TUESDAY February 20th
1 Corinthians 15:35
‘But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”’
When I worked in the motor trade as a painter and refinisher, I also did accident recovery, going either to the scene of an accident to recover the vehicles or to fetch and deliver cars that needed repairing or had been repaired. Often it took up my evenings, and if I was going on a lengthy journey, maybe up to two or three hours away, I would ring home and arrange to pick up one of our three sons who loved to come in the lorry with me. But there was a problem, I suppose I would say a good problem, but it could get a little wearing, he loved to talk and ask question after question after question! And I would have to try to answer them. (We used to have to play at being at church as well—we would sing songs and I would have to preach and often a testimony given!)
Well in our verses today Paul is presupposing that someone would now ask a question and they would want it answered. So, he gives the questions and then over the remaining verses he gives the answers.
What is the first question—‘How are the dead raised?’ Well, I am glad I don’t have to answer it, Paul has done that for us, but it is a good question, and he uses logic in verses 36-41 describing what happens in the natural, and then explains it regarding the spiritual, the resurrection in verses 42-49.
Those of us who are regular gardeners always marvel (well I do) at the way that we can place what looks to all intents and purposes a shrivelled up, dead, seemingly useless seed into the soil and then a few days or weeks later, it pushes some shoots up through the ground and eventually becomes a flower or vegetable with a body of its own.
How often have we gone to a funeral and watched the coffin lowered into the ground, and you recall the individual, they may have been elderly or old, they had wrinkled and were perhaps a shadow of what they had been in their younger years and yet the miracle of the resurrection is that the same God who gives life to the seed that I have planted in the soil will also give life to the believer who has been planted into the ground, and what an amazing body it will be on that resurrection day, no longer the old perishable body, but one that will be imperishable. We don’t have to understand it all, remember Paul calls it a mystery, but what is important is that we believe it! Remember that after Jesus had told Martha that he was the resurrection and the life and that all who believed in him would be raised, he said to her ‘Do you believe this?’ Do you?
Romans 8:11 puts it this way, ‘If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.’