Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

The transformed resurrection body

³⁵ But someone is now going to say: “How are the dead raised? What sort of body will they come back with?” ³⁶ Stupid! What you sow doesn’t come to life unless it dies. ³⁷ The thing you sow isn’t the body that is going to come later; it’s just a naked seed of, let’s say, wheat, or some other plant. ³⁸ God then gives it a body of the sort he wants, with each of the seeds having its own particular body.

³⁹ Not all physical objects have the same kind of physicality. There is one kind of physicality for humans, another kind for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. ⁴⁰ Some bodies belong in the heavens, and some on the earth; and the kind of glory appropriate for the ones in the heavens is different from the kind of glory appropriate for the ones on the earth. ⁴¹ There is one kind of glory for the sun, another for the moon, and another for the stars, since the stars themselves vary, with different degrees of glory.

⁴² That’s what it’s like with the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown decaying, and raised undecaying. ⁴³ It is sown in shame, and raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, and raised in power. ⁴⁴ It is sown as the embodiment of ordinary nature, and raised as the embodiment of the spirit. If ordinary nature has its embodiment, then the spirit too has its embodiment. ⁴⁵ That’s what it means when the Bible says, “The first man, Adam, became a living natural being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

⁴⁶ But you don’t get the spirit-animated body first; you get the nature-animated one, and you get the spirit-animated one later. ⁴⁷ The first man is from the ground, and is made of earth; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸ Earthly people are like the man of earth; heavenly people are like the man from heaven. ⁴⁹ We have borne the image of the man made of earth; we shall also bear the image of the man from heaven.