Why does Paul find it necessary to say that the natural body comes first,
and then
the spiritual body? It is likely that some people in the Corinthian church were claiming that the resurrection is only an internal, deeply personal event. Perhaps, like the false teachers Hymenaeus and Philetus, they were saying that the resurrection has already happened
(2 Timothy 2:18).
In opposition to this idea, Paul maintains that the natural body and the spiritual body are two historical realities. Right now we are living with the natural body, the body that we have received from Adam, a body subject to weakness and death. But one day we will have a real, spiritual body, a body which we will receive from Christ through the Spirit.
46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.