I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

1 Corinthians 15:50

Chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians records Paul correcting the error some within the church at Corinth were promoting concerning the resurrection of the dead at the end of time (15:12ff).  The question asked of the apostle had been, “How are the dead raised?  With what kind of body do they come?” (15:35).  Paul has been answering that question by teaching that our deceased physical bodies will be resurrected as something different than they had been (15:42-49).

He continues to expound on that fact in verse 50, cited above.  Our physical bodies (“flesh and blood”) cannot receive the kingdom of God which Christ will deliver to his Father in heaven in eternity once time here on earth has ceased (15:24ff; cf. 2 Pet. 1:11).  We therefore need to be resurrected from our current “perishable” physical bodies to the “imperishable” eternal bodies waiting for us on the Day of Judgment.

The apostle now describes what will happen to us.  “Behold! I tell you a mystery,” he begins, meaning that he is about to reveal something which up to that time had been previously concealed (mysterion, kept secret) by God.  “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall all be changed” (15:51-52).  On the day Christ comes again, he will “descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.  And the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess. 4:16).  That “trumpet of God” described to the Thessalonians is the “last trumpet” Paul is writing about to the Corinthians.  It “will sound,” at which point, in less time than it takes to blink an eye, all of the dead will both be given bodies that will never decay or die again and be raised from the dead (cf. John 5:28-29).

This will happen regardless of how decayed and decomposed one’s body is; it will not matter if it has been eaten by fish in the sea (cf. Rev. 20:13a), cremated (cf. 1 Sam. 31:12), or has rotted to the point where it is nothing but dust (Eccl. 3:20).  In the end, “this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (15:53).  When this happens, Paul prophesies, “then shall come to pass” the sayings which Paul loosely draws from the Septuagint’s rendering of Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:14:  “Death is swallowed up in victory” and “O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?” (15:54).  In other words, when the dead are raised to immortality, physical death will become no more (cf. 15:24-26; Rev. 20:11-14).

Paul then points out that “the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (15:56).  Sin – the transgression of God’s laws (Rom. 4:15; 1 John 3:4) – is the reason death came into being.  No one could keep the law of Moses perfectly (Gal. 3:10), which is why eternal salvation could not be found through the keeping of that law (Heb. 10:1ff).  This is why the apostle urges Christians to give thanks to God, “who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (15:57).

Never forget, Christians.  We are always victorious over sin and death because of what Christ did on the cross!

— Jon