What does 1 Corinthians 15:43 mean?

Paul is helping the Corinthians understand that a believer's resurrected body will not be some reanimated, lesser version of the body before death. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The two bodies, though related, will not be of the same kind. They will be as different as a bird's body is from a fish's body (1 Corinthians 15:39) and as different as a man's body is from a star (1 Corinthians 15:40).

The previous verse began to spell out specific differences between the sin-corrupted frame of a believer in this life and the glorified, perfected body to come in the resurrection. The first difference mentioned was that our bodies before death are perishable. They come with an expiration date. They are wearing out. The resurrected body is eternal; it is deathless.

Now he adds that the pre-death body is sown in dishonor. Because of the analogy Paul used earlier (1 Corinthians 15:37), this term can be taken in more than one way. The word "sown" may refer to how the body is buried: planted in the ground. The other possibility is that Paul means "sown" here in reference to how the body is initially born into sin. In other words, that the earthly body grows from a state of sin. In either case, the sin we're born into and the sin we commit causes our physical bodies to be dishonorable, and they do not become honorable simply because we die.

Instead, for the believer in Jesus Christ, a transformation takes place. The believer's body is resurrected in glory. The use of the word "glory" connects to Paul's example of the radiant bodies of the stars in the heavens. Bible teachers often refer to resurrected bodies as "glorified bodies:" free of all dishonor of sin and full of the eternal light of God's glory.

Paul goes on: These pre-death bodies are sown in weakness, severely limited in physical, moral, spiritual strength. The believer's body, though, is resurrected in power beyond our current imagining.