What is the resurrection of the body?

Suffering, Evil & Hard QuestionsIn theological review

The short answer

The resurrection of the body is the Christian hope that God will raise the dead bodily at Christ's return, transforming the bodies of believers into imperishable, glorious bodies like Christ's own. It is not a soul escaping the body forever: it is the body redeemed. Paul devotes the longest chapter in his letters to it and stakes everything on it: if Christ has not been raised, he says, the faith is futile.

The fuller answer

Paul's fifteenth chapter to Corinth is the fullest treatment, and it should be read whole rather than mined. It begins with the gospel itself: Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared, to Peter, to the twelve, to more than five hundred, and last to Paul. The resurrection of believers is then built entirely on Christ's. He is the firstfruits, the first sheaf of a harvest that guarantees the rest. In Adam all die, Paul says; in Christ all will be made alive, each in turn, Christ first, then those who belong to him at his coming.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

1 Corinthians 15:20 (BSB)

The hope is far older than Paul. Job, from inside his ruin, confessed that he knew his Redeemer lived and that in his flesh he would see God, with his own eyes and not another's. Daniel was told that multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life and others to shame. Jesus himself set the scene: a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear the Son's voice and come out, to a resurrection of life or of judgment. Body, grave, voice, awakening: the vocabulary never changes.

But I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand upon the earth.

Job 19:25 (BSB)

What kind of body? Paul answers with a seed. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. Sown in dishonour, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. Spiritual there does not mean made of spirit or ghostly. It means animated and ruled by the Spirit, as Christ's risen body was: touchable, recognisable, able to eat, and yet no longer subject to death or decay. Continuity and transformation together: the same person, the same body, healed of mortality at the root.

It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

1 Corinthians 15:44 (BSB)

Paul refuses to let this be a decorative doctrine. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either, preaching is useless, faith is futile, and Christians are of all people most to be pitied for pinning their lives to a lie. He would rather be thought a false witness than soften it. That is why the creeds end where they end, with the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Christianity does not promise escape from the material world. It promises the material world, and us in it, raised and remade.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
The Apostles' Creed (received text)

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What happens between death and the resurrection?Scripture teaches that those who die in Christ are with him immediately, consciously and in rest, while they await the resurrection of the body: to be away from the body, Paul says, is to be at home with the Lord. Jesus promised the dying thief that they would be together in paradise that day. The view called soul sleep, that the dead are unconscious until the resurrection, is stated fairly below, but the direct statements of Jesus and Paul point the other way.Will we know each other in heaven?The Bible gives good reason to expect that we will know each other in heaven, though it answers the question indirectly. Jesus's teaching that there is no marriage in the resurrection answers a question about marriage, not about recognition. His parable of the rich man and Lazarus pictures the dead recognising one another, and Paul comforts grieving believers with a reunion: the dead in Christ rise, and then the living are caught up together with them, with the Lord.What happens when we die?The Bible says we die once, and after that face judgment. For those who trust Christ, death is not the end or a long unconscious wait: Jesus told the dying thief, today you will be with me in Paradise. Beyond that lies what the whole story leans toward, resurrection of the body and a renewed world where death itself is finished.What is heaven like?Heaven, in the Bible's final picture, is a renewed earth, not an escape from one: God dwelling with his people in a vast, garden like city, with death, mourning, crying and pain ended, and a river and a tree of life at its centre. Scripture holds two things together: Paul says no eye has seen what God has prepared, and Revelation still gives real pictures. They are pictures, stated plainly, of a real place.Bible Character: JobThe blameless man of Uz who lost his wealth, his servants and his children in a single day, refused to curse God, argued his case through long nights of debate, and was restored.Bible Character: DanielThe young exile who would not defile himself with the king's food, interpreted dreams for the kings of Babylon, read the writing on the wall, and came unharmed out of the lions' den.Bible Character: JesusThe Son of God, born of Mary in Bethlehem, who preached the kingdom of God, was crucified for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was raised on the third day.Bible Character: PaulThe Pharisee who persecuted the church until the risen Jesus stopped him on the Damascus road, and who became his apostle to the Gentiles, travelling the Roman world and writing many of the New Testament letters.Lesson: Did Jesus rise from the dead?The Christian faith stands or falls here, and Paul says so himself. Learn the answer at three depths: hallway, coffee, and the long evening.Lesson: The big story of the BibleThe Bible is one story, not sixty-six separate ones. Walk the whole arc once, from creation to new creation, and every book you open will have a place to sit.