o part company with an old companion and friend. As
Paul puts it in 2nd Corinthians, 'Not for that we would be unclothed,
but clothed upon.' All thoughts of the future which do not give
prominence to the idea of a bodily life open up but a ghastly and
uninviting mode of existence, which cannot but repel those who are
accustomed to the fellowship of their bodies, and they feel that they
cannot think of themselves as deprived of that which was their
servant and instrument, through all the years of their earthly
consciousness.

II. 'The body that shall be' is an emancipated body.

The varied gifts of the Spirit bestowed upon the Christian Church
served to quicken the hope of the yet greater gifts of that
indwelling Spirit which were yet to come. Chief amongst these our
text considers the transformation of the earthly into a spiritual
body. This transformation our text regards as being the participation
by the body in the redemption by which Christ has bought us with the
great price of His blood. We have to interpret the language here in
the light of the further teaching of Paul in the great Resurrection
chapter of 1st Corinthians, which distinctly lays stress, not on the
identity of the corporeal frame which is laid in the grave with 'the
body of glory,' but upon the entire contrast between the 'natural
body,' which is fit organ for the lower nature, and is informed by
it, and the 'spiritual body,' which is fit organ for the spirit. We
have to interpret 'the resurrection of the body' by the definite
apostolic declaration, 'Thou sowest not that body that shall be...
but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him'; and we have to give
full weight to the contrasts which the Apostle draws between the
characteristics of that which is 'sown' and of that which is
'raised.' The one is 'sown in corruption and raised in incorruption.'
Natural decay is contrasted with immortal youth. The one is 'sown in
dishonour,' the other is 'raised in glory.' That contrast is ethical,
and refers either to the subordinate position of the body here in
relation to the spirit, or to the natural sense of shame, or to the
ideas of degradation which are attached to the indulgence of the
appetites. The one is 'sown in weakness,' the other is 'raised in
power'; the one is 'sown a natural body,' the other is 'raised a
spiritual body.' Is not Paul in this whole series of contrasts
thinking primarily of the vision which he saw on the road to Damascus
whe