As if all of these immense blessings were not enough, God’s intentions in the glorification of His people extend even further. Paul continues in the passage (1 Corinthians 15:44) to contrast our old natural bodies to our new spiritual bodies. This text may appear a little hard to understand if, as you read the chapter, you encounter verse 50. There you see Paul saying that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God…” What does he mean? Is he saying that we will have non-physical bodies rather than physical bodies similar to what we have now? We have been arguing all along that God’s people will be raised in their own bodies that have been glorified. Does this present a problem to what I have been teaching?

No, this doesn’t present a problem to what I have been saying. Please consider Paul’s argument in the passage. In the verses preceding verse 50 (verses 45-49), Paul has been setting up a contrast. He is contrasting the first man Adam and the last Adam, the natural and the spiritual, from the dust and from heaven. He concludes his contrast in verse 49 by declaring that “…just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.” It appears evident that Paul is contrasting the new, glorified, physical body of the Lord Jesus with the sin-stained, fallen bodies of the masses on earth.

Notice further that straight after he says that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, he goes on to make a parallel statement that aligns flesh and blood with perishable and contrasts it with the imperishable. It should be clear here that what is different about the glorified bodies of the saints is not an argument of physical/non-physical, but perishable/non-perishable. It seems that the type of flesh and blood he is speaking about is perishable flesh and blood as discussed in verse 42—the perishable body will be raised an imperishable body.

The Lord Jesus went to a lot of effort to demonstrate the physical nature of His body after He rose from the dead (See Luke 24:39 as an example). If Christians’ resurrection bodies will resemble the resurrection body of the Lord Jesus, they will also be physical bodies, only raised imperishable.

Before we move on to discuss the exciting implications of our new spiritual bodies, allow me to advance one last argument from the text that should convince the reader that our new spiritual bodies will actually be physical bodies.