Beginning at the Vigil of Easter and now during the rest of the week we have been celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. In His resurrection our Lord defeated death and began the resurrection of the dead. The stunning claim of the New Testament is that the resurrection of the Last Day has already started in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This means that Jesus’ resurrection is about more
than proving that He had completed His mission and showing that the saving work
of the cross had been accepted by the Father for our forgiveness and
salvation. Instead, Jesus is the second
Adam who brings the full restoration of human life, just as the first Adam
brought death. Paul told the
Corinthians, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits
of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come
also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ
shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits,
then at his coming those who belong to Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:20-23).
Jesus Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection.
He is the first part that guarantees the rest of us will follow. The apostle Paul tells us that Jesus is the model and pattern for our
resurrection. He writes, “But 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). In other words, if we want to
get a sense of what our resurrection body will be like, we need to look at the
texts in Scripture that describe the resurrection of Jesus.
What we find is that there is continuity and
discontinuity – it’s the same, but different. There is a profound continuity in that it is
still a physical and material existence.
Luke tells us that Jesus went to
great lengths to demonstrate to the disciples that He was the same physical
Jesus they had known before the resurrection.
We read: “As they were talking
about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, ‘Peace to
you!’ But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And
he said to them, ‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?
See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit
does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said
this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved
for joy and were marveling, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’
They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them”
(Luke 24:36-43). Naturally the same emphasis is found when Jesus tells Thomas
to put his finger in the nail marks and his hand into Jesus’ side (John
20:26-29).
Not only is there continuity in what the body is
made of, but there is also continuity in form.
The disciples are able to recognize Jesus because his body appears the
same as it did before the resurrection – he doesn’t have three heads or four
arms. The biblical witness supports the expectation that the form of the
resurrection body will be like it is now.
Genesis tells us, “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the
ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a
living creature”(2:7). The text describes God as being directly involved in
forming the body of Adam. The human body
was created directly by God. Sin has
brought weakness and death (Romans 5:12-14) and we now live a life impacted by
the curse (Genesis 3:16-19). Yet even
though lust currently inhibits our ability to perceive accurately the beauty of the nude body, we are still able to recognize the inherent aesthetic value
and beauty provided by its form.
Jesus Christ is described as the “second Adam” (Rom
5:12-17; 1 Corinthians 15:20-23). He reverses
all that Adam corrupted by his sin. Yet
for Jesus to play the role of the second Adam he must correspond to the
first Adam. The disciples are able to
recognize the risen Lord as being Jesus because he has the body of the Jesus
who was crucified. He is the same Jesus
– his body has the same form. Given how
the first Adam received the form of his body directly from God it seems
reasonable to believe that this form continues on in the resurrection body of
the second Adam, and so also for and those conformed to his resurrection
(Philippians 3:21).
A unique aspect of this continuity in Jesus’ body
before and after the resurrection is that Jesus’ resurrected body bears the
marks of His crucifixion. On the surface
this may seem to raise questions about whether our own resurrected bodies will
bear marks relating to the experiences of our life. Although the God’s Word doesn’t speak
directly to this issue, the manner in which this fact is introduced strongly
suggests that the marks on Jesus’ body are unique to His role as the crucified and risen One. They demonstrate beyond a doubt (see Thomas
in John 20:24-28) that the Jesus who died on the cross has risen from the dead.
There will certainly be continuity. And at the same
time, Paul makes clear that there will be discontinuity. He writes: “I tell you this, brothers: flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit
the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we
shall all be changed, 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” (1 Corinthians 15:50-52). Our bodies, which because of sin are mortal
and perishable, will be changed to be like our Lord’s resurrection body.
As we have seen, this does not mean that our bodies
will cease to be physical. This is a
common misunderstanding derived from Paul’s statement, “It is sown a natural
body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also
a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44).
However the Greek adjective used in the phrase “spiritual body” (σῶμα
πνευματικόν) does not involve the denial of a physical
or material body. Instead, as scholars have amply demonstrated,
it describes a body transformed for end-time life directed by the
Holy Spirit.[1]
Paul’s
discussion of discontinuity in 1 Corinthians 15 contains two sets of opposites.
In 15:42-43 he mentions: corruption/incorruption (15:42), dishonor/glory (15:43)
and weakness/power (15:43). They describe the body in the present as flawed. Then in a second set he lists:
perishable/imperishable and mortal/immortal (15:50-54). The first set appears to point forward to the second set, with the emphasis falling on the second set since Paul places it in the conclusion
of his discussion. Thus it seems that
the primary change/transformation (1 Cor 15:51 ἀλλαγησόμεθα ; Phil 3:21 μετασχηματίσει) has to do with the fact that the body in its fallen state is inherently flawed so that it wears out, breaks
down and dies. When the resurrection takes place, we will receive bodies that
no longer experience this. They will not perish and they will not die. Not only will it be a body that shares in eternal life, but will also be a body that is perfectly tuned to the Spirit’s guiding (a “spiritual
body”).
Paul’s
reference to glory and power (15:43) prompts us to consider one other
possibility. In the accounts about the
resurrected Lord, it is impossible to miss the fact that he does things he did
not do before the resurrection such as appear in the midst of locked rooms (John
20:19-20, 26; cf. Luke 24:36). His
bodily existence is not limited by physical barriers. Will this also be true
for resurrected Christians? No sure
answer can be given. While it can’t be
ruled out, Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians does not present it as an obvious
outcome. In addition we cannot lose
sight of the fact that in his resurrected body Jesus Christ continues to be something
that the believer will never be: true God.
As true God he was already able to do things before his resurrection that transcend the physics
of this world such as walk on water.
Likewise as the risen Lord who is still true God and true man he
continues to work the miracle of the Sacrament of the Altar. It may be that these actions after his resurrection narrated in the gospels
reflect his continuing powers as the Son of God and are not something specific
to the resurrection body itself.
There
are indeed other questions that we ponder. We wonder about things like what “age” will
our body be in the resurrection? For
this and similar questions, there are no answers. Scriptures enables us to understand
the broad contours of the continuity and discontinuity. For answers that go beyond this, we must wait
until the Last Day.
In
many ways, the discussion of the resurrection body takes up back to the first
day for Adam. God created Adam as a unity of body and soul. Adam’s sin brought death (Genesis 3:19; Romans
5:12-14). But God did not leave things
there. Instead in the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, the second Adam, He brings about the restoration of His created
intention for human existence. For us it
is simply a matter of timing. In Jesus
Christ the resurrection of the body has already begun. We are looking towards
the Last Day when Christ returns and gives us a share in it as well.
While
we wait, Holy Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar demonstrate the importance
of the body and point forward to the resurrection. Both sacraments are bodily, physical
actions. Water is poured on our body,
and bread and wine are received in our mouth. They show that God saves the whole person – body and soul. And both
sacraments point forward to the resurrection of the body. They guarantee that
our bodies too will share in Christ’s resurrection. Paul told the Romans about baptism, “For if
we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united
with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5). Our Lord has promised us, “Whoever eats my
flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last
day” (John 6:54).
[1] N.T. Wright comments: “They will
have a soma pneumatikon, a body animated by, enlivened by, the Spirit of
the true God, exactly as Paul has said more extensively in several other
passages. This helps to provide a
satisfactory explanation for why he has homed in on this unique phrase at this
point in the chapter. It is the most
elegant way he can find of saying both that the new body is the result of the Spirit’s work (answering
‘how does it come to be?’) and that is the appropriate vessel for the Spirit’s life (answering ‘what sort of a thing is
it?’) (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian
Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2003), 354; emphasis his).
Fee (Gordon D. Fee, The First
Epistle to the Corinthians [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1987], 786)
and Witherington (Ben Witherington III, Conflict & Community in Corinth: A
Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians [Grand Rapids: William
B. Eerdmans, 1994], 308) arrive at similar conclusions. See the perceptive discussion in Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God,
312-361 and in Anthony C. Thiselton, The
First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans, 2000), 1275-1280.
No comments:
Post a Comment