We All Need Some Body, Part 2

Alan Dunn – February 2021

I have mental images of my Dad when he was young. He was an avid swimmer. He would swim across lakes in Canada and parallel to the beach when we were on vacation in Florida. His freestyle stroke was smooth and powerful. I remember him saving a man who was drowning. He was trim and fit for most of his life. He spent his final months with us. He needed a walker to get about and a chairlift to go upstairs. He passed in our living room on January 31^st. We buried his thoroughly weakened body the following weekend. Now I remember his corpse, his casket, his grave.

I am thankful to Christ for answered prayer. My Dad came to faith in Christ later in life. In the days leading up to his death, he took a peculiar interest in Philippians 3:21 which speaks of the hope we have in Christ for our bodies. When Jesus returns He will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. In part 1, we saw three kinds of human bodies: Adam’s original pre-fallen body, our present death-prone bodies, and Jesus’ resurrected body – the body of His glory.

Adam’s Progeny and Place

In 1 Corinthians 15:45, Paul presents us with two Adamic men: Adam and Jesus. “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. “Adam” is not only the progenitor of a resurrected human race, He is the proprietor of humanity’s resurrected place: the new heavens and earth.

We need to appreciate the integral relationship between Adam and the earth. Adam is animated dirt. God formed him from the dust as His creaturely son, His image. God gave him dominion over creation. Adam is vitally, inherently identified with the earth. As it goes with Adam, so it goes with the earth itself. When Adam sinned, he brought the punishment of death upon himself and the earth which includes all earthy creatures: his wife formed from his rib, as well as the animals formed, as was Adam, from the dust of the ground. Although the Lord salvaged the fallen world, He yet cursed the ground and that curse enveloped Adam because Adam is animated dust. When the dust is cursed, Adam’s body physically disintegrates and collapses back down into the dust. Envision the movement between the dust of the earth and the body of Adam. The ground is cursed and it pulls Adam back down into the dust.

This inherent relationship between Adam and the earth pertains to the last Adam too. Adam, by definition, is “Adam” with dominion over creation itself. As it goes with Adam, so it goes with the earth. Jesus died and was buried. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dust into the life of the age to come – bodily, physically. Now, envision the movement of the resurrection. When the last Adam rises from the dust, His bodily resurrection affects the material of creation. He rises and, as the Adamic Man, He must take His domain with Him into resurrection glory. As the last Adam rises, He pulls creation up into glory with Him. The resurrection of Jesus guarantees the glorification of creation itself.

¹⁸ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

¹⁹ For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.

²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope

²¹ that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God [Rom 8:18-21].

In Genesis, we are introduced to the first Adam in the garden-temple of Eden. In Revelation, we arrive at the resurrected glorified Eden, the domain of the last Adam who, with His resurrected progeny, will live with God who will be all and in all [1 Cor 15:28]. Then it begins anew with all things subject to our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.

From Dust to Glory

We placed my Dad in the ground alongside my Mom. We were grieving, but not as those without hope [1 Thes 4:13]. I know, people stare at the corpse in the casket and say, “He’s not there, you know. That’s not him.” I understand what is being said, but I don’t entirely agree. That was my Dad in that casket. That is my Mom in that thirty-year-old grave. That bodily material has personal identity. Christ died to save us soul and body. When He returns, that dirt into which my parents perished will be set free from corruption and out of that dust the resurrected bodies of the children of God will burst forth in the splendor of eternal glory!

We have good news to declare in the face of death. Jesus Christ is risen. Jesus is Lord. As the enthroned Priestly King, He gives His Spirit to us who were once dead in sin and already makes us alive together[1] with Christ [Eph 2:5]. By the Spirit of the risen Christ, we already begin to live lives defined by His resurrection. In union with our living Lord, we live by faith and repentance, we learn to love and to serve, we bear fruit and await the harvest of the resurrection at the end of this age. Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed[2] day by day [2 Cor 4:16].

We all need some body because we are humans, psychosomatic creatures. In spite of the achievements of modern medicine, we cannot obtain a body like that of the first man, Adam. Because of the curse of death, we have bodies that are perishable, dishonorable, and weak. Our bodies collapse into dust. The gospel of the crucified and resurrected Jesus promises a future resurrected body conformed to the body of His glory. All who die in Christ have this certain hope – glory! But those who die in their sin will also be resurrected. Jesus says, Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment [John 5:28-29]. There shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked [Acts 24:15]. It is beyond our ability to conceive of resurrected bodies conformed to Christ that are fit to live in the glory of the new cosmos. It is also beyond our ability to conceive of resurrected bodies that are fit to live an eternal death, separated from Christ in hell. These are sober truths about life and death. When you stand beside the graves of your loved ones, you are compelled to face sober truths about life and death.

You will be resurrected. You need some body. So let me ask you to answer the question that was posed to Paul. “With what kind of body will YOU come?”

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1. Here is that unique resurrection term translated life-giving in 1 Corinthians 15:45.

2. Here is yet another term that speaks of resurrection life.