What will I look like after the resurrection?
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| The Resurrection of Christ (Kinnaird Resurrection) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Corinthians questioned the viability of the resurrection on two counts: “How is it possible for life to come out of death?” and “What is to be the nature of the resurrected body?” The first question is easily answered: If God is able to create life out of nothing, then He is perfectly able to bring life, order, and organization out of the chaos and confusion of death (which is not annihilation but the passing from one form of existence to another).
But what will be the nature of that organization? “The Bible clearly teaches that our bodies hereafter are to be the same as those which we now have; but it nowhere teaches us wherein that sameness consists,” Hodge wrote. “In what sense is a sprouting acorn the same with the full-grown oak? Not in substance, not in form, not in appearance. It is, however, the same individual organism. The same is true of the human body. It is the same in old age that it was in infancy. But in what sense? The materials of which the body is composed change many times in the course of an ordinary life, yet the body remains the same. We may rest assured that our future bodies will be the same with those which we now have in a high and satisfying sense, though until the time comes we may be as little able to explain the nature of that identity as we are to tell what constitutes the identity of the body in this life.”
Our bodies will be the same, but changed; just as Christ, after His resurrection, was the same, recognizable by the disciples, but different. But what is this difference? Our resurrected bodies will not decay, need nourishment, or grow old. No longer will we be bound by weakness of the flesh, but we will be raised in power. No longer will we have the bodies of Adam, natural and designed for earthly existence, but we will have spiritual bodies, like Christ, fashioned for our heavenly existence.
This does not mean we will be spirits. Spiritual in this connection does not mean ethereal, which would make “spiritual bodies” a contradiction. We will have bodies, but they will be adapted to our higher nature. What these bodies will look like is not known, anymore than we can see the beauty of the flower when we examine only the seed.
Go out into your yard, or go to a park sometime this week. Gather any acorns or seeds you can find. Examine the seeds and acorns closely. Taking the seed, compare it to the fully grown plant, flower, or tree. How are they different? In what way are they the same? Praise God today for the manifestation of His power in the resurrection.
