May 31 – LD 22, Day 4: The Miracle of the Resurrection of the Body

Read: I Corinthians 15:12-23

There are several considerations that make the resurrection of the body an amazing miracle. Let us mention a few of them. They will help us realize what a great wonder God performs for us when he raises our bodies.

Think, first of all, of the fact that the bodies of every child of God that ever lived will be raised. This includes not only all the saints who lived in both the old and new dispensations, but also all those saints who lived before the flood: Adam, Abel, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah and all the rest. The flood was a great catastrophe and tore the earth to pieces. Yet the bodies of the people of God were somehow preserved.

Think of all the things that can happen to a human body: it can be and has been burned with fire. The ashes of the pre-Reformer John Wycliffe, for example, were strewn on the waters of a river and were carried out to the oceans. Some were drowned; some were eaten by fish; some were eaten by lions in the arenas of Rome; and so became a part of the bodies of fish and animals. Some were buried, turned to dust, and became a part of grass which cows ate and turned into milk, milk that was drunk by others.

How impossible it all seems to us.

But we must remember also that the resurrection of our bodies is a truth we believe by faith. No wonder the unbeliever scoffs. With all his science he cannot believe something so “scientifically” impossible. But we walk by faith, not by sight. We believe in a great God who created all things, is present in every particle of the creation with his whole being, and upholds all things by his word. He can and does preserve every particle of every child of God so that he can raise it at the end of time.

This miracle is necessary, because our own bodies are raised. We are taught: “this my body, being raised.” The very same body conceived in my mother’s womb, grown to adulthood, dead and buried, rotted in the ground, is going to be raised. God does not abandon our earthly bodies and create for us entirely new bodies. No, he preserves our bodies and raises them.

They are greatly changed, but they are the same bodies in which we lived on earth.

This is the way it was with the body of Jesus. When our Lord died, he was buried in Joseph’s tomb. From that tomb his body arose. After he arose, the body was there no longer.

And yet it was changed. It was so changed that our Lord could not be seen unless he took on some form that was visible to the human eye. He could, in his body, enter rooms that were locked and sealed. It was his body that ascended into heaven, is now glorified and in which body Christ rules over all.

What an astounding wonder! But what blessedness!