Question: Dear Greg,
At the resurrection do our bodies look the same as they do now? A funeral
parlor director told me that a body in the ground for many years is completely
decomposed, not much different from one that has been cremated. I know
that God can still “re-create” us like those thousands instantly cremated in
the
I’d like to hear an answer. Thanks, and keep up the good work.
Charles
Answer: Dear Charles,
We don’t really know exactly how God will do what it appears that he will. We do know that the body does not need to remain intact, in any burial form, for God to resurrect it to life. The Creator does not need our burial methods to help him, no matter how sincere our efforts may be. For example, the practice of placing the body facing upward is said to come from anticipation of the resurrection. However, God can “roll over” a body that is looking down! In addition, if a body has been cremated that is of little concern to the Creator when it comes to the resurrection of that body.
The consensus of Christians over time has been that the resurrection will be of the body because of the correlation made in the New Testament of our resurrection with that of our Lord and Saviors’ (1 Corinthians 15 being the primary passage). That is, Jesus was resurrected—his body—the same body he had before the cross that was glorified and made immortal.
Jesus, of course, was unique in that his incarnation means that he is and was both God and man. He was not 50% human and 50% divine, but “very man and very God” as the early Christians expressed it. He did not lose divinity in becoming human, but remained God because God, by definition, cannot stop being God.
When Jesus died on the cross the man, Jesus, died. God did not die, for he cannot. Jesus, in fact, said that he would resurrect his own body (see John 2). His body would die but because he was God he could resurrect himself. When his body was resurrected it was not merely a spirit, but the actual body of the man Jesus. It was the body because he was the firstborn of the dead, the firstfruit of the resurrection. He, the man Jesus, was resurrected. His body. He showed that very body to Thomas who doubted—the nail marks in his hands and his pierced side. This was the very body of Jesus, not some spirit entity as some claim.
The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus testify to the fact that he now had a body that was no longer subject to aging, death and decay. That is our hope, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15. We will be like him in that we will have a glorified body that will be immortal, not subject to corruption. We will not be like him in that we will not be God—for we are only human, not like him in his incarnation: the God-man. God is uncreated. We are created. God is eternal, without beginning or end. The resurrection of our Lord proves that the grave does not need to end our life. We can be given eternal life, life eternal enjoyed in the glorified body God gives us at our resurrection.
Hope this helps.
In Christ,