APOSTLES’ CREED: The Resurrection of the Body
As we approach the end of the Apostles’ Creed, we come to this: “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” What does that mean, and how does it impact our lives?
Let’s read what the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:10…(Read text)
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY?
-Death is not the end of us; we will live after we physically die.
***Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, died of cancer in 2011. Shortly before his death, he gave a commencement address at Stanford University, saying, “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”**
“Death clears out the old, to make way for the new…” It sounds very noble, even life-affirming, but it means that individuals have no enduring future.
Steve Jobs was a smart man, but I think a little girl named Jane was wiser. ***Jane had a question for God: “Dear God, instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don’t you just keep the ones you have now?” (website, “Children Speak to God”)***
What a great idea, Jane! That is exactly what God intends to do! Jesus promised to give us life after death, saying in John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” God plans to keep us!
Many people believe in life after death, but they might view things differently than Jesus and the creed. Some believe in reincarnation, where a person comes back with a new identity. Some believe dead people live as ghosts or spirits, only a shadow of who they once were. Jesus spoke of something else: resurrection. In resurrection, the identity of the person is maintained, and they are just as substantial as they were before.
Yet this raises a question: What form will we take when we are resurrected? Our physical bodies are already subject to decay, and when we die our bodies will either be burned or rot in the ground. Yet our bodies and minds carry so much of our identity: our personality, our interactions with other people, our abilities to create, love and express our inner self. How will we live after our physical bodies die?
-The creed says, “I believe in the resurrection OF THE BODY.”
Most Greek philosophers taught that people consisted of two parts: body and soul. (Some believed in three parts: body, soul, and spirit.) The essence of a person was thought to be the soul, which lived in the body. Some even described the body as a prison for the soul. They believed that when the body died, the soul would be set free, for the soul was immortal; it could never die.
The Greek view of the immortality of the soul is still common today. Even some Christians think that when the body dies, the soul goes to heaven. However, the Bible never indicates that a soul lives apart from a body. In the Bible, the soul represents the essential nature of the person, includes all aspects, which might be describes as body, soul and spirit, or even “heart, soul, mind, and strength. (See Jesus’ summary of the law in Mark 12:30.)
The believers in Corinth lived in a Greek culture, and many of them believed in the immortality of the soul. Paul would have none of that! He was not satisfied with a future as a disembodied soul or spirit; it would be like being naked! Reread 2 Corinthians 5:1-4.
Our bodies carry so much of who we are: our personality, our interaction with other people, our ability to create and love and express our inner self. Without a body, we would be less than we are now. But Paul’s vision for life after death is for more, not less. He was looking forward to a more substantial existence: a house instead of a tent, new clothes instead of old rags.
That raises a question, however: When we die, do we get our resurrection bodies immediately? It is a personal question for me: My dad died a few years ago. Is he alive now? Does he already have a resurrection body?
In 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, Paul says “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” The last trumpet represents the return of Jesus to judge the living and the dead. Must my dad wait until Jesus comes back to be changed—to have a spiritual body? Is he sleeping, or living as a ghost, or existing as a disembodied soul until Jesus returns to make all things new and give him a body?
In 2 Corinthians 5:8, Paul says that leaving his physical body behind means being “at home”: “We… would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” Earlier in that same passage, he said that his home would be a house, not a tent. He also said that he didn’t want to be “unclothed,” he didn’t want to be “naked,” after he died. I don’t think he was planning on being “naked” until the final judgment! Yet this appears to contradict what he said about getting the resurrected body at the final judgment.
Some theologians try to eliminate the apparent contradiction by saying that, at death, the soul goes to be with the Lord, waiting to be united to a new body after the judgment day. That removes the contradiction, but what is a soul without a body? It seems to me like something less, not more.
The Bible gives a different picture of saints who have died. In the gospels, Jesus and 3 disciples were on the mountain, and Jesus was transfigured; his earthly body displayed the glory of a spiritual body. Moses and Elijah joined Jesus and the disciples on the mountain. Moses had died, and Elijah had been taken into heaven without dying, but both of them had bodies—spiritual bodies—that could be seen by the disciples. They were not disembodied souls.
I believe the Bible implies that people who die in the Lord receive their resurrected bodies immediately after they die AND at the final judgment. Isn’t that a contradiction? No, it only appears to be a contradiction from our perspective, limited by the dimensions of the universe and the smallness of our experience.
Remember, when Paul talked about this in 1 Corinthians 15, he began with, “Listen, I tell you a mystery…” In other words, it is deeper than our understanding of reality, which is limited to the space and time of the universe.
One of our limitations is our linear view of time. There is yesterday, then today, and then tomorrow. God is not limited in that way. As early as the 4th century, St. Augustine recognized that “God created the world with time rather than in time.” In other words, time as we know it did not exist until God created the universe.
Our view of time is quite restricted to what we can observe. (Preacher: Project a photograph of the night sky, showing Venus and the stars.) As we look into a dark sky, the light from Venus and stars strikes our eyes at a single point in time, giving us this picture of reality. Yet the light we see is from very different times. The light from Venus left the planet about 6 minutes before, while the light from the stars was generated years earlier—anywhere from 4.22 to 4000 years earlier. We might see Venus as it was 6 minutes ago, and stars as they were in the time of Abraham!
The Hubble space telescope has observed a star called Icarus, which is 9 billion light years away. Scientists think it is still there, although the radiation the telescope observes left the star 9 billion years ago! The star may have exploded and died a few million years ago, for all we know. Only God knows whether Icarus still exists. Yet God knows what is happening on Icarus at this very moment. His knowledge spans time, so that 9 billion years is like a blink of the eye.
This is quite mind-blowing, but the point is that my father, who died a few years ago, is beyond the limitations of universe-time. For me, the time of his death is past, and the time of the return of Christ and the final judgment is in the future. For him, those events need not be separated. When he left the earth, he entered a realm that encompasses his physical death, the return of Christ to earth, and all of eternity. In that realm, he is not naked, a soul waiting for a body, but my dad, with a body more glorious than I could ever imagine.
In the creed, we say, “I believe in the resurrection OF THE BODY.” That raises another question: What kind of resurrection body will we have?
-Our resurrection bodies will be better versions of ourselves.
How many of us want to keep our bodies, just as they are, forever? How many would at least like to make a few improvements?
Many of us struggle with aches and pains, which get worse with age. Many would like to be more attractive, smarter, or stronger. Some are ashamed of the condition of their bodies, and some don’t feel that their bodies measure up to cultural ideals. Some face severe disabilities or emotional distress.
St. Francis of Assisi had a favorite name for his body: “Brother Ass.” Our bodies don’t always cooperate with our minds, and our minds are sometimes foolish and stubborn.
Our bodies and minds are subject to decay. ***One study says that good judgment is not fully developed until age 25 or 30. Another study says that people begin to lose their short-term memory in their 20s. Maybe we get a good year or two?**
We say in the creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” We don’t say, “I believe in the resuscitation of the body,” because having our physical bodies after death would not be good enough. We need a better body!
God agrees, and that is what he has for us! The Apostle Paul describes the bodies God will give us in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44, “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, 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.”
Our resurrected bodies will be “spiritual bodies.” When we think of spiritual bodies, we might think they are less substantial than physical bodies. The opposite is true! A spiritual body is more substantial, not less.
After his resurrection, Jesus had a spiritual body. The disciples recognized him as Jesus, but his body was different. Blood was not seeping from his side, where the spear had gone in. He entered the upper room without needing to open the door. Yet he was not a ghost, because when they gave him fish to eat, the fish disappeared as he closed his mouth around it. The walls of the room and the fish he put in his mouth were less substantial than his spiritual body!
Philippians 3:21 tells us that when we die, Jesus “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” We will still be ourselves, but we will be better versions of ourselves.
Our spiritual bodies will be uniquely us, but more glorious. There will be no disabilities, no flaws to hide, and no aches and pains. Our resurrected personalities will be flawless and glorious as well. We will be beautiful in every way, and instead of wasting away, we will get better with age. Our minds will be amazing. We will be wise, and we won’t suffer from dementia or poor decisions. We will understand mysteries far beyond the universe!
Because of the resurrection of the body, we can have hope for a better version of ourselves.
HOW SHOULD OUR BELIEF IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY AFFECT HOW WE LIVE?
After Paul talks about the resurrection of the body in 2 Corinthians 5, he tells how it applies to our lives today: 2 Corinthians 5:9-10, “So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while IN THE BODY, whether good or bad.”
Sometimes that is taken out of context, to imply that we are saved by our good works. Jesus said in John 6:29, “The work of God is to believe in the one he has sent.” We are saved by trusting Christ, not by how good we are.
Paul’s point here, however, is that we must trust God with our minds and bodies. Some people have a disembodied faith, saying things like, “I am a spiritual person,” or “I love God,” or “I have a good heart.” That is great, but we can’t leave our bodies out of it. We must trust God in our actions, by what we do.
The story is told about a woman who said, “I’m a vegetarian, but I really love bacon.” That doesn’t work, of course; what we do cannot be divorced from who we are. If you eat bacon, you are not a vegetarian. Our bodies are part of who we are.
***Musical legend Beyonce is known for her stage presence. She says that when she is performing, she becomes someone else, an alter ego she calls Sasha. “I would like Sasha if I met her off stage,” she says. “Oh no. She’s too aggressive, too strong, too sassy, too sexy! I’m not her in real life at all…I created he so that when I go home, I don’t have to think about what it is I do. Sasha isn’t me. The people around me know who I really am.” Maybe it works for her, but for her fans, Sasha and Beyonce are the same person. More importantly, Sasha is a part of who Beyonce really is.**
Some people think they can separate some of their actions from who they really are. They might say, “The person I am at work—that’s not really me.” Or, “When I yell at the kids, that isn’t really who I am.” Or, some believe the ad that says, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
Since people in the Greek culture of Corinth believed that the soul was the real person, and the body was only a container for the soul, some of them found it convenient to think that what their bodies did not involve them—did not affect who they really were. In Corinth, as today, some tried to separate sexual behavior from their core identity. Paul addressed this in 1 Corinthians 6:15-17, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.”
We can’t separate body and soul. We worship and serve God with our body and mind. In Romans 12:1, Paul says “offer your BODIES as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” We serve God with all that we are: body, mind, and spirit.
On the positive side, we can use our bodies to honor God. In 1 Corinthians 6:20, Paul says, “You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
We can honor God by our actions: work, words, or acts of kindness. We can honor God in our thoughts and emotions, as we develop a healthy personality and a healthy spirituality. We can honor God in our creativity and craftsmanship. We can honor God by loving people, caring for those in need, and being faithful in our relationships. All of these take place in and through our bodies. Bodies matter, and actions matter.
What we do so imperfectly in this body, we will do more gloriously in our resurrection bodies! While we wait for those bodies, we offer our bodies to God, in anticipation of the glory that is waiting for us.
“So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.”
