1 Corinthians 15:35-49 I Believe: Imperishable “The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting”
The Resurrection of…who?
Today we are finishing up our series on the Apostles’ Creed. Since the beginning of Lent, we have been going line by line through this ancient confession of faith.
- It’s not scripture, but we believe it is an accurate reflection of what scripture teaches.
- It wasn’t written by the apostles, but we believe it is a good summary of what the apostles passed down to us.
- It isn’t very long, but we believe it sets helpful parameters on what it means to be a Christian.
- When we stand to recite it, we are participating in a sort of Pledge of Allegiance that connects us to Christians across the centuries and spanning the continents.
So, this will not be the last time we recite the Creed together, but it will be the final time for this series. Would you stand with me now? Christians, what do you believe?
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
Throughout the series, I’ve been telling you a little bit about my experience of the Creed as a child. I grew up in a church that recited the Creed nearly every week without a lot of explanation, and we used some older language, so as a kid I struggled with language that talked about Jesus judging the “quick and the dead” or language which talked about “the Holy Ghost.” When it doesn’t get explained, kids tend to fill in their own meaning for phrases like that.
Another phrase that confused me was the one we are going to focus on today: “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” The words are plain enough, but I wasn’t sure why that line came at the end of the creed. I mean, as a kid growing up in church, you know that the word “resurrection” has to do with Jesus. It was Jesus who was resurrected for the dead. So I always assumed that line was talking about Jesus.
But then, I’d think, didn’t we already talk about Jesus? Doesn’t the Creed cover that when it says “on the third day He rose again”? So why was the Creed doubling back to that?
Of course, this line is not referring to the resurrection of Jesus. I’m not sure how old I was when I figured it out: this line is about the resurrection of us.
A Misunderstood Doctrine
I have a feeling that this is a part of Christian belief that a lot of Christians misunderstand; or, at the very least, don’t think about all that much. An essential part of our faith is the belief that believers will be given resurrected bodies. We believe that our life everlasting will be spent in the same flesh we inhabit today.
I think this is confusing because of popular conceptions of what happens when we die. We believe that when we die, our souls get separated from our bodies and they go to heaven to be with Jesus. And so, many of us have a picture of eternity taking place in a non-physical realm where we sort of hover around as spirits or ghosts.
But let me tell you, Christian doctrine does not believe in ghosts. There is nothing in Christian belief that talks about disembodied spirits hanging around in this realm or any other. Ghosts are a part of fiction, but they are not a part of the Bible. And whatever happens to our spirits between the end of this life and the beginning of the new heavens and new earth, disembodied souls is not a part of God’s long term plan for us.
Likewise, we do not believe that Christians become angels after we die. Sometimes we take comfort in the idea that a loved one who has passed is now a guardian angel watching over us. But that is not Biblical either. We certainly believe they are in heaven, and they may have an awareness of what is taking place on earth, but they are not angels. Angels and humans are different. In fact, the Bible says angels are envious of the salvation we experience as human beings (cf. 1 Peter 1:12)
No, what Christians believe, what this line of the Creed is saying, and (as we will see) what the Bible teaches is that the eternal hope for believers in Jesus is that not only will our spirits be saved, but our bodies as well. If we die before Jesus comes again, then we believe our bodies will reunite with our souls at the end of days. We will be resurrected, just like Jesus.
This is how the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, question and answer number 57:
- How does “the resurrection of the body” comfort you?
- Not only my soul
will be taken immediately after this life
to Christ its head,
but even my very flesh, raised by the power of Christ,
will be reunited with my soul
and made like Christ’s glorious body.
Heidelberg Catechism #57
“Not only my soul…but even my flesh.” As Christians we believe in the salvation of our entire beings. Body, soul and spirit. When we say we believe in “the resurrection of the body” we are talking about what will happen to us someday.
How Foolish!
But this can be a hard doctrine to believe in. It sounds rather un-sophisticated, maybe even superstitious. “Am I really supposed to believe that dead people are going to be raised to life?” Are we really supposed to believe that the decomposed bodies of believers that have been dead for a 1000 or more years, who have been lost at sea, who have been burned up in fire, are we really supposed to believe that God is somehow going to reassemble them and bring them back to life? Isn’t that a little silly?
That’s the question that begins our scripture text today. We’re looking at 1 Corinthians 15:35-49. And the first verse is one that you have to read with a little bit of scorn in your voice. A sneer. It’s filled with skepticism:
35But someone may ask [Paul writes], "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?"
In other words: "How can anybody think the dead can return to life? After you die you decompose. Your body breaks down. It becomes fertilizer for plants. Food for worms. What kind of body could you possibly come back to life with?"
And, on the face of things, these doubters seem to have it right. I mean, Christianity is nearly 2000 years old. That means there are believers who have been decomposing for two millennia. There’s not much left. How can we expect a resurrection for them when there's hardly anything left to be resurrected? The whole thing does seem rather foolish.
But that's only if you look at the face of things. That's only if you leave out God.
In fact, Paul turns the argument of the doubters on its head. Verse 36:
36How foolish!
They say it is foolish to believe in the resurrection, but he says that they are the ones acting foolishly. They've left God out of the picture. They're thinking in strictly earthly, human terms of a resuscitation or reanimation of dead body parts. They're thinking of some kind of zombie emergence from the grave, but Paul is talking about the transforming power of the Almighty God.
Who would dare to draw limits on the power of God? How could you possibly say that the God who created the universe is incapable of bringing back to life the bodies of those who have died? How could any of us say that God can do this but not that?
Let’s skip ahead a few verses to verse 39-41 (I’ll come back to 36-38 in a moment):
39All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40There 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. 41The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
Here Paul is looking back to Genesis 1 and the story of creation. God has created men, animals, birds and fish. He's created bodies on earth and bodies in the heavens--the sun, the moon, and the stars. All of these things have their own kind of beauty, their own kind of splendor. All speak of the incomprehensible power of God. He made them all.
How foolish, then, to look down your nose at the resurrection! How foolish to dismiss it as beyond the realm of possibility! How foolish to say that God is incapable of doing what the Bible promises He will do!
My friend Matt writes:
If God can make bodies that have feathers for flying, and fins for swimming, and fur for keeping warm, and DNA for passing on genetic code, then He can prepare a new resurrection body with new properties. If God can make rivers and ravines, moon rocks, and sunfire, and stars with varying colors and sizes and qualities, then God can certainly raise up resurrection bodies that are suitable for heavenly living. (Matt Mitchell, A.M. Sermon, How Foolish!, March 24, 2002)
How foolish to say otherwise.
Paul's point here is the same point he has been making throughout this chapter (which is known by many Bible students as “The Resurrection Chapter”): God has already raised Jesus from the dead, and it is a certainty that He will do the same for those who belong to Him. Because Jesus has been resurrected, you can be resurrected too.
The Analogy of the Seed
But that doesn't mean the questions of verse 35 are entirely off-base. While the actual mechanics of resurrection will perhaps always be a mystery to us (I have no idea how God will bring back to life the body of somebody who has been cremated and scattered in the ocean, but I believe He can), it is reasonable for us to wonder what our resurrection bodies will be like. This is our eternity, after all, what's it going to be like?
This is a question we wonder about often. What will it be like after I'm dead? Will I be able to recognize other people who have died before me? What will they look like?
In one sense, these are questions we don't have answers for. When people die now, before Jesus' return, we can't really say for certain what happens. We know, from Jesus' statement to the thief on the cross, for example, that those who die believing in Him go to be with Him in heaven (Luke 23:43, cf. Phil. 1:21-23, 2 Cor. 5:8), but we can only assume their existence is bodiless, since their bodies remain here on earth. The Bible really doesn't say.
What the Bible does talk about though, and what (from a Biblical perspective) is more important, is the eternity we will spend with Jesus, after His return, in resurrection bodies like His (see v. 49). What the Bible wants us to know, and what the passage before us is about, is that Christians will spend life everlasting in our old bodies, but they will be transformed by God into something new.
Paul uses the analogy of a seed. Now we can go back to verses 36-38:
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.
When you go to planting, you don't plant the thing you expect to have at the end, but the seed which is going to produce the fruit you want. Farmers wouldn't get very far if they kept transplanting the same corn plants year after year.
But in order for that seed to work, it has to die first. That is, it needs to be plucked off of the life-giving plant and put in the ground to do its work. When that happens, and the conditions for growing are right, then that small, dead, relatively ugly seed will grow into something big, alive, and beautiful. Seed corn produces corn plants. Wheat kernels turn into wheat fields. Acorns become Oak trees.
Always the thing produced contains a nugget of continuity with the thing planted (corn seeds don't produce Oak trees, acorns don't turn into wheat), and yet in the mystery of God's design of the world the seed is transformed into something different--something better.
That, Paul is saying, is what our resurrection will be like. Our bodies are going to die. They're going to run down and return to the dust. But that death is going to open the door for God's resurrection power to make us into something new. Our present, earthly bodies are the seed for our future, resurrection bodies in which we will spend eternity.
Your old body will become new. But, rest assured, it will be your body. That’s the big idea this morning. Our resurrection bodies will be new bodies, but there’ll still be a connection to our old bodies. Continuity and discontinuity. Like the seed and the plant. Your old body will become new. But it will be your body.
So, what will it be like? How will our bodies become new? Paul goes on to give us 4 ways our resurrection bodies will be better than the bodies we have now.
No "Use By" Date
First, Paul tells us that our resurrection bodies will be imperishable. They will live forever. Verse 42:
42So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;
Right now, we are all living in bodies that are running down. Like milk in a grocery store cooler, we all come stamped with an expiration date. We don't know when it is, but we all have one. The bodies we are in will not last forever.
But our new bodies will be imperishable. Eternal. They will not wear out or grow old or be subject to sickness or disease. They will be healthy and strong forever.
So, that means if you die of cancer, there will be no sign of it in the resurrection.
If you suffer from diabetes now, you won't know it in the resurrection.
If you live to be 110 before you die, in the resurrection it will look like you never aged a day past 20. (Or something like that. I don’t know if those who die in infancy get fast forwarded to an adult age or if those who are really old get reversed. My guess is that relative age won’t matter anymore.)
Imperishable. I take that to mean, also, that any physical deformities or handicaps you have in this life will be gone in the next. If you've lost a finger or a limb, you'll have it back in the resurrection. If you were born without a finger or a limb, you'll have them in the resurrection. The blind will see, the deaf will hear, the lame will walk.
No sickness. No decay. No flaws. In the resurrection our bodies will become perfect. We will see humanity as God intended it to be.
Lovely
But that's not all.
Second, Paul tells us that our resurrection bodies will be glorious. They will be beautiful. Verse 43:
It [the body] is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.
As it is now, our bodies are dishonorable, shameful. If you don't believe that, ask some new parents about changing a diaper.
Dying too, is evidence of our dishonor. There is nothing dignified about gasping for our final breath, lying helpless on a hospital bed. You can die in an honorable way—on the battlefield or protecting your family—but dying itself is always sad, helpless.
In the resurrection, though, our bodies will be raised in glory. No more shame. No more dishonor.
In fact, in the physical sense, I believe this verse is telling us that we will all be beautiful. You'll never be able, after the resurrection, to look at another person and say that he or she is ugly, because ugliness won't exist.
Does this mean all the men will look like movie stars and all the women like Miss America? I doubt it. You'll still be able to tell that I am me, I'll know that you are you. I doubt if conventional standards of beauty will even mean much. But there will be an attractiveness about us that will be evident to all.
Where will this beauty come from? From the glory of God. Just as God is said to radiate glory there will be a kind of brightness or radiance surrounding our bodies that will be evidence of the exaltation and honor God has bestowed on us.
Moreover--and I think this is the really important point here--in the resurrection we will be reflecting the glory of God the way we have always been intended.
The thing that makes us dishonorable is sin. Sin doesn't just affect our souls, it affects our whole bodies. It leaves us disgraced and degraded before God (i.e. Rom. 1:24, 26). Sin debilitates us. Sin makes us ugly. Sin leaves us unattractive.
But in the resurrection all that sin will be finally and ultimately put away. We will be the mirrors for God's glory we were always meant to be (i.e. Gen. 1:26). And so, we will appear to be lovely not only to each other, but also before God.
And that's what really matters.
Strong
Third, Paul tells us that our resurrection bodies will be powerful. They will be capable. More from verse 43:
It [the body] is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.
We are weak. Some of us are weaker than others. But, ultimately, we are all weak. There’s nothing we can do to stave off death. We’ll all be powerless when our time to go comes.
But in the resurrection, those of us who belong to Christ are promised powerful bodies. Not only will we be free from sin and disease, we'll also be given a fullness of strength and power.
Not infinite power, like God, of course. And probably not "superhuman" power like Spider-Man or Superman. But full and complete human power and strength, the strength that God intended human beings to have in their bodies when He created them. Says one theologian: "It will...be strength that is sufficient to do all that we desire to do in conformity with the will of God.” (Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 832)
I can't even imagine what this will be like, can you? We're not talking about fanciful stuff like climbing walls or jumping over skyscrapers--what reason would we have to do anything like that? But anything I want or need to do to glorify God, I'll be able to do it. I won't get tired. I won't slow down. I won't be limited. I won't be weak.
We'll be raised in power.
Super-Natural
Then, fourth, Paul tells us that our resurrection bodies will be spiritual. They will be responsive to God. Verse 44:
It [the body] is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
This can seem a little confusing. This whole sermon is designed to help us understand that our actual, physical bodies are going to be transformed by God at the resurrection. Now Paul says this new body is not going to be natural, but spiritual. Does that mean that we're wrong, that we will actually only exist as ethereal, spiritual beings?
No. It is important to understand that when Paul uses the word "spiritual", he's not talking about a disembodied being like a ghost, but he's talking about a life that is consistent with the Holy Spirit. It means that our bodies are natural now and are going to be supernatural then. We die in a body that is fitted or suitable for natural living in this created order. We will be raised in a body that is spiritual, fitted, and suitable for living in the coming Spiritual world order.
The best illustration I’ve heard is to think in terms of computers. Right now, if you are a Christian, the perfect software for your computer is already running on it, call it “Holy Spirit Infinity Version.” But your hardware is barely suitable to run that software: “Human Body, Adam Version.1"
What we need is an upgrade. New bodies consistent with the Spiritual software we are meant to run. And the resurrection is your “upgrade.” You will be given a hard drive that is perfectly in-sync with the “software of the Spirit.” (Matt Mitchell, ibid).
Does that make sense? I hope so.
As it is now, our lives and our bodies are constrained by their natural, fallen state. If you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit living in you now. But we are not yet perfect. Not yet completely free from the shackles of our sin.
This is what the rest of verse 44 through verse 48 is getting at:
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a lifegiving spirit. 46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48As 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.
Paul takes us back to Genesis chapter 2 where the spirit of God breathes life into Adam’s body. In the same way, Jesus came to be the last Adam, the new representative of a new race and He became, in His resurrection, a “lifegiving spirit.”
That means that in His resurrection, Jesus got a transformed body that has new qualities that are even better suited to live in sync with the Spirit (if you can imagine that!). And His new body now serves as the life-giving template, model, and paradigm of the new bodies that are on the way for us.
The point is: If you came from Adam (and all of us did, think of how the children in the Narnia books are called “Sons of Adam” and “Daughters of Eve”) then you have the things Adam had after the Fall: perishable, corruptible, weak, dying, dust-formed, natural bodies (and a sin-nature, too!).
But if you are in Christ (the second Adam) then you will get what He has! A new resurrection body: imperishable, glorious, powerful, supernatural, and in perfect tune with the Spirit.
Do you see that? Don’t miss this.
Let me put it like this:
If you are in Adam, you have an “Adam-like” body (and all that goes with it).
If you are in Christ, you will have a Christ-like body (and all that goes with it).
This is a glorious truth.
Why Live Like Adam?
Which leads to our application this morning. Why would you continue to live like dusty old Adam when you are going to be like spiritual, heavenly Christ? Why live today like a creature of this world when you know that your future is going to be different? That would be foolish!
That’s Paul’s point in our final verse. Verse 49:
49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
Our time living like Adam should be over. Soon, the life-giving spirit called the Lord Jesus Christ is going to make us like Him. God (by His transforming plan and in all of His transforming power) is going to re-configure our bodies to be like the man from heaven.
So, why don’t we live like it right now?
Why don’t we live in anticipation of what we will be?
Why don’t we live holy lives of purity?
Why don’t we live with eternity’s values in view?
Why don’t we live like we’re going to soon have indestructible bodies?
Why don’t we live for the glory of God?
Why don’t we practice living in-sync with the Spirit of God?
Why don’t we make a break and stop living like dusty old Adam when we are going to be like spiritual, heavenly, Christ?
To do anything else would be foolish.
My question for you this morning is what practices (in your life), what behaviors, what attitudes, what relationships are “dusty old Adam?” They should be on the way out.
And on the way in should be the likeness of Christ.
Adamlikeness on the way out.
Christlikeness on the way in.
Because we believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
