Our Coming Resurrection

Resurrection is not the same as reviving the dead. A number of people have been revived according to biblical stories, such as Lazarus or the widow of Nain’s son. Resurrection is a return to life, but it is more than that. Resurrection brings something new, a new body, as different from the old body as a grain of wheat from the mature plant, as different as the glory of earthly things and the glory of the stars.

Jesus was not revived. He was changed. Jesus after his resurrection did things not seen before, such as appearing in a house with locked doors. His closest followers did have a slight bit of trouble recognizing him. He was the same and yet different.

If you ask a hundred people what Jesus did to save us from our sins, most would say, “He died on the cross.” This is because we have—erroneously—elevated the death of Christ to the status of the ultimate saving act. Ask a theologian how Jesus saved us from our sins and you’ll hear a lot more: in the incarnation he assumed our condition to save it from within, at the cross he joined us in experiencing death, and by being resurrected in a new, glorious body he did away with sin forever.

Humanity is broken. We are not good. We have the idea of good and most of us want goodness. But we fail at our own standards and at everyone else’s. We are irrational beings who have the power of reasoning. We think highly of ourselves because of our reasoning, but look how we have ruined the world. If there is beauty, one of us will spoil it. If there is innocence, one of us will ruin it. If there is love, one of us will destroy it. If there is peace, we will bring conflict. If someone has plenty, someone else will take it.

God loves us—each and every one of us—too much to leave us to our own irrationality and inadequacy.

Death is God’s solution to the problem of evil. And resurrection is God’s solution to death.

As you might imagine, there are many sayings about resurrection in the Bible. Isaiah spoke of God swallowing up death (25:8). Ezekiel said the dry bones would live (37:5). Daniel said many who sleep in the dust will awake (12:2). Jesus said he was the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25). Paul says we were buried with Christ and we were (past tense) also raised with him (Romans 6:4).

But the king of resurrection scriptures is 1 Corinthians 15. And here are just some of the critical truths expressed there:

The resurrection of Jesus and the promise of our resurrection are connected.

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain.

–1 Corinthians 15:13-14 NASB

Resurrection is a key part of ending evil.

… if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.

–1 Corinthians 15:17 NASB

That Jesus was resurrected and that we will be resurrected is the basis of our hope.

If we have hoped in Christ only in this life, we are of all people most to be pitied. 

–1 Corinthians 15:19 NASB

Christ is the anti-Adam. Adam brought death and Christ brought resurrection.

For since by a man death [came,] by a Man also [came] the resurrection of the dead.

–1 Corinthians 15:21 NASB

Resurrection is every bit as universal as death (all people and all creation will be saved).

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.

–1 Corinthians 15:22 NASB

We are resurrected to a different kind of body, just as a grain of wheat becomes a flourishing plant.

But someone will say, "How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?" You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies; and that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.

–1 Corinthians 15:35-38 NASB

Our resurrection bodies will be “spiritual bodies.”

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable [body,] it is raised an imperishable [body;] 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.]

–1 Corinthians 15:42-44 NASB

Resurrection is the key event that brings about our New Creation (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). Karl Barth liked to contemplate the paradoxical dialectic of resurrection: we are New Creations but we still live as Old Creations. In God’s timeline (he is beyond time) we are already raised, already new. God relates already to the New Us while we have difficulty seeing beyond the Old Us. The promise is both now and not yet.

Douglas Campbell argues at length—in his weighty book, Pauline Dogmatics—that we already have access to our resurrected minds even while we live in our not-yet resurrected bodies. That is, through the mysterious presence of the Spirit of God within us we can already access the kind of thinking we will have in the Age to Come.

Easter is not just about springtime and pastel colors. It is the commemoration of the day humanity’s course was changed, when the myth of Adam was undone by the reality of Christ. 

Resurrection is not merely some event from the past we need to prove or disprove. Those who have come to be “in Christ”—which eventually will be everyone—do not believe in resurrection because of proofs. We believe it because the truth of resurrection was communicated to us by God himself. God reveals God. While there is some value in people considering the evidence or lack thereof for an executed messianic figure returning to life on the third day, our faith is not based on such substantiation.

The resurrection of Jesus is something you either believe or you don’t. I am saying that eventually you will believe it. We all will. And not because God twists our arm. He wins us all with love. And God always wins.