Doesn’t that sound better, planted instead of buried? My only sister had a horror of being buried. I could tease her about being planted rather than buried, but she wasn’t sure that would spare her of being interred. We respected her wishes. After she gave her body for medical use, and her remains were cremated, we scattered her ashes rather than bury them.

  It points up the glory of our hope as believers that at death our bodies are planted rather than buried. Burial implies an end, while planting implies a harvest. Paul the apostle in 1 Corinthian 15:42-44 gives dramatic emphasis to this: "So also is the resurrection of the dead,

    it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption;

    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."

  Those are powerful lines. For the apostle to have formed an alliteration, repeating sown the way he does, and then to create the opposites – corruption/incorruption, dishonor/glory, weakness/power, natural body/spiritual body – is thrilling to the soul. One only needs to read them aloud, emphasizing the alliteration, to feel their dramatic effect. They are a classic example of the power of Holy Scripture.

  And what stunning promises! We are destined to put on incorruption after an earthly sojourn in a fleshly body that gradually wears out. While our bodies are contemptible in death they will be glorious in resurrection. Our weakness will give way to power. And our natural, carnal bodies will become spiritual.

  That we are to have spiritual bodies is mind-boggling, a promise that challenges our imagination. It is, of course, beyond our comprehension, but we gain some understanding when we realize that we will have a body like that of our Lord’s glorious, resurrected body. Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 15:49: "As we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man." And he assures us in Philippians 3:21 that our decaying bodies will be "conformed to his glorious body." Then in 1 John 3:2 there is the comforting promise that "when He is revealed we shall be like him."

  As joint heirs of Christ we will have a glorious spiritual body like unto his. We get a glimpse of this in our Lord’s resurrected body. And it was a body with the similitude of his natural body. He could reveal and conceal his identity at will, and he was sometimes recognized during his forty-day sojourn following his resurrection, appearing and disappearing. He could move through the walls of his sepulchre, if need be. We are to understand that the stone was rolled away so the witnesses could get in, not so that Christ could get out! And he walked through closed doors. While in his natural body he had to walk to get somewhere, while in his spiritual body he only needed, like an angel, to will to get there.

  The Transfiguration also provides further insights into what a spiritual body is like. Those that the apostles saw on that occasion – Jesus, Moses, Elijah – "appeared in glory." They had spiritual bodies. They talked to each other, and they recognized each other. They were recognizable human beings, but they were "in glory" – a kind of heaven on earth. It presaged how it will be for the redeemed in God’s tomorrow. Moses and Elijah have spiritual bodies in heaven. For the occasion of the Transfiguration they came down to earth and appeared with Christ "in glory," and they talked with him about the sufferings he would soon undergo in Jerusalem.

  Being "sown" and "raised" are of course metaphors. We are not to suppose that graves will literally be opened and bodies will come forth, and that natural bodies will be transformed into spiritual bodies, perhaps right there in the cemetery! In the first place there is but a small percentage of the billions of the dead who are in cemeteries. The vast majority of dead bodies no longer exist, for they have long since become part of the dust from which they came. Or they are now part of the oceans. When Revelation 20:13 says "and the sea gave up the dead that were in it" the language is obviously metaphorical.

  We are not to be doctrinally naïve as was the divine who when dedicating a new cemetery said, "What a lovely place this is for Resurrection morning! Those who will be buried here will one day rise amidst breathtaking beauty!" It hardly occurred to him that if it takes a "grave" for a resurrection there will be comparatively few raised. Many of the dead – including Christians – were devoured by beasts or eaten by fish. Others were burned at the stake, and their ashes scattered. Many were never buried at all. Clearly, a literal grave has nothing to do with the promise of resurrection.

  And yet the apostle can speak of the body being "sown" at death and at last raised in glory. It is a beautiful metaphor that points to a blessed reality. We are to have "a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" as Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:1. But this has no relation to our old earthly bodies. In the same verse the apostle says the old body is destroyed or is dissolved. The Lord doesn’t need the old body in order to create a new one. If so he would have to re-create the old body!

  Again, since we are joint heirs with Christ we can see this in what happened to Jesus’ old body, which he left behind Easter morning. From the evidence in the resurrection narratives we can only conclude that his body simply disappeared or evaporated. That is what happens to ours, but it may take decades for ours to dissolve, while his disappeared instantly – there on the slab in the sepulchre.

  That is the picture we have in John 20:3-8. Peter and John run to the tomb on that Sunday morning. John outruns Peter, but he hesitates at the entrance of the tomb and does not enter, perhaps in deference to Peter’s leadership. When Peter arrives he goes right in. They both see "the cloths lying there" on the slab – John from the entrance and Peter at close range. The drama heightens when John finally goes in. Verse 8 says John "saw and believed." He was the first disciple to believe that Jesus had been raised, and he believed when he saw what was on the slab.

  What did he see? First, what did he not see? Had the slab been bare he would have supposed the body had been stolen. Had the cloths been in disarray, unravelled, and scattered he would have supposed his enemies had violated him even in his death, desecrating his burial and purloining his body for further abuse. What he did see caused him to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead. When he arrived at the tomb he was still an unbeliever.

  The record says he saw that the headgear – the cloths that had been wrapped around his head -- were "folded" and apart from the rest of the body, which was also wrapped mummy-like, and with a hundred pounds of spices sprinkled through. What the apostle saw could only be staggering in its propensity. He could not help but believe. On the slab before him was a perfectly wrapped, undisturbed, cocoon-like shell that once contained a corpse. The headgear was neatly separated, but it was all "folded" and empty. The weight of the spices would leave the appearance of a collapsed mummy.

  The evidence indicates that the body simply disappeared or was dissolved, which is what will happen to our own bodies over time. The risen Christ may never have been in the tomb. He simply started appearing to his disciples – providing "many infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3) – over the next forty days in his spiritual body.

  An amusing exchange took place in a classroom at Harvard when I was a student there. Professor Krister Stendahl and his students were going over the resurrection narratives. A student asked, "Suppose one had a Brownie camera and took a picture inside the tomb on Easter morning, what would the picture show?" The professor, having a bit of fun, said, "I suppose he would have a picture of the resurrection!"

   In the light of John 20 I will venture to answer the student’s question. But I will go one better. Suppose one were allowed to be present as a witness when the "resurrection" took place, what would he see? Almost nothing! If he were very attentive he would see the mummy-like form before him simply collapse. He certainly would not see Jesus sit up, unwrap himself, stretch, get up, and walk away. He would likely not see Jesus at all. The body of the earthly Jesus "dissolved," as Paul says our bodies will. The risen Christ, now in his glorified body, was elsewhere. And yet that spiritual body had the similitude – or could have – of his carnal body. Again, so will ours.

  I am well aware of Paul’s warning about this sort of speculation: "But someone will say, ‘How are the dead raised up? And with what kind of body do they come?’ Foolish one, what is sown is not made alive unless it die" (1 Corinthians 15:35-36). And yet the apostle goes on to confirm my thesis that the natural body dissolves and disappears, giving way to the spiritual body. Notice verse 37: "you do not sow the body that shall be," and verse 38: "God gives it a body as he pleases." Then there is verse 44: "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body," and finally verse 46: "The spiritual (body) is not first, but the natural (body), and afterward the spiritual (body)."

  Is not Paul clearly distinguishing between the two – that the "resurrected" body is not a resuscitation or a refashioning of the natural body? Paul uses the sowing of a grain of wheat to make this clear: the grain that is sown (first body) is not the (second) body that shall be (verse 37).

  Therefore, the "resurrection of the body" – whether Christ’s or ours – has to be a metaphor and not literal. For most of the dead there is no body to be raised. But what a beautiful and scintillating metaphor! It means we are to receive a new body, like unto Christ’s glorious body. Doesn’t that have more appeal than a re-working of your old body?

  That we are "joint heirs with Christ," as Paul affirms in Romans 8:17, is an incredible, overwhelming promise. It seems too good to be true, but that is the extravagance of God’s grace. Imagine, what Christ is heir to in all its glory we are heir to! This includes sharing the "likeness of his resurrection" (Romans 6:5). The apostle Peter refers to "the exceeding great and precious promises" and says they make us "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).

  This means that such promises have the potential to make us like Christ inwardly – in our hearts and lives – in this world. And they assure us that we will be like him outwardly – in the likeness of his heavenly body – in the world to come. That is God’s eternal plan for us, that we be "conformed to the image of His Son" (Romans 8:29), now and forever.

  Notes

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  All these essays are available at leroygarrett.org