I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
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Well - we made it! We are at the end of the series Foundations of the Faith: A close look at the Apostles Creed.
And as is true in the Christian faith, the end leads to a new beginning. When we become a Christian, we put to death our old life, and we walk into our new life. The scriptures describe a new Christian as being a new Creation.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
And so it is with the Creed. Our last faith declaration is what we believe God is doing and will do when this age comes to an end and the new one begins.
I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.
God has already shown us what happens next when He rose Jesus from the dead. You may recall the sermon a few weeks back when we reached the line in the Creed that states “The third day He rose from the dead.”
In that sermon, you may recall me saying “The resurrection of Jesus shows us what will happen to us one day in the future. Through faith in Jesus, we can receive, right now, new life. We are a new creation. New thinking, new behavior, new spirit, new status with God as his children…but our bodies continue to die. Upon the return of Christ, the dead will rise and we will all receive our new, imperishable, immortal bodies.
Since I spoke on resurrection recently, I’m not going to add to much more on that topic in our examination of the Creed - other than how it leads us into eternal life.
As author and Asbury Seminary President Timothy Tennant has written: “Christians believe in a bodily resurrection. ... we do not believe simply in a spiritual state where our souls live forever. In contrast, Christianity affirms that our entire life, which includes our bodies, our minds, our souls, and our spirits, is to be redeemed.” - Timothy C. Tennent. Foundations of the Christian Faith
Fully redeemed, restored, resurrected - humans will then be equipped for what God has in store for each us in the age to come. And his plan for us will be not to merely exist, but to fully live!
Remember what Jesus offers us:
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Eternal life will be an abundant life!
What is to come? Well, we do not know exactly. Much of what is said about the life eternal is speculation - the Bible does not provide much insight - other than to say that eternal life is to be present with the Lord.
And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
With that caveat in place, I do think there is some indication in scripture on what we could expect.
A good place to start is to turn back to the beginning and remind ourselves of God’s original intention for us in the Garden, before the fall, when God walked with Adam, spoke to him face to face, and put him to work.
Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
We are designed to work. but our labor was not meant to be weary, frustrating, or tedious.
St. Augustine, a bishop in the Church in the 4th Century, wrote...
Old Testament I: Genesis 1–11 Man’s Work in Eden Was Not Toilsome (Augustine)
Although man was placed in paradise so as to work and guard it, that praiseworthy work was not toilsome. For the work in paradise is quite different from the work on the earth to which he was condemned after the sin. The addition “and to guard it” indicated the sort of work it was. For in the tranquility of the happy life, where there is no death, the only work is to guard what you possess.
The verb here translated as ‘to guard’ is the Hebrew word Shamar - which means to keep or to have charge of - the same word is used several times in the Old Testament in the context of a shepherd tending to his sheep.
Imagine doing work that you love to do, tending to it carefully and with great satisfaction - work that has been entrusted to you from the Lord. Maybe you have experienced something close to that in your own life. Tending a garden may be a good example. Imagine tending a garden without having to deal with weeds, blight, drought or too much rain. Work for the pure joy of it.
Now if, before sin and death entered the scene, human kind was meant to rule over creation, as God commanded in Genesis 1:28
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
and we were to work in paradise in peace and tranquility - could that not be what is before us in the life eternal?
Eternal life is a promise for all who in faith, trust and follow the Lord. This promise is found throughout the Bible.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
We also heard it in our Gospel reading this morning. Jesus, the good shepherd, has come down from heaven to seek and search for his lost sheep, and when he find us, we can rest secured that we are now his and will be with him forever.
For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Jesus will resurrect us and we will join him to live as God lives - eternally.
Returning to the book Foundations of the Christian Faith, this is what Tennant believes we can expect:
We will be unleashed into endless creativity and deeper discoveries about God’s creation. For all eternity we will be brought deeper and deeper into the full glory and mystery of the Trinity and his self-revelation. We will learn to love him and one another in deeper and deeper ways. We will, ultimately, be like him because we will finally see him face-to-face. As John says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2 ESV). Timothy C. Tennent. Foundations of the Christian Faith.
So let’s use some holy imagination and contemplate what would be possible we are “...unleashed into endless creativity and deeper discoveries about God’s creation.”
God has made us in his image. He has fashioned us to be creative beings, given us the capacity of knowledge and wisdom, compassion and mercy, and gifted us with various skills, talents and abilities.
Listen to Psalm 8
Psalm 8 (ESV)
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
To have dominion over means to govern, to have authority, to gain control and to rule.
In the Kingdom to come, governance and rule is rightly administered because sin is no more, corruption is unheard of, self promotion is not a temptation, all things are done for the greater good and under the perfect will of our Lord who reigns.
Oversight and care for the new heaven and new earth will be given to a redeemed humanity.
Exploration of the depths of knowledge surrounding God’s Creation will continually amaze us. To fully understand what has been hidden or out of reach.
Will we explore the far reaches of the universe? Will the flourishing, living habitation on the new earth be found on planets throughout the galaxy - with redeemed humans travelling and having dominion over newly discovered worlds. Who knows what God has planned?
What we do know is that God’s promises do not expire. His Word is forever true.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
The life eternal is worth fighting for. It is the hope that we place before us as we live each day in this age. Life here and now is difficult. We enjoy glimpses of what is to come - but it is fleeting.
Thanks be to Christ. For he has already redeemed those who turn to him in faith. And he is calling each of us to live now as if the Kingdom of God is already fully realized. We live both in the now and the “not yet”. This means that we live with love for one another, peaceably as much as it depends on you, we work for justice, extend mercy to others, practice hospitality, and enjoy the fellowship of the saints.
Our words and actions are not going unnoticed and if we are faithful, our rewards await us.
1 Timothy 6:12 (ESV)
Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Amen.