Bible Strands
1 Corinthians 15:38
But God gives it a body as He has designed, and to each kind of seed He gives its own body.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Paul addresses the Corinthian church while defending the doctrine of bodily resurrection against claims that a dead body cannot be restored.
The words — The Greek σῶμα (sōma) means a physical body, and ἠθέλησεν (ēthelēsen) means He has willed, directly linking God's sovereign choice to the specific form assigned to each seed.
The thread — The text grounds this principle in 1 Corinthians 3:7, where God alone makes things grow, and Genesis 1:11, where God commands the earth to yield vegetation according to its kind.
Why it lands — The verse demands that readers accept resurrection as a divinely ordered transformation tailored to each kind, not a human-engineered or uniform outcome.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
Cross-references
- 1 Corinthians 3:7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
- Isaiah 61:11 For as the earth brings forth its growth, and as a garden enables seed to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
- Genesis 1:11 Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants and fruit trees, each bearing fruit with seed according to its kind.” And it was so.
- Psalms 104:14 He makes the grass grow for the livestock and provides crops for man to cultivate, bringing forth food from the earth:
- Mark 4:26 Jesus also said, “The kingdom of God is like a man who scatters seed on the ground.