The End of the World (7)
Part 7 – The New Testament: The Resurrection Body.
As I mentioned during the previous article, I am now turning to this aspect of the end time that is almost entirely new to us. This is an area that has caused much confusion in the Church: confusion that manifests itself almost every time anyone mentions heaven. We have adopted this idea of spiritual ether into which our souls disappear to be with God, never again to have physical form. I would attempt to explain this; but I can’t. Nowhere in the New Testament does it mention that our spirits are to become divorced from our bodies. We might take some of these ideas from the Old Testament, and it is a very nice cosy way of describing what happens when we die that doesn’t involve complicated explanations, and is therefore, to some extent, useful. Of course attempting to simplify hard concepts is a useful thing, and indeed is what I am here attempting to do; there is a distinction, however, between simplification and adjusting the truth in order to achieve that result. At this point I imagine that many of you are thinking, of course I understand this. If you do, fantastic! Let me put it like this: do you believe that when you die, as a believer, you will go to be with God in heaven? If you have just answered yes to the above, then our discussion is going to lead to a reappraisal of your idea of ‘heaven’, and I hope and pray you will benefit by it.
Please don’t think that I am saying anything revolutionary here. As I hinted during the last article, many (often centuries old) hymns deal accurately with this. So, I imagine that many of you are now wondering if this (apparently sane) writer has now lost it totally by saying that we have got it, at least to some extent, wrong. So let me begin.
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul explains in depth exactly how this resurrection will take place. Our model for this resurrection is Jesus; his Spirit was separated from his body for three days, until he was physically raised from the dead. He did physical things like eating and walking and talking and made physical contact with his disciples, most notably Thomas (John 20:24-31). His new body was recognisable to the disciples, but must have been in some ways different: he was able to walk through a locked door, and disappear. In spite of these (physically impossible) things, we should not be in doubt that there was a physical resurrection. This is explained in verses 1 to 34 of our reading. In verses 12 to 19 Paul goes so far as to say that if we do not profess our faith in this physical resurrection, we deny the resurrection of Christ, and render therefore our faith entirely useless (verse 14) and futile (verse 17). It is also useful to bear in mind that Paul’s phrase here and elsewhere for death in this world is ‘sleep’; this analogy is very useful to us: if you are asleep you will wake up, it is a temporary state.
From verse 35 onwards we see a description of how this applies to us. The body ‘sown’ at death is not the body that will be raised, but it is a ‘seed’ of the body that will be, which is to be as God determines it. Verses 42 to 44 show the contrast between our earthly bodies and our ‘heavenly’ bodies; which are as different as human bodies are to animal bodies on earth. From that which was perishable comes that which will be imperishable; from dishonour comes glory; from weakness come power and from natural life comes spiritual life. And this is the eternal life that we so often talk about as a purely spiritual experience. Verse 49 closely matches 1 John 3:2, we now bear the likeness of ‘earthly man’ as typified in Adam; then we shall bear the likeness of Christ, i.e. ‘we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is’. How could we be like the physically risen Christ who defeated the power of death in his physical resurrection if we are to be intangible spirits and he is a physical form?
From the Old Testament we can read some of these ideas; In our study of Isaiah, we saw that in chapter 35:5-7 and 32:3-8 that on the day of the lord those with physical hindrances would be freed of them. Daniel 12 also hints strongly at this, that ‘multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.’
Continuing with our reading of 1 Corinthians 15, we see in verses 50 to 58 further details about this resurrection. It is this bodily resurrection that will ‘clothe’ us with immortality, and thereby render death finally defeated as prophesied in Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:14, which we find quoted here as evidence.
Further reference is made to this change in 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, with some oblique reference in chapter 4, this follows a similar line to the reading from 1 Corinthians we have studied above in terms of the comparison it draws between our earthly and heavenly bodies (dwellings). The one addition is that we are shown as longing for the day when all this will happen, and that the Spirit within us is an indication of what the resurrection body will be like. This is followed in verses 7-10 with an encouragement to live with our sight on that which is to come by living to please God alone so that we will appear pure before Him.
So where does our idea of heaven come from? It would be foolish to suggest that there are no grounds upon which to base the idea usually given the name of ‘heaven’ in the Bible. In Revelation 6:9 we see the souls of the martyrs beneath the altar. We also have a vision in Revelation 7:9–17 of a multitude gathered in worship of God before the final judgment of chapter 20:11-15. From this we might suggest that in death we fall asleep as Paul puts it ‘in Christ’, i.e. our souls depart to what we call ‘heaven’ until the day comes when our bodies rise again made perfect in the victory of Christ.
This resurrection extends beyond our bodies. In Revelation 21 we find a description of the creation of a new heaven and earth, which coincides with the resurrection of body and the marriage of the Lamb and his bride (the Church). You may remember from part 2 of this series that we saw in Isaiah 24 that the old earth is completely destroyed; we now know that it is to be replaced.
Having assessed the main pieces of scripture that we have relating to this, I hope that we are now able to gain a better picture of how the ‘restoration’ of God’s people that we discussed before will take place. There is no doubt that this is incredibly complicated; I do not claim to understand it. I have, however, had the benefit of having read these writings on the subject in conjunction with one another. From any interpretation of these readings we cannot take any message but that there will be a physical resurrection of our immortal bodies. We can dispense with any notion of a purely spiritual ‘heaven’, which although it exists, is where we will wait until our new bodies are given us as God sees fit on that final day.
At this stage I am going to raise an issue that might cause us some problems when presenting this, and it is one word: ‘reincarnation’. The problem: ‘are we discussing reincarnation?’ The answer: ‘no!’ The concept of reincarnation comes loaded with several fixed notions: 1) The body is resurrected as a normal physical body that bears no resemblance to its former self, and a mind which holds no memory of its previous self. 2) That body is what Paul would call an ‘earthly’ body, in that it will die, by definition of this process which would continue ad infinitum. 3) That body is consequently subject to all the defects, major and minor, which come with being human. From this brief (and simplistic) statement we can surely see that Christian theology is significantly at variance in that we certainly disagree with all three points on the grounds of clearly expressed teaching to the contrary as cited above. We will be aware of who we are in our resurrected bodies just as Jesus knows who he is in his, if He is to be our model for this process it seems reasonable to suggest that we will also bear a strong enough resemblance to our human selves as to be recognized by close friends, yet we will not be bound entirely by physical laws. This is a process that will occur for us once only, and as we have already agreed the body will be perfect (as it is given from God) and immortal. Many ancient religions believed in reincarnation; the Egyptians, for example, buried their Pharaohs in tombs for that very reason; they expected them to be brought to life in their mummified state. Again, I can only emphasise in their mummified state and suggest that this is clearly at variance with the belief of the writers who developed our beliefs on this matter. We can also dispense with the ethereal notion of our souls departing our bodies to float around nowhere in particular. In fact it seems that this is probably where our problems arise: have we watered down our own belief in order to attract those who do believe this?
I hope this has clarified the way the Bible deals with the resurrection of body; there is not as much teaching related directly to this as we could, perhaps, want. That is a matter for God to decide and is not for us to question. What we do know is that, as 2 Timothy 3:16 says all scripture is an authoritative source for us, and we must treat the various pieces of this puzzle with the respect they deserve regardless of the fact that they are fewer in number than other subjects. I do not expect that this is the easiest of articles to read; neither was the original teaching! I expect that some people feel that they have got it wrong and completely misunderstood this. All I can say is that I was in the same position until about 2 months ago when I first began to go into some depth on this subject.
Learning is sometimes a challenging process; however you react to this please don’t allow it to change your beliefs that we will ‘fall asleep’ to be in the presence of Christ (heaven), we’ve only missed out on the next part of the story. Any teaching you have previously had that says you go to heaven if you believe is still correct, but misses out a piece of theology that is understandably not usually taught to new or recent believers. What I will say, and I expect some will disagree with me, is that our Church today is doing a great work among non-Christians, but are we over-simplifying our teaching to the extent that we never go beyond what I shall call the ‘basics’ to our own cost? Perhaps we need to find a way of feeding those who need to be introduced to faith as well as allowing those who need to grow in faith and knowledge of scripture to do so. Aren’t Bible study groups a good idea!
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