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Introduction
I want to teach you two Latin phrases today.
Don’t worry, it’s just 3 words in Latin, but two full sentences in English.
Here’s the first, ready?
Memento mori!
In Ancient Rome, when a victorious general was being paraded through the streets when he returned home, a servant was tasked to stand behind him and recite those two words.
Memento mori!
Remember that you will die!
Don’t get too puffed up, general.
You are a man and you will die.
Memento mori.
We don’t like to talk about death.
Though we are mortal creatures, we don’t like being that very much.
We can see it in all the euphemisms we use for death: He’s passed away.
She’s moved on.
He’s been called home.
She’s in a better place.
All designed to hide the gruff reality that we dwell in a mortal body that will one day it will cease to function, we will be put into a casket, and placed in the ground or burned.
We’ve been unable to avoid the conversation of death, especially over the past 2 years as a pandemic has ravaged the globe and our nation.
932K Americans have died with COVID, that’s more than all of the deaths in America’s armed conflicts combined.
In Mississippi, we’ve seen nearly 12K dead: that’s the entire city of Grenada, gone.
It seems impossible to forget death, but we do.
And there is great danger in forgetting it.
Maybe death has not visited your family for a while.
I am happy for that, but that might make you think that you are immune to it, that you will never come to the grave…death might affect others, but you’ve got plenty of time.
Memento mori.
Remember that you will die.
But, if you are in Christ, that is not the end of the story.
Memento mori, yes.
But, Christian, after remembering that you will die, you can shout in victory: resurgam!
— I shall rise again.
Death is not the end for the disciple of Jesus.
If you have your Bibles, you can turn to 1 Corinthians 15.
We’re finishing a 3-part series on the resurrection today. 1 Corinthians 15 starts on page 653 of the white pew Bible.
Remember our big idea for this chapter of Scripture:
The resurrection is a fundamental part of the gospel, our hope for the future, and our endurance in this life, so we must hold firmly to it!
The resurrection of Jesus is a fundamental part of the gospel, our hope for the future, and our endurance in this life, so we must hold firmly to it!
Today, we will look closely at the final clause of that theme: The resurrection is a fundamental part of our endurance in this life.
Today, I want to answer 3 questions from the text:
What is the nature of the resurrection of our bodies?
What does it look like?
What is accomplished in the resurrection?
How does the resurrection of our bodies, which lies in the future, help us today?
What is the nature of the resurrection?
What is accomplished by the resurrection?
How does the future resurrection help us today?
Let me read the first portion of our text, starting in verse 35:
Skip to verse 42:
PRAY
Paul has been instructing the Corinthian church about a doctrine that some of them had abandoned.
Some members of the church at Corinth had decided that there was no such thing as the resurrection.
And Paul writes to say, “No, we must hold firm to the doctrine of the resurrection!”
The resurrection is essential to the gospel: If Christ was not raised from the dead, then his atoning sacrifice was not accepted and we are still in our sins.
If we are still in our sins, then our faith is in vain.
But, he says, Christ was raised and therefore we will also be raised since we are in union with Christ.
That’s verses 1-34 in 10 seconds.
And now in verse 35, Paul turns to the practical.
He anticipates the question: “Well, what’s it going to look like when we are raised?
If we are going to be resurrected one day, how’s that going to shake out, exactly?”
That’s our first question to answer today:
What is the Nature of the Resurrection?
Paul uses the metaphor of a seed being sown, placed in the ground for a time, and then growing and raising into something with new life.
And he gives 4 contrasts, starting in verse 42:
Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption
sown in dishonor, raised in glory
sown in weakness, raised in power
and sown a natural body, raised a spiritual one
So, he’s doing two things here.
With the general metaphor of the planting of the seed and it growing into a plant, he’s emphasizing the continuity between the old and the new.
Here’s what I mean.
When you plant a corn kernel in the ground, what grows up?
Corn, of course.
Bigger, better, fuller, more useful, but corn nonetheless.
When you plant a wheat kernel into the ground, what grows up?
Wheat.
The same seed, but more glorious and more what a wheat ought to be.
When you plant, then, and Eric into the ground, what ought to grow up?
Right, an Eric that is better, fuller, and more glorious, but definitely an Eric.
That’s what Paul is getting at with the seed metaphor.
What is planted is what grows.
When are bodies are planted, so to speak, what grows up in eternity is ourselves in identity.
Our physical body here is a shriveled seed.
When planted in the grave like wheat that is sown, it decays.
And from that decay, on the last day, will rise the fuller, better, more glorious, more human, body.
Entirely different, and yet precisely the same.
When we are raised from the dead on the last day, we will see in our bodies what it means to truly be human, the way we were designed to be from the beginning.
We receive the incorruptible body that Adam should have attained in the Garden.
And in that similarity lies the difference, the contrasts that Paul gives.
We will have the same identity — which I believe means we will clearly recognize people whom we already knew — the same identity and yet as different as we could possibly be.
Our now bodies are corruptible, our then bodies incorruptible.
No more decay, no more aging, no more back pain, no more cavities.
Incorruptible.
But, even that doesn’t go far enough, I believe with the word Paul is using here.
Aphtharsia I believe extends not just to no decay, but decay’s reversal!
When Paul says we are raised in incorruption, I believe he is saying that, essentially, every day is better for us.
Each day for eternity, there is a progressive and purposeful flourishing in the fulness of life and humanness.
Every day better than before.
What a day of rejoicing that shall be.
He goes on: sown in dishonor, raised in glory: he’s talking about the final and complete removal of sin and its effects and the fulness of our transformation into Christlikeness.
The last tattered rags of sin thrown aside and being fully clothed in the righteousness of Christ for eternity.
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