Raised in Splendor: The Hope of Gloryنموونە

Christ’s Glorified Nature

When we take Christ’s active and passive obedience together, we come to the crux of the matter concerning what Christ had to do in order to redeem people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Further, the reason that Christ took on humanity is that only He was able to reconcile mankind to the triune God. His perfections as truly God are expressed in His sinlessness as a true man and in His undeserved death for the sake of those who did. And by taking on the sin of those for whom He died, He is able to be the offering for sinners that God accepts (2 Cor. 5:21). He becomes the righteousness for sinners, as God looks upon Christ’s perfect life and sacrifice and declares them righteous because of Him. Not only is this defeat of sin true at the cross, but its defeat along with death is also true at Jesus’s resurrection (1 Cor. 15).

When the Bible tells us that Jesus rose from the dead, this is not like any resurrection we have seen previously. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus would one day die again. Lazarus’s resurrection was not permanent. However, when Jesus is raised by the trinitarian will, it is a first-fruits kind of resurrection. Jesus is the first of any human to be raised in final resurrection. We get a glimpse of what it means for us to receive a resurrection that fits us for eternity with God.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that we will share in the resurrection body like Christ. Paul explains that “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can corruption inherit incorruption” (15:50). We should immediately recognize the problem with this. We are flesh and blood. We have corruptible bodies.

What, then, are we to make of Paul’s statement that these flesh-and-blood, corruptible bodies cannot inherit the kingdom of God? Thankfully, Paul front-loads and back-loads this question in the very text from where we draw our question. Earlier in the passage, Paul tells us that just as we are heirs of Adam according to his fleshly body — “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust,” those who are in Christ are like the “second man [who] is from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47–48). In other words, we receive our corruptible human bodies from Adam, and we will receive our imperishable glorified bodies from God through Christ’s resurrection.

The truth concerning the resurrection body of Jesus leads us to think about Christ’s glorified nature.

His Glorified Nature

Here we return to the resurrection of Jesus to begin understanding glorification. Paul states our relation to Christ — our union with Him — in His resurrection body in terms of image-bearing (1 Cor. 15:47–49). Paul submits that, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can corruption inherit incorruption” (v. 50). Paul did not say that flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God, but rather that our flesh and blood as it exists today cannot inherit the kingdom of God. There must be a transformation — our corruptible and mortal bodies must be clothed with incorruptible and immortal qualities (vv. 53–54).

Paul’s basis for saying this is that Christ’s resurrection body has taken on these qualities (15:49). Just as in our old creation bodies in Adam we were created in dust, so in our new creation resurrected bodies we will bear the image of the Man of Heaven.

Thank you for reading!

This plan was adapted from Raised in Splendor by author Jason Alligood. Click here to learn more or purchase your copy.