The Resurrection of the Body

What kind of body is a resurrection body? Paul meets the skeptic's question head-on, drawing on seed and harvest, earthly and heavenly, the first Adam and the last. What is sown perishable will be raised imperishable. What is sown in weakness will be raised in power. This Sunday we sit with one of Scripture's most remarkable promises — that the body matters, and that God intends to redeem it fully.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We're in our sermon series, The Death of Death. And what we've been looking at is Paul's argument for the purpose and literalness of the resurrection of not just Jesus, but of those who are in Jesus also. And so that's what this series has been looking at. And we're here this morning in verses 35 through 49. Here's what I know for sure. You and I, we have a problem with our bodies. And it's not the problem you might be thinking of, at least not the obvious one, right? I am studying this sermon. I decided out of this deep conviction I was going to start working out again, right? And uh my kids were all off at camp for a whole week. My only excuse was laziness. And here's what I can tell you there is a problem with my body. It is dying, even while I'm talking to you. It is decomposing and deteriorating right before your eyes. I feel it in the very fibers of who I am. But I'm not talking about this obvious one of the weakness, the limitation, the way that we age and fail, and ultimately these bodies give out, right? What I'm talking about is something that is as real and present in everyday life, but it's one of our worldview, of our belief and thought. The problem is what we've actually concluded about our bodies in light of all the shortcomings we experience. Somewhere along the way, in yours, in my life, the body simply became the thing we drag behind our spiritual life. The body became the thing that we dragged behind our spiritual life. The vessel, the container, at best, something simply to be managed, and at worst, something to be completely discarded and escaped. We've made peace with the idea that God is mostly interested in our spirit. And the body just accompanies our life until the time runs out. The problem is that view dismisses how God created us as embodied persons, spirit and body together, making up our personhood, our soul. It dismisses how God created us. But it doesn't just dismiss that, it actually diminishes how he is redeeming us. How is he redeeming his whole creation through the finished work of his son Jesus? As I said, he's made us embodied persons, and he's redeeming us toward resurrected embodied persons. In this passage, the Apostle Paul, he's writing to a church that had drawn many of the exact same conclusions, and he's going to spend the next 15 verses dismantling this worldview, this theological system of which now their lives are operating within. And what he wants to make clear is this the body is not the problem, the body is the promise. The body is not the problem, the body is the promise. And what God intends to do with yours, the one you inhabit right now in this room, the one that aches and groans and feels burdensome, what God wants to do with that body is far greater than you have ever thought or imagined or could comprehend. So read with me, beginning in verse 35. Says this. But someone will ask, How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? You foolish person. 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 some other grain. But God gives it a body, as He has chosen, and each kind of seed its own body. Now, there are two questions that Paul assumes his readers might ask in light of the defense of the literal physical resurrection of the body. Now, the first question, how are the dead raised? It's a question of ability. How in the world can dead things come back to life? By what power? By what means? While the second question, with what kind of body do they come, is a matter of essence. What nature will those bodies have? So, Paul, before he really dives into answering those questions, he calls such a person who might ask such a thing a fool. You fool. Now he's not just hurling insults at the Corinthian church to try and make fun of them or to try and demean them. No, he's actually making diagnosis about the worldview of which they hold. You see, a fool in the biblical sense is one who does not take God into account in their thinking or way of life. So Paul's saying, your whole worldview, where these questions even derive from, is a worldview of a fool that's removed God from the way that they understand the life that they're living. When you ask about how can someone be raised from the dead, have you not contemplated or considered your maker who took creation and made it out of nothing? Or when you say, With what kind of body will they have? Have you not seen the splendor and diversity of the bodies of which he's made? There's nothing impossible for him. And so Paul makes a diagnosis about the worldview of which they hold, saying, You've removed God from it. That's why you're asking these questions. The problem's not that the questions are dishonest, the problem is that they're built on assumptions absent of a God whose power is without limitation. The first question: how are the dead raised? As we said, it's an objection to ability. Bodies decompose, they scatter, they disintegrate back into the earth. And so the philosophically minded in Corinth looked at the physical reality and concluded that resurrection was simply irrational. You cannot get life from dust. Dead things stay dead. As we saw last week, Paul even quotes their cultural anthem back at them in verse 32. If this is the worldview that you're gonna hold, then just eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. That Gnosticism, that belief that the body is evil and doesn't matter, it collapsed for the Corinthian church into utter hedonism. That they would just pursue fleshly, worldly pleasure right now because tomorrow didn't matter because they had no vision for the future of their body. This anthem is the life lived if you cannot imagine a future for the body, because the present body becomes everything that you have. Now the second question with what kind of body do they come? Right? That's a bit more sophisticated of a question. It's not so raw because it actually assumes, for the sake of argument, that something might happen after death, but then it presses on the objection of essence. The physical body is in essence unsuitable for eternal existence.

unknown 8:40

Right?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Flesh immortality, they go together. So even if you could raise a body, the body is not the kind of thing that belongs in the eternal realm of God in his glory. Now, while Paul puts forward two distinct questions from his opposers, I want you to notice what they share. Both of them have attempted to write the body out of God's redemptive story. One by resignation. How can dead things ever live? One by spiritualization. Even if they did rise, they wouldn't be suitable for glory. Paul refuses both questions on their own terms, and he doesn't answer the first one with some explanation of how God reassembles dust particles back into fleshly bodies. What does he do? He points to a seed. He points to a seed. You plant a simple seed into the ground, and what comes up? It bears no resemblance to what was sown. The seed does not survive in any recognizable form. It dies. And from that death, something entirely distinct emerges from it. It's complex, it's transformative, it's alive in a way that the seed never was, suited for the world that the seed could not inhabit on its own. And yet, it's the same plant. Think about an apple seed. If you had no frame of reference for an apple tree, you could go your entire life holding a seed in your hand and never draw the image of the tree from it. Never. How could this seed become something so transformative as the tree? You see, the gap between what the seed is and what it's going to become is simply too large, too full of majesty to imagine. But the tree is what the seed was always for. Every part of that tree was already latent in the information of the seed, waiting for the right conditions, waiting to be put in the ground, waiting to die, so that something the seed could never become on its own could finally emerge. You see, God gives the seed a body through death. A body that He has chosen that is transcendent and transformative and full of glory and splendor. That's resurrection. Continuity of person, the seed and the plant are still the same apple, but distinct through transformation of image. This is what Paul wants to help us understand here. The God who designed the seed, who knows exactly what is going to become, is the same God who is able and will raise your body in resurrection life. So don't ask, can the dead be raised? Don't ask with what kind of body will they come. Understand, the same God works all things for his glory and the good of his people. Then Paul, he's gonna press the further, he's gonna press further to answer the question of essence. And here's what he says: look at creation. Right? You've got animals, birds, fish, stars, sun, moon. God has never been limited to any single kind of body. If you're worried about will this body be able to dwell in transcendent glory, you don't have to worry if God is able to make a body suitable for its environment. Fish can live in the water, birds can live in the air, the stars and the moon, they are able to dwell where they are with the right glory ascribed to them perfectly because of God's good design. God's never been limited. He gives each creature a body suited to both its nature and its environment. And so if God can do that across all of creation, from fish to stars, can He not give the raised believer a body suited for its habitation of glory? Then comes this list of contrasts in verses 42 through 44. Let's read these together. He says this. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory, it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Four contrasts are put forward here for us to observe. The first one is this perishable to imperishable. Right? The body sowed into the ground through death is subject to decay and deterioration, but the one resurrected is eternal and everlasting. He then says, from dishonor to glory. And marred by the effects of sin. It is dishonorable in its very nature. But the body that will be raised will be glorified and absent of sin and its corruption. Weakness to power. Our natural body is weak and fragile. It aches, breaks, bruises, rips, tears. Even the most superior human being among us is subject to death by a microscopic virus. We are weak in our very nature, but the body that will be is one of power. The resurrection is one of might and majesty. And then he goes natural body to spiritual body. Now that phrase, spiritual body, it's important to include body in that language. It's brought a lot of confusion within the church, especially theological confusion. People hear spiritual and they assume something. They assume that Paul means immaterial, ghostly, phantom-like, non-physical. But that's not Paul's contrast that he's making. He is not making material versus immaterial. The contrast he's making is soul animated versus holy spirit animated. Here's the Greek word that he uses for spiritual body. It's the word soma pneumaticos. Again, it's important that we include that word body in its definition. Paul was intentional by calling the natural body soma psychosis and the spiritual body soma pneumaticos. Why is that? Because it is a body. What's the difference? What is animating that body? What is bringing that body to life? And in the resurrection, it's the Spirit of God, the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. And so the resurrection body is a physical body, just as Jesus was when he walked out of the tomb, when he spoke Mary's name, when he broke bread on the road to Emmaus, when he ate breakfast on the shore with his disciples. But that body will be fully and finally animated by the Spirit of God in a way that this present body is not. You see, we often think of resurrection as simply a resuscitated corpse. Right? Our imagery of resurrection might be more zombie-like than we really care to be honest about. A body reanimated, resuscitated back to life. But the scriptures are very distinct between those who have been raised from the dead and the one, Christ Jesus, who has been resurrected. Right? Those who have been raised from the dead. Lazarus, Jesus' dear friend, Jairus' daughter, who, Jesus that was merely just sleeping. Those were people who had been raised from the dead. There was no discontinuity in form or essence. They were a resuscitated corpse. They were reanimated dead bodies who would simply die again. There has been one resurrected one. Christ Jesus. And his resurrection was transformationally distinct from his perishable body. After the resurrection, the people who knew Jesus best didn't even recognize him. Think back with me through his post-resurrection appearance. Mary Magdalene stood close enough to him at the empty tomb to have a full conversation with them and mistook him for the gardener until he whispered her name. Two disciples walking with him the entire length of a journey said, Did not our hearts burn within us? But never once did they recognize his face until he lifted up the bread, blessed his father, and broke it before him and said, That, that's Jesus. What about the disciples fishing on the shore? They saw him standing there next to the fire, and they had no clue who it was until the fish started overwhelming their nets, and Peter dove into the water saying, That's the Messiah. That's him. Thomas. Thomas, who needed proof of identity. Jesus didn't point to his face and said, Thomas, look, it's me. No, he pointed to the wounds in his hand and the spear that pierced his side. He pointed and said, The marks of my death are my recognition. But yet Jesus was unmistakably him. Mary's heart filled with joy when she heard her name whispered. That's Jesus. They saw in the way he blessed the meal, that's Jesus. They saw in the way that he presented himself, that's Jesus. How he worked a miracle to bring them their sustenance. That's Jesus. That's Paul's point. You cannot look at the seed and draw the tree. You can't do it. You see, in Jesus, it was the same voice, the same wounds, the same hands that broke bread. He ate with them, they touched him. He was not a ghost or a phantom or a vision. He was physically, bodily present, but transformed beyond recognition. You see, the people who had spent three years with Jesus could not look at the risen Christ and immediately see the man that they had buried, the seed that they had sown into the belly of the earth. It wasn't that anymore. And so the gap between what went into the grave and what came out of it was simply too great for them to take in at a glance. It was the same person, yet unrecognizable glory. And church, that's what's coming for your body. Paul reaches back to Genesis to show us why this is true, verses 47 through 49. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of dust, of the dust. And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. Here's another thing I think we get confused. When we hear we will be or being transformed into the image or likeness of Jesus, there's a twofold disconnect. One is that we often only think about our inner man. We don't take our outer man into consideration. And two, we see the language of identical rather than image or likeness in its proper place. Look around this room. You all bear the image and likeness of your father Adam. Now look at all the distinct diversity that makes up this room. But nonetheless, you are made in his likeness, the man of dust. In resurrection, you and I will fully be made into the image and likeness of the man of heaven, Jesus. But there's this beauty that we will have this distinct diversity of personhood still intact, yet completely transformed. Here's what Paul puts forward. There's two atoms, the first and the last. There's two images. You were born bearing the image of the first Adam, made from dust, returning to dust. And so every ache, every limitation, every grave that you stood beside and wept over, you know what that is? It's the image of Adam, the man of dust. It's your inheritance that he's given to you. But if you're in Christ's church, a second inheritance is coming. Because here's where this is all pointing to. The fullness of our redemption is the fullness of his image. The fullness of our redemption is the fullness of his image. Paul does not say that one day you'll simply leave your body behind. And what really matters is just your spirit, man. He says, no, you will bear in full image, spirit and body, the image of the man of heaven. You will wear him. Like a body wears a robe, or like a king wears a crown. You will be adorned with him. This means that the whole Christian life is directional, it's toward an end and aim, which is Christ Jesus. And the direction of our life runs right through the body. It doesn't try to subvert it or go around it or destroy it. It is here in our embodied self, sanctification. It's not just an internal project of the spirit man. No, it's a whole person project of our whole self. And so the spirit forming Christ in your inner man right now is already moving the whole person toward a destination that includes your outer man also. Romans 8 tries to help us understand this. And it helps diagnose a tension that we feel. Let's start with 829 first. It says this for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Now, that is not a metaphor for spiritual improvement. That is a destination with a body in it. And the spirit working in you now is not a temporary arrangement until you get to your real redemption. He's the first fruits. The spirit in you now is the down payment, the guarantee that what he has begun, he will finish in you. This is why the resurrection is not just a fact about the future with no impact for our present. The body you carry right now, it's already under the Spirit's redeeming care. What you do with it right now, how you suffer in it, how you offer it to God as a living sacrifice of worship, as Romans 12, 1 says, is our spiritual service to Him. What we do with our body, none of it is wasted. The seed is not wasted. It is exactly the raw material God has chosen to work with for his glory. But here's where it gets personal for us. Because the two questions of verse 35, how are the dead raised and with what body shall they come? It's not just questions rooted or abandoned to ancient philosophy. These are questions that we, whether consciously or subconsciously, have wrestled with ourselves. And here's the truth we've created a theology that informs the function of our everyday life from it. You see, the way we answer those questions has been shaping you and how you relate to your body, how you relate to suffering and to hope. And what we need to understand is that the tension that we feel, it's not something that's gone wrong in our spiritual life. It actually has a name. And Paul gives it a name. Here's what we kind of distill it down into. You and I, we live in the tension of partial redemption. We live in the tension of partial redemption. Look, the Spirit of God is already at work in us. If we are in Christ Jesus, we have been filled, sealed, baptized in, empowered with, the fullness of the Spirit of God. He's at work in us, He's real, He's present, He's forming Christ in our inner man. But let's go back to Romans 8 for a second. Because 823 says that we have the first fruits of the Spirit, the guarantee, the down payment. But notice what comes next. In 823b, it says, We groan inwardly. What? As we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. The tension you and I live in is our inner man now is being renewed by the power of the Spirit, while our outer man continues to break down, waiting for the promise of what's to come. That's the tension we live in. And what should that cause? Groaning. Groaning. Aching, weeping. You see, church, the first fruits, it's not the full harvest. The spirit we have received now is the partial gift, the down payment of the full gift that will be given to our bodies at the resurrection. This means that the very presence of the spirit in us creates the groaning. The more alive we become to Christ inwardly, the more we feel how unfinished the outer man really still is. And so that tension is not a sign of weak faith. It's a sign that the Spirit's actually doing exactly what it has promised to do in you. The question is, what do you and I do with the tension? What do we do with the groaning? I believe many of us were like the more like the Corinthian church than we like to realize or be honest about. Many of us, we resolve the tension by living as if today is all there is. Our Gnosticism, our belief that the body is bad and unredeemable, collapses into hedonism. We have a theology of the body. We just don't consciously know it. It sounds a lot like this. The body's just temporary. It's just some cage or prison that my true self lives inside of. And so at death I'll simply leave it behind. And what happens in it and what is done to it, it doesn't carry eternal weight. But but Paul addresses this head on at the beginning of this very letter. He says, Some of you are joining your bodies to prostitutes and not knowing that your body matters because it's the temple of the very Spirit of God. How dare you do such a thing to your physical body? This is why 1 Corinthians 15 is so important. Because it matters what we do. We can't just collapse into the pursuit of fleshly pleasure. And so the question of how you use it, what you do with it, what you feed it, how you present it. When you have this worldview, they simply just become personal choices rather than eternal matters. You see the cultural anthem of verse 32? It's not just the Corinthians, it's ours today. It's not just some shrug at mortality, whatever. It's actually a conclusion that's drawn from a theological belief. If the body has no future, it has no transcendent significance now. And if it has no transcendent significance, then whatever you do with it is between you and your personal preference. You hear this everywhere within culture. Right? Sexual ethics, what is it reduced to? Personal consent and personal preference. What about the body as this canvas of self-expression? But done without any recognition or reference to its creator and maker? Or the ache that our spirit feels, our body groans for. What do we try to do? We try to numb the groaning with whatever's in arm's reach. We are like those who would ask the first question. How are the dead raised? It doesn't even make sense. We're not hostile to the resurrection, we just simply find it unimaginable. And a body with no imaginable future will be lived like there is no tomorrow. So eat, drink. Some of us, though, we're we're much more spiritual than that, right? Here's how we try to resolve that tension of partial redemption. We try to do it by treating the body as the problem to overcome. Many of us in this room, we would never let our theology collapse into Gnostic hedonism. We're way too mature for that. We're way too smart, too disciplined, we're too spiritual. But our question actually is the second one that is posed. With what kind of body do they come? And underneath that question, there's an assumption that we've never honestly examined. The assumption is that the body is the lesser thing. The spiritual is what is real, the inner man is what is primary. So we build our entire sanctification almost entirely around the interior spiritual self. So prayer, scripture, devotion, character formation, these aren't just what primarily matter. They are what only matter for us. The body barely makes it into our vision for what God is doing in our redemption. It's something to be managed, subdued, disciplined. The body's not something being redeemed. We read Paul's language about putting the flesh to death, and we simply conclude that the goal is to become less physical, to live disintegrated lives rather than the embodied, integrative self we've been created to be. And so the body simply is the part that you keep under control while the real you gets sanctified. Instead of allowing our body absent theology collapse into hedonism, instead, it's the same Gnosticism, just a different side of it. We collapse into asceticism. So what is asceticism? Asceticism is the belief that the body is the enemy of the spiritual life. I would imagine many of us in this room hold that. Whether we consciously understand it or not. Instead of offering the body to God as a spiritual sacrifice of service and adoration and worship, we declare war on it. And so the drift, it's almost imperceptible because it looks so mature and godly and spiritual. But it's simply just Gnosticism with a quiet time. The dangers that we're not trying to escape God. The dangers that we're just pursuing Him with only half ourselves. And we call that maturity. But here's our hope. Church, the fullness of redemption triumphed when the man of dust rose as the man of heaven. Christ, the last Adam, he took the full weight of the first Adam's condition. He was born bearing the image of the man of dust. He was embodied, mortal, subject to hunger, thirst, exhaustion, grief, weariness, and physical death. He didn't take on partial humanity. No, Christ took our humanity upon himself entirely and in full, and he carried it all the way to the grave, but he didn't stay there. He was raised in resurrection power, not resuscitated, not a reanimated zombie, not his soul freed from his body, but he was raised in power, in glory, imperishable, in splendor. The same body that was crucified and buried came out of that tomb transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit into the resurrection body that this world had never seen before. Spirit animated. Not because he stopped being physical or with some ghostly phantom, but because the Spirit of God so thoroughly permeates his resurrected flesh that he is now the source and lifeblood of resurrection power for anyone who's united in him. This is the answer to both questions. How are the dead raised? Look at the empty tomb. With what body do they come? Look at the risen Christ. A body fully and finally animated by the Spirit of God. Church, he is the destination. And because you are in him, his resurrection is your guarantee. The first fruits are not the whole harvest. Church, they're the proof that the harvest is coming. In calling Christ the first fruits, Paul is asserting that the resurrection of the believing dead is absolutely inevitable and has been guaranteed by God Himself. And so here's the beauty about the tension that you feel. It doesn't just get dismissed, it doesn't get denied, it gets solved. The tension you feel has a resolve in the fullness of him. And that's where our hope is. So here's where I want to wrap up. The same spirit indwelling us now will raise us then in the fullness of his image. You see, this changes everything about how we understand and function in the body today. Your body's not just some vehicle that you drive until it breaks down like some irresponsible teenager. It's not an obstacle between you and your real spiritual growth. It's already a temple of the Holy Spirit, already under his redeeming care, his nurturing affection, already being moved toward a destination that Christ has secured in himself. So, what you can you do? You can offer your body in weakness without shame, embarrassment, or guilt, because weakness does not have the final word for you. You can suffer in your body without despair. Because the body that suffers now is the body that will be raised in power and glory then. You can serve with your body through sacrificial worship because no act of embodied love offered to God is ever wasted. And so the groaning you feel, that tension is not evidence of redemption failing. No. It's evidence that the spirit is present and that the fullness is still to come. And so the seed knows nothing of the harvest. But church, the spirit does. And he is faithful to finish what he has started. Amen? Let's pray.