What is God’s will for our bodies when they are raised from the dead?

The apostle Paul says, “But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body” (1 Cor. 15:38). God bestows the body “as He pleases” and His pleasure is nothing but that the body enjoys the blessed, heavenly life. This is His pleasure: to grant that the same body that shared in the soul’s earthly struggle also shares its glory.

Every seed that is sown produces a body of its own. We have not heard of a seed of wheat that produced barley, nor an apple seed that produced a lemon; rather every seed produces a harvest of its own kind. The apostle Paul says, “All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.” (1 Corinthians 15:39).

The body that the Lord raises is a real body, the body of a human being with his own individual character, yet glorified and spiritual. It is not, as some imagine, an apparition. Theodore of Mopsuestia, says, “In the resurrection a better body rises, a body no longer composed of flesh and blood like ours, but a living being, immortal and indestructible.”¹²⁹³