I. Death, dissolution, decay, decomposition whichever may be the body subjected to that process is not only no obstacle in the way of that body living again, but affords a presumption that if it is to live again at all, it may be to live in a superior condition; it may be to live possessed of a new nature, a new organisation, adapted to the new sphere into which it is to be introduced. In the case of the seed the bare grain is cast into the ground to die, the resurrection is to a new life, to a life altogether new and fresh. The dead seed is quickened into a new life. So if the body is to exist again, it may be under a new law of life. Death is not the destruction, but the quickening of it.
II. The body which you are to receive in the resurrection may differ from that which you have now very much as what springs out of the ground and presents itself to view in late autumn in the shape of a luxuriant shock of corn, differs from the bare seed dropped into the ploughed earth in spring. The body that now is and the body that is to be are not to be exactly the same.
III. Still, there is real identity. "To every seed his own body." It is to be such a body as God may be pleased to give, but still it is to be its own body. It is to be a body which the individual himself and all who knew him may and must recognise as his own. It may be changed from what it was when the tomb received it weak, wasted, worn. It may wear the bloom of summer life, instead of the cold bleak deadness of the bare grain. It will not, however, be so changed but that the instinct of conscience will feel it to be the body in which the deeds of this life were done.
R. S. Candlish, Life in a Risen Saviour,p. 134.
The Analogy of Nature.
This is St. Paul's answer to objections against the resurrection of the body. The objector took his stand upon supposed impossibilities. "How are the dead raised up?" (as if death were extinction) "and with what body do they come?" (as if corruption were annihilation). St. Paul's answer is drawn, not from faith, but from nature. "Death," he says, "is a condition of life. Death does not extinguish the seed; it must die before it can be quickened, and 'thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain.'" The change or corruption of the seed is not annihilation, but the germination of a new form, a more perfect structure, the blade, the stalk, and the ear. Nature refutes your fancied impossibility by her perpetual facts. The resurrection is before your eyes. You believe it already. Nature has her resurrection as well as grace; both are kingdoms of God, and His omnipotence is in both alike. There is a relation of virtue and power, as between seed and fruit; so between the body sown and the body that shall be raised from the dead. We shall consider, not the particular subject of St. Paul's controversy, the resurrection of the body, but the form of his argument, which we are wont to call the analogy of nature. It is of great moment that we should well understand its use; for no argument is so strong within its sphere, and none more fatal if pressed too far. Within its legitimate range it makes nature divine; when pushed beyond it reduces faith to a natural religion. Let us see, then, how far it is good, and when it becomes bad.
I. The argument from analogy is good and unanswerable. (1) First, when it is used, as by St. Paul in this place, to refute objections. It is plainly absurd to argue against revelation, or any specific doctrines of revelation, on the ground of difficulties and supposed impossibilities the like of which may be found already to exist in the acknowledged facts of nature. (2) The argument from analogy may be used to some extent affirmatively also. What was simple refutation becomes a presumptive proof. We may now say, "You cannot deny these facts in nature; you acknowledge that nature is from God; the faith is so far a counterpart of nature, bears the same features, the tokens of one and the same hand: how can you deny that the faith too is from God?" This is not offered as a positive or constructive proof. It is a strong presumption, a high probability, but revelation awaits its own proper evidence. It does but reduce the assailant to his defence, and throws the burden upon the objector.
II. This analogical way of reasoning may be bad and destructive. (1) It would be mere infidelity to take the analogy of nature as the measure or limit of revelation. For this, in fact, has been the normal argument of freethinkers. In truth, as has been said by a great master of analogy, we can be no judges of the wisdom of God in the order we find established in the world; and nothing but the knowledge of another world, to which we might compare it, would give the criterion for such a judgment. Let us, then, while we trace the unity and harmony of all God's works, both in nature and in grace, beware how we limit the manifold fulness of Divine procedure.
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. iv., p. 152.
References: 1 Corinthians 15:35-38. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vi., No. 306; Homilist,1st series, vol. vi., p. 328. 1 Corinthians 15:35-45. F. W. Robertson, Lectures on Corinthians,p. 232. 1 Corinthians 15:36; 1 Corinthians 15:37. H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxiii., p. 241. 1 Corinthians 15:37; 1 Corinthians 15:38. G. Dawson, The Authentic Gospel,p. 308. 1 Corinthians 15:38. H. Batchelor, The Incarnation of God,p. 101; C. S. Brooks, Christian World Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 161; H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Children's Bread,p. 88.