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The Resurrection of the Body

The Christian hope is not simply that the soul survives death but that the body will be raised. Following Jesus, who rose bodily from the tomb, the Bible promises that the dead in Christ will be raised imperishable and glorious. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul calls Jesus the firstfruits of them that slept, the first of a great harvest. What is sown in corruption is raised in incorruption; what is sown in weakness is raised in power. This is why Christians confess not the immortality of the soul alone but the resurrection of the body.

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.1 Corinthians 15:20 (KJV)

Christianity's startling claim

Many faiths and philosophies have hoped that some part of us survives death, a soul, a spirit, a spark that goes on. Christianity says something stranger and bolder: that our bodies will be raised. The center of the faith is an empty tomb. Jesus did not merely live on as a spirit or a memory; he rose bodily, ate with his friends, showed them his hands and side, and was recognized. And what happened to him is the pattern of what will happen to all who belong to him.

This is why the ancient creeds of the church confess I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. It is not a footnote but the heart of Christian hope. The gospel does not promise escape from the material world but its redemption. The God who made bodies, and called them good, and himself took a body in Jesus, will not finally abandon them to the grave.

Christ the firstfruits

Paul devotes the great fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians to this hope. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. Firstfruits was the first sheaf of the harvest, brought to God as the promise and pledge that the whole harvest was coming. So the resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated wonder but the beginning of a general resurrection. Because he lives, his people will live.

Paul is blunt about how much hangs on this. If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain, and those who have died in Christ are perished. The Christian faith is not a set of timeless ideas that would survive even if nothing happened in history. It stands or falls on an event: Jesus really rose. And because he did, death itself has been defeated, and a door has been opened that leads through the grave and out the other side.

Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption

When people asked what kind of body the dead would have, Paul reached for the image of a seed. What we bury is like a seed sown in the ground; what God raises is like the plant that comes up, continuous with the seed yet gloriously transformed. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.

Every phrase is a comfort to those who have watched a body fail. The body that is sick will be raised whole. The body that grew weak will be raised in power. The body that was buried in dishonor and decay will be raised in incorruption and glory. Nothing that made us us will be lost, and everything that broke us will be healed. It is the same person, the same body in the deepest sense, and yet made new beyond our imagining.

What kind of body will it be?

Paul calls the resurrection body a spiritual body, and this has sometimes been misread to mean a ghostly, non-physical body. But he does not mean a body made of spirit. He means a body fully animated and ruled by the Spirit of God, no longer subject to sin, weakness, or death. The risen Jesus is the model: solid enough to be touched and to eat, yet no longer bound by the old limits, no longer able to die. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

So the resurrection is neither a mere resuscitation of the old body to die again, nor an escape into a bodiless existence. It is transformation. What is raised is continuous with who we were and radically renewed, the true self at last, freed from everything that ever diminished it. This is why Christians can grieve at a graveside and still speak of hope: what is laid down is a seed, and the God who raised Jesus will raise it too.

An ancient and certain hope

The hope of resurrection did not begin with Paul. Long before, in the midst of unspeakable suffering, Job cried out with sudden certainty, For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Even in the ruin of his body and the darkness of his grief, he believed he would one day see God, not as a bodiless spirit but in his flesh.

The prophet Daniel was given the same hope: Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life. And Jesus made it personal and present when he stood before a grieving sister at her brother's tomb and said, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. The resurrection is not finally a doctrine to be argued but a Person to be trusted; to have him is to have the life that death cannot hold.

This is why the earliest Christians could sing at their funerals and face the arenas without despair. They were not clinging to a fragile wish but resting on an event they had witnessed and a Lord they knew was alive. The tomb was empty, the Redeemer lives, and because he lives, all who are his will live also. Their hope was not that death is unreal but that it has been beaten by the one who tasted it for us and rose.

Death swallowed up in victory

Paul brings the chapter to a soaring close. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The last enemy, the one no human power could defeat, is undone not by our strength but by the risen Christ.

And then, tenderly, he turns from the vision to the everyday. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. Because the body will be raised, nothing done in the body for love of God is wasted. The resurrection is not only a comfort for the dying; it is fuel for the living, a reason to spend ourselves in good, knowing the harvest is sure.

Where Christians differ: All the historic Christian traditions confess the resurrection of the body as the final hope, following the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Believers have wondered, and differed gently, about the precise nature of the resurrection body, given that Scripture speaks in images of seed and harvest rather than in technical detail. What is not in doubt is the promise itself: the dead in Christ will be raised, imperishable and glorious.

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