Jesus' Resurrection And Ours

1Co 15:20-22  

"But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits 

of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came

also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, 

even so in Christ shall all be made alive." 

    For the Greek immortality lay precisely in getting rid of the body. For him the resurrection of the body was unthinkable. Paul's view was quite different than the Greeks. If we begin with one fact, the rest will become clear. The Christian belief is that after death, individuality will survive, that you will still be you and I will still be me. Beside that lets look at another fact. To the Greek the body could not be consecrated (not sacred). To them it was matter, the source of all evil, the prison house of the soul. But to the Christian the body is not evil. Jesus, the Son of God, has taken this human body upon Him and therefore it is not contemptible because it has been inhabited by God. To the Christian, therefore the life to come involves the total man, body and soul. 

   But Paul never said that we would rise with the body we had at death. He insisted that we would have a spiritual body. And with that spiritual body, a man's personality would survive. It is almost impossible to conceive of personality without a body, because it is through the body that the personality expresses itself. What Paul is saying here is that after death the individual remains.

  My Friends, Paul believed in the resurrection of the whole man. He will still be himself; he will survive as a person. That is what Paul means by the resurrection of the body. Everything of the body and of the soul that is necessary to make a man a person will survive, but, at the same time, all things will be new, and body and spirit will "alike" be very different from earthly things, for they will "alike" be divine. 

Amen!

Reading: 1 Cor 15:1-58

Ref: HG SB; BSB

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry