📖WEB · 1 Corinthians 15:40
What does 1 Corinthians 15:40 mean?
"There are also celestial bodies, and terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial differs from that of the terrestrial."
— 1 Corinthians 15:40 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
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.
There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.
So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown perishable; it is raised imperishable.
It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.
Explanation
Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, addressing a serious problem: some believers there were denying or doubting the resurrection of the dead. In chapter 15, he builds a lengthy argument defending the reality of the resurrection, and one objection he anticipates is a practical one: "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" (v. 35). Verse 40 is part of Paul's answer, where he uses illustrations from the created world to show that God has already designed many different kinds of bodies suited to different realms of existence, so there is no reason to assume a resurrected body must be identical to an earthly one.
In plain language, Paul is simply observing that there are bodies suited for the heavens ("celestial bodies") and bodies suited for the earth ("terrestrial bodies"), and these two categories have different kinds of glory, or splendor. He is not necessarily making a scientific statement about literal stars and planets as living beings, but using a broad analogy: just as earthly creatures (like humans, animals, fish, birds — mentioned in verse 39) differ from one another, and just as heavenly bodies (sun, moon, stars, mentioned in verse 41) differ from earthly ones and from each other in brightness, so too the resurrected body will differ in kind and glory from the physical body we now have.
Theologically, this verse supports Paul's larger point: the resurrection body is real, but it is not simply a resuscitated corpse or a
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