31. My brothers and sisters, I face death every day! The pride I have in you, in our life in union with Christ Jesus our Lord, makes me declare this.
32. If I have, as it were, fought “wild beasts” here in Ephesus simply from human motives, what have I gained? But if the dead are not raised to life, then, as the saying goes, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die.”
33. Do not be fooled. “Bad companions ruin good character.”
34. Come back to your right senses and stop your sinful ways. I declare to your shame that some of you do not know God.
35. Someone will ask, “How can the dead be raised to life? What kind of body will they have?”
36. You fool! When you sow a seed in the ground, it does not sprout to life unless it dies.
37. And what you sow is a bare seed, perhaps a grain of wheat or some other grain, not the full-bodied plant that will later grow up.
38. God provides that seed with the body he wishes; he gives each seed its own proper body.
39. And the flesh of living beings is not all the same kind of flesh; human beings have one kind of flesh, animals another, birds another, and fish another.
40. And there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; the beauty that belongs to heavenly bodies is different from the beauty that belongs to earthly bodies.