The Unavoidable Fact of Death Before Resurrection

By its definition, resurrection requires death first.  Given that death is a guarantee—your chances of dying are 100% if Jesus doesn’t preempt it by His return—resurrection changes the whole human trajectory.  The unavoidable fact of death (something even non-Christians believe is real) testifies to the truth of God’s existence and God’s law.  It transports every man, woman, and child back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall of mankind.  Evolution can’t explain mortality.

In our look at “What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?” and study of 1 Corinthians 15, we’re now at verses 35-37 to deal with that unavoidable fact of mortality.

1 Corinthians 15:35 But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 

The Apostle Paul was dealing with Resurrection-deniers, those cynics who were asking how dead people can possibly rise.  After all, in a natural world, mist settles and rises, dead people don’t.  They stay dead.  But in a supernatural world of Christ’s intervention, people can rise to life again.  

I like Paul.  He uses gardening analogies.  He says a seed ceases being a seed when it is planted.  That’s true: it dies to being a seed.  But the seed will produce what was sown. 

A seed contains DNA that will produce what its DNA says it will be.  A zucchini seed will produce a zucchini plant which will produce zucchinis that eventually make zucchini bread or grilled zucchini (or the unavoidable fact that too many zucchinis end up as baseball bats that no neighbor wants or gardener in good conscience gives away).  But the point is: a zucchini seed produces zucchini plants which produce zucchinis.

A sinner (when he dies in his sin) has a sinner’s DNA.  That’s why Christians need to be born-again by the Holy Spirit.  By faith, we get transformed by the death of Christ in order to have DNA that says “Redeemed!”  Resurrection will either be to eternal life as Redeemed or to eternal separation, commonly called Hell, for those who have tried the do-it-yourself method of salvation.

We not just natural, physical beings.  We have supernatural souls and spirits–that breath of life God gives which transcends our body’s physical death.  What does your spiritual DNA say about you?  The unavoidable fact of death is … well, unavoidable.  So is resurrection.  So the question is: will you rise redeemed or with the sinner’s DNA?