May 2, 2004
by J. David Hoke
35
But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 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. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. 42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:35-49, NIV)Part of living is dealing with pain. Very early in life we find out that pain is not a thing we want to experience very often. When we fall down and scrape our knee, we run crying to Momma, hoping that she will be able to take the pain away. We don’t like pain, and who can blame us?
Of course, we are told that some pains are good for us. Growing pains, for instance, are supposed to be evidence that we are growing larger–– that we are maturing as we should. But we don’t like it. We still want to avoid it.
And then we eventually grow older. Our bodies begin to deteriorate in the natural process of aging. Of course, we don’t like this either. People have been searching for the Fountain of Youth for as long as people have been getting old. They have yet to find it; although companies are producing a wide variety of products that they claim will cause you to look younger. We buy them. We apply them. And because we’ve spent good money on whatever it was, we tend to think that we do look a little younger. After all, we don’t want to admit that we have wasted our money. Just stay away from a mirror.
Ultimately all of us are going to have to face the fact that we will grow old, and look old no matter how many surgeries we have, and eventually we will die. We don’t like that either, and who can blame us?
For the Christian, however, there is good news. The good news is that although we cannot do anything about the fact that we grow old and die in this life, one day we will be raised from the dead. The Bible teaches that we will get new bodies. In our own resurrection, we will receive a body that is different from our current body, yet will still reflect who we are. It will be made for the eternal realm. It will be a glorious, powerful, eternal, and spiritual body like the body Jesus has. This changes everything. This gives us hope.
We don’t like to think about death. At every funeral I do, I remind people that funerals force us to think about death. And that is a good thing. People need to think about death, because they are going to die. Just what does God have in store for us after we die? As Christians, we do not believe that death is the end of life. We believe in the resurrection of our bodies. Someone has said that this is life after life after death. You see, when a Christian dies, he or she goes to be with the Lord in a sort of spiritual resurrection. We don’t really die. Our bodies do, but our spirits are translated into God’s presence. That is life after death. But that is not it. For the Bible teaches that one day our very bodies shall be raised again. But what will this be like?
And what difference will it make? What about the new you? How is it going to change how we live? Why will we need bodies anyway? I certainly hope they are going to be different than the kind of body we have now. The reality is that they are going to be radically different in many ways.
We need to have a greater understanding of the nature of what awaits us on the other side of this earthly life. If we understand more of what God has in store for us, it will give us tremendous encouragement and hope. It has the power to change our attitudes concerning what we endure in this life and what awaits us in the next. Without this understanding, life is full of despair.
So let’s focus on several important realities of the bodily resurrection–– our bodily resurrection. I hope to impart more than information. I hope to engender an expectation of the incredible things that await us. The first reality is that...
We Will Have A New Body
35
But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. (15:35-38)One of the blessed hopes of every Christian is that one day Jesus will return and give us a new body. There is an old spiritual song that refers to it as "that great gettin up morning." The first reality that we need to comprehend is that we will have a new body when Jesus returns. One of the questions that was being asked, however, was just what kind of body we would have. And on the surface, it seems to be a quite valid question.
Paul, however, thinks it is foolish. Obviously they were referring to whether God was going to just pull back together our old bodies. All around them was evidence to the contrary, even in nature. Our old bodies must die. Even a seed planted in the ground must degenerate, or die, in order for the new and better life to come forth. It retains the same nature. A seed of corn does not become an oak tree, but it does not become simply a bigger seed either. We must pass through death into resurrection life. And then God will give us a body as he has determined. To each of us God will give our own body. You will be you, but you will be a new you, containing the same nature but with a new body.
Who would want the old body anyway? I’m ready to trade mine in right now. I don’t want a renovation. I need to resurrection that gives me a better model. I’m not looking for a used-car, with a good warranty. I’m looking for a brand new Lamborghini.
In this is the plain teaching here. We must die to live. We must trade in the old for the new. Jesus himself went through death in order to come back to life with a transformed, resurrected body. This brings us to another reality. The second reality is that...
We Will Be Fitted For Eternity
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All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 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. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. 42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. (15:30-42a)Not only will we have a new body, but the new body will be fitted for eternity. Unlike the body we currently have, which is made for this world, our new resurrection bodies are going to be made for the new dimension of eternity.
This is the point of the illustration that Paul is giving us in verses 30 to 42. He says that all flesh is not the same. And then he lists different kinds of living creatures: men, animals, birds, and fish. He mentions heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, the sun and the moon, and stars. He says that each star differs from star in splendor, going on to say that the resurrection will be like that. What does he mean?
He means that God created everything uniquely designed for its purpose. Fish swim in water, while birds fly in the air. A fish would have a hard time doing that. God created some things to live on earth and other things to exist in the vacuum of space. And everything is unique and different. Everything is perfectly suited for what it was created for.
We will be fitted for eternity in our new bodies. Our current bodies are fitted for living on planet Earth. And as a result of the fall of Adam, they will not live forever. They get sick, grow old, and eventually die. Again, we do not need a refurbishment, we need something new. From what we know about eternity, and from what we read concerning the resurrection body of Jesus, our new bodies will be radically different in many ways. And those ways will uniquely fit us for eternity.
We Will Be New And Better
The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. (15:42b- 44)
One of the glorious realities of our resurrection bodies is that we will be new and better. We have already seen that we will need new bodies. But the bodies that we will receive will not just be another fresh version of a new human body. We’re not talking about reincarnation here. For some, reincarnation is a variation of resurrection. But there are enormous differences.
In reincarnation we are reborn with the opportunity to live again as a new person. Based on the Karma of our current life, we will either be reincarnated in a better state or in a worse state, and I’m not talking about California or New Jersey. Those who believe in reincarnation believe that we continue to be reincarnated until we get it right. The problem is that we have no memory of how he got it wrong in order to be able to get it right. But we get the opportunity to live again, even though we have no memory that we ever lived before. It hardly seems to be a good deal. Frankly, it seemed to me to be a poor substitute for a real bodily resurrection.
No, we will rise again with a new body that will be improved and better in many ways. We see in our text several important contrasts that bear this out. Using the analogy of the seed sown into the ground, Paul points out the differences between our old bodies and our new and better ones.
The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable. Our human body is not made to last forever. After the head of the human race, Adam, chose to rebel against God and eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve were not permitted to eat of the Tree of Life. One of the consequences of this rebellion was death. Death entered into the world and everyone is subject to it. As we saw in our last study, the last enemy to be destroyed is death. So our human body is slowly running down and will eventually die no matter how much we exercise and eat right and take care of ourselves. Unless Jesus returns, every one of us will die. It’s just a question of when.
The new resurrection body, on the other hand, will never die. It is imperishable. It is made to last forever. Apparently the laws of physics have been suspended in this new realm. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the Law of Increasing Entropy, states that everything is moving toward decay. In other words, things left to themselves tend toward disorder and decay rather than positive improvement. For example, a pile of bricks left to itself, without any outside force acting upon it, such as a brick mason using them to build something, will eventually become a crumbling pile of bricks, not a building. That’s just the way it works. In fact, this is a great argument against evolution. Just as a pile of bricks does not evolve into a house, so random bits of various elements do not evolve into life. But we have an outside influence acting upon us. God gives us our bodies in the resurrection–– bodies that will live for ever and never die.
He also says that our bodies are sown in dishonor but raised in glory. Perhaps the dishonor of which he speaks is the sinful condition of our current situation. Sin dishonors God. And we’re sinful creatures in this flesh. But we will be raised in glory. Our new bodies will be perfect and sinless, a testimony to God’s grace and work of recreation. Our new bodies will bring praise to God.
Likewise he says that we die in weakness but will be raised in power. The fact of our weakness is so obvious that it hardly needs to be mentioned. In our youth, we are probably at our strongest physically. As we age, we lose the strength of our youth. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t what he used to be. But our new bodies will be powerful. He is not just speaking of the power of God that will take to give us these bodies. He is talking of the bodies themselves being powerful.
Finally, our death will be the dying of our natural body. The word used here in the original language is the word for soulish. You see, our human body is natural in the sense that it is energized by our soul. But in the resurrection, our new body will be energized by the spirit. It is in that sense that it is called a spiritual body. And it is this spiritual body that is in harmony with God’s new creation of the new heavens and the new earth.
We Will Be Like Christ!
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So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. (15:45- 49)The final reality we need to understand is that we will be like Christ. This is the essence of what he is getting at in verses 45 through 49, where he speaks of the first and last Adam.
The first man Adam became a living being. This is a quote from Genesis. Of course, it refers to God’s initial creation of Adam from the dust of the earth. God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and Adam became a living soul, as the Scriptures indicate. This first man, Adam, became the head and representative of the human race. We are all his descendents, and receive our nature from him.
It was from Adam that God created Eve. This was a literal creative act of God. Many liberal or rationalistic theologians believe this was simply a story to symbolize the appearing of human life. I do not agree. I believe there was a literal Adam and Eve, and that Eve was created from the body of Adam. The entire human race is descended from them, and we receive our human nature from them. Unfortunately, because of their rebellion against God, we receive a fallen human nature that is tainted by sin.
Jesus Christ is the last Adam. He came to do what the first Adam could not do, obey God. Of course, Jesus was from heaven and so did not inherit the sinful human nature of the first Adam. He was God made flesh. As such, his sacrifice for sin was sufficient to satisfy the divine justice of God for the entire human race. And those of us who receive that gift of grace are destined to bear the likeness of the man from heaven, just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man.
So our resurrection bodies will be like the body Jesus had. He would disappear and reappear at another place. Yet he could enjoy a meal with his disciples. It’s fantastic to ponder. None of us wants to die, but when we understand the realities of our resurrection, we see things differently. Let me close with a quote from a Presbyterian minister in Memphis. His name is Ben Haden:
I was thinking about death. We hate death. We fear death. We’ll do anything, pay anything, just to postpone death a few hours.
But suppose you couldn’t die. Do you know what that would mean? The blind would remain blind...The paralyzed would never walk...The retarded child would never have a normal mind...The injustices of this world would continue to prevail...That which is crooked would remain crooked and never be straightened...The last would remain last...The first would remain first...The least would remain the least...Those terminally ill would remain ill but never terminate...And aching hearts would continue to ache and never be healed. Suppose we couldn’t die. Wouldn’t that be horrible?
There’s never a man, woman, or child in whom the risen Jesus lives who can do any more than physically die. The real person––the real me...will survive without experiencing one moment of eternal death. Jesus’ resurrection changes everything.
Jesus’ resurrection changes lives. It changes our willingness to forgive...It changes our willingness to shift the blame to ourselves...It changes us into people of boldness who do not fold under cancer, or heart attack, or open-heart surgery, or anything else we can name.
[Quoted in Doug Goins message, Our Resurrection Bodies, posted on the internet at http://www.pbc.org/dp/goins/4538.html]
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