Where Are We Headed? Part 4

Subtitle: God's Plan for the Uber-Man

1 Corinthians 15:35-49.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on April 10, 2022, Palm Sunday.

We have been looking at humanity’s attempt to be its own god and chart its own course forward.  Today, we are going to look at God’s plan for humanity.

Friedrich Nietzsche in the 1880s pointed us to his idea of what some called the superman, but is better thought of as the over-man (uber mensch).  He felt that Christianity was too oriented to a world beyond, and so he pictured a true over-man as a human who had fully embraced their humanity.  This would be a human set free from all the bonds of tradition and religion, a fully actualized person.  It is no small wonder that Nietzsche went insane by the end of that decade.  Perhaps he succeeded in becoming his over-man and that is what it looks like.  We should recognize that Nietzsche did have some valid criticisms, but he over-estimated man’s ability to be his own god.

Let’s look at our passage and see God’s plan for the uber-man.

God will resurrect the righteous

Apparently, there were some Corinthian Christians who were saying that there was no such thing as a resurrection of the righteous (or of anyone of that matter) coming in the future.  This whole chapter is Paul responding to this group.  He demolishes the idea that you can be a Christian and yet not believe in a Resurrection Day.  This is in verses 1-34. 

They were wrong.  God has decreed that He will resurrect the Righteous.  Paul doesn’t get into whether or not the wicked will ever be resurrected.  His focus is solely on its impact on believers.  This is important because the heavenly body that he is going to describe later, is not an immaterial body.  It is a true body, but not of an earthly kind. 

In verse 35, Paul turns to several objections, or questions, about the mechanics of resurrection.  How are they raised and with what body?  Paul responds to this with an illustration from nature that anyone can understand.  It is the amazing and mysterious world of seeds and the things that grow from them.  Ultimately, he reminds them that a seed must die in order for the new thing (life) to come forth from it.  I wouldn’t get stuck on the word die here.  Scientists would most likely reject the idea that a seed is dying, but people do.  We are dealing with an analogy and shouldn’t get bogged down in how well the analogy fits the thing we are analogizing.

Instead of eating the seed, it is planted in the ground.  This is pictured as a kind of loss, and yet there is a gain in it.  Jesus uses this same analogy for a something a bit different in John 12:24. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.”  Most people only think of this from a salvation standpoint.  If Jesus doesn’t lay his life down, die, and pay the price for our sins, then none would be saved and join him in heaven.  However, we should not truncate the importance of the Resurrection in what Jesus is saying.  Jesus dies, but then is resurrected.  Jesus would still dwell alone as a resurrected human if there is no general resurrection of the righteous.  The greater life that God has for us is on the other side of death, not to say that this life is unimportant.  It is extremely important for it determines our place in what is next.

For these Corinthian objectors, Paul pictures this life and these bodies as a kind of seed that is sown, but from which will come forth a different body and life.  This new body is determined by God, just as it was He who wrote the code for what comes forth from each seed.  You cannot tell what will come from a seed just by looking at it, unless you are a botanist and have studied that seed.  Even then, the proof would be in planting it and seeing what grows from it.

Humans also have seeds and a code that determines what will come forth from it.  We call this procreation.  However, there is a greater “code” than our DNA.  Or, perhaps, our DNA does have information that speaks to Resurrection.  How would we know?  Paul is not going into the science of resurrection, but if we try to do this without God, we would have to try and “crack” the code.  God Himself signals that it is possible not only to create a more powerful body, but to transfer the consciousness of a person into it.  This will prove to be an especially tricky quagmire for humans, but it is nothing for God.

A person is much more than a set of memories.  How would we know if a transference of consciousness had truly worked?  Mere answers to questions would not fully suffice.  Keep in mind that we are also dealing with evil spiritual beings who already know how to “hack” humans, at least those who open themselves up to them.  Why not just trust God instead of going down a path of Dr. Frankenstein?

In verses 39 to 41, Paul points out that there are many different kinds of earthly and heavenly bodies.  This great variety of bodies and flesh are not being considered from a moral standpoint, so don’t be thrown off by the word “flesh.”  Paul points to the heavenly bodies of the sun, moon and stars.  These are the most common for humans to see.  They are very different from the things we see on the earth.  Though it is not mentioned, we see this difference between the angels, cherubim, and seraphim. 

Paul’s main concern is not so much what these bodies look like, such as, will we have wings etc.  He is mainly pointing out that they will be different. He points to 4 points of difference between these bodies that we can know.  Anything beyond this becomes speculation for us.

Here is a list for us:

Earthly body  vs. Heavenly Body

Corruption  vs. Incorruption

Dishonor vs. Glory

Weakness vs. Power

Soul vs. Spirit

The first shows that the heavenly body is not mortal.  It does not grow old and die.  It is immortal. 

The second doesn’t mean that there is no honor or glory in this life.  Rather, this life is comparatively one that lacks the honor and glory of the life to come.  In this body, we still fall short of the glory of Christ’s righteousness.  In the heavenly body, we shall be like him completely.  Daniel even connected the resurrection of the righteous to shining like the stars (Daniel 12:3), i.e., heavenly beings.

The third comparison is between the weakness of this body.  That body will be a body of power.  Our bodies become sick, must physically go from one place to the next, need food to operate, and of course grow old and die.  The heavenly body is more than immortal.  It will not have sickness, or the same limitations of movement that these bodies do.  I refer specifically to the ability of Jesus to appear in a locked room, and later, ascend into heaven.  The heavenly body can interact in both the material realm and the spiritual realm.

Lastly, this body is animated by our spirit or soul.  Paul uses an adjectival form of the word psyche.  It is that life force that is within these mortal bodies.  The heavenly body will be animated by Spirit (pneuma).  I won’t pretend to understand completely what that means, but it is a true inner difference between the two.  In fact, it may even be a reference to our heavenly body being directly animated by the Spirit of God.  This is often translated as a natural body versus a spiritual body.  Again, don’t think that spiritual means immaterial.  It is a true body, just different.

The effects of Adam and Jesus

In verse 45, Paul points out how these very different bodies are part of the effect of Adam and Jesus.  Paul quotes from Genesis 2:7. “The first man Adam became a living being.”  However, Jesus is a Life-giving spirit.  The word “became” is not in the original language, so we should be careful here.  Jesus did have to go through his work on earth to be able to dispense life to us, but He always was a Life-giving spirit. Thus, we have living versus Life and being versus spirit.  From Adam, we can only obtain the natural breath of life.  However, Jesus has life in and of himself.  He gives this, or shares it with us.

Adam is the natural man who comes first, but Jesus is the spiritual man who comes after him.  This is parallel with our experience of first living a natural life, but being promised a life in a spiritual body that will come after our natural life.  I must live an Adam life before I can live a Christ life. 

Adam was a man of the earth and made of dust (language from the Genesis passage).  Jesus is a man of heaven, and though he put on a dust-body, he was far more than that.  He was the last Adam.  There are no more Adams to come forward and bring us into other states of being.  In Christ, we will be perfected.

Though we have all born the image of Adam, we are promised that we will bear the image of Jesus who was the exact representation of the Father.  We should not confuse this with discipleship.  Sure, even now, we work on becoming more like Jesus.  However, we cannot fully become like him because he is even now in a heavenly body.  The resurrection completes our discipleship.  It is the capstone to all that we have done on this earth.  It is Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith.  Our destiny is to be like Jesus in bodies that do not get sick, grow old, die, or have sinful attachments to fleshly things.  We will have bodies that have never been bitten by sin and its deadly effects.  Praise God!

This is where God is taking us.  Why do we insist on trying to forge a path alone and on our own?  Yet, even now, God loves you and calls out to you, “Why will you die?  Choose life (and that eternal)!”  This will be the true life of an uber-man.

God's Plan audio