God will give us new bodies that will live forever
February 18, 2007 (Monday)
“These perishable bodies of ours are not the right kind to live forever.” (1 Corinthians 15:50 TLB). After this statement, Paul goes on to tell us about the kind of body we will have in Heaven. First Corinthians 15 is a glorious chapter of the Bible.
Our physical bodies are remarkable. Every day they function without our knowing everything about how they work. Most of the time we don’t need to know the details of the body’s systems. We leave all that to the teachers and physicians, until we get sick. Then we want to know more specifics of how our bodies work.
Our bodies, as marvelous as they are, sometimes lasting more than a hundred years, shall perish. Somewhere along life’s way, we learn that we are mortal. We shall die. How do we deal with death?
The question is not a simple one. From this inquiry have arisen the many philosophies that attempt to help us understand ourselves and the world. People adopt beliefs that help them to cope with the idea of death.
Some folks accept death stoically. “That’s life,” they say. Others see it as obvious evidence that life has no meaning at all. Some see our offspring as a kind of immortality in which our genes are perpetuated through our descendants. Numbers of people believe we return to earth in a different form of life, like a lion or elephant. Still others believe that we literally return in the body of another person. Some think we become one of many spirits who either live in a different dimension on earth or walk among the living, observing and sometimes intervening in human affairs. More than a few Christians seem to believe we are transformed into angels. There is probably no end to the list, so I’ll stop there, and say that the Bible teaches none of these ideas.
What did Jesus say about this subject? He said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. (John 11:35-36 NIV). What does the Bible teach about these earthly bodies and eternal life? It observes the obvious about our earthly bodies: we die and in the natural order return to dust. After death, children of God are “absent from the body, present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). The definitive Bible chapter on this subject is 1 Corinthians 15, which speaks of a spiritual body we will inhabit in Heaven when we move out of this earthly body. At Christ’s second coming, we receive that new body, immortal and indestructible. If we are still living when Jesus returns, our present body will be “swallowed up” by the new one (2 Corinthians 5).
“Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).