The Amazing Resurrection of the DeadSample

What will we look like when we are raised from the dead?

This seems to be an eminently sensible question, but Paul didn’t think so. This was his reaction: ‘You foolish person!’ Well, at the risk of being thought foolish, I want to go on and consider what else he said (1 Corinthians 15:36-49).

First, he states the obvious: no seed germinates unless it first dies. The consequential new flora is always better, brighter, and more beautiful than the original seed. It is usually astonishingly more beautiful. God makes it so (verses 36-38). The same will apply to us. Think about your garden’s most pesky weed and compare it with your most delightful flower or fruit.

Elsewhere he writes, ‘God will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body’ (Philippians 3:21). John agrees: ‘When Jesus appears we shall be like him’ (1 John 3:2). What an amazing prediction! Even if we are like him only in the way he could do earthly things differently after his resurrection, it will be amazing. But could it also mean that we will be as he was in his transfigured appearance? Is this the ‘glorious body’ to which Paul refers?

To be very clear, Paul goes on to point out how different seeds produce different plants. Similarly, different animals produce different offspring. But all have their particular splendour. In the same way, earthly life and heavenly life differ in splendour.

In particular, in 1 Corinthians 15, note the following differences:

Perishable—imperishable (v. 42)
Dishonour—honour (v. 43)
Weakness—power (v. 43)
Natural—spiritual (v. 44)
Earth—heaven (47, 48)
The image of Adam—the image of Christ (49)

The apostle describes the first man Adam as ‘a man of dust’ who was ‘from the earth’ (verses 45-49). As is commonly recited at funeral services, the body passes from ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’. We came from dust and to dust we shall return.

But the second man, Christ Jesus, is the man from heaven. While the first man originally became a living soul (the Greek word is psyche), the last was a life-giving spirit (pneuma). One received, the other gave.

The wonder is that ‘just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven’ (verse 49). What a promise! What a miracle! What a future!

This is our great hope. This is our destiny. To be like Jesus!

What next?

Think about the risen Christ before he ascended to heaven. In what ways was he different from other people? Make a list.

Read (aloud), record, repeat, and recall 1 Corinthians 15:42.