The resurrection, God’s answer to death

The hinge of the faith

Everything we have seen so far leads to one place. If a human being is a unity, if death is the reversal of creation, and if the dead sleep without consciousness, then the only hope for anyone who has died is that God will raise them. Paul understood this with complete clarity, and he refused to soften it:

For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.

Read verse 18 slowly. If there is no resurrection, “those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished”. Not “are in heaven without bodies”. Not “are enjoying God in a different form”. Perished. Paul could not have written that sentence if he believed that the souls of the dead were already in glory. For Paul, no resurrection means no future for the dead at all. That is how central the resurrection is, and that is why the enemy of souls has worked so hard, for so long, to replace it with something that does not need an empty tomb.

The firstfruits

But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming.

The firstfruits were the first sheaf of the harvest, waved before the Lord as a pledge that the whole harvest would follow (Leviticus 23:10-11). Christ’s resurrection is that pledge. He really died; He really rose, bodily, with a tomb left empty behind Him. And “each one in his own order”: Christ first, then “those who are Christ’s at His coming”. Not at their death. At His coming. Paul’s timetable is always the same.

Everyone in the graves will hear

Jesus gave the resurrection its widest statement:

Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.

Where are the dead? “In the graves.” What will happen? They “will hear His voice and come forth”. Who? “All.” There are two resurrections, one to life and one to condemnation, and Revelation tells us that a thousand years separate them (Revelation 20:4-6). But nobody is left out, and nobody is anywhere else. The dead are in the graves until He calls.

Four times in a single chapter Jesus promises the believer, “I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:39, 40, 44, 54). He does not promise, “I will receive his soul at death.” The last day is the day of resurrection, and that is where Jesus points every time.

The oldest hope in the Bible

The resurrection is not a New Testament invention. Job, in what may be the oldest book in Scripture, said:

For I know that my Redeemer lives, And He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, That in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, And my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!

“After my skin is destroyed ... in my flesh I shall see God.” Job expected to decay in the grave and then to see God in a body, with his own eyes, when his Redeemer stands “at last on the earth”. That is the second coming and the resurrection, seen from the far side of history. Isaiah sang it: “Your dead shall live; Together with my dead body they shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust” (Isaiah 26:19). Daniel was told that he himself would “rest” and then “arise” to his inheritance “at the end of the days” (Daniel 12:13). Hosea heard God promise, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death” (Hosea 13:14). Every one of these saints expected to sleep and then to be raised. None of them expected to bypass the grave.

What kind of body?

So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. 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. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

The resurrection body is a real body, the same person, but no longer subject to decay, weakness or death. “Spiritual” does not mean immaterial; the risen Jesus ate fish and invited Thomas to touch His wounds (Luke 24:42-43; John 20:27). It means a body fully alive to God and fitted for eternity, “conformed to His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). The believer who died with a broken body will rise whole. The believer who died an infant will rise. The believer whose body was lost at sea or burned to ash will rise, because “the sea gave up the dead who were in it” (Revelation 20:13) and the God who formed Adam from dust can form His children from anything at all.

The moment itself

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 incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

In a moment. At the last trumpet. The dead raised incorruptible, the living changed, both together putting on immortality. This is the morning the whole Bible has been waiting for, and it is the morning that gives “absent from the body” its meaning, the thief his Paradise, Job his sight of God, and the heroes of faith their promise. Nothing less than this is the Christian hope. Nothing else is needed.