1 Corinthians: Day 54
SCRIPTURE
50What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
51Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, 52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” 55“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:50-58, NRSV)
WHAT
If we read this passage with the basic outline of The Genesis Project in mind, what Paul says makes a whole lot more sense. If we read it with the usual understanding of what happens when we die – our soul leaves our body and we become disembodied spirits in heaven waiting for the return of Jesus to earth so that our disembodied spirit or soul can be implanted into a new body – it makes less sense.
(What I just described is how most Western Christians understand death and the afterlife today. We’ll see below this is NOT how Paul viewed it. This view of souls departing for heaven at death became common during the 2ndcentury A.D. and beyond, a period when more Gentiles came into the Church. As these Gentile Christians were more familiar with the ideas of Greek philosophers, the ancient Jewish notions of death and afterlife were supplanted by those of Greek philosophy. In particular, Christian theology was influenced by the ideas of Plato as the Church tried to show Greco-Roman pagans familiar with Plato’s philosophy that Christian teaching was not so radical after all. Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century, himself a converted Gentile, had an enormous impact on cementing this view of the afterlife. It was later amplified by the great 13th century theologian Thomas Aquinas, who also contributed to the doctrine of Purgatory. Christian scholastic theology in the medieval period – i.e., theology centered in the new phenomenon called universities rather than monasteries -- further cemented the view. Most of us were taught these ideas about souls journeying to heaven at death as if that was the ONLY Christian understanding. But again, as we’ll see below, Paul had a different view.)
The basic outline of The Genesis Project is this (see the introduction for more or read my book The Genesis Project: The WHY of Discipleship for a fuller explanation):
· God created the world, including light, planetary objects, and life on earth. As he did so, God brought order out of chaos, separating light from darkness, waters above from waters below, land from sea, and so forth. Everything had its place and its purpose.
· On the sixth day of that creating project God created human beings, both male and female. This was the high point of creation as God created them in his image with the mission to bear and reflect that image in God’s temple of heaven and earth. That’s what images in the ancient world did in temples – they bore and reflected the likeness of the god whose temple they were in. The creator God, however, did not make likenesses out of stone or wood; he made them out of human flesh.
· God is triune, ONE God in three persons. God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – all of whom were involved in the creating project as we can see in the opening paragraph of Genesis (and the Gospel of John).
· There is a profound ONENESS, wholeness, intimacy, and community within the Trinity – ONENESS of Father with Son, Son with Spirit, and Spirit with Father.
· As those created in God’s image, we are to bear and reflect that ONENESS in God’s temple of heaven and earth. We do so by reflecting ONENESS in four key relationships – ONENESS with God, others, creation, and self.
· Creation is declared to be “very good.” Things are exactly as God wanted them to be.
· In a second creation story in Genesis 2, we turn from the cosmic big picture to discover that God is deeply concerned with the man he had created. God noticed something “not good” in creation: the man was lonely. This is not how God wanted things to be. So God created a companion who was “bone of my bone; flesh of my flesh” for him. She became his wife, his partner. There were delightful distinctions between them, but they were “one flesh.”
· The man and his wife were placed in a garden of paradise. Everything they needed was there, including meaningful work to do. It was there that they were to bear and reflect God’s image in which they were created, bringing praise and worship to God from the creation, who was so closely connected to them that their relationship was described as walking together with God during the cool of the day.
· Creation was “very good” again. It was exactly how God wanted it.
· But then sin entered the picture. The man and his wife shattered the order God had brought to creation. They believed the lies of a creature over whom they were supposed to have dominion, thus allowing that creature to have dominion over them. The creature led them to distrust God’s goodness and love for them. They rebelled against God when they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, thereby trying to become gods themselves. This led to the shattering of ONENESS not only in their relationship with God but in all four of the key relationships. Lest they eat from the Tree of Life and live forever in this broken state, God ejected them from the garden of paradise.
· One significant consequence of this sin was that the partnership between the man and his wife was shattered. He had blamed her before God for their joint rebellion. (He also blamed God for creating her in the first place!) As a result, the man gained dominion over his wife. They were no longer partners. Hierarchy and patriarchy was introduced into their relationship as a result of their sin. As a sign of this new relationship the man got to name his wife, as one names a pet. Thus her name “Eve” is a reminder of their sin.
· Creation was now NOT what God wanted. But God never gave up on his original will, purpose, and intent.
· Sin grew worse and worse, involving more people and deeper rebellion. A one point, God sent a flood as a do over while saving one man, Noah, and his family. But even that didn’t eradicate sin. Eventually, a group of insurgents planned the ultimate rebellion against God. They built a tower toward the heavens with the plan of taking over. God had to confound their ability to communicate with one another to stop the takeover project. ONENESS between human beings was further broken.
· To deal with this sin problem, God called a man – Abram, later renamed Abraham – through whom God would call a people – later named Israel – to become a light to the nations. Israel was to show the nations the way back to God’s original intent for them. God entered into a special relationship with Abraham, blessing him to be a blessing to the other nations. God established a covenant with Abraham and his descendants, fitting them for this important mission.
· Abraham’s descendants, God’s chosen people, made their way to Egypt, the bread basket of the world, to avoid a famine. But while initially successful there, Israel eventually became enslaved to a pharaoh who no longer saw them as a special and privileged people.
· God eventually led Israel on a great “Exodus” to freedom from Egyptian bondage, leading them to a land of promise filled with milk and honey.
· On that journey, God personally dwelled with Israel, first in a portable tabernacle, then centuries later when they were settled, in a more permanent temple.
· God gave the people through Moses, their leader, a law. Its purpose was to train them up to become the people God needed them to be to function as a light to the nations.
· Abraham’s descendants, however, became even more deeply imbedded participants in the sin problem they were supposed to help correct. Idolatry (failure to love God) and injustice (failure to love others) grew rampant, especially among Israel’s leaders. A civil war even broke out which divided the nation of the chosen people in two.
· Fed up with their idolatry and injustice, despite years of prophetic warnings, God eventually withdrew his special presence from them and they went into exile in foreign lands. Things looked really, really bleak. It appeared that God’s original will, purpose, and intent for creation was over.
· But it was NOT over. God never gave up on The Genesis Project. As God had promised through specially called prophets, God eventually returned to Israel. This time it was not to the new temple they had built, but rather it was to a person. God came to dwell among his people again in the person of a baby born in Bethlehem and who grew to be the man named Jesus. He was the Christ, the Messiah, a royal son of King David. In short, he was Emmanuel, “God with us.”
· Jesus taught about something he called “the kingdom of God,” or “the kingdom of heaven.” Living in that kingdom was what he called living out God’s original will, purpose, and intent. It was about ONENESS in those four key relationships – with God, others, creation, and self – which had all been broken during the rebellion in the garden and following. Jesus came to heal, or save us (the Greek word is sozo) from all the ways we are broken.
· Jesus called and commissioned a group of twelve men among his followers and focused his kingdom training on them. But this kingdom vision was so radically different than what everyone envisioned and wanted that even they didn’t get it at first. Jesus was eventually arrested, interrogated, tortured, and executed on a Roman cross. But, amazingly, Jesus himself had said this would happen.
· The third day after his death, as he said would happen, Jesus was resurrected. Not resuscitated, but resurrected. He was the first fruits of resurrection in a way that was very much unexpected.
· Jesus’ resurrection not only validated his kingdom vision, but it also inaugurated the beginning of the very kingdom he proclaimed.
· The resurrected Jesus appeared to many during a period of several days. Over five hundred people, in fact. This included Paul, then known by his Jewish name Saul. But he was eventually taken up into the heavens to sit at the right hand of God. This left that group of twelve (which now included Matthias as a replacement for Judas) to lead the implementation of The Genesis Project vison. To those who witnessed his ascension into the heavens, angels promised that Jesus would someday return, just as they had seen him ascend.
· Through Jesus’ resurrection, God was bringing to reality what had been his will, purpose, and intent all along, ever since the “in the beginning” of Genesis 1:1. It was the fulfillment of The Genesis Project. It was an “already but not yet,” two-step fulfillment that began with Jesus’ resurrection and looked forward for its completion to that promised day of Jesus’ return.
With this outline, let’s look at how Paul’s message fits in it.
What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. (1 Corinthians 15:50, NRSV)
The “kingdom of God” as Paul uses the term here refers to that day when the two-step Genesis Project fulfillment takes place. It refers to that day when God’s original will, purpose, and intent for creation at last comes fully to pass in all its richness. Flesh and blood cannot participate in that fulfillment because flesh and blood -- a term which refers to our physical bodies -- are subject to death and decay, which are contrary to God’s original will, purpose, and intent. These are consequences of the rebellion in the garden of Eden, not God’s original intent. Because of that rebellion, flesh and blood have become subject to death and decay as a consequence of sin. Every human body, in fact every living being, decays when the breath of life leaves it. In that sense, it is perishable. This is not compatible with the fullness of the kingdom of God.
Notice that the kingdom of God, or The Genesis Project vision, is lived out one earth. As we saw last time, Paul does not envision our “going to heaven” as disembodied souls or spirits, but rather living in physical bodies on earth, with Jesus coming to live with us again.
But there’s that problem of corruptible, or decaying, bodies, being incompatible with the fullness of The Genesis Project, right? So something must be done. Something must change:
Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. (1 Corinthians 15:51-53, NRSV)
A “mystery” for Paul is something that cannot be discovered, no matter how smart we are. A mystery is not something that can never be known but rather something that must be revealed by God. And God has revealed it. In order for flesh and blood to enter into the fullness of God’s Genesis Project, or kingdom of God vision, there has to be a change in those physical bodies.
For those who have died, the change has already taken place. But what about those who still are alive when Jesus returns? They are still in bodies subject to decay. Their bodies are the very sign and emblem of the sin problem, which is incompatible with life in the now completed kingdom of God. That’s why Paul says, “We will not all die,” i.e., some of us will be still alive when Jesus returns. “But we will all be changed,” both the dead and the living.
Paul envisions that when the metaphorical trumpet sounds, or when the alarm bell signaling the end of class at last sounds, and Jesus does in fact return to complete the final act of fulfilling The Genesis Project, we will ALL be changed. Our bodies will be made fit to live with him on earth in that kingdom. Those bodies will be physical but no longer subject to death -- because sin has finally been totally eradicated – nor decay.
On that day of Jesus’ return, the dead will rise with new, incorruptible physical bodies, and those who are still alive will experience their bodies changing from corruptible, or decaying, bodies to incorruptible, not subject to decay bodies. “For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”
In Philippians, Paul expressed this idea this way:
But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation [i.e., our corruptible mortal bodies] that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. (Philippians 3:20-21, NRSV)
Notice that Paul says nothing about the disembodied souls or spirits of the already departed returning to take up new physical bodies. That’s what makes the conventional understanding of souls going to heaven so difficult to reconcile with what Paul says here. He is totally focused on what is taking place on earth. The already dead are raised to new life and receive new incorruptible bodies. And the still living experience their corruptible bodies changed to incorruptible bodies. Together, they then all live on earth with Jesus in the fully realized kingdom.
In 1 Thessalonians 4:17, as N. T. Wright points out, “Paul uses picture-language of one sort, borrowed from Daniel 7: we will be caught up on the clouds to meet the Lord as he comes, so that we can then escort him royally into his kingdom, here in God’s new world.”
When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:54-57, NRSV)
When all this happens, when Jesus returns and perishable bodies – of both the dead and the living – are given imperishable bodies, when our mortal bodies put on immortality, then death will be swallowed up in victory. Bishop Wright says:
“Death has claimed a victory, and the pagan world shrugs its shoulders and acknowledges it. The Jewish world at its best declares that God remains the creator and will do a new thing. The Christian message is that he has already done the new thing in the Messiah, Jesus, and that he will do it for all Jesus’ people through the power of the spirit. And in that new thing death and decay will be gone, swallowed up forever.” (Emphasis mine)
Paul draws inspiration from Isaiah where he says:
(God) will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 25:8, NRSV)
Here’s more, this time from Hosea. Speaking of the depth of sin into which Israel has fallen, and asking if God should simply pretend that it never happened, the prophet (speaking for God) asks:
Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death? O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction? Compassion is hidden from my eyes. (Hosea 13:14, NRSV)
Paul concludes this passage, and his entire defense of resurrection in light of its Corinthian skeptics that has been the subject of all of chapter 15, with these powerful words:
Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58, NRSV)
As my friend and pastoral colleague, Dr. Jim Jackson, says, “Whenever you come across the word ‘therefore’ in the Bible, it is telling you what everything that came before it is ‘there for.’” Paul is making the point that resurrection is not just about “someday.” It is about today!
N. T. Wright says:
“You might think, after a spectacular chapter like this one, that (Paul) would conclude by saying something like, ‘So let’s rejoice at the wonderful hope we can look forward to!’ But he doesn’t. And this isn’t just because he is a solid and sober practical theologian, true though that is. It’s because the truth he has been expounding, the truth of the resurrection of the dead and the transformation of the living, is not just a truth about the future hope. It’s a truth about the present significance of what we are and do. If it is true that God is going to transform this present world, and renew our whole selves, bodies included, then what we do in the present time with our bodies, and with our world, matters.” (Emphasis mine)
“If it is true that God is going to transform this present world, and renew our whole selves, bodies included, then what we do in the present time with our bodies, and with our world, matters.”
This is why Paul saved his defense of resurrection to the end of the letter. It undergirds all the topics he has already addressed – Corinthian disciples suing one another in secular Roman courts, sexual immortality, marriage and divorce, eating meat sacrificed to idols, how the Corinthians celebrated the Lord’s Supper and worshiped. Resurrection undergirds everything because what we do with our bodies today matters.
Bishop Wright concludes by commenting on how encouraging it is that Paul focuses on emphasizing that what we do matters, even when we seem to be doing it to no one’s notice. He says:
“How God will take our prayer, our art, our love, our writing, our political action, our music, our honesty, our daily work, our pastoral care, our teaching, our whole selves – how God will take this and weave its varied strands into the glorious tapestry of his new creation, we can at present have no idea. That he will do so is part of the truth of the resurrection, and perhaps one of the most comforting parts of all.”
Having now completed his defense of resurrection and shown how integral it is to everything he has said so far, Paul draws his letter to its conclusion. But first, he wants to tell the Corinthians about an important project he is working on and promises them he will visit soon.
APPLY
What I do with my life and body matters. God will take my prayer, my art, my love, my writing, my political action, my music, my honesty, my daily work, my pastoral care, my teaching, my whole self and weave its varied strands into the glorious tapestry of his new creation. How? At present I have no idea. That he will do so is part of the truth of the resurrection which I affirm. It is perhaps one of the most comforting parts of all.
PRAYER
The promises of resurrection are so great and have such deep biblical roots. Thank you, O God, for not giving up on The Genesis Project all those times we gave, and still give, you reason to do so. In Christ. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How do you react to Bob’s summary of The Genesis Project, which is the thread that ties the whole Bible together? How does resurrection fit into this outline?
2. How is Paul’s view of resurrection as outlined here different than the usual view of souls leaving bodies at death to dwell in heaven? Can you summarize Bob’s very brief history of how and perhaps why Paul’s view morphed into the predominant view so common today?
3. Why does Paul say that our perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality? What does all this have to do with the kingdom of God, or what Bob calls The Genesis Project?
4. Why does Paul say that what we do with our bodies today, in this life, matters given that we will get new incorruptible bodies in the resurrection?
How can you apply these insights in your life?