<p>15:36 <i>You foolish one</i>- For all his gentleness and tolerance towards the Corinthians, Paul is quite sharp with the false teachers: &quot;You fool&quot; translates a fairly coarse term in Greek. This should be our pattern- patience and endless gentle reasoning with the weak, but standing up to false teachers. Hence the policy of an open table but a closed platform.</p><p><i>What you sow does not come to life unless it dies</i>- Death is necessary in the wider plan of salvation; the coming to life must be at some point after death, for we are but a seed sown. Death is the gateway to a 'coming to life' at the last day not immediately after death. The necessity of resurrection is therefore Paul's answer to the detailed questions as to how mechanically the dead shall be raised. And it is important to grasp that logical and spiritual necessity of bodily resurrection- and the details and mechanisms then become irrelevant. The Greek for 'come to life' is used of our being spiritually quickened now after baptism (Jn. 5:21; 6:63), when we figuratively die and rise again. The Lord Jesus is now a life giving Spirit (:45; 2 Cor. 3:6). Hence Paul can write of how he dies daily (:31). Note that a seed does not die in the earth, but Paul is using this as a figure of death, a burial in the ground. The external body of the seed decays but the germ within lives. Paul is not teaching here the immortality of the soul, but rather than the very essence of a believer, which is the spirit, shall determine the nature of our resurrected existence. See on :22. It is the same Spirit of Christ which now dwells in us which shall also be the means whereby our bodies are made alive at the last day (Rom. 8:11 is explicit about this). It is of the Spirit that we reap eternal life at the last day (Gal. 6:8). The Lord had likened Himself to a seed falling into the ground and dying, and then bringing forth much fruit when it rises from the earth (Jn. 12:24). Paul is alluding to this because his whole argument is that baptism makes the Lord's death and resurrection a pattern for our own.</p>