Given we are celebrating this week the most important event in human history, and given mortality is on everybody’s mind, it is a good time to reflect on the very long term, which would be forever. Providentially, I’ve been making my way through I Corinthians 15 the last week, probably the most important chapter in all of the Bible because it credibly affirms that event, the resurrection of Christ. The Apostle Paul tells us that the implication of Christ’s resurrection has eternal implications for those of us who trust its salvific meaning, the resurrection of the dead. If Christ was raised from the dead, so will if; if he did not, neither will we. He did, and we will! As I argued in my previous post, we have every reason to be confident this is true. In this final section of the chapter, Paul gets into detail about what exactly our resurrected bodies will be like, although for us words can hardly capture the reality.
First, he uses the analogy of a seed, which when sown “does not come to life unless it dies.” What is sown isn’t the thing, like a plant or tree or flower, but that which is contained within the seed. I wrote a blog post about acorns, and I marveled that there is a massive oak tree in a little acorn. God, I argued in Aristotelian terms, is the formal cause of all things, including our resurrected bodies. Just like a seed, it too will flower into something completely different, the final cause. He uses the power of poetic words to try to tell us what this will be like:
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 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.
Our slowly rotting flesh is not the end of the story! I don’t know about you, but this is very hard for me to believe. The main reason I believe it is because the evidence for the truth of Christianity is compelling, but the other reason I can believe it so passionately is because I find any alternative to Christianity impossible to believe. My Christian brother or sister, you need to get this because when you do your doubts will be harder to believe than that which you doubt! Like, “Could there actually be a real resurrection, and a resurrected imperishable spiritual body waiting for me after I die?” Let’s see. If the Bible isn’t actual history, if Jesus wasn’t Israel’s long awaited Messiah, if the gospel creed Paul started the chapter with isn’t true, and Jesus didn’t actually, really, physically come back to life, and the eyewitnesses were either deluded or liars (all 500 plus of them), then . . . . what?
Then atheism/materialism is true? And all of reality is a cosmic accident? Preposterous in the extreme! Then if a God-less universe is impossible to believe, and Jesus didn’t rise from the Dead, maybe Islam is true? Zero evidence, and look at the fruit. Maybe the Jews were right, and Jesus wasn’t the Messiah? But the only way Judaism and the Old Testament make sense is if Jesus was in fact Israel’s Messiah, and the whole New Testament is about his fulfillment of it, and a compelling case it is. Then how about one of the pantheistic religions, like Hinduism or Buddhism? It is impossible for me to believe that the end goal of a true religion is the obliteration of personhood in a universe filled with persons! And there is absolutely zero historical evidence for any truth claims those religions make, and they don’t really believe in “truth” anyway.
So I’m stuck with Christianity! The alternatives are not compelling at all, in the least, not even close. Not only is the Christian story compelling, the evidence for it being true is overwhelming. And whenever you doubt, because every normal, psychologically healthy, finite person does, just think of what alternative has to be true if Christianity isn’t. Then you’ll realize what C. S. Lewis, the most reluctant convert (from atheism) in all of England, concluded:
I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.
Because of the intellectual tradition of the West known as the Enlightenment, we’ve become conditioned to think that the burden of proof for the ultimate explanation of reality is all on the Christian. It most certainly is not! If you claim, friend, that Christianity isn’t true, actual history, that it’s a fraud, a lie, or a mass delusion, then what is? Convince me? Give me evidence for your claims, whatever they may be. We’ll find they can’t do that, and that the mass majority of people have no idea what they actually believe or why they believe it anyway. We do!
Paul then again contrasts Adam with Jesus, and that as we bear the earthly likeness of the former on this earth, we will one day bear the spiritual likeness of the latter forever, the clothing of the perishable by the imperishable. I used the word rotting above to describe our earthly bodies, and I just learned this very moment that that is a biblical term! People always laugh, or sometimes get annoyed, when I use it, but that is exactly what the Greek word for perishable, phthora-φθορά, means, destruction from internal corruption (deterioration, decay); “rottenness, perishableness, corruption, decay, decomposition.” Nobody over the age of 25 or 30 has to be convinced of this. And the older we get the less!
Paul tells us that, “in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet . . . the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” The rotting, or already rotted, will be transformed into that which can never rot! The mortal with immortality. Quoting the Old Testament, Paul declares what has been predicted, victory over death, will have come true. We conclude:
58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
We know, not in vain.
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