We Believe in the Resurrection of the Body

Introduction

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

That one line from the famous “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’ can easily be said to be the motto for contemporary culture. We live in a nation obsessed with the body. Mirrors are everywhere and we desire that they tell us that we are indeed the “fairest of them all.” Billions of dollars are spent on the search for iron abs, makeup, hair styles, trendy diets, and every attempt to prop up a body that keeps aging…

And to add to it all, the way we even conceive of ourselves is based on the daily assessment of how we’re doing compared to others. We are slaves to the mirror, and anyone and everyone who is thinner, shapelier, more muscular, or “prettier” automatically becomes our rival. I understand this, I am a short man afterall, if you haven’t noticed, and have spent my life trying to measure up.

Or, in the opposite end, we hate ourselves, our nose, our legs, our skin tone, or hair color, or cheek bones or waste line. This is even played out to the extreme where some people so hate their biological body that they go under the knife to remove and change their genitalia. We have an image and mirror problem, my friends!

And all of this is simply the fruit of a belief problem. The root of this all is that people think this life and this body is all they have. So, if this is it, change it all to your liking. If we only have one life, then manipulate it as much as possible in order to get to the peak level of happiness, right? I mean, if the body just ends up in the ground rotting, use it and abuse it as much as you can. This also explains why the past year, people have lived in an absolute terror of getting Covid. I’m not downplaying caution or wisdom. But I do believe the overwhelming terror in the secular culture is based on fearing the loss of this one life.

But, my friends, those who follow the resurrected Jesus have an extremely different view of the human body! We do not believe in just one life. We do not believe that this flesh is all there is. We do not believe that we use and abuse, manipulate and re-formulate the body… We believe in the resurrection of the body!

Oh, and this is a deep and profound belief. I bet many Christians, even many of you here today, do not really believe that your body will be physically resurrected! 1600 years ago, Augustine proclaimed, “On no point does the Christian faith encounter more opposition than on the resurrection of the body.” And that is the same today.

Exposition

But it is not a recent belief, or casual belief. We believe in the resurrection of the body because its directly connected to the resurrection of Jesus. Another way to say this is that we believe that Jesus will raise the corpses of Christians from the dead! That’s the main point of 1 Corinthians 15, the Bible’s most famous passage on the resurrection of believers.

And that’s how the chapter begins. Paul asked the Corinthians in verse 12 “How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” The Corinthians believed that God resurrected Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:1–2, 4, 11). Paul himself reaffirmed their belief. He made clear that Jesus really did die and rise. Jesus verified His resurrection by large public appearances, many of which were still alive at the time to testify. And because of it all, Christians aren’t in their sins anymore and even when their lives are afflicted, they are not pitiable. Yet, even in that, some of them denied that God would resurrect the corpses and bodies of those who follow Jesus.

You see, the idea that God would resurrect a human corpse was revolting to the Greek, Roman and pagan. It made no sense to them, as their culture had influenced their thinking. They believed that the physical body was inferior and had no future beyond the grave and that only the spiritual soul was important and superior. They valued the soul over the physical body. And so, some of them thought that what they did with their physical bodies didn’t really matter that much.

In light of that, Paul directly corrected the Corinthians. They had had adopted worldly and cultural assumptions about resurrection from their pagan surrounding. He declared undeniably that God will certainly resurrect the corpses of believers (1 Corinthians 15:12–34).

And the entire logic of the argument is rooted in Jesus’ own resurrection. If they believed, some had seen, that Jesus was resurrected, what would make them think they wouldn’t be resurrected themselves? As verse 23 makes so beautifully clear: Jesus’ resurrection was a firstfruit. A firstfruit is just as the name implies, the first fruit that a tree bear. It shows that the tree is mature enough to bear fruit now and is an indicator that more fruit it on the way. It’s a guarantee that the tree will bear more fruit. We know more apples are coming, because the first apple just ripened on the tree. We know Christians will be raised, because we know Christ was raised.

In fact, Paul is so confident of this that he provides a time for it all. We who trust Jesus will be raised from the dead at His second coming. “For as in Adam all [his posterity] die, so also in Christ all will [his posterity] be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming. (22-23)

And how is he so confident in this? Because Christ now reigns invincibly over the universe. He will return, establish a global Kingdom, and destroy death. That’s how confidence is built. As Paul wrote, “For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. (25-26)

So, as John Piper has said if “there is no disease, no addiction, no demon, no bad habit, no fault, no vice, no weakness, no temper, no moodiness, no pride, no self-pity, no strife, no jealousy, no perversion, no greed, no laziness that Christ will not overcome as the enemy of his honor”, will He not defeat your own death, and bring you back to life? Will He not give life again to your dead and decaying corpse, which by the way, we will all be one day!

Of course, He can and will, that’s Paul’s argument. And so much so that he even used an example of some type of weird practice that some were wrongly doing as an example for this. Verse 29: “Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?” Someone somewhere was baptizing people on behalf of people who had died. Weird and wrong, right? Well Paul underlines that abuse as even an example supporting his argument. They do that weird thing because they believe that dead person will be resurrected. How much more should we spent our lives for the sake of the world, mission and glory of God if we, not doing weird baptisms, believe Christ is risen and will raise us!? If He will do that, then it doesn’t matter the danger, or death, or beasts, or culture, or pressure. At the end of the day, if they kill me, if they silence me, if they shut me up and shut me down, if I did… Jesus will bring me right back! It’s like the best video game restart imaginable!

Illustration

Now you are probably asking yourself exactly what the Corinthians asked Paul: verse 35 “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” What does this even look like or mean?

And Paul answered with 3 illustrations for us:

First, the resurrection of the body is like the seasons and sowing seeds. Verse 36-37: “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.” . A little seed looks so lifeless, and when it planted in the earth, it will eventually live and flower and bear fruit. That is God! Every gardener and farmer know seed must die; but they must plant that seed. It must be buried in the ground or it cannot live again. They take the seed and plant it in the soil to let it decay and die. And suddenly there is life from the dead. After the seed is buried, it just looks like dirt and filth and fertilizer. In fact, the richer the soil, the stronger will it grows. Out of the buried mess comes a marvelous, glorious flower.

We are in Spring right now, and it is a yearly sermon on the power of the Spirit to raise from the dead. All winter the trees looked dead and suddenly they blossom beautifully. All around us, the flowers and trees and bushes and plants all show up again. The resurrection is like this. So, it shall be when your body is planted in the ground. It will die and decay, but the promise, God’s promise through nature, is that He will raise it up again.

Second, the resurrection of the body is like the uniqueness around us: verse 39: “For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.”

Paul directs us to look at all the Uniqueness in the way God has created this world. If you plant an apple seed, it will not grow into a daisy. God gives every one of those seeds a unique body and they are all different. Humans produce humans. And every kind of animals will produce of their own kind. And then he turns us up to the glory of the universe. Every single star looks different with its own makeup and glow. Just think about how unique God has created everything!

And so, that is the way we are in the resurrected body. We will be similar, but greatly different, just like we do here. There will not be a flat, uniformed body. Each believer will receive a different measure of glory in their resurrected body. There will be a vast range of degrees of glory including those who are called the least and greatest. Moses is not going to be Elijah, and Elijah is not going to be Moses. They will be different. And you are not going to be that man, and that woman is not going to be you. God is going to make you too different. It is going to be you. It’s going to be different. I mean, just think how many snowflakes fall in the wintertime and through time. Every snowflake is different from every other snowflake! That is what it is going to be in the resurrected body, you are going to have you, but it will be different from you. This is remarkable.

Third, the resurrection of the body is like the differences between Adam and Jesus. They are very different. Adam was the first man, a living being, from the earth, made of dust. Yet Jesus is God the Son, who had no beginning, is spiritual, came from heaven, the man of heaven. You put those two together and you get what the resurrected body will be like. The same physical material we currently have mixed with spiritual material! God will transform these perishable, mortal bodies into imperishable, immortal bodies to triumphantly defeat death!

God will give us a resurrected body that will be conformed to Jesus’ own resurrected body. Just think about what Jesus’ own resurrected body was like during the 40 days He stayed with His disciples before ascending to heaven. Jesus’ resurrected body is full of light. He could veil His glory fully or partially or unveil it to show His terrifying glory. At times, Jesus was not even recognized. He could suddenly appear or vanish from sight. It is a “supernatural flesh” with bones and has the capacity to eat food. Jesus walked through the wall to enter a room when the doors were shut. He showed them the scars in His hands, feet, and side. He even prepared a fire and cooked fish. And at His ascension, He rose up into the air, up to heaven.

My friends, our resurrection body will be imperishable, glorious, powerful, physical and spiritual!

Application

Now, you might be wondering why this is so important?

Well, you must remember that God created this material universe. Our bodies were His idea! He created humans with physical bodies. He created your body. He doesn’t just love human souls and hearts and emotions and spirits. He loves human beings. He loves human bodies. Jesus took on flesh and will have his physical, resurrected body forever. In fact, He sits right now in heaven with human ears, hearing our prayer.

God so loved the physical world that He will transform the current physical earth into a new and better one. And God so loved our bodies that He will transform your natural, earthly body into a supernatural, heavenly body. This is very important if you are struggling with how you view your body. You know your body. The moles and the scar from when you were young. There are those stretch marks and that ingrown toenail and those emotions that well up inside of you when you hear a certain song. There’s that hair that won’t cooperate and your love for coffee. There’s the extra twenty pounds and the you from high school that could run a mile way faster than today. There’s also the gray. God looks at you right here and right now and says, “I like what I see! I love what I see. You are a sight to behold!” You, right here, right now, the complete physical you, are a wonder. God made you, God cares for you, for your actual skin and bones. He loves it so much that He sent His Son in your very frame and He will raise your body from the grave!

That is wonderful news for those who believe because our bodies are deteriorating and groaning and dying. You feel that don’t you? Aging keeps creeping up. This is why verse 42-44 describes our bodies at death sown in dishonor, weakness, natural. Don’t you feel that? It might not be you, but you see it in the people you love. As we age and the moment, we buried it’s a process of becoming less: less honorable and attractive, less strong and mighty, less powerful and undefeatable…. It’s very sobering. It’s also one reason the surrounding culture doesn’t honor age and resists anything that might jeopardize youth, strength and life.

Your earthly body is perishable just like that rotting banana in your kitchen, but the promise is that your heavenly body will be “imperishable”. In fact, Jesus’ very resurrection guarantees that death will die. It’s the death of death! We actually don’t have to fear death. You can stare age and sickness, and cancer, and Covid in the face and you say, wholehearted verse 55: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

It doesn’t matter what the future holds for you. If you trust in Jesus, be it a blood clot, a stroke, a car crash, family rejection, cultural isolation, governmental persecution. If it kills you, it doesn’t make you stronger… Jesus will bring you right back from the dead! This is the truth that has bolstered Christians for 2,000 years. Death has lost its sting. We don’t mourn like those who have no hope.

So, we look forward to enjoying a supernatural body like Christ’s resurrected body as Paul says later: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Philippians 3:20–21).

So, whether we are Living at the time or are dead in the grave, we shall be given new bodies in an instant at Christ's coming, according to verse 51-52. And therefore, Death now has no sting and will be swallowed up in victory.

And you know what this means for us? We do huge amounts of Christ-exalting work because none of it is in vain! We have confident now! As Paul ends the chapter in verse 58, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.”

Think about that! Now put it into your life. How is this real life? I just heard about a Bell County Kentucky High School graduation where two students were missing but memorialized… because they were killed in a car crash the night before their High School graduation… What if you invested into your kid for 18 years, to have him die before graduation? Was your labor in vain?

Our family has been working very hard, especially Brooke, to get our new home painted, and fixed, with updated, and ready to move in in a few weeks! This is our first home that we have been waiting for and saving for. What if there are a few sparks form an old appliance that starts a fire that burnt down our new home? Is all of that in vain?

What about that paper you’ve been working on for school, and right as you are completing it, the computer breaks down and you lose the entire project? Was it all in vain?

Is your life in vain? Is your work in vain? NO! But therefore…, therefore. Because Christ has won a historic reality over death, we don’t fear death, and failure, and disappointment. We aren’t shakable or wavering like a leaf in the wind. We aren’t immovable. When situations are hard, and we are tempted to move our hope to something else... we won’t, we will be immovable. Instead, we are abounding. We will do lots of work! Overflowing in the work of the Lord. That doesn’t just mean being a pastor or teacher, but whatever we do, we do for the Lord. Whatever you are doing, changing a diaper, hammering a nail, closing a project, do it in the name of Jesus. Love Jesus as you change that diaper. Love Jesus as you hammer that nail. Give God glory as you send the finished file. This is all the work of the Lord. And it’s not in vain!

CHRIST-CENTERED CLOSING

And work is not in vain, death has lost its sting, and we know we will be resurrected, why? Because verses 56-57 says: “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, a who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Did you catch that? Death stings us because sin is involved. There would be no death without sin. Sin is what caused death and caused death today. And the fear of dying is due to the presence of sin. This is the power of the law. The law says, “Don’t do that”. And then we do it. And then we die because of doing it. That’s the power of the law over us and the sting of sin that causes us to fear our death. We know that after death will come judgement. And how terrifying it is to die in sin, rebelling against the Lord God. That’s all of us my friends.

Yet in such a stark, terrifying situation. Thanks be to God… Thanks be to God. Oh, Thank you God! That He has given the victory through Jesus Christ. Jesus came and took our very own skin and bones, that how much He loves us, He became us. But then, He face down our own sin. On the cross, His own physical body was lacerated and torn to shreds, until His faced the ultimate fear: death itself as He lost consciousness, His eyesight went black, and His body shut down. He was in the grave, starting to rot like we will.

But then, Praise God, His eyes open, His heartbeat, and out of that grave came the firstborn of the Resurrection, with a promise that those who follow Him, will likewise, come out of our own graves, wherever they are, and according to verse 52: “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 shall be changed.” Jesus won the victory, wins the victory now, and will win the victory. And on that day, we will look at Him with a resurrected eyeball and see the truly fairest in the land and we will hear anew with resurrected ear drums, a whole new meaning to what He said on the cross: “It is finished, amen!”