The Resurrected Body Series

Today is Palm Sunday, the day we remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the people were waving palm branches, and shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD” (Mark11:9). What a joyful day that was. In its OT context, from Psalm 118:25, Hosanna means ‘I beseech thee, O Lord, save now’ [1]

However, later that same week, by Friday, many of those who shouted “Hosanna,” “O Lord please save us,” were now shouting “Crucify Him, crucify Him” (Mark 15:13-14). It was then they crucified Jesus. Jesus, taking on the sins of the whole world, died for us. But that’s only the beginning. On the third day Jesus rose from the dead. This is our hope.

1 Corinthians 15:20 But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Christ is the firstfruits and we who are in Christ will one day, in like manner, rise just as Jesus did. But those who were in the church in Corinth, had trouble believing about the resurrection, of Jesus, and the fate of those who had died in Christ. They had questions, like, so how does this resurrection thing work? How is our bodies resurrected? And that is the point of today’s passage. Paul anticipates these questions and will attempt to explain them.

1 Corinthians 15:35–49

How many of you know someone that you are very careful when you ask how they are doing because they will take the next 30 minutes telling all the things that are wrong with them. Then there are those of us when asked, will always say “I’m fine” regardless of the shape we are in. People today are pre-occupied with their bodies. While some of us could take better care of ours, major industries have sprung up to help meet the concerns that people have with their bodies. Many spend hours in fitness centers making sure that their abs are tight and that there is not an ounce of fat to be seen.

Beauty products abound - each promising to make us look like movie stars or athlete or younger. Wrinkles must be removed, hair must be tinted to hide the gray and blemishes must made to disappear. Many spend hours in front of the mirror. We are looking for the perfect or ideal body, sometimes using extreme measures, liposuction, implants, face lifts and plastic surgery. We want our bodies to be perfect and to last a long time.

Yet our bodies were only made to last a short period of time before they die and are gone. We see it in the aging process, even though we try to hide or prevent it, or delay its onset.

Short of Christ’s return we will find ourselves facing death. I agree that we should be concerned about our bodies and take care of them, but the body we should be more concerned about is the body that we will have not just for a few decades but the body we will have for eternity.

Today we consider the fact that we, as believers, will have a resurrected body one day and we will consider what it will be like. And while we may learn a few things, we may even end up with more questions than we started with. There are many things we do not understand about our eternal bodies and many things God has chosen not to reveal. Even passages in 1 Corinthians 15 are hard to understand – we could go thru all kinds of technical explanations, but instead we will glean what we can from passage so we can better know what it is when we say "I believe in the resurrection of the body!"

The people in Corinth found it hard to accept the idea of the resurrection. One reason was they thought of body as evil, something to be discarded. Another is that they could not understand how it could be done. How can God take bodies which have deteriorated, burned, or been destroyed in different ways and reconstruct them again? What if a cannibal ate a person? There are all kinds of things that are hard to understand.

The most startling characteristic of the first Christian preaching is its emphasis on the resurrection. The first preachers were sure that Christ had risen, and sure, in consequence, that believers would in due course rise also. This set them off from all the other teachers of the ancient world. [2]

So the question, Paul assumes is raised:

1 Corinthians 15:35 But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?”

How does the resurrection happen? How does the resurrection work? What is the resurrected body like?

1 Corinthians 15:36 You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies;