I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body
Resurrection Hope
Glorified Body?
The Christian faith has always valued the body and understood it to be an essential part of the human person. The body, therefore, is not an encumbrance to Christ’s salvation but a necessary object of it. While there have long been debates among Christians regarding the timing of the future resurrection, Christians agree that when the Lord comes again in glory the redeemed will be raised to new life and enjoy the blessing of a glorified body. The precise nature of the glorified body is a mystery, but Scripture provides enough revelation for readers to imagine several of its features.
The basic pattern for the future glorified body is the Lord’s resurrected body. When the resurrected Christ appeared and conversed with others, there was obvious continuity with his former body: the disciples recognized the Lord, touched him, and confirmed he was not a phantom. At the same time, his new resurrected body did not experience normal limitations, nor was it subject to suffering, sin, and death (Rom 6:9). Thus, the glorified body is not a different body but a different form of the same body: it is what Paul calls “a spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:42–44).
Following the example of Christ, the New Testament speaks about the glorified body as more than the mere resuscitation of a dead body. Christ will transform the bodies of the faithful to be like his glorious body (Phil 3:20–21). The resurrected body will be suitable to the conditions of immortality and enjoy all the blessings of dwelling in the presence of the glory of God. The glorified body will also experience freedom from all the encumbrances of time and space, and it will have new attributes, such as incorruptibility (1 Cor 15:52), subtlety (John 20:19), and glory (1 Cor 15:43). Some speculate about other attributes, wondering for example what the apparent age of believers will be in their resurrection bodies; the Bible simply does not reveal many specifics.
What will the Resurrected Body Be Like?
What Do We Mean By a Glorified Body?
What do Christians today understand and affirm concerning eschatological resurrection? We will offer a fivefold answer.
1. More than Resuscitation of Corpses
Eschatological resurrection is to be something more than the resuscitation of human corpses. It is to be more than reviving a corpse or simply restoring life to the present physical body. This may be seen in contrast to the three instances of Jesus’ raisings from the dead, or resuscitations, recorded in the Gospels. There is nothing in the New Testament that would indicate other than that these persons so raised subsequently died. On the contrary, Jesus’ resurrection meant that he would die no more (Rom. 6:9). Hence eschatological resurrection, like Jesus’ resurrection, is to bring the death of death.
2. A Different Plane of Being and Living
Eschatological resurrection is to involve a plane of being and living distinctly different from present human existence with its bodily limitations and human relationships. In his resurrection body Jesus was able to move through closed doors (John 20:19), and in his teaching (Mark 12:25 and par.) he affirmed that marriage relationships would not characterize the heavenly state. Life in the body of the resurrection will, therefore, be markedly different from life in the present physical body.
3. Bodily Resurrection, Not a Continued Noncorporeal Existence
Eschatological resurrection is to be a raising from the dead in a body rather than a continued noncorporeal existence. It was spoken of as the coming forth (ekporeusontai) of those who are “in the graves” (John 5:28–29, KJV, TEV) and as a raising at “the last day” (John 6:39, 40, 44, 54). Paul did not hesitate to refer to the resurrected state as being in a “body” (sōma) (1 Cor. 15:35, 37, 38, 40, 44).
4. Full Redemption of the Body
Eschatological resurrection is to effect the complete redemption or ransoming of the human body (Rom. 8:23; Eph. 1:14; 4:30). Jesus came to liberate human beings from the bondage of “the fear of death” (Heb. 2:14–15). Final resurrection will bring about “the deliverance of the whole person from the dominion of death.”
5. A Different Kind of Body
Eschatological resurrection is to involve a body, but a different kind of body. Paul in 1 Cor. 15:44, 46 clearly differentiated between the “physical body” (RSV, TEV) or the “natural body” (KJV, Phillips, NIV) (sōma psychikon) and the “spiritual body” (sōma pneumatikon). The former is the present human body, adapted to the needs of the psychē, or the present animate life. The latter is to be the resurrection body. Some interpreters have ignored the “spiritual,” and others have ignored the “body.” The one has led to a crass carnality in resurrection, and the other has led to incorporeal immortality. Some, beginning as early as Augustine of Hippo, have taken the “spiritual body” to mean a body perfectly adapted to the needs of the human spirit. Others, such as William Milligan51 and George E. Ladd, have understood “spiritual body” as a body adapted to the Holy Spirit. To reinforce the difference between the two bodies, Paul employed the analogy of the kernel of wheat and the full-grown plant (1 Cor. 15:37–38) and noted that human bodies differ from those of mammals, birds, and fish and the sun, the moon, and the stars from earthly bodies (1 Cor. 15:39–41). Moreover, Paul also contrasted the “perishable” (phtharton) and “mortal” (thēton) with “imperishableness” (aphtharsian) and “deathlessness” (athanasian) (1 Cor. 15:53–54) and “the earthly tent we live in” (RSV, NIV) (hē epigeios hēmōn oikia tou skēnous) with “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (RSV) (oikian acheiropoiēton aiōnion en tois ouranois) (2 Cor. 5:1).