What does 1 Corinthians 15:39 mean?
Paul continues to answer and instruct those in Corinth who have been saying there is no resurrection from the dead for Christians (1 Corinthians 15:12). He has called "foolish" the one who rejects belief in resurrection based on a lack of understanding about how God could resurrect a human body. The objection seems to assume Christian "resurrection" means restoring movement and awareness to a decayed corpse.In contrast, Scripture indicates that the resurrected body will not be some lesser form of the pre-death body. Rather, the form into which a believer is re-born is the ultimate form of their body! This, much like the plant is the ultimate form of the seed. Beyond that, though, the resurrected body will be of its own "kind," meaning that it will be as different as a bird is from a fish.
Taken on its own, Paul's statement here is obvious: human and animal "flesh" are different, belonging to different creatures. He will develop the point, though, to show that our resurrected bodies will be substantially different from our pre-death bodies.