Hope for our bodies

The future resurrection involves not the restoration only of our present mortal bodies but the glorious transformation of those bodies. Now, the one example we have of a resurrected body is the resurrected body of the Lord Jesus. And it was a true body. Jesus said to his disciples, Go ahead and touch me. You see that I am a real person. I have a body. And they touched him. He even ate and drank. And so the resurrection body can do that, but there are other things it can do. Jesus’ body was capable of appearing and disappearing, passing through locked doors (John 20:19), and of shining with the glorious light of heaven (Acts 9:3). They say, Oh no, but that’s Jesus’s resurrected body. Well, here is what the Bible says: we will inherit in the resurrection the same kind of body. Paul says in Philippians 3:21 that Christ will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body. So we only know of one example of a resurrected body in the Bible—the resurrected body of Jesus—and we are told that ours will be like his. 

Now, it will not be a new body that we receive in the future resurrection. It will be these very bodies we have been living in—the same bodies, if Christ has not come yet, that will have died—they will be raised. The body is not replaced with a different body but is changed into a glorified body suitable for the new heavens and new earth, in which Christ will reign in glory. Geerhardus Vos says this: It is not a simple return of what was lost in death. The organism is now endowed and equipped with new powers. That is what the Bible shows—a body equipped with new powers. There are added faculties and qualities that should be regarded as supernormal from the standpoint of our present existence. Now that is a very wonderful hope we therefore have.

And we should note that we tend to think of our future in terms of our souls being in heaven with the Lord—isn’t that normally how we talk? What do you believe? I believe that I have trusted in Jesus, he has taken away my sins, and when I die, my soul is going to go to heaven. Interestingly, that is not where the Bible places the emphasis. In fact, comparatively little is written in the New Testament about what we call the intermediate state—that time before Christ’s return, after our deaths, when our souls are in heaven with him. What does the Bible emphasize? It emphasizes the glorious resurrection of the body awaiting both those who are living and those who have already died and are with Christ in spirit in heaven. One scholar rightly observes, “This resurrection is something new, something the dead do not presently enjoy. It will be life after life after death.”¹

Richard D. Phillips