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The Seed Analogy

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How much continuity and conformity does our resurrection body have with "His glorious body" (Phil. 3:20-21)?
We get the same kind of resurrection body that Jesus has, but we were never promised that our physical bodies would have the same privileges that Jesus' physical body had. Jesus was sinless. He is the only one who was ever promised that His flesh would not "see corruption" (Acts 2:24-31). Everyone else was told "you are dust, and to dust you shall return." This means physical death is not the "Death" that was threatened by God against Adam's disobedience, and therefore not the death that is reversed by the eschatological resurrection event. Jesus nailed the "penalties" for our sins to the cross. Physical death seems to be a planned "natural" consequence of being human and living on earth.

Furthermore, Paul's seed analogy in 1 Cor. 15:35 on indicates that the outer shell of the seed dies and decays. The outer shell is not a part of the new body that rises out of the dust.

As a one time farmer and still owner of productive farm ground I know first hand this truthful concept. When a planted corn seed first sprouts its green and lively stem from beneath the soil, the hard shell of the original seed still remains - clutching the new little seedling for all its worth. But the end for that hard shell is inevitable and soon looses its grasp and decays - becoming nothing more than the soil it was planted in. If a seed is dead on the inside the seedling never emerges and disappears within the earth just as a body of flesh would decay and disappear.

The new body arises out of the inside of the seed. It is a different kind of body. The outer shell of the seed is not "the body which is to be" (1 Cor. 15:37) "But God gives it a ... body of its own." (1 Cor. 15:38) This is a crucial point, one which many exegetes have overlooked.

The seed analogy does not teach that the new body with which the seed sprouts has the same outer shell and form that it had before. It is the same seed. The inner part of the seed definitely has continuity with the original seed. But part of that seed stays in the ground. It is the inner man which has the spiritual life and rises with a new kind of body. It is the outer shell of the seed that is raised and then later changed. The change ocurrs before it rises out of physical death. The seed's outer shell dies and stays in the ground, and a new kind of body rises out of the inner part of the seed already changed and fitted for its new existence.

For Christians before 70AD, they had to wait until the resurrection at 70AD to be raised with that kind of body. This whole section of 1 Cor. 15:35 and on is full preterist turf in the discussion about the resurrection body. It does not teach that we will have "a physical, tangible resurrection".


Note; The above is 'Full Preterism'.