The Resurrection Body

I'm becoming very thankful that one day, this body will be changed to a more glorious form that will be suitable for eternity.  I think a lot of those I love and serve in the church, along with The Lovely Joanne, feel the same way.  The last six months or so, we've all been assaulted by a myriad of aches and pains, and medical treatments for various body parts that have quit working up to the original specification.  We've been poked and prodded, stabbed with needles and shot with various kinds of rays, given exercises to do and pills to take, in an attempt to get the engine going again.  And in June, of course, Joanne and her father and I said goodbye to her mother, Joyce, as this mortal life ended for her. 

This physical body is not designed to last forever.  David said famously in Psa. 90:10, "Seventy years are given to us!  Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away."   Paul follows up on that in the "resurrection chapter," 1 Cor. 15.  Let's look at v. 53:  "For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies."  The earthly body, not suited to eternity because it decays, "cannot inherit what will last forever" (v. 50).  So God will give us a body, "the new body he wants [us] to have" similar to the way a seed planted in the ground sprouts in a new form (v. 38). 

We received our human body because of Adam, and will receive our spiritual body because of Jesus Christ (v. 45-49).  We will not be disembodied spirits, but will have bodies made for us by God: "For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies" (2 Cor. 5:1-3).  Jesus, after his resurrection, still looked like himself, including the wounds he had suffered on the cross.  He ate and drank with his disciples -- but he could also appear and disappear at will, and travel somehow.  And we will be given bodies like his (Phil. 3:21) so it follows that we, like Jesus, will look much the same as we have before.  (Now, there's a big debate about whether we'll get our hair back, or how much we will weigh -- the Bible doesn't say, and I'm not going there either!  You'll just have to find out later.)

What a relief that will be!  No more doctor visits or hospital stays, blood tests or mammograms.  Proctologists and gynecologists alike will be out of work (not that they'll mind, I'm sure!).  Joints and muscles will work properly again, and we won't be bothered with psoriasis, cancer or Crohn's disease.

What do we do in the meantime, while we suffer from these things?  We deal with what we have patiently, and look out for one another.  "Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2). "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed" (James 5:16).  And with hope in our hearts, let's look forward to the end, when even death will be destroyed completely by Jesus (1 Cor. 15:26).  Amen to that!