Several years ago (2013), The Week magazine quoted TV chef Anthony Bourdain, who advised, “Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.” Then they posed the question: “What would be a good name for a theme park ride based on the typical American's body?”
Here were some of the best answers:
• Sedentary Mountain
• Cholester-Roll
• Plumper Cars
• Tunnel of Love Handles
• The Tragic Kingdom
• The Expanding Universe
• SORRY—ride closed due to poor maintenance (“The Week contest—Theme Park rides,” The Week, 6-27-13; www. PreachingToday.com).
To be sure, no matter what shape you’re in, your body is in a state of decay. The hardest thing for me recently has been to watch my dear wife’s body grow weaker and weaker over the last few months.
Even so, I find hope in the fact that her decaying body is but a transition into a beautiful, glorified body when God raises her from the dead. As our bodies decay, every believer can look forward to that day when God transforms this perishable, embarrassing body into an imperishable, glorious one. So, if you are a believer in Christ, don’t let the sufferings of this life keep you down. Instead, look forward to what’s ahead.
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Corinthians 15, where we see what’s ahead for every believer.
1 Corinthians 15:35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” (ESV)
Now, these are not the questions of a sincere seeker. These are the questions of someone who laughs at the concept of the resurrection. The Greeks in the First Century saw the body as an evil, tortuous, prison, so they could only image horrible things when they thought about a resurrected body. Maybe, they picture zombies stumbling around in misery. To which Paul says, “That’s really stupid!”
1 Corinthians 15:36-37 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain (ESV).
The Bible says the believer’s death and resurrection is like planting a seed in the ground. There is continuity between the seed that dies and the plant that arises from it, but the plant is very different than the seed. In the same way, the body that is planted in the grave is the same body that will arise, but it will be very different.
I like the way Lee Eclov put it in his sermon When the Seeds Come Up. He said:
Let's start with a tulip bulb. Is it a tulip? Not exactly. But one day it will be a tulip, because tulips come from bulbs. A bulb is planted—buried in the ground—and then the flower grows from it…
These mortal bodies carry our essence—our souls, our lives—and when these mortal bodies are buried, God draws that essential part of us up into the new bodies he will give us, the way DNA and life flow from the bulb to the flower. You will still be you when God gives you a new body, because he draws the "you" from this mortal seed of your body into the "you" of the immortal flower of your resurrection body (Lee Eclov, from his sermon When the Seeds Come Up; www.PreachingToday.com).
In other words, the “you” becomes fully realized when God raises your body from the dead. You will not be a zombie, stumbling around in a half-dead body. You will be more alive than you have ever been, because you will have shed the old, dry husk of the seed you were to become a radiant flower in full bloom to the glory of God.
D. L. Moody once said: “As I go into a cemetery I like to think of the time when the dead shall rise from their graves… Thank God, our friends are not buried; they are only sown!” (D.L. Moody, Christian History, no. 25; www.PreachingToday.com).
So, dear believer, to get through your suffering today…
LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR COMPLETED BODY.
Anticipate becoming all that God created you to be. Await the full realization of your potential in Christ.
Malcolm Muggeridge put it this way: “Quite often, waking up in the night as the old do, I feel myself to be half out of my body, hovering between life and death, with eternity rising in the distance. I see my ancient carcass, prone between the sheets, stained and worn like a scrap of paper dropped in the gutter and, hovering over it, myself, like a butterfly released from its chrysalis stage and ready to fly away. Are caterpillars told of their impending resurrection? How in dying they will be transformed from poor earth-crawlers into creatures of the air, with exquisitely painted wings? If told, do they believe it? I imagine the wise old caterpillars shaking their heads—no, it can't be; it's a fantasy. Yet in the limbo between living and dying, as the night clocks tick remorselessly on… I hear [Jesus’] words: “I am the resurrection, and the life,” and feel myself to be carried along on a great tide of joy and peace (Malcom Muggeridge, Seeing Through the Eye, Ignatius Press, 2005, p. 5; www.PreachingToday.com).
Oh, my dear friends, let the promise of your resurrection carry you along on a great tide of joy and peace. Just look forward to your completed body. Then…
LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR CELESTIAL BODY.
Anticipate the glorious form you will have in heaven. Await the imperishable, powerful, beautiful hunk you will be, fit for travel among the stars with God’s holy angels.
1 Corinthians 15:38-41 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory (ESV).
Paul changes the metaphor here, from contrasting the difference between seeds and plants to contrasting the difference between earthly bodies and heavenly bodies.
1 Corinthians 15:42-44 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 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. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body (ESV).
This dying, embarrassing, weak body becomes an eternal, glorious, powerful body. In other words, the earthly body becomes a heavenly body, and the natural (or soulish) body becomes a spiritual body—i.e., the body with a soul becomes a body with a spirit.
Lee Eclov put it this way: “Now, the landlord of your body is your soul. Then, the landlord of your body will be God's Spirit. You will still have your soul, but it will be God's Spirit who completely owns and moves you, with your soul as the happy tenant.
Then he quotes David Prior who said, “Even now God's Spirit dwells in our mortal bodies, but the more the Spirit makes us like Jesus, the more these mortal bodies groan under the strain of anticipating their own demise and the freedom of totally new bodies designed for glory and power… The first body has all the limitations of our earthiness; the second body has all the capacity of God's Spirit” (Lee Eclov, from his sermon When the Seeds Come Up; www.PreachingToday.com).
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get that kind of body.
In Plato’s Republic, Plato asks us to imagine a group of men, trapped in a cave, knowing only a world of flickering shadows cast by a fire. Having experienced no other world, they assume that the shadows are the only reality.
But what if the men could turn around and see the figures creating the shadows. More than that, what if the men could leave the cave altogether and see the reality that those figures only represent. That’s what it’s going to be like when we step out of our earthly existence into our heavenly one. We’ll see and be a part of a reality that goes far beyond the shadows of this world.
C. S. Lewis gives us a glimpse of that world in his book The Great Divorce. As he arrives in heaven, he says:
I saw people coming to meet us. Because they were bright, I saw them while they were still very distant, and at first I did not know that they were people at all… The earth shook under their tread as their strong feet sank into the wet turf. A tiny haze and a sweet smell went up where they crushed the grass and scattered the dew. Some were naked, some robed. But the naked ones did not seem less adorned, and the robes did not disguise in those who wore them the massive grandeur of muscle and the radiant smoothness of flesh. Some were bearded but no one in that company struck me as being of any particular age. One gets glimpses, even in our country, of that which is ageless—heavy thought in the face of an infant, and a frolicking childhood in that of a very old man. Here it was all like that (Lee Eclov, in the sermon It Doesn't Sting Anymore, www.PreachingToday.com).
Oh, my dear friends, that’s what’s ahead for every believer in Christ. So, in the midst of your suffering, look forward to your completed body; look forward to your celestial body; and finally…
LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR CHRISTLIKE BODY.
Anticipate becoming fully like Christ in your body as well as in your spirit. Await having a body just like His resurrected body.
1 Corinthians 15:45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit (ESV).
In contrasting our current body with our resurrected one, Paul has talked about the difference between seeds and plants, and the difference between earthly bodies and heavenly bodies. Now, he talks about the difference between Adam and Christ.
Earlier, in this chapter, Paul wrote, “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” (1 Corinthians 15:21–22).
1 Corinthians 15:46-49 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven (ESV).
Adam brought sin and death into the world. Christ brings righteousness and life to all who trust Him. Adam and those born of him are made of dust and to dust they shall return (Genesis 3:19). Christ, on the other hand, comes from heaven. He is the resurrection and the life, and those born again through faith in Him shall live even if they die (John 11:25).
Andrew Wilson says, “You are what you sweep” when He talks about your current state in Adam. You are dust, he says, which “goes unnoticed, for the most part. It surrounds us, but unless we work in construction, we hardly ever see it. When we do, it is usually because we are trying to Swiffer it up or sweep it away. Although we are continually touching and inhaling a cocktail of hairs, pollens, fibers, mites, and skin cells, we try not to think about it.
“Dust speaks of decay. It comes about through the decomposition of other things, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral. Dust in a home means our cells have died recently. Ghost towns and postapocalyptic movies are covered in it, highlighting the loss not just of creatures or structures but of civilization itself. And God says: ‘You are made of that.’
“It doesn’t sound very encouraging. Being dust-people means that one day we will be dead people… One day our cells will be swirling in the autumn leaves, wedged between sofa cushions, and hidden behind radiators. The same is true of the world’s most powerful and influential people… even our apparently invincible empires will finally turn to dust. So will we.
“But only for a while. One day, Paul says, we will no longer be modeled after the man of dust who came out of the soil, but after the man of heaven who came out of the tomb (Andrew Wilson, “You Are What You Sweep,” CT Magazine, May/June, 2020), p. 36; www.PreachingToday.com).
Think about it! One day you who trust Christ will have a body like His resurrected body.
After Jesus rose from the dead, He could move instantaneously from one place to another (Luke 24:33-43), and He could pass through locked doors (John 20:19-29). He tossed aside all barriers of time and place, while also eating food and letting His disciples touch and feel His body. They recognized Him for who He was in the same body, yet a very different one.
And that’s the kind of body you will have. People will recognize you and be able to touch you, but you will be able to travel at the speed of thought and pass through all physical barriers.
Imagine wanting to explore a planet at the edge of the Milky Way. Just think about where you want to go and POOF you’re there without having to use a spaceship or worry about any obstacles in the way.
You won’t need oxygen either. When Jesus ascended into heaven, he did not gasp as he rose higher and the oxygen got thinner (Acts 1:9). No! He rose through the sky, through the vacuum of space right into the throne room of heaven itself.
Lee Eclov explained it this way: “When Jesus rose from the dead, he didn't need our air to breathe. He may have breathed, but he didn't need oxygen to live, any more than he needed the meal of fish his disciples gave him to be strong. The living Spirit of God—the Breath of God—within him was his new oxygen (Lee Eclov, from his sermon When the Seeds Come Up; www.PreachingToday.com).
The same will be true of you who believe in Jesus. The Living Spirit of God within you will be your new oxygen. You will be like Christ in every way, both in spirit and in body.
So in the midst of your suffering today, look forward to that day. Look forward to your completed body. Look forward to your celestial body, and look forward to your Christlike body. It will help you get through today no matter what life throws your way.
Nancy Guthrie recently interviewed evangelical Christian author, Joni Eareckson Tada. A diving accident in 1967 left Joni, then 17, a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. In the interview, Joni expressed an interesting perspective upon what she is looking forward to:
You look at me in this wheelchair, paralyzed for 52 years, and most people would think, O, you’re looking forward to your new body. And yeah, that’s one of those fringe benefits. But I’m looking forward to the new heart; a heart free of manipulating others with precisely-timed phrases; a heart free of fudging the truth; a heart free from hogging the spotlight, believing my own press releases … a heart free of not believing the best of others; a heart free of caving into fear or anxiety about the future. I can’t wait to have a heart free of sin (Nancy Guthrie with Joni Eareckson Tada, “Suffering, Healing, and the Hope of Eternity,” The Gospel Coalition Podcast, 3-25-20; www.PreachingToday.com).
I can’t wait, either. In the meantime, let’s persevere through the pain and hardship, faithfully serving our Lord until the day He comes or calls us home.
