Biblion Bible Commentary
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Sown Perishable, Raised Imperishable
1 Corinthians 15:42-49
42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown perishable; it is raised imperishable. · WEB
Four contrasts describe the raised body, and the two Adams explain why the natural comes first and the spiritual after.
So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown perishable; it is raised imperishable 1 Corinthians 15:42.
The seed image is applied, and four contrasts follow in the same form — sown one way, raised another. Perishable to imperishable: what decays is replaced by what cannot.
It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power 1 Corinthians 15:43.
The second and third pairs. Dishonor is honest about a corpse, and glory answers the graded splendors of the previous verses 1 Corinthians 15:41. Weakness to power is the same reversal the letter applied to God's own methods — the weakness of God stronger than men 1 Corinthians 1:25.
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body 1 Corinthians 15:44.
The fourth pair, and the most easily misread. Spiritual body is not a contradiction and does not mean immaterial — the letter has just spent nine verses insisting that a body is what God gives 1 Corinthians 15:38. The adjective describes what animates and governs it, not what it is made of; the same word was used of people earlier in this letter, where spiritual and fleshly described two kinds of living human being 1 Corinthians 2:15 1 Corinthians 3:1. The raised body is a real body wholly ruled by the Spirit.
So also it is written, "The first man Adam became a living soul." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit 1 Corinthians 15:45.
The quotation is from the creation of man Genesis 2:7, and its wording matters: Adam became a living soul — he did not receive one as a separate part. That is the scriptural account of a human being, a body animated into life, which is why the hope in this chapter has to be resurrection rather than escape. And the contrast is not soul against spirit but living against life-giving: the first Adam received life, the last Adam gives it.
However, that which is spiritual isn't first, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual 1 Corinthians 15:46.
The order is stated because the Corinthians had inverted it. They believed themselves already arrived — filled, rich, reigning 1 Corinthians 4:8 — and the sequence is fixed against them: natural first, spiritual after. The glorified state is not available now.
The first man is of the earth, made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven 1 Corinthians 15:47.
Two origins, two races, and everyone belongs to one or the other 1 Corinthians 15:48. The chapter's whole hope rests on the second man having come.
As we have borne the image of those made of dust, let's also bear the image of the heavenly 1 Corinthians 15:49.
And the last line turns the doctrine into something to do. The English translations divide over whether this reads we will bear or let us bear — a promise or an exhortation — and either way the direction is the same: the image being carried now is dust, and the image coming is his Romans 8:29 1 John 3:2. The most speculative passage in the letter ends by pointing at a life.
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