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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - 1 Corinthians 15:37 - 15:37
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37. καὶ ὃ σπείρεις. ‘There are two parts in this similitude: first that it is not wonderful that bodies should arise again from corruption, since the same thing happens in the case of the seed; and next that it is not contrary to nature that our bodies should be endowed with new qualities, when from naked grain God produces so many ears clothed with a wonderful workmanship.’ Calvin. Tyndale renders, And what sowest thou?
οὐ τὸ σῶμα τὸ γενησόμενον. ‘The same, yet not the same. The same, because the essence is the same; but not the same, because the latter is the more excellent.’ Chrysostom. The identity of the body does not depend upon its material particles, because physicists tell us that these are in a continual flux, and that in the course of seven years every material particle in the body has been changed. Personal identity depends upon the principle of continuity. The risen body arises out of that which has seen corruption, in the same way as the plant out of its germ. The length of time that elapses is nothing to Him to Whom ‘a thousand years are but as one day.’ But as the seed is to all appearance very different to the plant which arises from it (although science tells us that it contains that whole plant in miniature); as the Body of Jesus after His Resurrection was endowed with many strange and new qualities (Joh 20:19; Joh 20:26) so as often to be unrecognizable by His disciples (Luk 24:16; Luk 24:31; Luk 24:37; Joh 20:14; Joh 21:4) though yet it was the same body (Luk 24:39-40; Joh 20:20; Joh 20:27); so we learn that the body we sow in the grave is ‘not that body that shall be,’ but that the resurrection body—the spiritual body, as St Paul calls it—while it exhibits visible and unequivocal signs of its connection with the body out of which it has arisen, will be possessed of many wondrous faculties which are denied to us here. See notes on next verse and on 1Co 15:42-44, and cf. Rom 8:11; Rev 21:4.