its cause, of course, but the step that comes before it. There may be change, as he shows later, but no resurrection unless death comes first. Death breaks the body down, but it does not wipe it out. It takes the body apart before another way of being begins.
The second half of the verse rules out a swap. What God gives back is unlike what was sown, yet it is the same creature.
You sow a seed in the earth. It keeps its identity, yet it comes up with a very different body. Bury an acorn, and an oak springs up. Every seed has what we may call its own special resurrection body in which it comes forth. The bearing of this on our question is plain. A believer's dead body goes into the grave. In the resurrection it will come up very different, yet with its identity kept.
God set this order at creation.
God has an order in creation, that every seed produces out of its death its own kind… The form that God gave it in creation is preserved (ver. 38) — "to each kind of seed its own body." Death does not destroy the seed's identity.
"As He has chosen" puts the shape of the risen body wholly in God's hands.
In resurrection, then, God decides the character of the body. He can clothe it with a glory greater than any we have yet imagined. Philippians 3:21 tells us our body shall be fashioned like that of the Lord Jesus in resurrection. In that body, material barriers were no obstacle to Him. In that body He went up to heaven. Time and space were no obstacle at all. Each body will also have its own distinct glory, just as every person on earth today is different. Such is the marvel of the ways of our God!
The last words of the verse touch something very personal about the coming day.
The last clause of verse 38 matters. It bears on the question of personal identity, and so on the children of the resurrection recognising one another in the coming day. Each grain of God's true wheat will have its own body, but not in the same measure of increase.
Some press the seed picture further. They imagine that some germ of the old body survives death and comes back glorified. One writer answers that idea with this verse.
1 Corinthians 15:38 answers it: "God gives it a body as He has chosen." What is sown in corruption is raised in incorruption, and what is sown in dishonour is raised in glory. If we pretend to go further, we go beyond what is written… Scripture draws no such detailed comparison as this notion looks for… As has been said of old, we are to bring ideas from Scripture, not to it.
- Sown — nothing you plant lives unless it first dies. Death is not the barrier to resurrection but the step before it. It breaks the body down without wiping it out.
- Given — the body is a gift, not an achievement. God gives it as He has chosen. For faith, that is a fuller answer than any account of the "how".
- Own — "to each kind of seed its own body" keeps you you. Bury an acorn and an oak rises: a far different body, the same life.
- Glory — God is at no loss for splendour. Each risen body will have its own glory, shaped like the body of the Lord Jesus.
- Enough — the verse tells us that God does it, not how. Press past what is written and you leave faith behind for guesswork.
Every flesh [is] not the same flesh, but one [is] of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another [flesh] of birds, and another of fishes.
Some Corinthians doubted the resurrection and asked how the dead are raised, and with what body they come. Paul answers by pointing at the world they could already see, starting with the variety of flesh God has made.
Paul's readers assumed that if the dead rise, they must rise in a body like the one they have now. Creation itself says otherwise.
The apostle shows how empty it is to assume that the risen body must be in a condition like its present state. He proves it from the variety of flesh in the animal world we see now. There is no monotony in God's creation. The flesh is plainly different in men, in cattle, in birds, in fishes. How unreasonable then, if that is the ground taken, to assume the body must be at all like what it is now! Resurrection is a condition so distinct from this one. It makes far more sense to expect the most striking difference.
The word "flesh" has several meanings in the New Testament. Mixing them up causes trouble. Here it has the plainest one — physical tissue.
We meet with flesh in its ordinary sense, as the flesh of men and of animals (1 Cor. 15:39). We read of "flesh and blood," describing man in his present state of bodily existence... Then the human race is called "all flesh"... Besides all this we meet with the term flesh in a moral sense, describing the evil nature within us (Gal. 5:17)... Failing to pay attention to the different uses of this term flesh may lead to great confusion.
The real issue behind the question was never biology. It was whether God can do it, and whether He may choose the form.
Paul answers them in a way that convicts them of not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God. The Lord answered the Sadducees in the same way. It is altogether a question of the power of God. Is God able to reorganise the body? Even if it has dissolved and actually returned to dust, can He re-form it? And if He is able to reorganise the body, can He not, in reorganising it, make it such a body as pleases Him?
But freedom in the form does not mean a different creature. The seed shows why.
When the seed rises after death, He gives it a body as it pleases Him. But notice, "to each of the seeds its own body" (v. 38) — not a body of an entirely different kind. Identity is kept. "GOD" is the answer that is enough for a simple and sincere soul, though it may not satisfy a "fool."
The verse says something about origins as well as endings. The four kinds Paul lists are not stages on one ladder.
Paul supports Genesis 1 here. There is no transition from the lower order to the higher. That is no more possible than a move from non-living matter to living matter.
These fixed kinds also settle a modern question about where man came from.
In the same way, men, beasts, birds and fishes are wholly distinct in their type of flesh. This shows that God can give whatever flesh He pleases. The verse also refutes any theory of animals developing into humans.
Paul is driving toward one answer: a body that is the same body, yet belongs to another order.
Corruption, dishonour, weakness and soulishness mark the body that is sown in the grave. Let us be allowed to coin that word "soulish," for that is the more literal sense of "natural" — something fitted for the animal soul rather than the spirit. It is raised in incorruption, glory, power, and as a spiritual body rather than a soulish one. The words repeated four times show that the identity stays the same: "It is sown… it is raised." Still, the condition it is found in is of an entirely different order. This answers the question, "With what body do they come?"
- Variety. God already makes flesh of four kinds. A risen body unlike this one is just what His creation leads you to expect.
- Vocabulary. Here "flesh" means physical tissue, the stuff of men and animals. Elsewhere the word means the evil nature within us.
- Power. The question is not about biology but about God. Can He re-form a body that has returned to dust? And may He shape it as He pleases?
- Identity. A new form does not mean a new person. Each seed gets its own body, and the risen body is the body that was sown.
- Order. Sown soulish, raised spiritual: the same body in a wholly new condition. That is the answer to "with what body do they come?"