The Hope of the Believer . . .

The Hope of the Believer...No. 5

WE SHALL BE LIKE THE RISEN CHRIST 

But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. — (1 Cor. 15:20)

In the resurrection might we recognize each other's voice as well as each other's bodily appearance?

That question gets at some of the things I want to say in this installment on the hope of the believer, especially in reference to our hope in a future resurrection of our bodies. The question involves a consideration of the nature of the resurrection of our Lord, and once that is determined we have the key to the understanding of the nature of our own resurrection, for our resurrection will be like his. The above text says as much: Jesus Christ in his resurrection became the firstfruits of those who will be raised after his likeness.

The idea of recognizing each other's voice in another world may sound farfetched, but there is nothing that is more personal and more identifiable than one's voice. It is more and more being accepted as an unmistakable means of identification, even in criminal investigation. The voice competes with fingerprints as a sure means of identification. We all have a computer in our brains that can unerringly identify hundreds of different voices, even those that we have not heard for many years.

Mary Magdalene was the first to see the risen Christ, but Jn. 20:14-16 tells us that she did not at first recognize him, supposing him to be the gardener. It was when she heard his voice, when he called to her by name, that she knew who he was.

That Mary recognized Jesus' voice provides insight into the nature of our Lord's resurrection, especially when it is placed alongside other instances of his bodily appearances. When they are all taken together we can draw a conclusion that appears to be sound: Jesus' old body was not resuscitated, but he appeared in a new order of life in a new body, but it was a body that had the capacity to look like, act like, and sound like his old body.

One way to get at this is to suppose that you would be allowed to video tape the resurrection. What would you have filmed that Easter morning as the moment for the resurrection came? Would you have seen a figure wrapped like a mummy rise to a sitting position, stretch his arms as if he had been sleeping, and then stand up, discard his grave clothes, and walk out of the tomb through the door that the angels had opened for him by rolling back the stone?

There is no way for this to be anything like what happened. You could not have filmed the resurrection, even if heaven had allowed it. There was nothing visible to film! The only thing you would have on tape would be the collapsed or "folded" cloths in which our Lord was wrapped. Because of a hundred pounds of spices that had been sprinkled through the cocoon-like wrappings, they suddenly collapsed when the body disappeared. That is all you would have on film. You would not see Jesus walk out. Re did not need to. The angels did not roll back the stone so that Jesus would have a way to get out, but that his disciples (and others) would have a way to get in. Jesus in his resurrected body (not a resuscitated body) could pass right through the wall of the tomb. But he probably did not do even that. Re simply began to appear where he chose to manifest himself, first to Mary.

It is reasonable to suppose that what happened to Jesus' old body is what will happen to all our bodies, except that it happened to his body instantaneously: It disintegrated or evaporated. As it will be with all of us, Jesus' old body "returned to dust," meaning that it ceased to exist, but while ours takes many years to decompose his did so instantly. His old body disappeared, leaving behind the cocoon-like shell, neatly arranged and undisturbed, only collapsed under the weight of the spices.

This is what caused the apostle John to believe when he entered the tomb (Jn. 20:8). Re did not believe when he first entered, and it was not the empty tomb that convinced him. When he saw the way the grave clothes were lying, he knew that no one had stolen the body. There was but one answer: The Lord had left of his own will or God's will and had left the wrappings behind, as if he had evaporated out of them. When John saw that he believed!

While the risen Lord was not in his old physical body, he was in a body, his resurrected or spiritual body, so it was a bodily resurrection. That he was now in a new and higher form of life is indicated by what he did in his resurrected body, things he did not do in his old "natural" body. Reappeared and disappeared at will, at one place and then another, irrespective of time and space. Re walked along the road to Emmaus with two of his disciples, who did not at first recognize him, but when they at last broke bread with him and recognized him, he vanished from their presence, as if out of thin air (Lk. 24:31). The two disciples, smitten by the experience, hurried back to Jerusalem to the other disciples, who were hiding behind locked doors, to tell them they had seen the risen Lord. While they were all there listening to the moving experience of the two disciples, Jesus appeared in their midst. We may safely conclude that he did not have to walk (or run!) back to Jerusalem as the two disciples had done, nor did he have to knock on the door in order to gain entrance. In his old body Jesus would have had to walk, and he did not walk through closed doors.

This was probably the meeting in which Thomas was absent, who, when he heard the report from the others, declared he would not believe unless he could see for himself. In Jn. 20:26 we learn that after eight days the disciples were all together again, and again behind locked doors, with Thomas present. Jesus again suddenly appears in the room. Re singles out Thomas, inviting him to look at his pierced hands and to touch his wounded side. This is when Thomas, now a believer, cries out, "My Lord and my God!"

This shows that Jesus' spiritual body had the identifying marks of his old body, even the wounds of the crucifixion, or he could make it appear so. He made it a point to eat in their presence, again and again. But there is a mystery in all this, for surely Jesus no longer needed food and drink. It is apparent that in his spiritual body he could take on the similitude of his old body at will. Or was the wonder in the eyes and minds of the disciples, that is, did they see and hear what Jesus wanted them to see and hear? Luke tells us that the two disciples on the Emmaus road did not recognize Jesus because "their eyes were restrained," and when at last they did recognize him it was because "their eyes were opened and they knew him." So we can properly ask whether Mary actually heard the familiar voice of Jesus calling her or whether she was induced to hear what she heard. Moments before she had looked upon Jesus but she did not recognize him. Is this because Jesus did not will himself to be seen and thus withheld his identity, or were Mary's eyes restrained from seeing, like the two disciples on the road? We can't be sure.

The most baffling passage in this regard is when Jesus said to his frightened and disbelieving disciples, "Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold, My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have" (Jn. 20:38-39). Jesus was certainly no spirit or ghost as they first supposed, for he was an embodied, corporeal human being, a real live person. But we are not to make too much of his saying that he had flesh and bones. For that moment he had, and for their benefit he could make it appear that he had. It was on that occasion that he ate fish and honey in their presence. But it was for their sake. His resurrected body needed no food, and while he at last ascended into heaven in his risen body (and is even now in that glorified body!) he did not take flesh and bones into heaven.

We are not to forget that Saul of Tarsus also saw the risen Christ, later on, "as by one born out of due time." Jesus came from heaven to appear to Saul, but we are to understand it was of the same order as his earlier appearances. He was in his heavenly body, and he talked to Paul as man would speak to man. It was not simply a vision. But it is not likely that when Jesus appeared to his disciples during a forty-day period, off and on with intervals of eight days or more, that he came back and forth from heaven. It seems that there was a set time for his ascension to the Father. But Jesus did not just evaporate when he was absent from his disciples during those forty days. Re was somewhere, for he was a real live person. We may conclude that in some way he moved between two worlds during that period between his resurrection and his ascension into heaven. Perhaps between the two worlds, in the company of angels, or did he during this time do more preaching to "the spirits in prison" (1 Pet. 3:19)?  

We can only conjecture about some of these things, but a crucial truth is evident. Jesus as the risen Lord was on a higher plane, a higher form of life, than the Jesus of Nazareth who lived in an earthly body like everyone else, a body that got tired, thirsty, hungry, and one limited by space and time. When he went from town to town he had to walk the dusty roads like everyone else. But in his resurrected body he was hovering much closer to heaven, and, like the angels, he only needed to will it and he was where he wanted to be instantly. A locked door did not matter, and he could vanish from a sealed tomb through the walls as well as through an open door!

Since the risen Lord had a different manner of body, that is the kind of body we are going to have. It is too good to be true, but it is true anyhow! It is breathtaking, almost too much to take in, as David said in Ps. 139:6, and yet it lies at the heart of the Christian's hope. It is the promise of our opening text: In his resurrection Jesus is the firstfruits of all the believers that come after him. We are heirs of his resurrection. We shall be raised as he was raised. Praise the Lord!

This means that we should understand that at death we will be through with our earthly bodies. When I leave my body and it is turned over to medical science, as I have willed, I do not expect to see it again. It returns to dust, disappears, ceases to exist, and is gone forever. So, our hope in the "resurrection of the body" finds its fulfillment in the putting on of a new spiritual body, not in the literal raising of our old material body. There will be no "gettin' up time" out at the cemetery, in spite of the old gospel songs we love. Graves will not be literally opened, for there is no reason to open them. The bodies have all returned to dust. There is no way for the sea to give up the dead that is in it, as Scripture promises, for the bodies have all ceased to exist. I recall the old divine that dedicated a cemetery, saying, "What a beautiful place to await resurrection morning, and what a beautiful sight awaits those who come forth from their graves." That makes for good poetry but it is poor theology. Who wants to sleep in a cemetery? All such symbolism is the Bible's way of promising us personal bodily existence beyond death. We will be raised in that we will live again in a new body and a new world. In the meantime we go to heaven to be with Christ, not to a grave yard. But we will eventually receive a spiritual body, like unto Christ's body, and that we can call "resurrection."

The apostle John says it all in a glorious statement in 1 Jn. 3:1-3. The crucial line is in verse 2: "We know that when Christ is revealed we shall be like Rim, for we shall see Rim as He is." That is the apostle's answer to the question of what we shall be like in the next world. While "It has not yet been revealed what we shall be," the apostle says, it is enough that we shall be like Christ when he comes. We will be like Christ because we are to enjoy a resurrection like his. John sees such motivation in such a promise that he adds, "Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as Re is pure." It is an exciting passage of hope and assurance. If the apostle John tells us that we shall be like Christ when he appears, the

apostle Paul assures us that we will then have a body such as Christ now has. In Philip. 3:20-21 he reminds us that we are to eagerly await a Savior from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, "who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which Re is able to subdue all things to Himself." It is clear that Paul believed that we will one day have glorious bodies, like Christ's. It is also clear that Christ, who as a man is our mediator in heaven, now has a glorious body. What an exciting contrast the apostle draws between our "lowly body" in which we now live and the "glorious body" that we are promised!

In this passage Paul sees our old bodies "conformed" into the likeness of Christ's spiritual body, and in I Cor. 15:52 he says "the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed." In verse 44 he says, "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." In the same verse he is unequivocal about there being both a natural body and a spiritual body. However he puts it, whether "changed" or "conformed to," it is clear that we discard the old natural body and take on the new spiritual body.

In 2 Cor. 5:1-3 the apostle is even more forthright about what happens to the old, temporary body: It will be destroyed. When that happens "we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." It looks as if the apostle is here expecting a new heavenly body the moment he dies, and yet in Philip. 3:21 he sees the believer receiving his glorified body when Christ comes. In this passage he sees the believer as groaning in his old body, "desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven" (verse 2). This makes it difficult to conclude that Paul ever saw a time when the believer would not be embodied. He even says "lest we be found naked," which indicates that he could not imagine a disembodied spirit in heaven.

If we conclude from this that Paul is now in heaven and has his "building from God" and is not "found naked," then he must be dwelling in an intermediary body until such time as "the resurrection" when he will receive his ultimate glorious body like unto that of Christ. This is an altogether possible conclusion, for otherwise we have not only Paul but all "the spirits of just men made perfect" moving about in heaven without bodies. Or as Paul would put it, they'd be running around naked! The apostle is rather definite about it in 2 Cor. 5:3, "Indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked." In view of this I find it difficult to think of Paul in heaven without a body, or anyone else who has died in the Lord. It may be sound theology to say that there is no such thing as a disembodied spirit - not the angels, not Christ, not the church already in heaven, not even evil spirits. Every spirit in heaven and on earth has a body, natural or spiritual. Except perhaps God himself. There may be no sense at all in which God has a body, except in the Bible's anthropomorphic imagery (such as God having eyes, a finger, a back, etc.), which we know is not literal.

The bottom line of all this is that We shall be like Christ! It is the promise of all promises. And is not this the point of being a Christian? In this life we are to become more and more conformed to the likeness of Christ inwardly. In the life to come we will also be like him outwardly. In our lowly, frail earthly bodies we may manifest the likeness of Christ by bearing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. When we live this way and so honor God in our natural bodies, we have the hope that one day our vile bodies will be discarded and we will have a "building from God," one like the glorious body that Christ has. We need no greater promise than that.

But this glorious promise introduces another, for after Paul says all that he does to the Corinthians about being clothed upon with a heavenly habitation, he says in 2 Cor. 5:5 that "He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee." The apostle is saying that God has provided us a "guarantee' that this promise of a redeemed, glorious body shall indeed be fulfilled.