1Cor 15:36-37 - Mother Nature, Father God

36-37 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.

Continuing Paul’s line of thought in his answer to the person looking to reject bodily resurrection, we see that he appeals to nature. Not to Mother Nature because Paul has no such thinking in his gospel; he appeals to the nature created and sustained by God. Nature is, in fact, a continuous miracle that simply unfolds at such a slow pace that we have time to get used to it - thus calling it "natural," when it is actually "slow" supernatural revelation.

God writes in history and in nature the precise story that He wants to tell. He gives clues to us, the clueless. Thus we get themes from Genesis recurring throughout the 66 books of the Bible, including light, darkness, order, chaos, wind/spirit, and - relevant here, we also get "seed" - all right in Genesis Chapter 1. And, this is no accident, for Paul’s developing argument draws heavily on the language of the creation account in Genesis, of which more later.

For now, some might be initially offended by the concept of the deliberate necessity of death as prelude to rebirth - yet this is the force of what Paul is saying. He points to the clues in nature with the same simple, commonly understood imagery that the Lord Himself so often used. Nature teaches us, he implies, that the death of a kernel of corn or a seed of wheat by throwing it upon the ground gives rise to a completely different-looking thing called a plant. Yet the plant cannot be until and unless the seed first dies. They are the same essence, but have differing appearance. They are related, but different.

Death is merely the process through which the seed goes, metaphorically speaking, because it doesn’t actually die, though it is buried. It dies to what it was and it rises as something new. It dies a seed, but it rises a plant with roots and stems and leaves and, ultimately fruit. There is a change that only comes about through the process. Put another way, the process of death is necessary in order for the transformation to take place. In short, because of Christ, death and resurrection is a metamorphosis for the saint.

True life for the saint is found in death. This is what Christ has wrought for us. Right now, we live in His death in our dying bodies; yet we live in His resurrection in our spirit. And one day, on a day that God has appointed for each of us, our body will die, though our spirit will live on. Finally, we shall rise bodily and our life will be complete in Him, body and spirit forever. This is the hope of the Christian. His hope is not here, but in heaven - in that place where Christ is most fully present, body and spirit. We await that day; we long for it; we look forward to it; we strain to be there now but are content to tarry as long as He wants - and not a moment longer.

The fullness of our redemption, our salvation and our glorification awaits us - and it is in the presence of the bodily resurrected Christ - Christ the God/man, Who is the chief member of the human race forever.