1Cor 15:38-41 - God's Glory in Creation

38-41 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.


Paul now begins to make a transition between what we regard as natural or earthly things and those which are higher and heavenly. The resurrected bodies of the saints are, like all the bodies of dependent beings, the creative work and design and prerogative of God, Who lacks nothing in variety and wonder and inventiveness.

Paul and all his contemporaries fully understood that all living things came from "seed." But the seed produced different creatures after being sown - different from the seed in appearance and different from the fruit of other kinds of seed. God does all this. He established reproduction and "kinds" - he delineated boundaries and limits but within those parameters He ordained change and metamorphosis, growth and its various stages. He laid down the order of the sperm and the egg, the foetus, the baby, the infant, the youngster, and the adult. And He did this in endless variety for a staggering range of His creatures.

Some reproduce asexually, some are capable of parthenogenesis, some bi-sexually. In some the adult is radically different in appearance from the infant - the mosquito and its larva, or the frog and the tadpole, for example. If we stand back and try to take it all in we are speechless. There is too much and it is too wonderful for us.

But then Paul moves on to other forms of creation - the heavenly bodies, which are more remote and, in some senses, more magisterial - more mysterious and untouchable than the things of earth. Yet to even these things, inanimate as they may be, God has given infinite variety and a diversity of beauty. Paul seems to be regarding the heavenly bodies as somehow more glorious in general that earthly things. Yet even there God retains His creative sovereignty by making each one different in its radiance.

Note the progression of Paul’s argument. He started by taking the premise of the non-resurrectionists and calling them foolish, while his real aim was to be heard by the faithful who were being led astray. In explaining why the false teachers who deny bodily (or any) resurrection were foolish, Paul sets about describing the what and the how of the resurrected body by pointing to the things that we can readily observe - first upon the earth in our everyday experience. Seed falls to the ground and dies - producing something that looks different and quite a bit more impressive - a plant. This shows the general principle that God can bring something vastly more glorious out of something seemingly quite simple.

Next, he makes the point that God is capable of producing an infinite variety of types of bodies in living things - namely humans, birds, fish, etc. So producing something more glorious for resurrected saints than this broken down body we live and die in is no challenge to God. Finally Paul points the cosmic stage where untouchable and powerful and glorious things exist - just outside of our direct personal experience - yet we see great variety in even these wonders. The fierce and blinding glory of the sun and the infinite variety of the twinkling stars. For even these wonders, God has created and appointed variety. If He can make the moon to shine pale and silvery and the sun to blaze fierce and blinding - can anything be beyond His ability - can glorified bodies for His saints for whom Christ died be impossible for Him? Paul does not think so, and neither should we, if we truly believe in he Who does it all.

So now, having laid the groundwork, Paul moves on to completing the simile in the next verses.