1 Corinthians 15:33

Evil communications corrupt good manners. Viz., with atheists and unbelievers who deny the resurrection. This is an iambic senarius of Menander's, as S. Jerome points out. Ver. 34. Awake to righteousness and sin not. Awake from sin to be righteous. The Greek copies give "awake righteously;" Ephrem, "Stir up your hearts righteously." Sin not, because some know not that God can call the dead to life.

I speak this to your shame. It is a shame for a Christian to have any doubt about the resurrection or the power of God. Vers. 35, 36. But some man will say... except it die. The Apostle strikes here at the root of their disease and the cause of their error, which was that some were despairing of and denying the resurrection of the body, because they saw that it rotted in the ground, and they thought therefore it was incredible and impossible for it to be raised again and refashioned. S Paul here answers this objection by pointing to a grain of corn which is sown. It first rots and dies away in the earth, and then as it were is born again and springs up, and brings forth, not merely one grain, but many grains from the one. In this way the one grain which is sown is clothed and laden at the harvest with many ears and grains, so that it seems to rise with greater glory. In the same way our bodies will rot in the ground, and thence rise to greater glory. Ver. 37. Thou sowest not that body that shall be. When you sow you do not sow the body which will rise from the seed, as, e.g., a tree or an ear, but bare seed, of apple, or of wheat, &c., and yet God gives to this seed sown, when it spring from the earth, not any other seed, but a complete and beautiful body, e.g., of a tree or of an ear, which is beautifully composed of its own stalk, beard, blossoms, and grains. Hence S. Augustine says (Ep. 146) that the Apostle implies, " if God can add to the new seed something it had not before, much more can He at the resurrection restore man's body."

Ver. 38. But God giveth... to every seed his own body. He gives to each seed the body that belongs to its own natural species, as, e.g., to a grain of wheat He gives a body of wheat, and not of barley or of oats.