For the last two Sundays we have been focusing on the resurrection chapter of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 15. Two weeks ago, we looked at Jesus’ resurrection and Paul’s three reasons for us to anticipate a great future. Then last week we looked at the resistance to the idea of resurrection both in the ancient world and today. Now, this week I want to address the question: What will our resurrection bodies be like?
Listen for God’s word to you from 1 Corinthians 15:35-54…
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.
I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
So, what will our resurrection bodies be like? First, Paul tells us, there will be continuity between our mortal bodies that are now and our immortal bodies that will be in the future. Just as there is continuity between the seed and the full-grown plant, so also there will be continuity between the mortal body and the immortal body.
This is not to say, necessarily, that we will recover those particular units of matter that we have now. As C. S. Lewis once noted, there won’t be enough to go around, for we all live in secondhand bodies. There are atoms in my chin that probably have served many another man, dog, eel or dinosaur. We don’t even retain the same particles in this life; we are constantly shedding some cells and gaining others. While Jesus reassumed the same body that had died only days before on the cross, this does not necessarily mean that we will do the same. What 1 Corinthians 15 and Jesus’ resurrection teach us is that there will be elements of continuity between our earthly bodies and our resurrection bodies. N. T. Wright summarizes the argument this way:
Paul says that God will give us new bodies; there may well be some bodily continuity, as with Jesus himself, but God is well capable of recreating people even if (as with the martyrs of Lyons) their ashes are scattered into a fast-flowing river.[1]
Ben Franklin once put it this way when he wrote his own epitaph:
The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer,
Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents torn out,
Lies here food for the worms;
But the work shall not be lost,
For it will (as he believes) appear once more
In a new and more elegant edition,
Revised and corrected by its Author!
That, I think, is a very good statement of the hope of the Christian.
The story is told of a lady who fell out of a second-story window and landed in a garbage truck that was slowly moving past the house. Half buried in the litter, she tried without success to get the driver’s attention. A foreign diplomat standing on the sidewalk saw her and commented indignantly, “Another example of how wasteful Americans are! That woman looks like she’s good for at least another 10 years.”
The Lord is not wasteful. And matter, in and of itself, is not evil. There is every indication that God likes matter. After all, he made a lot of it. And the doctrine of the resurrection teaches us that he is not going to waste any of it.
But the second thing we see in this part of 1 Corinthians 15 is that there will be discontinuity between our mortal bodies and our immortal bodies. Now, you may think that I am contradicting myself. I just said there will be continuity between our mortal and immortal bodies. Now I am saying there will be discontinuity. Which is it?
It is both. There will be continuity in some ways and discontinuity in others. It would appear from Scripture that there will be continuity in that our immortal bodies will be fashioned in some way out of the matter that God has already created. But there will be discontinuity in that our immortal bodies will have greater splendor, power, glory, and durability.
The point at which Paul’s argument can get confusing is when he begins to talk about the natural versus the spiritual body. It almost sounds like Paul is saying that the resurrection body will be immaterial. But that is not what he is saying. In this context, spiritual means created and sustained by the Holy Spirit. Back in 1 Corinthians 2:13 Paul said, “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.” Thus, “spiritual” does not mean “immaterial.” “Spiritual” refers to that which comes from and is sustained by the Holy Spirit. Our present bodies are given to us by natural generation from our human parents. Our resurrection bodies will be given to us directly by the work of the Holy Spirit, just as the Holy Spirit raised Jesus’ body from the dead.
Someone once wrote to Ann Landers,
A recent column of yours about a minister who mispronounced the name of the deceased three times during the service brought back some memories. Our preacher got this one off a few weeks ago while extolling the virtues of a leading citizen during the eulogy: “We have here only the shell—the nut is gone.”
Scripture teaches us that our bodies are a shell in which and through which we relate to the world. In God’s new world he is going to give us new and better shells in which to relate to our new and better environment. But at the same time, I have known a few nuts in this life!
Thirdly, we learn from this part of 1 Corinthians 15 that our resurrected bodies will be like Jesus’ body. Paul contrasts the natural, earthly body of the first man, Adam, with the spiritual, heavenly body of the last Adam, Christ. Paul says that we who are believers in Jesus will bear his likeness, just as we have borne the likeness of Adam. If you want to know what your resurrection body will be like, look at what Scripture says about Jesus’ resurrected body.
Jesus’ resurrected body could be touched (John 20:17). He was recognizable as the same Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee with his disciples (John 21:12). In his resurrection body Jesus was able to eat broiled fish (Luke 24:42-43). Jesus’ resurrected body was like our earthly bodies in these ways, yet it was also different. For example, after his resurrection, Jesus was apparently able to appear, vanish, and move unseen from one location to another (Luke 24:31,36).
E. Stanley Jones once told the story of a layman, a newspaper man, who was called upon to conduct the funeral of a mutual friend. Being an exact man, he wanted to do it properly and in the best Christian tradition. So, he turned to the New Testament as the original source and example of how Jesus conducted a funeral. And he found that Jesus didn’t conduct funerals at all. Jesus only dealt with resurrections… I love that!
Now, you may well be wondering, when will the resurrection of the body take place?Scripture teaches us that it will happen at Jesus’ Second Coming. Paul says,
Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
In a cemetery in Hanover, Germany, there was a grave on which were placed huge slabs of granite and marble cemented together and fastened with heavy steel clasps. It belonged to a woman who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Yet, strangely, she directed in her will that her grave be made so secure that if there were a resurrection, it could not reach her. On the marker were inscribed these words: “This burial place must never be opened.”
In time, a seed, covered by the stones, began to grow. Slowly it pushed its way through the soil and out from beneath the slabs. As the trunk enlarged, the great slabs gradually shifted so that the steel clasps were wrenched from their sockets.
A tiny seed became a tree that pushed aside the stones. The dynamic life force contained in that little seed is a faint reflection of the tremendous power of God’s creative word that someday will make not only new resurrection bodies, but also a new heaven and earth as we read about in Revelation 21.
If all that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 is true, then how should we be living now? Paul answers that question at the end of chapter 15 where he says…
Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
If all that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 is true, then we need to give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord.
What is that work? It is the work of helping each other get to the end for which God created and redeemed us.
C. S. Lewis put it this way in his sermon entitled The Weight of Glory…
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours… Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.[2]
[2] Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory (pp. 46-47). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
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