1 Corinthians 15:42,43

“So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: 43. it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.”

Here, strictly speaking, is the answer to the second question of 1 Corinthians 15:35: With what body? Answer: with a body which, far from being the reappearance of the former, will have characteristics of an absolutely opposite kind. The verb σπείρεται, it is sown, is generally applied, in accordance with the term sow in 1 Corinthians 15:36-37, to the interment of the body. This meaning may no doubt suit the first member of the first antithesis: sown in corruption. But it is impossible to carry out this application in the first members of the three following antitheses. The term weakness is not suitable to the state of the dead body, whatever Meyer may say; and in any case, it would form a singular stage beyond the preceding term, dissolution. Finally, it is still more impossible to apply the term psychical, “moved by a soul,” in 1 Corinthians 15:44, to the body which is laid in the tomb. No doubt it may be said that the point in question here is not the state of the body at that time, but its nature during life. But it is still very forced to apply the term animated to the body when deprived of the breath of life. For this reason, several commentators, such as Erasmus, Calvin, Heinrici, have been led to apply the term sow to the fact of birth. This meaning may suit the second and fourth epithets (weak, psychical); but hardly the other two (in dishonour, dissolution). How could Paul thus characterize the life of the child, full of freshness, at the moment when it begins to unfold its powers? Hofmann has been driven by these two impossibilities to understand by the word sow the giving up of the body, not specially to interment, but to the power of death, which works in it all through the duration of its earthly existence. This explanation comes near to what seems to me to be the true meaning of the four antitheses; but it is insufficient, inasmuch as it does not clearly account for their gradation. Their order is in a manner retrograde; and the meaning of the word sow is modified and widened as we pass from one antithesis to another. In the first, it relates to interment, as is required by the word φθορά, dissolution. In the second (the state of dishonour), the thought, taking a first retrograde step, embraces in the term sow all the miseries of this earthly life, which precede and go to produce the dissolution of the body, all the humiliating conditions to which our body is now subjected; comp. the expression: “the body of our humiliation” (Php 3:21). In the third antithesis, the term weakness brings us to the moment of birth, to that state of entire powerlessness which belongs to the infant at its entrance into life. Finally, the term psychical body, in 1 Corinthians 15:44, carries us further back still, to that moment when the breath of life, ψυχή, is communicated to the physical germ which is about to begin its development in order to serve the ψυχή as its organ. The word sow thus embraces all the phases of the body's existence, which, beginning with the first dawn of being, terminates in committal to the earth. It is in this sense that the earthly life is so frequently compared to the time of sowing, and eternity to the time of harvest. The three first corresponding terms: incorruptibility, glory, and power, are easily understood. The first represents the body to come as exempt from the touch of sickness, decline, and death; the second, as free from the daily infirmities of the present body, and all radiant with the brightness of perfect life; the third, as endowed with unlimited power of action.

But these three opposite characteristics distinguishing between the present and the resurrection body are all three effects; they rest on a fourth contrast which touches the very essence of the two bodies, and which the apostle indicates in the first proposition of 1 Corinthians 15:44 by the antithesis between a psychical and a spiritual body. It is this last contrast which is developed in the following passage, 1 Corinthians 15:44-49.