Systematic Theology – Eschatology

The Resurrection Body

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 21 of 32

Track: #21

Year:

Dictation Name: 21 The Resurrection Body

[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer.

All glory be to Thee oh God who dost make all things new through Jesus Christ our Lord. We thank Thee that through Him Thou hast made us a new creation, and given us great and marvelous promises through Thy word. Fill us oh Lord with the joy of the faith, that as we face the hostilities of Humanists and Statist we may be more than conquerors, that we may withstand all the challenges of the enemy, and triumph over them to the end that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from I Corinthians, the 15th chapter, beginning with the 35th verse. I Corinthians 15, beginning with the 35th verse.

35 But some man will say, how are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?

36 Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:

37 And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:

38 But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.

39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.

40 There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.

42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:

43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:

44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

45 And so it is written, the first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.

47 The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.

48 As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

49 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

On four previous Sundays we have studied the doctrine of the body as we encounter it in scripture, and we have seen that the body is very important in God’s purpose, in creation and in re-creation. Unhappily there has been a hostility to the material, to the physical, in the history of the church. We have see the rise and prevalence at times of asceticism. Now the sad fact is here that too often Protestants look at the ascetic practices, of the early medieval church in particular, and feel very self-righteous. But they are not in a position to cast stones because asceticism has been all to prevalent, exceedingly prevalent in protestant circles also.

Let me cite a few examples, for one, church buildings. There are many, many Protestants who’ve made ugliness and plainness into a virtue. They feel it is more spiritual to meet in a plain, drab, ugly, church building; as though this constituted something special in the sight of God. And yet scripture tells us that the Lord required beauty in His sanctuary. Moreover in terms of this same asceticism the Bible is spiritualized and the law and the history of scripture are downgraded as though being material concerns they were lower. I’ve actually heard some Bible teachers speak of the Old Testament as ‘carnal’ and speaking to a ‘carnal’ level of the faith. In fact I don’t know whether to cry or laugh over this, but I’ve actually encountered in my travels, on a couple of occasions, situations where congregations were very suspicious of a minister’s spirituality because his wife was an attractive women, and if he were truly spiritual (apparently) the idea was that he should of married an ugly girl [Laughter]. That would of proven how holy He was.

Well the sad fact is that asceticism has to often beset every branch of the church. Together with this has been quietism, and quietism says in effect that the world of material concerns does not matter, so we will withdraw from these things, and cultivate a quiet Spirit, one unaffected by anything. Now the Bible requires a quiet and a contented heart, but this means trust in God, not a withdrawal from the material. What it means is what Paul tells us in Philippians 4:4-7 “rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand, be careful (or anxious) for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with Thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God. And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Now Paul was not a quietist, he had a heart full of trust, but he faced indeed the basic issues of his day head on, and stood before kings and governors and gave his witness. Moreover Paul was not passionless. All one has to do is read through the Pauline epistles to see that here was a fiery, a passionate man, a man who sometimes was full of grief, as well as full of anger. Quietism is really asceticism with a stoic emphasis. You’re not supposed to feel anything. A quiet heart that trusts in the Lord is very different.

I recall some years ago talking to a man who had just lost his wife and child tragically. He was sobbing; he couldn’t hold back his grief and wasn’t trying. And when I tried to comfort him he made it clear to be that he didn’t understand what happened, but he knew that God was good, and he trusted in the Lord. Now his attitude was not quietism emphatically, but it was trust; he had a heart stayed on the Lord. There is a difference. Quietism has its roots in stoicism whereby if someone came to you and told you that your house had just burnt down and your whole family was destroyed and all your possessions, you would say “it is nothing, it’s material and it doesn’t count.” That’s stoicism, it’s not Godliness.

Now when we deal with the body we’re dealing with something God made and God pronounced it very good, together with all of His material creation. Moreover God has a glorious destiny for that body, and therefore there is more than a little said about the body in scripture, and about the misuse of the body. Paul in the 15th Chapter of Romans makes clear that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is basic to our faith. That if we do not believe it, there is something seriously wrong with us, that we have in effect denied the faith and we are of all men most miserable. And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching in vain, and your faith is also vain Paul says, it is futility. Now man was created on the sixth day as the culmination of God’s created universe, and the resurrection of our bodies does not take place when we die, but is reserved by God for the end of all things, when the whole creation is made new, then even as on the sixth day, the final day of creation we were created in Adam, so too in the new creation, which begins with the second Adam Jesus Christ, continues with our regeneration and with the subduing of all things to Christ is accomplished, then when the new heavens and the new earth are created totally anew, at the end, our bodies are resurrected as the culmination of the new creation. So, clearly our bodies are important in the providence of God

Now in verse 35 Paul deals with some of these questions raised by the doubters. There are two questions he deals with in this verse. “In what manner are the dead raised up?” is the first question. The reference is of course to the dead believers. How can the corrupted, the decayed, the dissolved body be reconstituted and brought back to life? This is the first question. And then the second “with what kind of body do they rise from the dead?” After all, given the fact of decay the elements of ones have probably passed into any number of other organisms. This is the kind of thinking that was indulged in the early era, and subsequently by scoffers. So how can these things be reconstituted, and what kind of a body will it be?

The assumption of both these questions is the same, namely that the resurrected body has the same characteristics as the buried body. The assumption is that the body that we have now, in this life here and now, has not been affected by the fall. And the fact is very clear that our bodies are not what Adam and Eve’s bodies were in the Garden of Eden. Sin brought death into the world, and sin and death have dramatically altered the nature of the body so that our bodies are something dramatically different from what they were created. We are told that as the power of sin is broken in us, and finally the last enemy death is destroyed, there shall be a new creation. And that the final creation will far surpass the original one. Then Paul goes on to say in verse thirty six, and he calls the questioners, the doubters, fools, that even as a plant cannot grow, a tree cannot appear unless first of all the seed of that plant or tree dies, disintegrates, perishes, to give way for the new life; so to it is man. Thus death is not only the penalty for the fall, but it is used by God to give us a more glorious life in a more glorious body. And Paul says therefore that the body cannot enjoy its great future unless it dies. Death is not annihilation but a disorganization towards a reorganization, and the body is quickened, we are told, made alive, it is passive in other words, it is God’s doing, it’s a miracle.

Then in verses 37 and 38 Paul says it is a very different kind of body, it is a body which has a identity like that of the old so it is recognizable; but with a great difference. When one sows a seed a plant appears, and there’s a difference between, say a carrot seed and a carrot, in appearance. This is not so with us, and yet there is a dramatic and a very great difference. But Paul’s point is we cannot predict from the seed what the plant or the tree will be like, so we cannot imagine having not seen the resurrection body, what a resurrection body will be like. We know it will be a body, such as we have, there will be an identity and yet the potentiality will so far surpass that which we now have, that it is beyond our imagination.

A good many years ago, in fact when I was a student, I recall a young man who was in field events at Berkley, and he was a sprinter. And the thing he remarked about once was that running gave him a kind of a religious feeling, because with each year that he was there he outdid what he had done the year before; and what he never thought he could do in the way of bettering his mark, he was able to do the next year. And he commented that he felt that there were potentialities in the body that in this life we could never realize, and that sometimes when he was racing he felt a surge of something that hinted at the great potential on the human body. Well think about of how far surpassing anything we can imagine the resurrection body will be.

The in verse 39 Paul says all flesh is not the same. He speaks here of flesh, not body, although he’s made this point with regard to bodies, flesh is unorganized matter in the Biblical meaning, and body is the organization of flesh. And Paul is not here speaking of sinful flesh, but pure material being. Then in verse 40 and 41 he goes on to illustrate that and he says there are celestial body and body’s terrestrial. The celestial bodies are, as he says in verse 41, the sun and the moon and the stars. And each has its characteristics and its glory, and so too do the terrestrial bodies; of plants of animals, and of men. And then he hints at a little bit of what this glory is in verses 42 following. The resurrection body he says is similar, it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption, it is sown in dishonor, the dishonor of death, of sin. 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.

Now by spiritual Paul does not mean ghostly, but a body created by the triune God, by the Holy Spirit, to be the habitation of the Holy Spirit, so that while it is a material body, we are born from natural generation in this world. Adam and Eve were created by the act of God out of the earth. But the body which shall be, God shall create miraculously and with a difference from the way Adam and Eve were created, far more gloriously. It will be created from heaven to be the habitation of the second person of the trinity, a body for the Spirit. And so it is written the first man Adam was mad a living soul. The last Adam was made a quickening Spirit. Now this tells us what we shall be like, Jesus Christ. He is the one who is made a quickening spirit, he had a body, but His body as He rose again from the dead was a body in which the nail prints were recognizable, He took food and He ate it before His disciples and said: “see it is I, and not a ghost.” It was a body recreated by the miraculous power of the triune God, to be a body, a spiritual body made from heaven.

Our bodies now conform to the fallen world, then to the new creation. By our salvation we look to that new creation because we are citizens of it and we work day by day to conform our whole being to the laws, to the way of life of that new creation, and Christ who is the Adam of the new humanity and the new creation is the one whom we shall be like, we were originally created for dominion and when our full strength is restored in the resurrection body for our calling to exercise dominion and to serve God in the new creation, as Revelation 22:3 makes clear. There is an order in God’s creation, in the first instance our bodies are made of earth, in the second from heaven.

At the end, whether dead or alive, we shall all be changed Paul says, and we shall all put on immortality. Sin and death are forever abolished, the strength of sin, which is the law, will give way to a different aspect of our being. The strength of sin is the law in that man, when he is a sinner, works to break the law and he exercises his will to dominion now fallen, now perverted, to break God’s law and establish his own law and his own dominion. And that strength, that evil will to dominion, is broken because thanks be to God, we have to victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have strength given us through our Lord, and therefore in the great concluding verse Paul says: “My beloved brethren be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. For as much as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. It is not in vain first because as Romans 8:28 tells us we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose.”We cannot lose. God takes everything in our lives, the grief, the sin, the troubles, and He makes them work together for good when we love Him. You can’t lose.

And second the resurrection of the body makes for a continuity between this world and the next. It means that what we do now is significant, it leads to something in the world to come, it leads to a glorious future. As Paul says in I Corinthians 5:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone might receive the things done in His body, according to that He hath done, whether it be good or bad (it’s a tremendous statement) we’re all going to appear before the judgment seat of God, of Christ, to receive the things done in our body’s, whether it be good or bad. Nothing that we do is in vain, or without consequences. We cannot depreciate our bodies.

In fact, the parable of the talents applies here. God gave to three of His servants’ talents and said “go and use these.” And the one who did not use his talents was condemned; our bodies are given to us by God to be used for His glory in terms of His law word. If we do not so use them we will indeed be judged.

Paul again says in I Corinthians, the first chapter, the ninth verse, we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, says the Lord. And the word of God says that our bodies were created by Him, they have an eternal purpose in Him and with Him and therefore we are to live by every word of God so that our whole being is under God and His word. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thank unto Thee that Thou hast made us and that our lives are not in vain in Christ, and our labor ever in vain. But Thou dost make all things work together for good in Thee. Grant oh Lord that we live day by day knowing that we must appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive the things done in our bodies, according to our daily lives, whether they be good or bad. Give us grace therefore to trust in Thee, to obey Thee and to walk joyfully and faithfully with Thee all the days of our lives, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] Well these scriptures, especially verse 51-57, we have heard a lot during this Christmas season because that’s the word for word Handel’s Messiah.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s right. Handel’s Messiah ties in the…

[Audience member] Starts at the 51st verse.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Handel’s Messiah begins with the prophesy’s of Christ, and then with His coming tells us what our destiny in Christ is.

Yes?

[Audience member] You commented on the wounds in Christ’s body. Many times when we think of the resurrection we think, and we certainly hope and believe that the frailties of our body, that sort of thing will be healed, and yet Christ definitely showed the wounds in His body. Do you feel He still has those wounds in His glorified body? Or what was the reason for those wounds still appearing after his resurrection?

[Rushdoony] There’s no way of knowing but I believe that he appeared with those wounds in order that they might see that it was indeed He. So that I think that was probably only during the period immediately after the resurrection, and it was as a witness to His disciples. However we don’t know, and scripture is silent on that.

Yes?

[Audience member] The disciples traveling to Emmaus when Christ appeared to them, scripture says that their eyes were {?} that they should not know him. And then later He revealed to them, open their eyes so that they would recognize who He was. Is that a capacity of the resurrected body, or was that something that would, maybe Christ simply did for His own purposes?

[Rushdoony] It’s a good question. On the road to Emmaus the disciples walked with Jesus, two of them, and they did not recognize Him. It is because they did not believe that He was alive. I was recently reading something on perception that was quite interesting and startling.

So used are we to seeing what we expect to see that very often we cannot see that which is something we’re not geared to seeing. For example when the ship The Beagle with Darwin aboard came to Patagonia they went ashore. The natives there saw the small boats because they had canoes and recognized small boats, but they did not see the big sailing vessel. It was not something they were used to seeing at all, and they did not see it until it was called to their attention, because it was something they were not accustomed to seeing.

We see what our eyes are accustomed to seeing. To give another illustration of that, they have taken and put glasses on people which have special lens which show the world upside down. Very quickly the people that have those lens, in terms of which they see the whole world upside down, will correct that vision so they see everything right side up wearing those glasses.

We tend to see what we are accustomed to seeing, and so it is they did not see Jesus until he chose to reveal Himself to them, and open their eyes.

[Audience member] Was that the same case with Mary Magdalene?

[Rushdoony] As what?

[Audience member] With Mary Magdalene, would that have been the same situation?

[Rushdoony] Yes, with Mary Magdalene it was doubtless the same. It’s interesting to speculate how this kind of limited vision marks all of us. How it has very often marked scientists who have observed things over and over again, that offered tremendous new discoveries and leads, and simply did not see them as relevant until much later when step-by-step they were led up to recognizing its importance and then they suddenly realized “but I saw that a long time ago” and yet didn’t see it.

Any other questions or comments?

Yes?

[Audience member] Well then based on what you just said then is it safe to assume that the spiritual body’s that we will have when we are resurrected will be recognizable in our personal sense? That I’m going to look like me in some sense, that my wife would recognize me, etc. and so forth and so on. Is that reasonable to assume that?

[Rushdoony] Yes, with the resurrection Peggy will recognize you and say “oh how good you look now!” [General boisterous laughter]

[Audience member] [Laughing] Walked right into that, didn’t I?

[More laughter]

[Audience member] When Christ is glorified and He, His body it is shown bright as light, do you feel that in the resurrection that we’re going to receive bodies similar to this, or are we going to be of the luminous {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s a good question. Of course we know that Moses, when he came down from the Mount, was asked by the people to cover his face because he too was to an extent transfigured, and his body shone, his face at least did.

Now what I’m saying is purely hypothesizing, but because in a sense a different world shone through our Lord then, it created a tremendous impact on viewers who were totally of this world. When we are all in the new creation we will all share the same characteristics so there will not be a particularly distinguishing mark. Do you follow what I’m saying?

[Audience member] Paul in 15, Corinthians 15, says that there is different glories.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] and he says so shall it be in the resurrection.

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Audience member] So you’re not saying that there’s not going to be a differentiation between glory?

[Rushdoony] There shall be. But I’m saying here, what we see from beyond, from the world to come as Christ, at the mount of transfiguration, struck everyone very forcibly it was so dramatically different. But it’ll be an aspect of our everyday life when we are in the new creation.

Someone once remarked if spring came only once in a century, the whole world would stand in awe of it, but because it comes every year most people take it for granted. So the glory that shall be a part of our bodies, and of all things in the new creation, will be a part of our everyday life there, a continual part of it, so it will not strike us as forcibly as the transfigured body of Christ did the disciples when they saw Him.

So we will move into a realm where everything will be glorious.

Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Our Lord and our God it has been good for us to be here. We thank Thee for all the great and glorious promises that our ours in Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that Thy creation so marvelous all around us is to be even greater at His coming again. Grant oh Lord that day by day we move with the confidence that we are citizens of no mean city, that we are members of Thy kingdom, that we have been made a part of Thy new creation with our regeneration, and that all things are ours in Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, amen.