1 Corinthians 15:53,54

“For this corruptible body must put on incorruption, and this mortal body put on immortality. 54. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.”

The first words of 1 Corinthians 15:53 reproduce in a positive form the idea of 1 Corinthians 15:50, and constitute the transition to the development following. The striking parallelism of the two propositions marks the ascending movement of the thought as well as the growing exultation of the feeling: it is the poetic rhythm in Hebrew. Perhaps the first proposition applies rather to the resurrection of bodies which have passed through the dissolution of death, and the second to the transformation of bodies constantly threatened with death during their earthly life. In that case, we have here an allusion to the two modes of change indicated in 1 Corinthians 15:52.

The twice repeated expression, this body, and the figure of putting on evidently imply the idea of the continuity of the new body and the old; it is one and the same organic principle which appears successively in two different forms. The permanent element, contained at first in a corruptible covering, is suddenly raised by an act of Divine omnipotence to an incorruptible mode of existence.