📖WEB · 1 Corinthians 15:37
What does 1 Corinthians 15:37 mean?
"That which you sow, you don’t sow the body that will be, but a bare grain, maybe of wheat, or of some other kind."
— 1 Corinthians 15:37 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Wake up righteously, and don’t sin, for some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.
But someone will say, “How are the dead raised?” and, “With what kind of body do they come?”
You foolish one, that which you yourself sow is not made alive unless it dies.
That which you sow, you don’t sow the body that will be, but a bare grain, maybe of wheat, or of some other kind.
But God gives it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own.
All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.
There are also celestial bodies, and terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial differs from that of the terrestrial.
Explanation
1 Corinthians 15:37 is part of Paul's extended argument about the resurrection of the dead, and in this particular verse he is using a simple agricultural illustration to answer a skeptical question. In plain language, Paul is pointing out that when a farmer plants a seed, what goes into the ground looks nothing like what eventually grows from it. You don't sow a full stalk of wheat with leaves and grain already formed; you sow a small, bare kernel. The mature plant that later springs up is a different form entirely, even though it comes from that same seed. Paul uses this everyday observation to make a point about the resurrection body: it will be different in form from our current physical body, yet it will be genuinely continuous with it, just as the wheat stalk is genuinely connected to the seed that was planted.
To understand the context, we need to remember that Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, a congregation that was troubled by various theological confusions, including doubts about whether the dead are raised at all. Some in Corinth apparently found the idea of bodily resurrection either strange or offensive, possibly influenced by Greek philosophical ideas that viewed the physical body as something to be escaped rather than redeemed. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul systematically defends the resurrection of Christ as historical fact and then argues that Christ's resurrection guarantees and previews the resurrection of believers. Verses 35-38 specifically address the objection "how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" Paul's answer begins with this seed analogy, which would
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