Philippians 3:21

21. change] The Greek verb is cognate to the word schêma, on which see second note on Php_2:8. It occurs also 2Co_11:13-15, and, with a different reference of thought, 1Co_4:6. Its use here implies that, in a sense, the change would be superficial. Already, in the “new creation” (2Co_5:17; Gal_6:15) of the saint the essentials of the glorified being are present. Even for the body the pledge and reason of its glory is present where the Holy indwelling Spirit is, (Rom_8:11). And thus the final transfiguration will be, so to speak, a change of “accidents,” not of “essence.” “Now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be” (1Jn_3:2).

our vile body] Lit., and far better, the body of our humiliation. Wyclif has “whiche schal refourme the bodi of oure mekenesse”; the Rhemish version, “the body of our humilitie”; Beza’s Latin version, corpus nostrum humile; Luther, unsern nichtigen Leib. All paraphrases here involve loss or mistake. The body transfigured by the returning Lord is the body “of our humiliation” as being, in its present conditions, inseparably connected with the burthens and limitations of earth; demanding, for its sustenance and comfort, a large share of the energies of the spirit, and otherwise hindering the spirit’s action in many directions. Not because it is material, for the glorified body, though “spiritual” (1Co_15:44), will not be spirit; but because of the mysterious effect of man’s having fallen as an embodied spirit. The body is thus seen here, in its present condition, to be rather the “humbling” body than “vile” (Lat., vilis, “cheap”), “humble.”

Observe meanwhile that peculiar mystery and glory of the Gospel, a promise of eternal being and blessedness for the body of the saint. To the ancient philosopher, the body was merely the prison of the spirit; to the Apostle, it is its counterpart, destined to share with it, in profound harmony, the coming heaven. Not its essential nature, but its distorted condition in the Fall, makes it now the clog of the renewed spirit; it shall hereafter be its wings. This is to take place, as the N.T. consistently reveals, not at death, but at the Return of Christ.

The bearing of this passage on the error of the libertine, who “sinned against his own body” (1Co_6:18), is manifest.

that it may be fashioned like] One word, an adjective, in the Greek; we may render, nearly with R.V., (to be) conformed. The word is akin to morphê, Php_2:6, where see note. It is implied that the coming conformity to our Blessed Lord’s Body shall be in appearance because in reality; not a mere superficial reflection, but a likeness of constitution, of nature.

unto his glorious body] Lit. and better, the body of His glory; His sacred human body, as He resumed it in Resurrection, and carried it up in Ascension[25], and is manifested in it to the Blessed.—“Of His glory”; because perfectly answering in its conditions to His personal Exaltation, and, so far as He pleases, the vehicle of its display. A foresight of what it now is was given at the Transfiguration (Mat_17:2, and parallels); and St Paul had had a moment’s glimpse of it as it is, at his Conversion (Act_9:3; Act_9:17; Act_22:14; 1Co_9:1; 1Co_15:8).

[25] The Ascension may well have been, as many theologians have held, a further glorification, the crown of mysterious processes carried on through the Forty Days. We see hints of the present majesty of the Lord’s celestial Body in the mystical language of Rev_1:14-16.

Our future likeness in body to His body is alone foretold here, without allusion to its basis in the spiritual union and resemblance wrought in us now by the Holy Spirit (e.g. 2Co_3:18), and to be consummated then (1Jn_3:2). But this latter is of course deeply implied here. The sensual heresies which the Apostle is dealing with lead him to this exclusive view of the glorious future of the saint’s body.

It is plain from this passage, as from others (see esp. 1Co_15:42-44; 1Co_15:53), that the saint’s body of glory is continuous with that of his humiliation; not altogether a “new departure” in subsistence. But when we have said this, our certainties in the question cease, lost in the mysterious problems of the nature of matter. The Blessed will be “the same,” body as well as spirit; truly continuous, in their whole being, in full identity, with the pilgrims of time. But no one can say that to this identity will be necessary the presence in the glorified body of any given particle, or particles, of the body of humiliation, any more than in the mortal body it is necessary to its identity (as far as we know) that any particle, or particles, present in youth should be also present in old age. However, in the light of the next words this question may be left in peace. Be the process and conditions what they may, in God’s will, somehow

“Before the judgment seat,

Though changed and glorified each face,

Not unremembered [we shall] meet,

For endless ages to embrace.”

(Christian Year, St Andrew’s Day.)

according to the working whereby &c.] More lit., according to the working of His being able. The word “mighty” in the A.V. (not given in the other English versions) is intended to represent the special force of the Greek word energeia (see note on the kindred verb, Php_2:12); but it is too strong. “Active,” or even “actual,” would be more exact; but these are not really needed. The “working” is the positive putting forth of the always present “ability.”

even to subdue all things unto himself] “Even” precedes and intensifies the whole following thought.

Elsewhere the Father appears as “subduing all enemies,” “all things,” to the Son. Cp. 1Co_15:25 (and Psa_110:1), 27 (and Psa_8:6). But the Father “hath given to the Son to have life in Himself” (Joh_5:26-29), and therefore power. The will of the Father takes effect through the will of the Son, One with Him.

“All things”:—and therefore all conditions or obstacles, impersonal or personal, that oppose the prospect of the glorification of His saints. Cp. Rom_8:38-39; 1Co_3:21-23.

“Unto Himself”:—so that they shall not only not obstruct His action, but subserve it. His very enemies shall be—“His footstool,” and He shall “be glorified in His saints” (2Th_1:10). And through this great victory of the Son, the Father will be supremely glorified. See 1Co_15:28; a prediction beyond our full understanding, but which on the one hand does not mean that in the eternal Future the Throne will cease to be “the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev_22:1; Rev_22:3), and on the other points to an infinitely developed manifestation in eternity of the glory of the Father in the Son. Meanwhile, the immediate thought of this passage is the almightiness, the coming triumph, and the present manhood, of the Christian’s Saviour.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Who shall change our vile body - compare the notes at 1 Cor. 15: The original words, which are rendered here as “vile body,” properly mean “the body of humiliation;” that is, our humble body. It refers to the body as it is in its present state, as subject to infirmities, disease, and death. It is different far from what it was when man was created, and from what it will be in the future world. Paul says that it is one of the objects of the Christian hope and expectation, that this body, so subject to infirmities and sicknesses, will be changed.

That it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body - Greek, “The body Of his glory;” that is, the body which he has in his glorified state. What change the body of the Redeemer underwent when he ascended to heaven, we are not informed - nor do we know what is the nature, size, appearance, or form of the body which he now has. It is certain that it is adapted to the glorious world where he dwells; that it has none of the infirmities to which it was liable when here; that it is not subject; as here, to pain or death; that it is not sustained in the same manner. The body of Christ in heaven is of the same nature as the bodies of the saints will be in the resurrection, and which the apostle calls “spiritual bodies,” (notes, 1Co 15:44); and it is doubtless accompanied with all the circumstances of splendor and glory which are appropriate to the Son of God. The idea here is, that it is the object of the desire and anticipation of the Christian, to be made just like Christ in all things. He desires to resemble him in moral character here, and to be like him in heaven. Nothing else will satisfy him but such conformity to the Son of God; and when he shall resemble him in all things, the wishes of his soul will all be met and fulfilled.

According to the working ... - That is, such a change demands the exertion of vast power. No creature can do it. But there is One who has power entrusted to him over all things, and he can effect this great transformation in the bodies of people; compare 1Co 15:26-27. He can mould the mind and the heart to conformity to his own image, and thus also he can transform the body so that it shall resemble his. Everything he can make subject to his will. (Mat 28:18, note; Joh 17:2, note.) And he that has this power can change our humbled and debased bodies, so that they shall put on the glorious appearance and form of that of the Son of God himself. What a contrast between our bodies here - frail, feeble, subject to sickness, decay, and corruption - and the body as it will be in heaven! And what a glorious prospect awaits the weak and dying believer, in the future world!

Remarks On Philippians 3

1. It is a privilege of the Christian to rejoice; Phi 3:1. He has more sources of real joy than any other persons; see 1Th 5:16. He has a Saviour in whom he may always find peace; a God whose character he can always contemplate with pleasure a heaven to look forward to where there is nothing but happiness; a Bible that is full of precious promises, and at all times the opportunity of prayer, in which he may roll all Iris sorrows on the arms of an unchanging friend. If there is anyone on earth who ought to be happy, it is the Christian.

2. The Christian should so live as to leave on others the impression that religion produces happiness. In our contact with our friends, we should show them that religion does not cause sadness or gloom, sourness or misanthropy, but that it produces cheerfulness, contentment, and peace. This may be shown by the countenance, and by the whole demeanour - by a calm brow, and a benignant eye, and by a cheerful aspect. The internal peace of the soul should be evinced by every proper external expression. A Christian may thus be always doing good - for he is always doing good who leaves the impression on others that religion makes its possessors happy.

3. The nature of religion is almost always mistaken by the world. They suppose that it makes its possessors melancholy and sad. The reason is, not that they are told so by those who are religious, and not that even they can see anything in religion to produce misery, but because they have fixed their affections on certain things which they suppose to be essential to happiness, and which they suppose religion would require them to give up without substituting anything in their place. But never was there a greater mistake. Let them go and ask Christians, and they will obtain but one answer from them. It is, that they never knew what true happiness was until they found it in the Saviour. This question may be proposed to a Christian of any denomination, or in any land, and the answer will be uniformly the same. Why is it, then, that the mass of persons regard religion as adapted only to make them unhappy? Why will they not take the testimony of their friends in the case, and believe those whom they would believe on any other subject, when they declare that it is only true religion that ever gives them solid peace?

4. We cannot depend on any external advantages of birth or blood for salvation; Phi 3:4-6. Few or no persons have as much in this respect to rely on as Paul had. Indeed, if salvation were to be obtained at all by such external advantages, it is impossible to conceive that more could have been united in one case than there was in his. He had not only the advantage of having been born a Hebrew; of having been early trained in the Jewish religion; of being instructed in the ablest manner, but also the advantage of entire blamelessness in his moral deportment. He had showed in every way possible that he was heartily attached to the religion of his fathers, and he began life with a zeal in the cause which seemed to justify the warmest expectations of his friends. But all this was renounced, when he came to see the true method of salvation, and saw the better way by which eternal life is to be obtained.

And if Paul could not depend on this, we cannot safely do it. It will not save us that we have been born in the church; that we have had pious parents; that we were early baptized and consecrated to God; that we were trained in the Sunday school. Nor will it save us that we attend regularly on the place of worship, or that we are amiable, correct, honest, and upright in our lives. We can no more depend on these things than Saul of Tarsus could, and if all his eminent advantages failed to give him a solid ground of hope, our advantages will be equally vain in regard to our salvation. It almost seems as if God designed in the case of Saul of Tarsus, that there should be one instance where every possible external advantage for salvation should be found, and there should be everything that people ever could rely on in moral character, in order to show that no such things could be sufficient to save the soul. All these may exist, and yet there may not be a particle of love to God, and the heart may be full of selfishness, pride, and ambition, as it was in his case.

5. Religion demands humility; Phi 3:7-8. It requires us to renounce all dependence on our own merits, and to rely simply on the merits of another - the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are ever saved, we must be brought to esteem all the advantages which birth and blood and our own righteousness can bestow as worthless, and even vile, in the matter of justification. We shall not despise these things in themselves, nor shall we consider that vice is as desirable as virtue, nor that a bad temper is to be sought rather than an amiable disposition, nor that dishonesty is as commendable as honesty; but we shall feel that in comparison with the merits of the Redeemer all these are worthless. But the mind is not brought to this condition without great humiliation. Nothing but the power of God can bring a proud and haughty and self-righteous sinner to this state, where he is willing to renounce all dependence on his own merits, and to be saved in the same way as the vilest of the species.

6. Let us seek to obtain an interest in the righteousness of the Redeemer; Phi 3:9. Our own righteousness cannot save us. But in him there is enough. There is all that we want, and if we have that righteousness which is by faith, we have all that is needful to render us accepted with God, and to prepare us for heaven. When there is such a way of salvation - so easy, so free, so glorious, so ample for all, how unwise is anyone to rest on his own works, and to expect to be saved by what he has done! The highest honor of man is to be saved by the merits of the Son of God, and he has reached the most elevated rank in the human condition who has the most certain hope of salvation through him.

7. There is enough to be gained to excite us to the utmost diligence and effort in the Christian life; Phi 3:10-14. If people can be excited to effort by the prospect of an earthly crown in a race or a game, how much more should we be urged forward by the prospect of the eternal prize! To seek to know the Redeemer; to be raised up from the degradation of sin to have part in the resurrection of the just: to obtain the prize of the high calling in heaven - to be made everlastingly happy and glorious there - what object was ever placed before the mind like this? What ardor should it excite that we may gain it! Surely, the hope of obtaining such a prize as is before the Christian, should call forth all our powers. The struggle will not be long. The race will soon be won. The victory will be glorious; the defeat would be overwhelming and awful. No one need fear that he can put forth too much effort to obtain the prize. It is worth every exertion, and we should never relax our efforts, or give over in despair.

8. Let us, like Paul, ever cherish an humble sense of our attainments in religion; Phi 3:12-13. If Paul had not reached the point of perfection, it is not to be presumed that we have; if he could not say that he had “attained,” it is presumption in us to suppose that we have, if he had occasion for humiliation, we have more; if he felt that he was far short of the object which he sought, and was pressed down with the consciousness of imperfection, such a feeling becomes us also. Yet let us not sink down in despondency and inaction. Like him, let us strain every nerve that we may overcome our imperfections and win the prize. That prize is before us. It is glorious. We may be sensible that we, as yet, have not reached it, but if we will strive to obtain it, it will soon be certainly ours. We may feel that we are far distant from it now in the degree of our attainments, but we are not far from it in fact. It will be but a short period before the Christian will lay hold on that immortal crown, and before his brow will be encircled with the diadem of glory. For the race of life, whether we win or lose, is soon run; and when a Christian begins a day, he knows not but he may end it in heaven; when he lies down on his bed at night, he knows not but he may awake with the “prize” in his hand, and with the diadem of glory sparkling on his brow.

9. Our thoughts should be much in heaven; Phi 3:20. Our home is there, our citizenship is there. Here we are strangers and pilgrims. We are away from home, in a cold and unfriendly world. Our great interests are in the skies; our eternal dwelling is to be there; our best friends are already there. There is our glorious Saviour with a body adapted to those pure abodes, and there are many whom we have loved on earth already with him. They are happy now, and we should not love them less because they are in heaven. Since, therefore, our great interests are there, and our best friends there; and since we ourselves are citizens of that heavenly world, our best affections should be there.

10. We look for the Saviour; Phi 3:20-21. He will return to our world. He will change our vile bodies, and make them like his own glorious body And since this is so, let us:

(a) bear with patience the trials and infirmities to which our bodies here are subject. These trials will be short, and we may well bear them for a few days, knowing that soon all pain will cease, and that all that is humiliating in the body will be exchanged for glory.

(b) Let us not think too highly or too much of our bodies here. They may be now beautiful and comely, but they are “vile” and degraded, compared with what they will soon be. They are subject to infirmity and to numerous pains and sicknesses. Soon the most beautiful body may become loathsome to our best friends. Soon, too offensive to be looked upon, it will be hidden in the grave. Why then should we seek to pamper and adorn these mortal frames? Why live only to decorate them? Why should we idolize a mass of moulded and animated clay? Yet,

(c) let us learn to honor the body in a true sense. It is soon to be changed. It will be made like the glorified body of Christ. Yes, this frail, diseased, corruptible, and humbled body; this body, that is soon to be laid in the grave, and to return to the dust, is soon to put on a new form, and to be clothed with immortality. It will be what the body of Christ now is - glorious and immortal. What a change! Christian, go and look on the creeping caterpillar, and see it changed to the happy and gilded butterfly - yesterday, a crawling and offensive insect; today, with gaudy colors an inhabitant of the air, and a dweller amidst flowers; and see an image of what thy body shall be, and of the mighty transformation which thou wilt soon undergo. See the change from the cold death of winter to the fragrance and life of spring, and behold an image of the change which thou thyself wilt ere long experience and a proof that some such change awaits thee.

“Shall spring the faded world revive?

Shall waning moons their light renew?

Again shall setting suns ascend.

And chase the darkness from our view?

Shall life revisit dying worms.

And spread the joyful insect’s wing?

And, oh, shall man awake no more,

To see thy face, thy name to sing?

Faith sees the bright, eternal doors.

Unfold to make her children way;

They shall be cloth’d with endless life,

And shine in everlasting day.”

Dwight.

11. Let us look for the coming of the Lord; Phi 3:21. All that we hope for depends on his reappearing. Our day of triumph and of the fulness of our joy is to be when he shall return. Then we shall be raised from the grave; then our vile bodies shall be changed; then we shall be acknowledged as his friends; then we shall go to be forever with him. The earth is not our home; nor is the grave to he our everlasting bed of rest. Our home is heaven - and the Saviour will come, that he may raise us up to that blessed abode. And who knows when he may appear? He himself commanded us to be ready, for he said he would come at an hour when we think not. We should so desire his coming, that the hours of his delay would seem to be heavy and long and should so live that we can breathe forth with sincerity, at all times, the fervent prayer of the beloved disciple, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly;” Rev 22:20.

“My faith shall triumph o’er the grave,

And trample on the tombs;

My Jesus, my Redeemer, lives,

My God, my Saviour, comes;

Ere long I know he shall appear,

In power and glory great;

And death, the last of all his foes,

Lie vanquish’d at his feet.

Then, though the worms my flesh devour.

And make my form their prey,

I know I shall arise with power,

On the last judgment day;

When God shall stand upon the earth,

Him then mine eyes shall see;

My flesh shall feel a sacred birth,

And ever with him be.

Then his own hand shall wipe the tears.

From every weeping eye;

And pains, and groans, and griefs, and fears,

Shall cease eternally.

How long, dear Saviour! Oh, how long.

Shall this bright hour delay?

Fly swift around, ye wheels of time,

And bring the welcome day.”

- Watts.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Php_3:21

Who shall change our vile body

The humiliation and glorification of the body

I.

Our present state of existence is one of much humiliation. We are in vile bodies--

1. If you remember their origin. They are formed from the earth. We are indeed curiously wrought, and exhibit proofs of the goodness, wisdom, and power of God; but let the body be analyzed, and decomposed, and wherein does it differ from the dust we despise? God knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust. What a fine lesson of humility is here.

2. Our bodies are tainted with sin and therefore vile. Always connect with the meanness of your origin the idea that you are infected with iniquity. We have unclean bodies which are the prisons of our souls. You have but to reflect on your proneness to impurity, to forgetfulness of God, and what but for Adams fall you might have been, to warrant your saying behold I am vile.

3. Our bodies are exposed to sickness, and destined to death. Thou shalt eat bread in sorrow till thou return to the ground. All this is true of all, and yet how many try to hide it in the elaborate trickery of dress and the disgraceful vanities of the age. The body is only valuable as the casket of an inestimable jewel.

II. The ennobling change which shall pass on that which is how subject to humiliation. It is not intended for our state of vileness to last. To shut out as infidels do the prospects of futurity is an act of unparalleled madness. In the gospel life and immortality are brought to light. But the specific hope of the text is not for those who are enemies of the Cross, etc., but for those who count all things loss, etc.

1. The time when this great and ennobling change is to occur. At the coming of Christ at the general resurrection; when the universe shall sink in years, the elements melt with fervent heat, when the last moment of time shall pass, and the whole of our race be assembled.

2. The precise nature of this change--like unto the Saviours glorious body.

(1) In spirituality. The earthliness of our bodies will be removed, and made light and buoyant, no more gross and material; Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

(2) In holiness. On earth He was holy, harmless, undefiled and is so now. None can enter heaven without holiness: therefore our bodies will be purged of sin.

(3) In immortality. Christ being raised from the dead dicta no more. Because I live, ye shall live also. The immortal Saviour shall reign over an immortal people.

3. The specific agency by which this great change shall be effected.

(1) By Him whom we call Lord and God. If there be any who are ready to take Him down from His Divine elevation let them mark this Divine prerogative. As the Father raiseth up the dead, etc. (Rom_14:9).

(2) By His mighty power. What power must he have who raises the dead?

(3) The particular principle is that by which He is able to subdue all things.

III. The accomplishment of this chance ought to be made a matter of joyful expectation. The great sin of men is not looking forward. For time they are ready to give all; for eternity nothing. But we Christians look for the coming of Christ--

1. As we hate sin, because we shall then be perfectly holy.

2. As we desire communion with God, because we shall see Him as He is, and be made like Him.

3. As we wish to arrive at the true grandeur and perfection of our nature, because we shall be changed into the image of moral beauty.

4. As we desire the perfect triumphs of the Redeemers kingdom, because then all things shall be put under His feet.

5. As we desire a meeting with all the great and good, because then we shall rejoice in an association with the family of God forever. (J. Parsons.)

The vile body made glorious

The word vile, in ordinary usage, represents that which is mean and despicable. This is not the thought of the Apostle Paul. The substance of the body is not in itself vile. There is nothing vile in the elements of the human frame or in their combination. The construction of the body is not vile. There is so much of Divine design, wisdom, and skill displayed in every part of the human body, that the attributes of the Creator seem to be enthroned or enshrined in it. The uses of the body are not vile, so far, at least, as the body is rightly used, and the members are instruments of righteousness unto God. It is not Pauls habit to speak in contempt of the human frame. The body is, nevertheless, as the subject of disease and infirmity, as sustained by toil and by the sweat of the brow, as appointed to die, and as liable to the motions of sin, in a state of debasement. It is in a state of humiliation.

I. The change here predicted.

1. The transformation in substance. This will consist in the change of the present natural material, to what the apostle calls spiritual. There is almost a contradiction involved in speaking of any substance as being spiritual, but we see very many changes in the substance of nature which are very like a change from that which is grossly material, to that which is refined and spiritual. Take, say, a lump of rough ice. Apply heat to it; and the change effected is to water. The material is nearer the spiritual as water than it was as ice. Continue to apply heat to this melted ice, and you get from it a cloud of vapour floating in the air. Here is something kindred to the change of that which is material into that which is spiritual, and, perhaps, the change of which the text speaks is of this kind or of this class. Or take, say, a grain of wheat and drop it into the ground; it germinates; and presently it comes up to a beauteous blade. How much more like the spiritual is that green spiritual blade, than the hard, cold, apparently lifeless thing called a seed which you cast into the ground? Flesh and blood, we are told, cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Of these qualities we may mention strength. How little, in certain aspects, the body can bear I Compared with the spirits of some men how weak is the body. God Himself is clothed with activity, is ceaselessly active. Those who are redeemed to God by Jesus Christ are saved from morbid inactivity. There is as strong a desire to do, as there is to be and to enjoy. Now, to have a body that will endure this doing, because constituted of a material that will never wear, and that will never waste! Oh, how glorious will this be!

(1) The transformation, so far as the substance is concerned, will be from a wasting material to a permanent substance. We all know that our bodies are now constituted on the principle of waste and repair. The future body will not be based on this arrangement.

(2) The transformation will be from a corruptible substance to an incorruptible--from a substance exposed to many ills, to a substance the heir only to vigour and to pleasure.

2. The change in the form may be gathered from Rev_1:13. The transformation will be from the mixture of comeliness and uncomeliness to perfect purity--from heaviness to lightness and agility--from dwarfishness or overgrowth to perfect stature--from the expression which sin and sorrow give to the human countenance unto the expression of perfect righteousness and of fulness of joy. Now all this is involved in the words, fashioned like unto His glorious body. The body of the Lord Jesus Christ is a body that his Father thinks worthy of Him. It is a body suited to His dignity as King of kings, to the glorious city over which He reigns, and which harmonizes with all that is sublime and beauteous there. And when our bodies shall be fashioned like it what a change this will be; like that between the colours on a painters palette, and the picture on the canvas, yet not like because infinitely surpassing it, or as the change which passes over the earth, when the winter is gone and the time of the singing of birds is come.

II. Jesus Christ will be the Transformer. The Redeemer has taken us men entirely in hand to do everything for us. We want a sacrifice, a righteous standing with God, regeneration, teaching, comfort in tribulation, victory in battle, and He provides them all. In the text Christ is doing our part of His work for us. He has already transformed our spirits, and will in due time change our bodies. The tendency of this working is to subdue everything to His purpose, so that all things may have this one issue--the working out of a complete salvation. The text exhibits--

I. The resources of Christ. He literally can do everything for you. Inwardly you are His workmanship, for you are newly created in Him; but more still will be done, even the transformation. Will you not, then, look more constantly to Christ? You cannot look to Him too much. He delights in your cherishing large expectations.

2. The completeness of redemption. Christ takes the body into His redeeming hand, He changes that, and He makes that perfect. Why not trust Him to perfect all that concerneth you?

3. The future glory of the saints. What is there involving dignity, or pleasure, or joy, that is not provided for in that Fathers house to which the Saviour has gone that He may prepare a place for us.

4. One great object of the Christians hope. The existence of hope in our nature is an illustration of the goodness of God. We double our sorrows by our fears. But what shall we say of the effect upon our joys of hope? We enjoy some promised or coming blessing, over, and over, and over again, long before it reaches our hands. Weary in this pilgrimage of life, whither are the weary steps which you are taking today carrying you? Every step carries you nearer home. Every pain tells that the hour is near in which the Lord Jesus Christ shall change the body of your humiliation. Wait a little, and your redemption will be consummated, and it will be as though you had never known a fallen world like this, and a humbled nature like this. (S. Martin.)

The redemption of the body

I. The subject of the process. In our present fallen state the bodies, even of the saints, exhibit marks of degradation, and furnish the causes by which that degradation is manifested.

1. Our bodies, as they were created, so are they now supported, by nutriment derived from the earth on which we tread.

2. They are liable to be painfully affected by various elements and agencies of physical nature.

3. They are subject to manifold injuries, and sufferings, and diseases.

4. They are ultimately destined to return to the dust from whence they were taken.

5. On these accounts, and with a tacit comparison of what the body is with what it was, with what it would have been, if sin had not marred it--and with what it shall be--that the apostle terms it the body of our humiliation, but too sadly in keeping with the fallen and degraded soul, till renewed by the grace of the Almighty Spirit.

II. The process.

1. Not an absolute change, but a transformation and modification. This presupposes and implies the doctrine of the resurrection.

2. The model, according to which this change is accomplished, is nothing less than the glorified humanity of Christ.

III. The agency. Surely He who made that which was not can make that which has been to be again. And, therefore, the text refers us to the Omnipotence of God. So wondrous a change is only explicable on the hypothesis of miracle.

IV. The lessons. The doctrine is--

1. Highly illustrative of the glory of the Divine attributes.

(1) How glorious will be that wisdom, which, through all the mutations of time shall keep its eye upon those integral and ultimate parts of the human body, which are essential to its identity, through all their various transitions, and which will collect those scattered particles and recombine them into a beauteous frame.

(2) How glorious that power which will accomplish that purpose.

(3) How glorious that justice which will sooner or later render to every man in his body according to what he hath done.

(4) How glorious that mercy which first makes men saints and constitutes them citizens of heaven, and finally admits them to the city of which they are made free by grace.

2. Calls upon us to remember and recognize with devout gratitude our special obligation to the Christian revelation, which brings this life and this immortality, not only of the spirit but of the body, to light.

3. Furnishes a powerful motive to submission when we are called upon to suffer bodily infirmity.

4. Affords an antidote against the tormenting fear of death for ourselves in ordinary life, and in the common process of human decay and mortality, as well as a strong consolation on the occasion of the removal of our beloved friends from time to eternity.

5. Shows us the fitness and propriety of that decent and reverential respect, which in Christian lands is ordinarily paid to the interment even of the mortal remains of departed and glorified friends?

6. Ought to convince us of the necessity of glorifying God with our bodies as well as our spirits. (Jabez Bunting, D. D.)

The resurrection of the body

I. Our sinful condition. Our body is a humble one.

1. Because of its sin, which brought all evil into the world.

2. Because of the immense labour that is necessary to supply its wants, abridging the time for intellectual and religious pursuits, and that only to feed that which will die.

3. As a hindrance to the richest feelings of which the heart is capable.

4. As doomed to die, and to inflict the keenest pain on beloved survivors.

II. The glorious scene which is peculiar to Christianity.

1. The fact of the resurrection. This identical body shall rise. We cannot say in what that identity consists. The body often changes its substance, but its identity abides. If only a similar body there were no resurrection, only a new creation. We depend, however, on scriptural proof.

(1) The resurrection of Christ. Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.

(2) The extent of redemption, which includes the body. Ye are not your own, etc. We wait for the adoption, to wit the redemption of the body. Christ cannot lose His own.

(3) Both body and soul have sinned or wrought righteousness, hence both body and soul must be rewarded or punished.

(4) The application of the term sleep to death--which cannot refer to the soul; hence, death is the body collecting new vigour for the morning of the resurrection.

(5) The great designation of Christ. He must reign … the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

2. At the resurrection there shall be a transformation of the bodies of the saints. What does it imply.

(1) That there shall be no more death, Christ dieth no more, nor His.

(2) Conformity to the body of Christ means no more deformity. Deformity in the countenance is sometimes the effect of sin, sometimes of accident: but there will be no more of either.

(3) Excessive care, necessary for the support of the body, shall then exist no more.

(4) The body will no more be a hindrance, but an assistant to the operations of the spirit.

III. The means by which this is to be effected. Doubtless the apostle introduced this to answer all objections. The whole is a miracle, but God makes miracles as great every day. (R. Watson.)

The body as it is and as it is to be

I. The body as it is.

1. In regard to its dignity.

(1) For this we must go back to its creation.

(a) It is represented as a mass of unorganized matter.

(b) Then it became an organized body.

(c) After that breath is infused into it and it became an animated substance. The latter element imparts to the human system surpassing worth.

(2) Dignity is imparted to the body in the process of redemption.

(a) It has become a sanctified thing through the incarnation. Christ could touch nothing that He did not ennoble.

(b) It has a dignity arising from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

(c) There are direct intimations that the body stands in a certain relation to mediatorial designs and purposes, and that Christ requires it for the advancement of His kingdom.

Glorify God in your body; Present your bodies a living sacrifice; The body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. For most of its operations the mind requires the assistance of the body, and anatomists say that the very structure of our frames is such as presupposes their being used for the carrying out of mental objects and inventions. But the body was intended of God to be the handmaid in higher departments, to be the servant of the renewed will, and the will of the true disciple moves only in obedience to the will of his Master. So Christ speaks through His servants mouth, works through his hands, controls his eye and ear lest they run after vanity, lifts up the feet on their mission of mercy and love.

(3) All this shows why the apostle insists not only that we should have our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, but also that we should have our bodies washed with pure water, for in baptism the, body is made a consecrated thing.

2. In regard to its humiliation. It is humbled--

(1) On account of our moral degeneracy and the curse entailed thereby. Every pain, disease, mark of old age, grave, remind us of this.

(2) Because it is the seat of sin. Hence the expression body of this death, and the necessity of keeping the body under.

(3) In consequence of the labour and pain required to provide for its wants.

(4) In that it is a hindrance to the souls powers.

II. The body as it is to be. The apostle uses the word transfigure, perhaps, with a designed reference to the glorious splendours of the Mount of Transfiguration.

III. Practical results.

1. The essential, inalienable sanctity of the body as a member of Christ and a temple of His spirit.

2. The folly and sin of undue carefulness in regard to bodily necessities.

3. The needlessness of the fear of death. (D. Moore, M. A.)

The power of Christ illustrated by the resurrection

The whole of our life is interwoven with the life of Christ. His first coming has been to us salvation. We live still because He lives. The completion of our salvation in the deliverance of our body from the bondage of corruption is wrapped up in His personal resurrection and quickening power.

I. The marvel which is to be wrought by our Lord at His coming.

1. He will change the body in which our humiliation is manifested and enclosed, and will transform it until it is like the body in which He enjoys and reveals His glory. Three times human eyes have seen something of the body of glory--in the face of Moses, after his forty days communion; in the transfiguration of Christ; in the angel face of Stephen.

2. Turning to 1Co_15:1-58 we learn--

(1) That the body is corruptible, subject to decay; but the new body shall be incorruptible. For the immortal spirit it shall be the immortal companion.

(2) It is sown in weakness, weak to perform our will, weaker still to perform Gods, weak to do and to suffer; but it is to be raised in power and be made like unto the angels who excel in strength.

(3) It is a natural or soulish body--a body fit for the soul, for the lowest faculties of our mental nature; but it will be raised a spiritual body, adapted to the noblest portion of our nature, suitable for the highest aspirations of perfected humanity.

(4) It is sinful, its members have been instruments of unrighteousness. It is true it is the temple of the Holy Ghost, but there are traces about it of the time when it was a den of thieves. But it awaits the time when it shall be perfectly sinless.

(5) Being sinless it shall be painless. Truly, we who are in this tabernacle do groan. Up yonder the rod shall no longer chasten, the faultiness being removed.

(6) The spiritual body will not need to sleep, for it will serve God day and night in His temple without weariness.

(7) It will be perfect. If the saints have lost a sense or a limb or are halt or maimed they will not be so in heaven, for as to body and soul they are without fault before the throne of God. We shall be like Him, therefore beautiful.

3. The miracle will be amazing if you view it as occurring to those who shall be alive when Christ comes. Reflect, however, that most will be in their graves, and of many all trace will have disappeared.

4. By what possibility then can the self same bodies be raised? I answer, it needs a miracle to make any of these dry bones live, and a miracle being granted impossibility vanishes. He who formed each atom from nothing can gather each particle from confusion.

II. This power which is to raise the dead is resident in Christ at this moment. It is not some new power which Christ will take in the latter days.

1. This power is ascribed to Christ as the Saviour, and it is precisely in that capacity that we need the exercise of His power at this moment. How large, then, may be our expectations for the conversion of men. Nothing is too hard for the Lord. If as Saviour He will wake the dead, He can now quicken the spiritually dead. Your own regeneration was as remarkable an instance of Divine power as the resurrection will be.

2. Opposition may be expected to this power, but that resistance will be overcome. There will be no resistance to the resurrection, but to the spiritual there is prejudice, hatred of Christ, sinful preferences, etc. But He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.

3. The text includes all supposable cases. Not here and there one, but all things. No man is so fallen but Jesus can save him.

4. Nothing is said concerning the unfitness of the means. The text obliterates man altogether. Jesus can and will do it all.

5. The ability is present with the Saviour. He is as strong now as He ever will be, for He changes not.

6. The text suggests a parallel between the resurrection and the subduing of all things.

(1) All men are dead in sin, but He can raise them; many corrupt with vice, but He can transform them; some lost to hope as though their bodies were scattered to the winds--but He who raises the dead of all sorts can raise sinners of all sorts by the self same power.

(2) As the dead are to be made like unto Christ, so the wicked when converted are made like Him. Brilliant examples of virtue shall be found in those who were terrible instances of vice.

III. The work which we desire to see accomplished. The Saviour subduing souls, not to our way of thinking, to our Church, to the honour of our powers of persuasion, but unto Himself.

1. This subjection is eminently desirable since it consists in transformation.

2. To be subjected to Christ is to be fitted for heaven. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The raiser of the dead

St. Paul had been speaking of some whose interests were centred in earthly things. Of them he says that their end is destruction, etc. And in contrast with this way of passing life he describes the life of Christs true servants. Their citizenship is in heaven. They are in the position of emigrants for whom the friendly government of a colony should provide, before their arrival at their destined country, a home and a rest. Heaven, then, as being already their country, naturally occupies a first place in their thoughts; but they cannot set foot in it until a great change has passed over them. It is upon this change, and upon the person of Him who is to effect it, that their eyes are naturally and constantly fixed while the present scene lasts.

I. The nature of the change referred to.

1. The human body in its present stage of existence. Our body of humiliation. The human frame appeared to the Greek artist the most beautiful thing in nature. It was the form which seemed to the Greeks most nearly to unveil the Divine beauty to the eye of sense. How impossible to imagine the phrase of the apostle upon the lips of the men who decorated the Parthenon! It implies that the man who uses it has seen deeper and higher than the realm of sense. The Greek knew only this visible world, and he made the most of it. The Hebrew had had a revelation of a higher beauty; and when men have come into contact with the Eternal, they sit lightly to the things of time. The Greek was occupied with the matchless outline of the human form. The Hebrew could not forget that his bodily eye rested after all on a perishable mass of animated clay (Isa_40:6-7; Psa_90:5-6; Job_14:1-2; Jam_4:14).

2. Not that the phrase implies any one-sided depreciation of the body such as we meet with in heathen ascetics. Christianity on this subject keeps strictly a middle way between two opposite errors. On the one hand, the body has seemed to some to be mans all in all just as it has to some of our modern materialists; and then it has been supposed that life either ceased altogether with death, or was, after death, so attenuated down into a purely shadowy existence as to lose all the importance which belongs to reality. And, on the other hand, the body has been treated as a mere incumbrance, having no true inherent relation to the complete life of man--the souls prison house--the degrading fetter which binds noble spirits down to the soil of earth--the mere instrument of a being who is complete without it, and who is never free, never himself, till he is delivered from it. And the effect, the moral effect, of the first of these opinions is certainly, upon the whole, to encourage unbounded sensual indulgence, and, of the second, to encourage suicide, since, if the alliance between soul and body is so disadvantageous and so unnatural, the sooner it is put an end to the better.

3. Between these opposite exaggerations revelation holds on a middle course. Death is the disturbance of that union of soul and body which constitutes man; and this irregular interruption of the true life of man ends at the resurrection, when man re-enters upon the normal conditions of his complete being.

4. And yet, masterful as the body is, it is not the governing element in human nature. Man is something higher, nobler, than the animal form with which he is so intimately identified. Man lives on the frontier of two vast mysterious worlds--the world of pure spirit and the world of animal existence. Our nature as a whole, has been ennobled as well as invigorated by the Son of God. He has taken body and soul alike, and joined it by an indissoluble union to His own eternal person. His body exists at the right hand of God, and thereby it confers a patent of nobility of which our race can never be deprived. And yet, while this life lasts, how great is the interval between our condition and His! How unlike to ours is the body of glory which rose from the tomb in its indescribable beauty, in its freedom of movement, in its inaccessibility to decay, in its spirituality of texture!

5. His glorious body! Christs greatest gift is yet to come. We shall die as do the creatures around us; whether by violence or by slow decay. But He will gather up what death has left, and will transfigure it with the splendours of a new life (1Co_15:42-44).

II. The ground of the great Christian expectation of a glorified body in a future life. How shall we get it? According to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.

1. Everything of course depends on that. St. Paul had no doubt that Jesus Christ, crucified some thirty years before, was living and reigning and had actual jurisdiction over all things in heaven and earth.

2. It seems very strange to many that the elements of the human frame resolved into dust many centuries ago should be recollected and endowed with a new and more glorious life. What has become of the particles; they have passed through animals and vegetables, and by this time are scattered in a thousand directions. How are they to be rescued from this oft repeated appropriation. It is an astonishing exertion of superhuman power which is under consideration, but it is not more than any reasonable believer in God would assent to upon sufficient evidence of His declared will. No man can believe in God, without believing in an act of power, compared with which the resurrection of the dead is a trivial incident. To believe in God is to believe in the original creation of all things out of nothing, and creation is, after all, the great miracle. And the man who believes it will not question Gods Word merely because the results to which it is pledged are what we call miraculous. By the very act of believing in God he believes in an initial miracle, compared with which all that can possibly follow is insignificant.

III. Such a faith as this in the resurrection must have great consequences.

1. If we parted company with the body at death for good and all, it would not matter much what was done with this perishing husk. But if this body of humiliation has before it a splendid destiny, then we shall treat it in life and in death as princes are treated who live in expectation of a throne--with all the care and honour that its prospects demand. And hence, after death, respect for the human body is a natural result of Christian belief in the resurrection. Just as the body of the Lord Jesus was carefully wrapped in fine linen and laid in a tomb until the morn of Easter, so, ever since, the bodies of departed Christian believers have been looked upon with eyes conveying something of the faith, something of the love, of Nicodemus and Joseph. We know that they, too, will rise. We know that we are not handling a lump of decaying matter which has lost its interest forever, and which will presently be resolved into its chemical constituents to be recombined no more. It lies before us, there in very truth, a body of humiliation. But one day--we are certain of it--it is to be fashioned like the glorious body of the ascended Son of God, and we treat it accordingly.

2. Much more important is our duty to the body during life.

(1) Guard it. You who are well off do what you can for the bodies of the poor. They, too, will rise. Let us all keep our bodies in temperance and chastity, from all that would bar entrance to the presence of Christ. Every man that hath the resurrection hope in him purifieth himself as Christ is pure. Do not forget how this sinful body may even here be made clean by Christs body, just as the soul may be washed with His most precious blood.

(2) Train it, not as a mere beautiful human frame, but as a future partaker in those scenes of transcendent joy and worship which are described in the Apocalypse. Present your bodies, says the apostle, a living sacrifice--in works certainly, and in that best of all kinds of work--in worship. Worship, including bodily reverence, as well as spiritual communion, is a direct preparation for heaven. The body, which never bends here before the Being of beings, is not likely to be joined to a spirit that has really learnt to hold communion with the Holy and the Infinite. In such matters as this Christian instinct is far better than argument. When eternity is once treated by a man as a practical reality, he is likely very soon to make up his mind how to bear himself among the things of time. (Canon Liddon.)

The body of our humiliation

Clothe that body in purple and fine linen; array it in royal robes; deck it with a kingly diadem; place it on a throne; give it the sceptre of dominion; let nations bow at his feet--it is a vile body: and Herod, while all the crowd were calling him a god, felt that he was one of the vilest of men. Animate that body with genius; light up that countenance with a flow of lofty spirit; let an intellectual nature beam out from those eyes; let deep thought work beneath that brow, and a towering spirit move those muscles--still the body is vile; and in the midst of the astonishing lucubrations of the indwelling spirit, it may sink into the loathesomeness of corruption. Nay, what is better, adorn the indwelling spirit with power; let the soul be redeemed and regenerated and sanctified and impressed with Gods image; let a soul born for glory look out through that face; let that body be the charge of angelic guardians; let that body be the temple of the Holy Ghost; let that body be sacred; let that body be associated with all that is estimable in the human character, with all that is dear and tender in social life; let that body attract wherever it moves--it is a vile body, liable to fall in a moment. It may be seized with the pangs of anguish, and in an instant be deprived of its indwelling spirit and left to loathesomeness and corruption. A vile body. We have all vile bodies--bodies of humiliation. Pride was not made for man--that is clear: pride will not do for man: Man that is born of woman is of few days, and fall of trouble. (T. Lessey.)

God made nothing vile

When Archbishop Whately was dying his chaplain read to him, among other scriptures, the words before us, but with his wonted clearness the great man interrupted the reader, saying, No; the body of our humiliation, not our vile body. God made nothing vile. (Canon Miller.)

The present glory and humiliation of the body

If you take mans body in some of its aspects it is a noble thing. Surely there are marks of design upon it which speak of its Divine origin. Consider the marvellous mechanism of respiration and the circulation of the blood. Trace that network of arteries and veins. Note how the eye and the hand have been singled out as leading to the conclusion of the existence of a God. Mark every joint and every limb. Take our physical nature as you see it in its fair beauty in slumbering infancy. Look at the maiden in the first blush of her beauty or the matron in that beautys maturity, and then tell me if the body is not a beautiful thing; whether the contemplation of its out ward aspect or its interior mechanism be not a study for our wonder and admiration. But we turn to the other side and hear Paul speaking of it as a mere tent, which is to be taken down, and we turn to the last passage of the preacher of the Old Testament, and there we have a wonderful description so exquisite with its imagery and poetry of the day, when the keepers of the house shall tremble, etc., which sets forth the sinking and failing powers of old age. But if we want to see the humbling side of this body of ours we must listen to Abraham whose wifes beauty had once been so great. She was so fair a woman that he was induced to lie for her, and yet a few years later from the same Abraham comes the piteous appeal, Give me a burying place that I may bury my dead out of my sight--the same fair, beloved Sarah. And in order, further, that we may see that this body is indeed a body of humiliation, listen to those words which go home to our hearts as we read them--Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days. (Canon Miller.)

The resurrection body changed

And so paper--that article so useful in human life, that repository of all the arts and sciences, that minister of all governments, that broker in all trade and commerce, that second memory of the human mind, that stable pillar of an immortal name--takes its origin from vile rags! The rag dealer trudges on foot or drives his cart through the towns and villages, and his arrival is the signal for searching every corner and gathering every old and useless shred. These he takes to the mill, and there they are picked, washed, mashed, shaped, and sized--in short, formed into a fabric beautiful enough to venture unabashed even into the presence of monarchs and princes. This reminds me of the resurrection of my mortal body. When deserted by the soul, I know not what better the body is than a worn and rejected rag. Accordingly, it is buried in the earth, and there gnawed by worms and reduced to dust and ashes. If, however, mans art and device can produce so pure and white a fabric as paper from filthy rags, what should hinder God by His mighty power to raise this vile body of mine from the grave, and refine and fashion it like unto the glorious body of the Lord Jesus Christ? (Gotthold.)

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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

3:21 change them into glorious bodies: See 1 Cor 15:42-54; cp. Rom 8:23. • he will bring everything under his control: See 1 Cor 15:24-27.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Php 3:21. Ὃς μετασχηματίσει, who will transform) not only will give salvation, but also glory; 2Ti 2:10.—τῆς ταπεινώσεως, of humiliation) which is produced by the Cross, Php 3:18, ch. Php 4:12, Php 2:17; 2Co 4:10. דכא is in the LXX., ταπείνωσις, Psa 90:3.—κατὰ, ording to) construe with will transform. The work of the Lord’s omnipotence.—τὴν ἐνέργειαν τοῦ δύνασθαι, working efficacy of His power [Engl. Vers. to the working, whereby He is able]) The Infinitive instead of the noun. [His] power will be brought forth into action.—καὶ) ; not merely to make our body conformed to His.—τὰ πάντα, things) even death.

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Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Php_3:21. As a special feature of the Lords saving activity at His Parousia, Paul mentions the bodily transfiguration of the ἡμεῖς, in significant relation to what was said in Php_3:19 of the enemies of the cross. The latter now lead an Epicurean life, whilst the ἡμεῖς are in a condition of bodily humiliation through affliction and persecution. But at the Parousiawhat a change in the state of things! what a glorification of these bodies now so borne down!

μετασχηματ.] shall transform.[173] What is meant is the ἀλλάσσειν of the body (1Co_15:51 f.) at the Parousia, which in this passage, just as in 1Co_15:52, Paul assumes that the ἩΜΕῖς will live to see. To understand it at the same time of the resurrection of the dead (so most expositors, including de Wette, Wiesinger, Weiss), is inappropriate both to ἀπεκδεχόμεθα and to the definition of the quality of the body to be remodelled: Τῆς ΤΑΠΕΙΝ. ἩΜῶΝ, both these expressions being used under the conviction of being still alive in the present state when the change occurs. Moreover, the resurrection is something more than a ΜΕΤΑΣΧΗΜΆΤΙΣΙς; it is also an investiture with a new body out of the germ of the old (1Co_15:36-38; 1Co_15:42-44.

Τῆς ΤΑΠΕΙΝΏΣ. ἩΜῶΝ] Genitive of the subject. Instead of saying ἡμῶν merely (our body), he expresses it with more specific definition: the body of our humiliation, that is, the body which is the vehicle of the state of our humiliation, namely, through the privations, persecutions, and afflictions which affect the body and are exhibited in it, thereby reducing us into our present oppressed and lowly position; πολλὰ πάσχει νῦν τὸ σῶμα, δεσμεῖται, μαστίζεται, μυρία πάσχει δεινά, Chrysostom. This definite reference of Τ. ΤΑΠ. ἩΜ. is required by the context through the contrast of the ἩΜΕῖς to the ἘΧΘΡΟῪς ΤΟῦ ΣΤΑΥΡΟῦ Τ. Χ., so that the sufferings which are meant by the cross of Christ constitute the ταπείνωσις of the ἩΜΕῖς (comp. Act_8:33); in which case there is no ground for our taking ΤΑΠΕΊΝΩΣΙς, contrary to Greek usage (Plat. Legg. vii. p. 815 A; Polyb. ix. 33. 10; Jam_1:10), as equivalent to ταπεινότης, lowliness, as in Luk_1:48 (Hofmann). On this account, and also because ἡμῶν applies to subjects distinctly defined in conformity with the context, it was incorrect to explain ταπειν. generally of the constitution of our life (Hofmann), of weakness and frailty (Luther, Calvin, Grotius, Estius, and many others; including Rheinwald, Matthies, Hoelemann, Schrader, Rilliet, Wiesinger, Weiss); comparison being made with such passages as Col_1:22; Rom_7:24; 1Co_15:44. The contrast lies in the states, namely, of humiliation on the one hand and of δόξα on the other; hence ἩΜῶΝ and ΑὐΤΟῦ are neither to be joined with ΣῶΜΑ (in opposition to Hoelemann), nor with Τ. ΣῶΜΑ Τ. ΤΑΠ. and Τ. Σ. Τῆς ΔΌΞΗς as ideas forming an unity (Hofmann), which Paul would necessarily have marked by separating the genitives in position (Winer, p. 180 [E. T. 239]).

ΣΎΜΜΟΡΦΟΝ] Result of the ΜΕΤΑΣΧΗΜ., so that the reading ΕἸς ΤῸ ΓΕΝΈΣΘΑΙ ΑὐΤΌ is a correct gloss. See on Mat_12:13 and 1Co_1:8; Fritzsche, Diss. II. in 2 Cor. p. 159; Lübcker, grammat. Stud. p. 33 f. The thing itself forms a part of the συνδοξάζεσθαι, Rom_8:17. Comp. also 1Co_15:48 f.; Rom_8:29. We may add Theodorets appropriate remark: Οὐ ΚΑΤᾺ ΤῊΝ ΠΟΣΌΤΗΤΑ Τῆς ΔΌΞΗς, ἈΛΛᾺ ΚΑΤᾺ ΤῊΝ ΠΟΙΌΤΗΤΑ.

Τῆς ΔΌΞ. ΑὐΤΟῦ] to be explained like Τῆς ΤΑΠ. ἩΜ.: in which His heavenly glory is shown forth. Comp. ἘΓΕΊΡΕΤΑΙ ἘΝ ΔΌΞῌ, 1Co_15:44.

ΚΑΤᾺ Τ. ἘΝΈΡΓ. Κ.Τ.Λ.] removes every doubt as to the possibility; according to the working of His being able (comp. Eph_1:19) also to subdue all things unto Himself; that is, in consequence of the energetic efficacy which belongs to His power of also subduing all things to Himself. Comp. κατὰ τ. ἐνέργ. τῆς δυνάμ. αὐτοῦ, Eph_3:7, also Eph_1:19; as to the subject-matter, comp. 1Co_15:25 f.; as to the expression with the genitive of the infinitive, Onosand. I. p. 12: ἡ τοῦ δύνασθαι ποιεῖν ἐξουσία.

καί] adds the general element ὑποτάξαι αὐτῷ τὰ π. to the ΜΕΤΑΣΧΗΜΑΤ. Κ.Τ.Λ.[174] Bengel aptly says: non modo conforme facere corpus nostrum suo.

τὰ πάντα] all things collectively, is not to be limited; nothing can withstand His power; a statement which to the Christian consciousness refers, as a matter of course, to created things and powers, not to God also, from whom Christ has received that power (Mat_28:18; 1Co_15:27), and to whom He will ultimately deliver up again the dominion (1Co_15:24; 1Co_15:28). Chrysostom and Theophylact have already with reason noticed the argumentum a majori ad minus.

[173] As to the nature of this transformation, see 1Co_15:53. The older dogmatic exegetes maintained in it the identity of substance. Calovius: Ille μετασχηματισμός non substantialem mutationem, sed accidentalem, non ratione quidditatis corporis nostri, sed ratione qualitatum salva quidditate importat. This is correct only so far as the future body, although an organism without σάρξ and αἷμα, 1Co_15:50, will not only be again specifically human, but will also belong to the identity of the persons. See 1Co_15:35 ff. Comp. Ernesti, Urspr. d. Sünde, I. p. 127 f. More precise definitions, such as those in Delitzschs Psychol. p. 459 ff., lose themselves in the misty region of hypothesis. The inappropriateness of the expression employed in the Confession: Resurrection of the flesh, has been rightly pointed out by Luther in the Larger Catechism, p. 501.

[174] Hoelemann takes καί as and, so that the sense would be, that Christ can do all things, and subdues all things to Himself. The very aorist ὑποτάξαι should have withheld him from making this heterogeneous combination, as it betrays itself to be dependent on δύνασθαι.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Phi 3:21 . μετασχ . It is doubtful whether, in this passage, any special force can be given to μετασχ . as distinguished from μεταμορφοῦν , carrying out the difference between σχῆμα and μορφή . The doubt is borne out by its close connexion here with σύμμορφον . Perhaps, however, the compound of σχῆμα has in view the fact that only the fashion or figure in which the personality is clothed will be transformed. We have here (as Gw [9] . notes) the reverse of the process in chap. Phi 2:6-11 . The locus classicus on the word is 2Co 11:13-15 . It is found in Plato and Aristotle in its strict sense. Cf. also 4Ma 9:22 . It is Christ who effects the transformation in the case of His followers, because He is πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν (1Co 15:45 ). Cf. Apocal. of Bar ., Lev 3 : “As for the glory of those who have now been justified in my law … their splendour will be glorified in changes, and the form of their face will be turned into the light of their beauty, that they may be able to acquire and receive the world which does not die”. τὸ σῶμα τ . ταπειν . The expression must apply esp [10] . to the unfitness of the present bodily nature to fulfil the claims of the spiritual life. It is pervaded by fleshly lusts; it is doomed to decay. ταπειν . is plainly suggested by δόξα which follows. σῶμα is “pure form which may have the most diverse content. Here, on earth, σῶμα = σάρξ ” (see an illuminating discussion by F. Köstlin, Jahrb. f. deutsche Th. , 1877, p. 279 ff.). Holst. ( Paulin. Th. , p. 10) notes that for this conception of σῶμα as “organised matter,” the older Judaism had no word besides בָּשָׂד . Later Hellenistic Judaism used the word σῶμα in its Pauline sense (see Wis 9:15 ). εἰς τὸ γ . α . is to be omitted with the best authorities. See crit. note supr. σύμμορφον is used proleptically as its position shows. Cf. 1Th 3:13 , στηρίξαι τὰς καρδίας ὑμῶν ἀμέμπτους . Perhaps the compound of μορφή is used to remind them of the completeness of their future assimilation to Christ. Cf. Rom 8:29 . The end of the enumeration in that passage is ἐδόξασεν . δόξα is the climax here. τ . σώμ . τ . δόξης α . With Paul δόξα is always the outward expression of the spiritual life ( πνεῦμα ). It is, if one may so speak, the semblance of the Divine life in heaven. The Divine πνεῦμα will ultimately reveal itself in all who have received it as δόξα . That is what the N.T. writers mean by the completed, perfected “likeness to Christ”. This passage, combined with 1Co 15:35-50 and 2Co 4:16 to 2Co 5:5 , gives us the deepest insight we have into Paul’s idea of the transition from the present life to the future. He only speaks in detail of that which awaits believers. Whether they die before the Parousia or survive till then, a change will take place in them. But this is not arbitrary. It is illustrated by the sowing of seed. The Divine πνεῦμα which they have received will work out for them a σῶμα πνευματικόν . Their renewed nature will be clothed with a corresponding body through the power of Christ who is Himself the source of their spiritual life. The σῶμα σαρκικόν must perish: that is the fate of σάρξ . If there be no πνεῦμα , and thus no σῶμα πνευματικόν , the end is destruction. But the σῶμα πνευματικόν is precisely that in which Christ rose from the dead and in which He now lives. Its outward semblance is δόξα , a glory which shone forth upon Paul from the risen Christ on the Damascus road, which he could never forget. Hence all in whom Christ has operated as πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν will be “changed into the same likeness from glory ( δόξα ) to glory”. Paul does not here reflect on the time when the transformation takes place. That is of little moment to him. The fact is his supreme consolation. On the whole discussion see esp [11] . Hltzm [12] . , N.T. Th. , ii., pp. 80 81 and Heinrici on 1Co 15:35 ff.; for the future δόξα Cf. Apocal. of Bar ., xv. 8 (Ed. Charles). κατὰ τ . ἐνέργ . ἐνέργεια is only used of superhuman power in N.T. Quia nihil magis incredibile, nec magis a sensu carnis dissentaneum quam resurrectio: hac de causa Paulus infinitam Dei potentiam nobis ponit ob oculos quae omnem dubitationem absorbeat. Nam inde nascitur diffidentia quod rem ipsam metimur ingenii nostri angustiis (Calvin). τοῦ δύν . “His efficiency which consists in His being able,” etc. The beginnings of this use of the genitive of the infinitive without a preposition appear in classical Greek. But in N.T. it was extended like that of ἵνα . Cf., e.g. , Act 14:9 , 2Co 8:11 . See Blass, Gram. , p. 229; Viteau, Le Verbe , p. 170. ὑποτάξαι . Cf. 1Co 1:24-28 . ἑαυτῷ . αυτω must be read with the best authorities. How is it to be accented? Is it to be αὑτῷ or αὐτῷ ? W.H. read the former, regarding this as one of the exceptional cases where “a refusal to admit the rough breathing introduces language completely at variance with all Greek usage without the constraint of any direct evidence, and solely on the strength of partial analogies” ( N.T. , ii., Append. , p. 144). On the other hand, Blass ( Gram. , p. 35, note 2) refuses to admit αὑτῷ . Winer, although preferring αὐτῷ , leaves the matter to the judgment of edd. Buttmann gives good reasons for usually reading αὐτ . ( Gram. , p. 111). Certainly αὐτοῦ is quite common as a reflexive in Inscriptions of the Imperial age (see Meisterhans, Gram. d. Att. Inschrr. , § 59, 5). To sum up, it cannot be said that the aspirated form is impossible, but ordinarily it is safer to omit the aspirate. Cf. Simcox, Lang. of N.T. , pp. 63 64.

[9] . Gwynn.

[10] especially.

[11] especially.

[12] tzm. Holtzmann.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Greek, "Who shall transfigure the body of our humiliation (namely, in which our humiliation has place, Co2 4:10; Eph 2:19; Ti2 2:12), that it may be conformed unto the body of His glory (namely, in which His glory is manifested), according to the effectual working whereby," &c. Not only shall He come as our "Saviour," but also as our Glorifier.

even--not only to make the body like His own, but "to subdue all things," even death itself, as well as Satan and sin. He gave a sample of the coming transfiguration on the mount (Mat 17:1, &c.). Not a change of identity, but of fashion or form (Psa 17:15; Co1 15:51). Our spiritual resurrection now is the pledge of our bodily resurrection to glory hereafter (Phi 3:20; Rom 8:11). As Christ's glorified body was essentially identical with His body of humiliation; so our resurrection bodies as believers, since they shall be like His, shall be identical essentially with our present bodies, and yet "spiritual bodies" (Co1 15:42-44). Our "hope" is, that Christ, by His rising from the dead, hath obtained the power, and is become the pattern, of our resurrection (Mic 2:13).

Next: Philippians Chapter 4

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 21. Who shall change our vile body] Ὁς μετασχηματισει το σωμα της ταπεινωσες ἡμων· Who will refashion, or alter the fashion and condition of, the body of our humiliation; this body that is dead-adjudged to death because of sin, and must be putrefied, dissolved, and decomposed.

That it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body] Εις το γενεσθαι αυτο συμμορφον τῳ σωματι της δοξης αυτου· That it may bear a similar form to the body of his glory. That is: the bodies of true believers shall be raised up at the great day in the same likeness, immortality, and glory, of the glorified humanity of Jesus Christ; and be so thoroughly changed, as to be not only capable through their immortality of eternally existing, but also of the infinite spiritual enjoyments at the right hand of God.

According to the working] Κατα την ενεργειαν· According to that energy, by which he can bring all things under subjection to himself. Thus we find that the resurrection of the body is attributed to that power which governs and subdues all things, for nothing less than the energy that produced the human body at the beginning, can restore it from its lapsed and degraded state into that state of glory which it had at its creation, and render it capable of enjoying God throughout eternity. The thought of this glorious consummation was a subject of the highest joy and confidence amongst the primitive Christian. This earth was not their home; and they passed through things temporal so as not to lose those which were eternal.

1. THE preceding chapter, to which the first verse of the succeeding should be joined, contains a fund of matter the most interesting that can well be conceived. The apostle seems to stand on the verge of eternity, and to have both worlds opened to his view. The one he sees to be the place in which a preparation for the other is to be attained. In the one he sees the starting place, where the Christian is to commence his race; in the other the goal at which his course terminates, and the prize which he is there to obtain. One is the place from and over which the Christian is to run; the other is that to which he is to direct his course, and in which he is to receive infinite blessedness. In the one he sees all manner of temptations and hinderances, and dangers standing thick through all the ground; in the other he sees the forerunner, the Lord Jesus, who has entered into the heaven of heavens for him, through whom God calls him from above, της ανω κλησεως του Θεου, Php 3:14: for what he hears in the Gospel, and what he sees by faith, is the calling of God from above; and therefore he departs from this, for this is not his rest.

2. The nearer a faithful soul comes to the verge of eternity, the more the light and influence of heaven are poured out upon it: time and life are fast sinking away into the shades of death and darkness; and the effulgence of the dawning glory of the eternal world is beginning to illustrate the blessed state of the genuine Christian, and to render clear and intelligible those counsels of God, partly displayed in various inextricable providences, and partly revealed and seen as through a glass darkly in his own sacred word. Unutterable glories now begin to burst forth; pains, afflictions, persecutions, wants, distresses, sickness, and death, in any or all of its forms, are exhibited as the way to the kingdom, and as having in the order of God an ineffable glory for their result. Here are the wisdom, power, and mercy of God! Here, the patience, perseverance, and glory of the saints! Reader, is not earth and its concerns lost in the effulgence of this glory? Arise and depart, for this is not thy rest.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

21 Who will change By this argument he stirs up the Philippians still farther to lift up their minds to heaven, and be wholly attached to Christ — because this body which we carry about with us is not an everlasting abode, but a frail tabernacle, which will in a short time be reduced to nothing. Besides, it is liable to so many miseries, and so many dishonorable infirmities, that it may justly be spoken of as vile and full of ignominy. Whence, then, is its restoration to be hoped for? From heaven, at Christ’s coming. Hence there is no part of us that ought not to aspire after heaven with undivided affection. We see, on the one hand, in life, but chiefly in death, the present meanness of our bodies; the glory which they will have, conformably to Christ’s body, is incomprehensible by us: for if the disciples could not endure the slight taste which he afforded in his transfiguration, (Matthew 17:6,) which of us could attain its fullness? Let us for the present be contented with the evidence of our adoption, being destined to know the riches of our inheritance when we shall come to the enjoyment of them.

According to the efficacy As nothing is more difficult to believe, or more at variance with carnal perception, than the resurrection, Paul on this account places before our eyes the boundless power of God, that it may entirely remove all doubt; for distrust arises from this — that we measure the thing itself by the narrowness of our own understanding. Nor does he simply make mention of power, but also of efficacy, which is the effect, or power showing itself in action, so to speak. Now, when we bear in mind that God, who created all things out of nothing, can command the earth, and the sea, and the other elements, to render back what has been committed to them , our minds are imrnediately roused up to a firm hope — nay, even to a spiritual contemplation of the resurrection.

But it is of importance to take notice, also, that the right and power of raising the dead, nay more, of doing everything according to his own pleasure, is assigned to the person of Christ — an encomium by which his Divine majesty is illustriously set forth. Nay, farther, we gather from this, that the world was created by him, for to subject all things to himself belongs to the Creator alone.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(21) Who shall change . . .—This passage needs more accurate translation. It should be, who shall change the fashion of the body of our humiliation, to be conformed to the body of His glory. (1) On the difference between “fashion” and “form,” see Php_2:7-8. The contrast here signifies that humiliation is but the outward fashion or vesture of the body; the likeness to Christ is, and will be seen to be, its essential and characteristic nature. This “humiliation” marks our condition in this life, as fallen from our true humanity under the bondage of sin and death. The body is not really “vile,” though it is fallen and degraded. (2) “His glory” is His glorified human nature, as it was after the Resurrection, as it is now in His ascended majesty, as it shall be seen at His second coming. What it is and will be we gather from the sublime descriptions of Rev_1:13-16; Rev_19:12-16; Rev_20:11. What is here briefly described as change to conformity with that glory is worked out in 1Co_15:42-44; 1Co_15:53-54, into the contrast between corruption and incorruption, dishonour and glory, weakness and power, the natural (animal) body and the spiritual body. In 2Co_3:18; 2Co_4:16, we read of the beginning of glorification in the spirit here; in 2Co_4:17-18; 2Co_5:1-4, of the completion of “the exceeding weight of glory” in the hereafter, as glorifying also “our house which is in heaven. St. John describes that glorification with brief emphatic solemnity, “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is,” and draws out explicitly the moral which St. Paul here implies, “Every man that hath this hope purifieth himself, even as He is pure.”

According to the working . . .—Properly, in virtue of the effectual working of His power to subject all things to Himself. Comp. Eph_1:19; Eph_3:7, and Notes there. Here, as there, St. Paul speaks of His power as not dormant or existing in mere capacity, but as energetic in working, unhasting and unresting. Here briefly, as more fully in the celebrated passage of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (1Co_15:24-28) he describes it as “subduing all things unto Himself,” till the consummation of this universal conquest in the Last Judgment and the delivery of “the kingdom to God, even the Father . . . that God may be all in all.” Of that power the primary exhibition, in which He is pleased to delight, is in salvation, gradually preparing His own for heaven; the secondary exhibition, undertaken under a moral necessity, is in retributive judgment. It is of the former only that St. Paul speaks here, as it shall be made perfect in the resurrection unto eternal life.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

Ver. 21. Like unto his glorious body] Which is the standard. {See Trapp on "1Co 15:38"} {See Trapp on "1Co 15:44"} Now we may say to our souls as he did to his, O anima, quam deforme hospitium nacta es? Poor soul, what an ill lodging room hast thou gotten! But at the resurrection all shall be mended. Then these vile bodies shall shine as the sun, and be so clear and transparent, that all the veins, humours, nerves, and bowels shall be seen as in a glass, saith Aquinas, that the soul may sally out at every part, and sparkle through the body as the wine through the glass, saith another author. Three glimpses of glory were seen, 1. In Moses’ face; 2. In Christ’s transfiguration; 3. In Stephen’s countenance.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Who shall change our vile body; who shall transform the body of our humility, or our lowliness, i.e. our lowbrought body, the singular for the plural, our humble and mean bodies, which depend upon and are beholden to our eating and drinking, and the actions which follow thereupon, that do humble and lower them, Luk 1:48; now, it may be, languishing with pains, sickness, and many infirmities, perhaps cooped up in a noisome prison, and, it may be, an unclean dungeon, sown in dishonour and weakness in the grave, 1Co 15:43.

That it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body; that they may be conformed to Christ’s incorruptible, impassible, and immortal body, and so glorious, 1Co 15:51-53, in their proportion agreeing with the blessed body of our Lord when he shall appear, 1Jo 3:1-3, and they shall see him with the eyes of their bodies, made like unto his, Job 19:26,27; Col 3:4, not in equality, but only in respect of the same qualities that his body hath, 1Co 15:51,52; 1Th 4:17. A conformity agreeable to that of head and members, that like as the sun is the fountain of all that glory which the stars have, so shall our Lord and Saviour Christ’s glory be of all our glory, Dan 12:3; Mat 16:27; 1Co 15:40,41; 2Co 4:14; Rev 21:11,23. But we must not imagine that our bodies shall be raised to the same height and degree of glory that his is: and therefore in regard of that power and majesty which is included in the body of Christ from the hypostatical union, our bodies will not be conformable, or made like to his; but in glory which he obtained from his resurrection. For the body of Christ may be considered either:

1. In its nature, and so there will be an agreement betwixt the bodies of saints and Christ’s body; or:

2. In regard of its subsistence in the person of the Word, and so there will be none.

For it is impossible that the saints should be raised up to the same union with the Godhead which Christ hath. But however their bodies may be tormented here, by unreasonable persecutors, then they shall be like to his glorious body.

According to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself: how incredible soever this may appear to be unto carnal reason, Act 17:32; 26:8, yet he who thought it no robbery to be equal with God the Father, and therefore can do what he pleaseth, Luk 18:27, can, by the same Divine power whereby he himself was raised from the grave, Joh 5:21,26,29; Eph 1:19,20, subject all things to himself, destroy death and the grave, 1Co 15:24-27; Heb 2:8,14, raise them up to the throne of his glory, Mat 19:28, and make them like the angels in glory.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

21. Change—The future destiny of the body involves a condemnation of the sensuality with which the “belly-worshippers” degraded and besotted it, and requires that it be kept in honour and purity. It is now, indeed, a vile body; that is, the body of our humiliation, our weakness, diseases, corruption, and mortality. It is to become like the body of glory of our ascended Lord. This passage, the purpose of which is to inculcate a pure life, incidentally supplies a key to some of the problems in the doctrine of the resurrection. The statement is general, and embraces both the dead and the living, describing the bodily transformation which will come upon all alike. We are to have a body like the risen and glorified body of Christ. It is not a substitution of one body for another; it is a change, but not an exchange.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body; rather, as R.V, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory. Compare the description of our Lord"s person and work in Php_2:6-8. There St. Paul tells us that he who was originally in the form of God took upon him the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man. Here he uses the derivatives of the same words "form" and "fashion" (mordh and schma), to describe the change of the bodies of the saved at the resurrection. He had already told us (ver. 10) that the Christian soul is being gradually conformed during life unto the death of Christ. He now tells us that this conformity of the Christian unto Christ is ultimately to extend to the body. The Lord shall change the outward fashion of our body; but this change will be more than a change of outward fashion: it will result in a real conformity of the resurrection-body of the believer unto the glorious body of the Lord. The body of our humiliation; not "vile body." St. Paul does not despise the body, like the Stoics and Gnostics; the Christian"s body is a sacred thing it is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the seed of the resurrection-body. (comp. 1Co_6:20)

According to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. According to the working, the energy, of his power not only to change and glorify the bodies of the redeemed, but also to subdue all things, the whole universe, unto himself. "The apostle shows," says Chrysostom, "greater works of the Savior"s power, that thou mightest believe in these.

The renewal of the body.

I OUR BODY IS A MARK OF OUR HUMILIATION. It is "the body of our humiliation," not "our vile body," as the Authorized Version has it. St. Paul did not share the Stoic contempt for the body; much less did he anticipate the Manichcan hatred of it which is the true parent of asceticism. But neither did he altogether admire the body in its present condition, as the disciples of our modern school of carnal aestheticism glory in doing. He regarded it as a great evidence of our humiliation. His words give little warrant for Origen"s strange doctrine that pre-existing human souls, having sinned and fallen in a purely spiritual sphere, were imprisoned in bodies for their punishment and discipline, and that, if they profit by the purgatorial earthly life, they will be liberated from these bodies and restored to the spiritual world. Two simpler facts come nearer to the teaching of St. Paul.

1. We have outgro w n our body. The body which is glorious in the animal becomes in many respects a hindrance and a source of shame to the man. The fact that the body, so fearfully and wonderfully made, is a mark of humiliation, proves that we have a higher nature and belong to nobler living.

2. We have degr a ded our body. By making that a master which should be a servant we show our own humiliation. By lowering the body itself to sinful ends we turn it into a visible proof of our degradation.

II WE NEED A SUITABLE BODY. The body will not simply be cast aside as a worthless thing, like the old skin sloughed off by the serpent. It is a work of God who made all things well. It has great purposes to serve, for it is our medium of communication with the external world. A disembodied spirit is an insulated spirit. By means of the body we receive information from without, and we also execute our will on things outside us. The scholar must have eyes and ears as well as an attentive mind; and the workman must have muscular arms and deft fingers as well as good plans and aims. Probably we shall always need some sort of body, stone sort of medium through which to receive knowledge and accomplish actions.

III CHRIST WILL FASHION OUR BODY ANEW. The gospel comes to man as a whole, body and soul; and it offers salvation to both parts of his nature. It begins the double process on earth. Christ healed the sick.

Christianity cares for the bodily condition of men. The hospital is a most Christian institution. By ameliorating the sanitary condition of men we indirectly help even their moral and spiritual life. Hereafter a bodily renewal is to be accomplished. What it shall be we cannot tell. But the distinct teaching of the New Testament is that the resurrection will not revive the body as we now have it. We are to be "changed," to have a spiritual body; what is sown in corruption will be raised in incorruption. Christ"s risen body is the type of this. We may be assured that all that is humiliating and provocative of evil will vanish, while greater sensitiveness and flexibility in ministering to the soul and responding to its ideas and volitions will be enjoyed. W.F.A.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Who will transform our vile body - Into the most perfect state, and the most beauteous form. It will then be purer than the unspotted firmament, brighter than the lustre of the stars and, which exceeds all parallel, which comprehends all perfection, like unto his glorious body - Like that wonderfully glorious body which he wears in his heavenly kingdom, and on his triumphant throne.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Observe here, 1. All the faithful, who have their conversation in heaven, do expect and look for Christ coming from thence, not as a terrible judge, but as a gracious and powerful Saviour.

Observe, 2. What they do expect at the coming of this Saviour, namely, the changing of their vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.

Note here, 1. The present condition of the body of man: it is in a vile condition, vile in its original, our body is made of vile dust; vile, in regard of its accidental vileness, as the body is the seat of many vile diseases, and subject to vile abuses; vile considered with respect to its ultimate vileness at death; how does a body, as beautiful as ever was Absalom’s, when death comes, run into rottenness and putrefaction! Our sin makes us vile in the sight of God whilst we live, and renders our bodies viler in the sight of men when we die.

Note, 2. The future condition which the bodies of good men shall be in, at the appearance of Christ: this vile body shall be a beautiful and a blessed body; the body we lay down shall be rebuilt, formed and fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body; resembling his in incorruptibility and immortality, in purity and spirituality, in power and activity, in happiness and felicity.

Note, 3. The efficient cause of this great and glorious change, with reference to the body; and that is Christ, he shall change our vile bodies: together with the means by which all this is to be effected and accompolished, namely, the wonderful power of Christ, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.

Surely it is as easy for Christ to give a body to a soul at the resurrection, as to breathe a soul into a body every day in the work of creation. But the power of Christ is but a weak argument to build our hopes of the body’s resurrection upon, without a revelation of his will: he can quench all the fire in hell in a moment; but where has he said he will do it? But now in the case before us, Christ is not only able to raise, but has declared he will raise and change our vile bodies; so that faith is enabled to make a sufficient reply to all the astonishing difficulties that reason can muster up: and those Christians that can only say, Our conversation is in heaven, may add, from thence we look for a Saviour, The Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

ARGUMENT 16

THE TRANSFIGURATION

“Whence we also look for our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

21. “Who will fashion the body of our humiliation similitudinous to the body of his glory.” Entire sanctification takes all of the world out of us, literally making us unearthly, putting us in the heavenlies; i.e., investing us with the heavenly nature, the peace, rest, loyalty, faith, obedience, victory, and happiness peculiar to the inmates of heaven. These citizens of heaven, while on earth, live constantly watching and waiting the return of their King, “who shall fashion the bodies of our humiliation,” not “vile bodies.” We are humiliated while on probation in these mortal bodies. This transfiguration consists in the elimination of all the gross materiality out of our bodies, so as to render them imponderable. In that case the Spirit will be the controlling element, and the body responsive to its incentives, will move with angelic velocity toward God. We will be transformed and translated independently of volition, and before we are aware. Doubtless, translation was the original economy in Eden. If the race had not fallen, they would have passed their probation and been translated, instead of dying. How fortunate we are, living away down in the last days of the last age, amid the aurora of the coming kingdom, when our chances for translation are so favorable. The true attitude of saintship in the old dispensation was constant expectancy of Christ. Since he ascended from Mount Olivet, the inspiration of faith for his return has been infinitely greater than before his incarnation. The apostles lived in constant outlook. We are certainly eighteen hundred years nearer this glorious coming than they. Hence, I am looking for him night and day. Jesus pronounces an awful woe on that servant who says, “My Lord delayeth his coming.” The expectancy is certainly a powerful inspiration to be ready. Entire sanctification is the only needed qualification. All whose vessels were filled with oil, went in with a shout of victory. When our Lord comes for his bride, all of the heavenly citizens will be transfigured and caught up with the risen saints, to meet the Lord in the air. This transfiguration will make our bodies like his glorified body, which flew up to heaven from Mount Olivet. It is wonderful, yet it is true. Lord, help us to be ready, according to the working of him who is able even to subordinate all things to himself! Our Omnipotent Christ is not going to leave anything Over which the enemy can boast, for everything is coming into his glorious restitution. The soul is restored in sanctification, the body in transfiguration, den in the millennium, and the heavenly state of this world in the new creation, following the fiery sanctification simultaneously with the final judgment at the end of time. (Rom 11:1.)

2. The Greek reveals that Euodias and Syntyche were women. Paul exhorts them to harmony in the Lord. The presumption is they differed on some nonessential points. This is admissible, but in the Church there must be harmony.

3. “I entreat thee also, true yoke-fellow,”—not revealed who he was; perhaps Timothy, who carried the letter,—”assist those women who labored with me in the gospel with Clement.” We see here that the women assisted Paul in his gospel work at Philippi. He found the first open door in the woman’s meeting by the riverside. Here, evidently, Lydia, Euodias, Syntyche, and other godly women did preach the gospel and labor in the Lord’s vineyard, saving souls. We are the last people to oppose women’s ministry, when our gospel came in that way. We are all Europeans, disciples of Paul, who first preached to our ancestors in that women’s meeting. In harmony with this fact, we see in this letter how very prominent he renders the women, even more so than the men, specifying that they assisted him in his evangelistic labors when he was there, ordering a special message to Euodias and Syntyche, that they should agree on the essentials of salvation, despite differences on non-essentials.

5. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice.” Of all the Pauline epistles, this is the most jubilant; yet it was written amid the most afflictive and alarming environments. Ruthlessly dragged away from his city mission, guarded by soldiers in the barracks, with Nero’s sword hanging over his neck, ready to drop any moment and sever his head from his body, yet this letter rings out a shout of victory from beginning to end. Lord, help us to do likewise! Paul did not rejoice in his environments, but in the Lord. If your joy is manward, circumstanceward, or moneyward, it will be transitory, like the ignis fatuus, whose delusive ray lights up unreal worlds, and glows but to betray.

I was born and reared in the back hills of Southern Kentucky. Our farm, containing about one hundred acres, was sterile, filthy, hard to cultivate, and yielding a stinted harvest to the hand of industry. The debts with which we began grew on us till the home had to go. It was a sad epoch in our history when we had to give up the home of our childhood, with no prospect of ever owning another. I look upon that emergency in our history now, as one of the brightest and most merciful interventions of God’s providence. We read of the eagle “stirring up her nest;” i.e., tearing it all to pieces, so the eaglets, which are old enough to fly and seek their fortunes, but too cowardly, are forced to leave their old nest, where they were hatched, and fly whithersoever the unerring One leadeth them. So it was with our family. Consequently we four boys all turned preachers, and have been going to the ends of the earth, blowing the silver trumpet. So, mark it down, you can always rejoice in the Lord. When there is no Joy in your environments, then God is showing you his most signal mercy. When your little child gets hurt, then you give it candy. So, when trouble comes on you in a Niagara of disappointment, bereavement, and sorrow, then look out! God is going to surprise you with sunshine and victory.

“Let your clemency be made known to all men; the Lord is nigh.” Our time here is but a moment, when contrasted with eternity. Hence, we should constantly walk in the perennial sunbeams of kindness and philanthropy to all who come within our influence.

6. “Be careful for nothing; but in everything with prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God.” Lord, help us all to obey this wonderful commandment! The world is dying prematurely, crushed under intolerable burdens of care. Like the man tottering under his load, overtaken by the wagon, responsive to the kind invitation, gets in, but still carries his load on his shoulder: so we give ourselves to the Lord, but hold to our burdens of care, still crushed beneath our loads. Remember your Omnipotent Savior can not feel your insignificant burden, though it be heavy as Pike’s Peak. You compliment him by letting him carry it. When the clerk came to Alexander the Great, sitting on the throne of the world, and said: “I think there is a mistake in the order for this immense sum of money, certainly too great to be paid; so I thought I would bring it to you for correction.” The prince of all the earth read the order, and, handing it back to the clerk, thus reprimanded his hesitation: “Why, sir, do you think anything is too great for me to pay? Do I not own the nations of the earth, with their treasures, which have been accumulating a thousand years? Do not the mines of silver, gold, and diamonds in all the earth belong to me?

Of Course, you will pay this order. The honor of my kingdom is at stake.

The greater the amount, the more my kingdom is honored.” If this was true of Alexander the Great, how infinitely more so of the King of kings! O how bright this world would be if the people would disencumber themselves of every burden, casting all their cares on the Lord! Do this, and your life becomes a cloudless sunshine.

8,9. In this paragraph we have a gorgeous constellation of celestial diamonds, radiating their beauties to every point of the compass, and bespangling the hemisphere down to either horizon with glories and splendors beggaring all human utterance. Bunyan’s Pilgrim saw an old man bent like the semi-circumference of a wagon-wheel, wearing himself out with a muck-rake, turning over the trash and filth, looking after gold; meanwhile, a bright angel on celestial wing is hovering over him, with a crown of gold ready to place it on his head if he will only straighten up. O that people would only look on the bright side and talk about bright things; then they would soon be bright themselves! But they will look on the dark side, persist in blue talk, and consequently they are blue as indigo, and they blue everybody about them. Lord, help you to lift up your head, and see this charming cluster of bright and beautiful graces, and gaze on them till the splendors of the bright upper world shine through you, flooding you with light, victory, and glory, and curing the blues, world without end! If Paul, wearing the prisoner’s chain in Nero’s barracks in full view of the executioner’s block, could roar out night and day the shout of victory without a solitary wail of sorrow, good Lord deliver you and me from every murmur, and sweep from our constitution every symptom of despondency!

10. “But in whatsoever you were thoughtful about me, you lacked opportunity.” The Philippian saints were the first-fruits of the European gospel. True to their responsibilities as the Alma Mater Church, they promptly sent supplies to Paul, pursuant to their opportunities, which, of course, were meager, as there were no railroads, and the Adriatic Sea always terrific for storms, thunders between Greece and Italy. Paul being so far away, they were much afflicted when they could not reach him with temporal sustenance, knowing that chains and soldiers disqualified him for making tents, and thus earning material support for himself and evangelistic comrades.

11. “I do not speak concerning deficiency; for I have learned to be content in whatsoever I am.” See how independently of all human resources Paul talks, though now utterly disqualified as formerly to labor with his own hands!

“Our Father is rich in houses and lands:

He holdeth the wealth of the world in his hands.”

God forbid that we should dishonor him by even telling the world of our needs! Tell Jesus only.

12. “I both know how to be humiliated, and I know how to abound; in everything and in all things I have learned both how to fatten and to starve, to abound and to be destitute.”

What is to become of the hireling ministry of the present day, who have given up God as their temporal support and taken man, thus forfeiting a thousand blessings incident to that close proximity with our wonderful Heavenly Father, only available when, like Elijah, we depend on his ravens to come and feed us? Will the ministry ever get back to the Pauline plan of self-support in the good providence of God, which never fails? When I have nothing to eat, I bless God for a fast, enjoy it exquisitely, and the longer the better. When I have a Benjamin’s mess, I give God the glory! When I have nothing, I shout his praises.

13. “I am able to do all things through him that filleth me up with dynamite.” Some transcriber, knowing that Christ is the only one that can do this, has here supplied the word in the English version. The Lord’s dynamite is more than a match for all the powers of earth and hell, ready every moment when ignited by a spark from heaven’s altars, responsive to faith, to blow up the devil’s batteries, blast and explode all the rock of inbred sin out of our hearts, sweeping all difficulties out of the way, whether in the realm of Providence or Grace.

14-16. Here Paul recognizes the kind benefactions of the Philippian saints in sending him temporal supplies regularly and promptly during all of his peregrinations in Greece.

17. “Not that I seek after a donation, but I do seek the fruit which aboundeth unto your credit.” While he was too loyal to God, and too jealous of his glory, to even insinuate his desire for a contribution; yet his zeal for God in their behalf abundantly qualified him to appreciate their donations as indices of their spiritual health and thrift. Lord, help us to appropriate the Pauline orthodoxy on the problem of all temporal support, that it be only encouraged and appreciated as the normal and legitimate fruit of spiritual life and prosperity. Among the mournful mementos of the current apostasy is the positive and universal departure from New Testament precept and example in the temporal department of the popular Churches. We all witness to our sorrow the abandonment of the spiritual policy, and the adoption of the carnal. We no longer see a vestige of apostolic precept in the financial policy of the dominant ecclesiasticisms. Sad to say, there has been a radical tergiversation. It has been taken out of the hands of God, and turned over to men, laying on the Church a mountain of carnality, clogging the wheels of Zion till they can no longer revolve on the upgrade to the New Jerusalem, but have halted stock still on the track. Then Satan, slipping in like a weasel, cunningly manipulates the reversal of the wheels, and has gotten them revolving down to hell, instead of up to heaven. Without a radical financial revolution and return to first principles, as plainly revealed in God’s Word, there is no hope of reformation in the Churches. On the contrary, they will wax worse and worse, like the antediluvian Churches ripening for destruction. How strange that preachers of the gospel, recognizing the Bible as their only guide in all things, spiritual and temporal, will deliberately close their eyes to the plain and unequivocal Word of God, take up human institutions, and obey the commands of men!

18. Whereas Timothy was the bearer of this letter from Rome—quite a long journey, which I traveled in 1895—Paul had previously sent to them Epaphroditus, preaching the gospel and bearing friendly greetings; by whom they had sent him an ample supply of temporal support. This he here recognizes, with thanksgiving to them and to God.

19. “And my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” If we are only true to God, he is infinitely rich and merciful to supply all our needs, temporal and spiritual. The poet has well said:

“Man wants but little here, Nor wants that little long.”

The king of England, riding along the highway in his shining vehicle, sees a ragged boy digging up briers in the fence-corner, orders a halt, and says, “Boy, what do you get for your work?” “I just gets my victuals and clothes.” “Go ahead, boy; I am the king of England, and that is all I get.”

O how few people verify God’s promise, “The just shall live by faith!” It is equally true, temporally and spiritually.

20-22. Though Paul was a prisoner in bonds, guarded by soldiers ready to cut his head off, he avails himself of the grand open door, and preaches the gospel in the barracks to soldiers and citizens. Nero, living in his golden palace, so despised the Christians that he undertook to feed them all to his lions. He hated Paul as a rattlesnake, and cut his head off. Though he did his utmost to exterminate Christianity from the earth, yet he could not so much as keep it out of his own family. Hence, Paul here sends to the Philippians saintly greetings from all at Rome, “and especially from Caesar’s household.” Nero lifted the floodgate of imperial persecution against the Christians. A red river flowed on three hundred years, only arrested by the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. When I was in Rome, I stood in the Coliseum, Nero’s theater, with a seating capacity for one hundred thousand. I saw the old subterranean tunnel, through which the lions were brought down from their lairs and turned loose on the Christians, that the cruel multitude might be edified by the bloody lacerations and carnivorous revelries, as they always had the cruel monsters well starved for the occasion. Despite all these bloody trepidations, Paul’s preaching struck fire, not only among others, both citizens and soldiers, but even entered the emperor’s household, and there won trophies for Jesus. Amid the awful tide of blood and death, after Paul and Peter have both flown up to heaven, honored with a martyr’s crown, and thousands have followed in their bloody track, history drops an item confirmatory of the blessed stickability of the work in the royal family. While martyrdom is all the go, and the devouring of the Christians in the Coliseum by the wild beasts is attracting the heathen millions daily to pour out their money for a seat in the imperial theater, behold they lead in the beautiful Julia, the royal heir of the empire, who must share the common fate of a Christian, and go down in the tide of martyr’s blood, unless she will recant her faith in Christ, and resume her loyalty to the Roman gods. All possible efforts are laid under contribution to save the life of the young queen. They think surely she will recant and live. The high priest of Jupiter compliments her with his presence, holding out the royal censer, and begging her only to drop incense on it one time, thus recognizing the worship of the Roman gods, and she shall live. They find the royal damsel immovable by all their bribes, threats, and importunities, as they point her to the imperial crown on the one side, and the roaring lions on the other. She responds:

“I have no God but Jesus. I fear not the lions. Do you not see the angels? The chariot is already lowered to bear me away to a world of bliss.” So she is abandoned to the lions.

23. “Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” This benediction is sweet in grace, and beautiful in brevity. It is a mistake to confine ourselves to the apostolic benediction (2Co 13:14), which has been used so excessively as to become stale. You will find a benediction at the conclusion of every epistle. God gave them to us for our free and unrestricted appropriation. Therefore, we should use a variety. When you want a short one, this is splendid; when a long one, you will find Thessalonians 5:23,24, or Heb 13:20-21, all right. Thus we should avoid monotony.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

21. Who shall change our vile body. Our lowly body shall undergo a change to fit it for heaven. It will take the form of his glorified body, such as was seen at the Transfiguration. Compare 1 Cor. 15:43–52; 2 Cor. 5:1–4; 1 John 3:2. According to the working. This change shall be effected in harmony with that mighty power which shall subdue all things to his sway.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

21. σύμμορφον (σύνμ -אD2*G). Before this word D2bK2L, 17 37 47 and the mass of cursives, syrr, Epiph Chrys Aug Jer read εἰς τὸ γενέσθαι αὐτό. The text is read by אOba 1:2*G2, vulg goth copt arm æth, Iren Euseb Ath Cyr Tert Cyp Hilar. All recent editors read text. The additional words are almost certainly a grammatical gloss.

αὐτῷ. So א*Oba 1:2*, many cursives, Eus Epiph Cyr Chrys (in one place]. אcD2cL, most cursives, Chrys (in two places) Hil Amb read ἑαυτῷ. So Wordsw alone of recent editors. WH αὑτῷ.

21. μετασχηματίσει. See the note on σχῆμα, above, Php 2:8. Cp. 2Co 11:13, μετασχηματιζόμενοι εἰς ἀποστόλους Χριστοῦ: 14, μετασχηματίζεται εἰς ἄγγελον φωτός: 15, μ. ὡς διάκονοι δικαιοσύνης. There, obviously, superficial changes are in view, true to the distinctive meaning of σχῆμα. And so it is here, in a true sense. Already the essentials of the “new creation” (2Co 5:17; Gal 6:15), which is to be “manifested in glory” (Col 3:4), are present in the believer. Where the Holy Spirit “dwells,” there already, even for the body, resides the pledge and as it were germ of the heavenly state (Rom 8:11). Thus the final transfiguration will be, so to speak, rather of guise than of being; as with the Lord Himself on the mountaintop. (But observe that in Mat 17:2; Mar 9:2, we have μετεμορφώθη.)

τὸ σῶμα τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν. Cp. A.V., “our vile” (i.e. cheap, common) “body” (Beza’s corpus nostrum humile, and Luther’s unsern nichtigen Leib). This is a paraphrase of the Greek, involving the reader’s loss and possible serious misguidance. No contempt of the body is implied by the Greek; only the body is “connected with our humiliation” as being, in its present state, inseparably connected with the burthens and limitations of earth, and conditioned by mortality.

Observe this peculiar mystery and glory of the Gospel, a promise of heavenly perfectness for the body of the Christian. It is no mere prison of the spirit; it is its counterpart, destined to share with it, in deep harmony, the coming bliss. Its stricken condition, in the Fall, makes it often the load of the spirit now; hereafter it shall be its wings.

The bearing of all this on the libertine, who sinned εἰς τὸ ἴδιον σῶμα (1Co 6:18), is manifest.

σύμμορφον. “To be conformed,” R.V. See note on μορφή, above, Php 2:6. It is implied that the coming likeness to our Blessed Lord’s Body shall be in appearance (σχῆμα) because in reality; the glorious surface shall but express the glorious substance. Ὅμοιοι αὐτῷ ἐσόμεθα (1Jn 3:2): to HIM, not only to His “guise.”

τῷ σώματι τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ. His sacred Body, as He resumed it in Resurrection, and carried it up in Ascension, and manifests Himself in it to the Blessed (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἐκ δεξιῶν … τοῦ Θεοῦ, Act 7:56). It is τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ, as answering perfectly to His personal Exaltation, and being, so far as He pleases, the vehicle of its display. Of it thus conditioned St Paul had a glimpse at his conversion (Act 9:3; Act 9:17; Act 22:14); cp. 1Co 9:1, οὐχὶ Ἰησοῦν τὸν κ. ἡμῶν ἑώρακα; 1Co 15:8, ἔσχατον πάντων, ὤφθη κἀμοί.

Our future likeness in body to His body is alone in direct view here, because the Apostle is dealing with specially sensual forms of error. But it stands in profound implied connexion with moral and spiritual likeness.

From this passage, as from others (see esp. 1Co 15:42-44, where σπείρεται and ἐγείρεται refer to the same thing), we gather that the Christian’s body here and hereafter is somehow continuous; not wholly a new thing in subsistence. But when we say this, we have said all we know; the mystery of the nature of matter falls upon our attempts to think the question out. The ἐπουράνιοι (1Co 15:48) will be “the same”; truly continuous, in their whole being, with the pilgrims of earth. But no one can say that therefore some particle of the body of humiliation must live on in the body of glory; any more than it is necessary to bodily identity now that constituent particles of the body of childhood should continue in the body of old age. However, the next words assure us that we may leave the matter in peace in the hands of “the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Somehow, in His will and power,

“Though changed and glorified each face,

Not unremembered [we shall] meet,

For endless ages to embrace.”

(The Christian Year, St Andrew’s Day.)

κατὰ τὴν ἐνέργειαν τοῦ δύνασθαι αὐτὸν. Literally, “According to the working of His being able.” Secundum operationem qua possit, Vulg. The A.V., “mighty working,” aims to represent the special force of ἐνέργεια (see note on ἐνεργεῖν, Php 2:13); but it is too strong. The ἐνέργεια is just the putting forth of the δύνασθαι.

καὶ ὑποτάξαι αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα. Καὶ emphasizes the whole thought.—Elsewhere the FATHER appears as “subduing all things” to the Son, in the final victory. So 1Co 15:25 (Psa 110:1), 27 (Psa 8:6), δῆλον ὅτι ἐκτὸς τοῦ ὑποτάξαντος αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα. But the Father and the Son are One in will and power.—Cp. Joh 5:31, οὕτως καὶ ὁ υἱὸς οὒς θέλει ζωοποιεῖ.

αὐτῷ. On the reading, see critical note.—“To Himself”: so we must render, in common sense, whether we read αὐτῷ or αὑτῷ.—We too, in English, sometimes say “him” where “himself” is meant.—In such cases the thought is from the speaker’s or writer’s view-point, rather than from that of the subject of the words.

His “subjugation” is thus such that what He subdues shall somehow serve Him. His very enemies shall be “His footstool”; and in His glorified saints He shall be glorified (2Th 1:10). Through this great conquest of the Son the Father will be supremely magnified; see 1Co 15:28, αὐτὸς ὁ υἱὸς ὑποταγήσεται, κτλ.; a prophecy beyond our full understanding, but pointing to an infinitely developed manifestation in eternity of the glory of the Father in the Son. But the immediate thought of this passage is the almighty grace and power of the incarnate, glorified, returning SAVIOUR of His people.

τὰ πάντα. The expression differs just so far from πάντα that it sums up “all things” and presents them together.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

21.] (describes the method, in which this Saviour shall save us—a way utterly precluding our making a God of our body) who shall transform (see 1Co 15:51 ff. The words assume, as St. Paul always does when speaking incidentally, the ἡμεῖς surviving to witness the coming of the Lord. The change from the dust of death in the resurrection, however we may accommodate the expression to it, was not originally contemplated by it; witness the ἀπεκδεχόμεθα, and the σῶμα τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν. It is quite in vain to attempt to escape from this inference, as Eilicott does, by saying that “every moment of a true Christian’s life involves such an ἀπεκδοχήν.” This is most true, but in no way accounts for the peculiar expressions used here) the body of our humiliation (beware of the hendiadys, by which most Commentators, and even Conyb. here enervate the Apostle’s fine and deep meaning. The body is that object, that material, in which our humiliation has place and is shewn, by its suffering and being degraded—πολλὰ πάσχει νῦν τὸ σῶμα, δεσμεῖται, μαστίζεται, μυρία πάσχει δεινά, Chrys. He once had such a ταπείνωσις, and has passed through it to His glory—and He shall change us so as to be like Him.—Whereas the rendering ‘our vile body’ sinks all this, and makes the epithet merely refer to that which is common to all humanity by nature. It is besides, perhaps, hardly allowable: for ταπείνωσις cannot—unless the exigency of context require it, as in ref. Luke (not in Pro 16:19),—signify mere ‘vileness,’ ταπεινότης, but must imply the act whereby the body ταπεινοῦται) (so as to be) conformed to (on this common idiom, εὔφημον, ὦ τάλαινα, κοίμησον στόμα, Æsch. Ag. 1258, al. freq.,—cf. Kühner, ii. 121) the body of His glory (in which, as its object or material, His glory has place and is displayed: see above), according to (after the analogy of) the working of His power also (besides the μετασχήμ. &c. spoken of) to subject to Him all things (the universe: see the exception, 1Co 15:25-27). ταῦτα δὲ ποιήσει, says Thdrt., ἅτε δὴ δύναμιν ἄῤῥητον ἔχων, κ. ῥᾳδίως κ. τὴν φθορὰν κ. τὸν θάνατον καταπαύων, κ. εἰς ἀθανασίαν τὰ ἡμέτερα σώματα μεταβάλλων, κ. παρασκευάζων ἅπαντας εἰς αὐτὸν ἀποβλέπειν. And Chrys.:—ἔδειξε μείζονα ἔργα τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ, ἵνα κ. τούτοις πιστεύσῃς.

αὐτῷ, used of the αὐτός of the whole sentence, from the position of the writer, not of the agent in the clause itself.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

21. ὃς μετασχηματίσει: ‘who shall refashion.’ For the verb see 1Co 4:6; 2Co 11:13-15. (See on 2:8, and comp. ἀλλαγησόμεθα [1Co 15:51].) The verb signifies the change of the outward fashion (σχῆμα), the sensible vesture in which the human spirit is clothed. See Just. M. Dial. Try. i., where σχῆμα is used of the philosopher’s dress.

The Jews looked merely for the restoration of the present body. Paul’s idea includes an organic connection with the present body, but not its resuscitation. The new body is not identical with the present body. There is a change of σχῆμα, but not a destruction of personal identity. “There is a real connection or some correlation between the present and the future embodiment, but not identity of substance. The life, the principle of life, the individuality of it, shall remain unbroken, but ‘the matter of life,’ as the physiologists say, shall be changed” (Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in New Light, p. 364). Paul’s conception is developed under the figure of the seed-corn in 1Co_15.

τὸ σῶμα τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν: ‘the body of our humiliation.’ Not as A.V. ‘vile body.’ To construe the phrase as a hendiadys is grammatically wrong (see on 3:8), and the apostle is far from characterising the body which Christ honored by his tenancy as base in itself. Such a sense, moreover, would lend countenance to the Stoic contempt for the body. The meaning is, the body in which our mortal state of humiliation is clothed. This body is called ‘the body of our humiliation,’ primarily in order to emphasise the contrast between it and the glorified body of the Lord, but also with a subordinate reference to its weakness, its subjection to vanity, corruption, and death,—its sufferings, and the hindrances which it offers to Christian striving and spiritual attainment. (Comp. Rom 8:20-24.)

There may possibly be an implied contrast of the glory of the transformed body with that glory of the sensualists which is their shame (Ellic., Mey., Weiss), but this must not be pressed. Nor do I find in the expression the hortative element which Ellic. thinks that he detects, and likewise Kl., who says it is an exhortation to preserve their bodies as temples of the Holy Ghost.

σύμμορφον: ‘that it may be conformed.’

TR. adds εις το γενεσθαι αυτο with Db and c EKLP, Syr.utr., Probably supplied to meet the apparent difficulty of the appositional accusative.

The adjective denoting the effect of the transformation is added appositionally instead of forming an independent sentence with εἰς τὸ γενέσθαι αὐτό. (Comp. Mat 12:13; 1Th 3:13; and see Win. lxvi. 3 g.) As μετασχ. denoted change of outward fashion, σύμμορφ. denotes conformation to what is essential, permanent, and characteristic in a body which is the appropriate investiture of Christ’s glorified condition—a ‘spiritual body’: a conformity which is inward and thorough, and not merely superficial. On the union of Christians with the spiritual life of Christ which belongs to the heavenly world (Rom 6:5), rests their hope that they shall be saved in his life and conformed to its heavenly investiture. (See Rom 5:9, Rom 5:10, Rom 5:8:10, Rom 5:11.)

σώματι τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ: ‘to the body of his glory.’ Not as A.V. ‘glorious body,’ by hendiadys, which dilutes and weakens the conception. See on vs. 8, and for other misapplications of the figure hendiadys, comp. A.V. Rom 8:21, ‘glorious liberty’; 2Co 4:4, ‘glorious gospel’; Eph 1:19, ‘mighty power’; 1Pe 1:14, ‘obedient children.’ The resurrection in the N.T. is habitually conceived in connection with corporeity, but a corporeity in keeping with the heavenly life. (See Weiss, Bib. Theol. Eng. §§ 19, 34.) The phrase ‘body of his glory’ signifies the body in which he is clothed in his glorified state, and which is the proper investiture of his heavenly glory; the form in which his perfect spiritual being is manifest. This glory is peculiarly and originally the glory of the incorruptible God, and therefore belongs to an embodiment which retains no trace of earthly materiality or corruption, but is altogether informed and determined by the higher vital principle (πνεῦμα) and is its appropriate organ (σῶμα πνευματικόν, 1Co 15:44). Accordingly this glorified body is no longer in antithesis to the πνεῦμα. It is the investiture which the πνεῦμα forms for itself, and which perfectly reveals it. In the resurrection, through which, as completed by the ascension, Christ received this body, he became wholly πνευματικός—a πνεῦμα ζωοποιοῦν (1Co 15:45), and therefore is called τὸ πνεῦμα (2Co 3:17). A foreshadowing of this appeared in his bodily manifestation between the resurrection and the ascension. His body appeared as πνευματικόν though not in its full manifestation as the σῶμα τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ. (See Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in New Light, p. 358; Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, ch. ii. p. 19-21; J. Oswald Dykes, Expositor, 1st ser. iii. p. 161; Mey. on 1Co 15:45.)

The change into the body of Christ’s glory is the consummation of the believer’s life in him. (Comp. vs. 9-11.) The entire passage (vs. 9-21) is a complete statement of the Pauline doctrine of salvation:

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Shall change [μετασχηματισει] . See on Mt 17:2; 1Co 4:6; 1Co 11:13. Also on from, ch. 2 6; and fashion, ch. 2 8. The word thus indicates a change in what is outward and shifting - the body. Rev., correctly, shall fashion anew. Refashion(?).

Our vile body [το σωμα της ταπεινωσεως ημων] . Wrong. Render, as Rev., the body of our humiliation. See, for the vicious use of hendiadys in A. V., on Eph 1:19. Lightfoot observes that the A. V. seems to countenance the stoic contempt of the body. Compare Col 1:22. The biographer of Archbishop Whately relates that, during his last illness, one of his chaplains, watching, during the night at his bedside, in making some remark expressive of sympathy for his sufferings, quoted these words : "Who shall change our vile body." The Archbishop interrupted him with the request "Read the words." The chaplain read them from the English Bible; but he reiterated, "Read his own words." The chaplain gave the literal translation, "this body of our humiliation." " That's right, interrupted the Archbishop, "not vile - nothing that He made is vile." That it may be fashioned like [εις το γενεσθαι αυτο συμμορφον] . The words that it may be, or become, are omitted from the correct Greek text, so that the strict rendering is the body of our humiliation conformed, etc. The words are, however, properly inserted in A. V. and Rev. for the sake of perspicuity. Rev., correctly, conformed for fashioned like. Fashion belongs to the preceding verb. See on shall change The adjective conformed is compounded with morfh form (see on ch. Phi 2:6, and made conformable, ch. 3 10). As the body of Christ 's glory is a spiritual body, this word is appropriate to describe a conformation to what is more essential, permanent, and characteristic. See 1Co 14:35 - 53. His glorious body [τω σωματι της δοξης αυτου] . Wrong. Rev., correctly, the body of His glory. The body in which He appears in His present glorified state. See on Col 2:9.

The working whereby He is able [την ενεργειαν του δυνασθαι] . Lit., the energy of His being able. Dunasqai expresses ability, faculty, natural ability, not necessarily manifest. Energeia is power in exercise, used only of superhuman power. See on Joh 1:12; 2Pe 2:11. Hence, as Calvin remarks, "Paul notes not only the power of God as it resides in Him, but the power as it puts itself into act." See Eph 1:19, where four of the six words for power are used.

Subdue [υποταξαι] . Rev., subject. See on Jas 4:7. It is more than merely subdue. It is to bring all things within His divine economy; to marshal them all under Himself in the new heaven and the new earth in which shall dwell righteousness. Hence the perfected heavenly state as depicted by John is thrown into the figure of a city, an organized commonwealth. The verb is thus in harmony with ver. 20. The work of God in Christ is therefore not only to transform, but to subject, and that not only the body, but all things. See 1Co 14:25 - 27; Rom 8:19, 20; Eph 1:10, 21, 22; Eph 4:10.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.