Oh man, our first scripture reading comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 20.
Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’
So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen clothes lying there, but he did not go in.
Then Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen clothes lying there, and the face cloth which had been on Jesus’s head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.
Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead.
And the disciples went back to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. She saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.
They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’
Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’
Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni,’ which means teacher. Jesus said to her, ‘Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord,’ and that he had said these things to her.
From there, we turn to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 5, beginning at the 35th verse. Paul writes, ‘But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies, and what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 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. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.’ But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, you have written so many mysteries in your word, so many things that we cannot ever fully hope to comprehend on this side of life. But through this word, you also do reveal a portion through examples and likeness, aspects of how things are and how they will be our expectant hope.
Help us to understand as much of your mysteries as we can until we are gathered together to you when all things will be made clear. Help us to abide in hope and help us to abide in your truth now and forever. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
He is risen!
It isn’t Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and died on a Friday afternoon; the subversive and anti-establishment Jesus Revolution seemed defeated. But then, on Sunday morning, he was risen victorious from the dead. Death could not hold him; neither Sheol nor Hades held any claim upon either his body or his soul.
And this is not merely because Jesus is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, but because he had first added humanity to himself, adding a physical human body and a human soul, thereby possessing both divine and human natures.
And as Jesus Christ, the God-man, lived a perfect, sinless life, he was not subject to or deserving of the penalty for transgressing God’s holy law. He was not deserving of death, for Jesus never sinned during his entire life. Jesus never bent or broke or defied God’s law— not even once.
Jesus alone in all humanity did not deserve to suffer punishment for any crime because he was perfectly and uniquely innocent. Jesus was without blemish or fault, the perfect human being. Jesus was, as John the Baptizer, his cousin, declared, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
He was the perfect Passover sacrifice. Exodus chapter 12 describes the instructions which the Lord gave to Moses for the people, establishing the very first Passover in Egypt. These instructions included the welcoming, the caring for, and protection of a perfect unblemished lamb within each family’s household before it was sacrificed.
Then the blood of the lamb was used to mark or cover the doorposts and the lintel of the house so that the Lord’s wrath would pass over them. This covering of blood identified them as belonging to the Lord, a self-identification by all those who are called to faith to trust and believe in the Lord’s promises, the hope that his wrath against Egypt would not fall upon them.
Those Israelites were covered by the blood of the lamb; their sacrifice was an expiation against God’s wrath, a turning aside of his divine judgment because the focus of his wrath— Egypt— was hidden or obscured by the power of the lamb’s blood.
That is what atonement, the Hebrew word Kippur, means at its simplest: a covering over. Thus, the first Passover sacrifice was actually meant as an atonement, while all those afterward are merely a memorial.
However, since the work of Jesus, we now understand that first Passover sacrifice as a foreshadowing, a looking ahead to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. And when we Christians say that we are covered by the blood of Christ, that we’re covered by the blood of the lamb who was slain, we mean that by what Jesus accomplished on the cross for us, he has covered our sins with his blood according to his sovereign grace.
So now God’s wrath against sin will pass over us. God’s just and righteous wrath, which we are due for our many sins, is turned away from us. More so, however, Jesus’s blood does more than merely cover or hide or obscure each Christian’s sin; it also cleanses us from the sin.
When Jesus cried out, ‘It is finished!’ upon the cross, he was not only covering our sins but he also was satisfying the moral debt which we had incurred by them. He paid our penalty through his suffering and his dying.
Isaiah writes, ‘But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’
As God credited our sins to his account, they have been debited, removed from our own. Thus, we are cleansed by his blood. ‘Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.’
A cleansing propitiation which enables the Lord, our heavenly Father, to now look upon us favorably as his beloved children because our sins were not only covered; they were removed and eradicated by Christ’s death on the cross. The wrath of God against us is satisfied— hallelujah! Amen.
So it was also that upon the cross, Jesus suffered within his body, within the body of his person, the greatest defeat: the defeat of sin and man’s rebellion against the Lord. Way back when in the Garden of Eden, God told Adam, ‘You may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.’
But then, after he sinned, the Lord gave Adam—and us—a stay of execution in his mercy, delaying the enforcement of divine justice so that all the elect could be redeemed according to the Father’s eternal covenant with the Son.
But because the rebellion of man is part of Satan’s rebellion, coming about at the devil’s instigation, the defeat of man’s sin was also the God-man’s victory over that ancient serpent. Jesus fulfilled the first messianic prophecy: ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.’
Sinful man falsely condemned and murdered God’s Son, the woman’s offspring. The unjust and unrighteous many killed the just and righteous one. But when Jesus rose up out of the tomb alive once more, all of Satan’s power against us of sin and death was broken.
Satan’s defeat came out from his presumed victory while Jesus’s victory came out from his assumed defeat. Yet death had no claim over him; and now that we are covered by the blood of Christ, death has no lasting claim over we who trust in Jesus— ‘Oh, victory in Jesus, my Savior forever! He sought me, he bought me with his redeeming blood.’
However, to achieve the victory over sin and death, his blood had to be shed because life is in the blood. So the victory is won in Christ Jesus. But what does that mean for us? How do we share in his victory?
Sadly, we do still suffer temporal penalties and effects because of our innate human sinfulness, even though the penalty of God’s eternal wrath and judgment against our sin has been satisfied. They remain as part of the Lord’s discipline.
This isn’t all intended for our continued correction and improvement, to call us to repentance, for us to place our hope on Christ in faith for our progressive sanctification towards Christ-like righteousness.
Therefore, because we remain sinners—sinners who are redeemed by the grace of the blood of Jesus—we are still condemned to experience the penalty of death. As the author of Hebrews wrote, ‘And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.’
Thus, unless Jesus returns first, we each shall die, and when we are raised, we shall each stand before the heavenly throne for the Lord’s judgment, standing there justified by the covering of Jesus’s blood, Christ’s righteousness imputed to us, as our sinfulness was imputed to him upon that cross— that neither the law nor death will have any further claim upon our body or soul, just like Christ.
So this is the wonderful promise and hope that believers cling to in faithful confidence because it was sealed for us by the resurrection of Jesus on that bright and shining morning of the first day of the week, two thousand years ago.
It is because of this hope that Christians are able to face the personal defeat at the end of our lives boldly, facing the day and time of our death, believing that we shall be raised and glorified just as Jesus was. It is also a promise for all of humanity.
Paul writes concerning this sure hope in his letter to the Romans: ‘Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall surely be united with him in a resurrection like his.’
So if we die in Christ, then we must also rise again in Christ. And meanwhile, it is still the greater hope which we hold to beyond this mere fact of our future resurrection that Paul writes about in his letter to the Corinthians: our transformed physicality, our glorification, and the Christ-likeness of our union with him.
Paul raises the question, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ And then he answers it with the analogy of a seed, explaining that death—the physical defeat of our lives—is a necessary good because it enables our glorification.
When we consider a seed such as a kernel of corn, a pumpkin seed, or an acorn, we notice that they do not really resemble what they will become after they’re planted and begin to grow. These seeds must die in order to become something greater. They must be defeated; their present form must be destroyed before they can be transformed into the form of their glory.
So it is with our human form. Those seeds are perishable, temporary vessels intended for a glorious transformation by virtue of the potential hidden within them. And thus are we. As the appearance of a seed does not suggest the full appearance of its future form, neither does our present body suggest the totality of our future glorified appearance.
And apart from what we know concerning the appearance of the resurrected Jesus and his glorified body—Jesus was raised physically; therefore, we believe that we too will be raised physically.
His resurrected body was transformed and glorified; so too will ours be transformed and glorified. Jesus ascended bodily into heaven, and thus we are confident that these glorified bodies will also be brought into the new heavens and the new earth.
Now, there are those who’ve suggested that upon the day of resurrection, we shall each appear as we did or would have around the age of 30— the presumed age of Jesus at the time of his death and resurrection. And while that idea sounds rather nice and is certainly quite idealistic, it’s not expressly supported by any text of scripture, nor is the idea that Hebrew will be the only language spoken following the day of resurrection—an assumption made because, well, that was the language of the Hebrew scriptures and was a language spoken by Jesus.
We will certainly not be as homogeneous as all this. Scripture is clear that different nations and kings will yet remain in this world, each one ruling and working subservient to King Jesus, and that all the glory of the nations, all of the many good and beautiful things which have come from the minds and hands of men and women, will be brought to God’s throne and will also be enjoyed in this new world, for they too will be redeemed and restored to a newfound glory devoid of the present sinful corruption.
Now, I do not believe that we will be raised as a perpetual 30-year-old. We will be raised differently from how we are, yet somehow we will still be the same.
I believe that we will be recognizable to one another, to those who love us and whom we love, just as Jesus was recognizable to Mary and the disciples on the morning of his resurrection. It is Jesus, God the Son, who took upon himself the aspect and nature of our humanity to become the God-man— a human soul and flesh united with his divine spirit.
So too in our resurrection, we expect that a new or different spiritual aspect and nature will be added to our own present physicality, where Paul explains what is sown as perishable is raised as imperishable; 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.
And if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. This spiritual body in which we shall be raised will be a new and a different thing, a type of thing previously found only in the person of the resurrected Jesus.
Now, this does not deny that we possess an everlasting spirit. We are spiritual people. Scripture has always affirmed the presence of our human soul—sometimes synonymously with the human spirit.
And we naturally and easily understand the idea of a natural and physical body, a fleshly body of the senses; while the idea of a spiritual body is strange and foreign to us, we can only conceive of this anticipated spiritual body by using limited, imperfect, and altogether human terms—by comparing what will be with what presently is.
We must presently and patiently wait for the complete revelation of this mystery until Christ’s return. But while Paul teaches us to tide us over, he says that as the first man was from the earth, a man of dust, so then the second man is from heaven.
This calls to our mind Jesus’s words to Nicodemus: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.”
When Jesus said that we must be born again, that we must be also born of the Spirit, he meant more than just our regeneration, the awakening of our hearts and the new spiritual life that fills everyone who believes on Christ.
He also speaks to the fullness of our future transformation, of our resurrection to a spiritual body so that afterward we may enter into and dwell within the kingdom of God—not just spiritually, but physically as well.
We must be both born of water and the Spirit—body and soul—to divine union of flesh and our human spirit by the Holy Ghost. Presently, we are still very much like Adam—living creatures of flesh with an indwelled spirit, for the Lord God breathed into us, breathing in the breath of life.
However, the spirit which dwells within the regenerated faithful is a different spirit from what dwelt within us before; it’s now the Spirit of Christ instead of a corrupted spirit of sin and Satan.
And when we are raised, we shall be like the last Adam, the resurrected Jesus Christ, as our spirit and our flesh are united into one single perfected and glorified whole. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
This word which Paul uses, translated as ‘image,’ is the Greek word ‘icon.’ This word does not mean image as we often use it—being a picture, a reflection, or a representation—nor does it refer to some kind of pagan idol.
It means having the same likeness and form or possessing the same nature and substance. Paul means that we presently bear the same kind of physical form and we possess the same kind of nature and composition as Adam—fleshy and earthly because he was formed from the dust of the ground—whereas our expectant hope is that we will one day bear the same bodily likeness or form and possess the same spiritual nature as our risen Savior, Jesus, the man of heaven.
That is the spiritual body which we hope for. We hope that in our glorification we shall be made worthy of heaven and the earth that is to be, instead of the present dishonor and weakness that we suffer in our earthly flesh.
Truly, it is no wonder that we find it so difficult to experience peace, shalom, in our lives because we exist in this disunity between our mortal bodies and our everlasting souls. Christians long for the life of the world to come as we suffer the abhorrence of our regenerated souls while they remain trapped within our sinful flesh.
Next, Paul begins to reveal more of the mystery of this, our resurrection hope, saying, ‘I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.’
A person who possesses mere flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s eternal kingdom, while a person possessing a spiritual body— a body born of water and the Spirit— will. That which is perishable— something which cannot last and must one day expire and fail— cannot inherit or own the imperishable, something that is unending, unfailing, and everlasting.
Because it will not be possessed or retained for very long, it can only be borrowed or held onto temporarily. Yet Jesus Christ, along with those who share in his inheritance as God’s children, will possess it because then we too shall be imperishable, unending, and everlasting—greater than God’s new creation which is to come.
Then we can actually hold on to it, possess it, and we will enjoy it forever in the presence of God. Paul says we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
After we have died, or if Jesus returns before that time on the day of his appearing, we shall then all be transformed and transfigured, body and soul, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
All of the dead shall be raised; not just some of the dead— all of the dead shall be raised, and we shall all be transformed, becoming imperishable and immortal, the righteous and the wicked, the just and the unjust, the good and the bad.
And this is God’s most wonderful promise to all mankind, and it is shown, sealed, and proven by Jesus’s resurrection. This is why the threat and promise of hell, of an everlasting future and second death within the lake of fire, is so terrifying.
Christians are not annihilationists; we do not believe that any human soul will be ultimately destroyed. Scripture teaches us that when the time of judgment comes, when we have all been raised into immortality, those who are covered by the blood of Christ, those who believe on and trust in Jesus, will be raised to enjoy eternal life in fellowship with God.
While those who are raised and condemned by the Lord’s righteous judgment will be cast into the lake of fire, where they shall forever suffer the wrath of God. They shall be dying everlastingly without any hope of the release found in death, as they will also be imperishable immortals, and divine justice will be finally served.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory!’
Death itself has already been defeated in Jesus’s raising, and when he returns in triumph to consummate his kingdom, then death shall also be judged and cast into the fire. ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. Our sins, our sinfulness, and the power of the sinful nature were put to death in the body of Christ upon the cross by his sovereign grace.
The blood of his atonement covers us; he has freed us from the sting of death and protects us, rescuing us from the condemnation of the law. Raised imperishable and covered by the blood of Christ, we will stand before the judgment seat of God, and we will be declared righteous because we will be judged according to the righteousness of Jesus that God has imputed to us through our faith in him.
The defeat which he suffered by his death on the cross was instead the total victory of God, the redemption of all those whom the Father has given to the Son. And that is the glory and hope from the resurrection that we are covered by the blood of Christ, redeemed and cleansed from all of our sins so that we may finally achieve our purpose of worshiping and enjoying him forever.
Before Jesus ascended to heaven to rule and to advocate on our behalf, he first needed to descend to earth where he experienced and suffered all that we do. He willingly went to the cross, suffered the human defeat of death in all humility, so that he could be raised up into the divine victory and bring us along with him.
He willingly shared the dishonor of our humanity so that we may gladly enter into the honor and glory of his divinity.
Paul concludes, ‘But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.’
Victory in Jesus! The most wonderful good news!
And now that we share in Christ’s victory, we must go forth into the world and do all the good works of the Lord which he has prepared for us. Now we must remain steadfast in our faith, holding firmly onto what scripture teaches us to believe about God and who he is, about man, about our sinfulness, about our need for repentance, about the salvation found only by faith in Jesus, and about our hope of life in the world to come.
Do you believe? Do you trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation with every fiber of your being? I pray to the Lord that you do. But if you have not yet responded to his call upon your life and your soul, then now is the moment. Now is the time to accept his freely given gift of grace and love and peace.
It is the most costly and most valuable present that you can ever hope to receive. Accepting God’s grace and mercy costs you nothing, but afterwards, obedient faith and trust in him will cost you everything— just as it cost Jesus everything to give you his grace.
If you have been born again by the grace of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, if our hearts, souls, and minds have been regenerated and restored, then we must live as resurrection people— as people who live in the hope of God’s promised things which are to come.
We must live obediently and in all holiness as our response for Christ’s sake. Now our lives must be transformed, becoming more and more Christ-like, renewed and restored as our hearts have been and as our bodies one day will be.
Jesus Christ won the victory over sin and death, and death was defeated 2,000 years ago. His victory was determined before God even said, ‘Let there be light.’ Jesus has promised that we shall also be raised like him.
And the question you must answer for yourself is: what will become of me after I am raised? Those who are called by God and have set their hopes on his mercy are already beginning to enjoy the spoils of his victory, and soon we will be brought into the fullness of Jesus’s inheritance— a land where joy shall never end, where tears will no longer flow, where sorrows shall cease, where peace shall be the rule, and everyone shall walk in the light of God’s loving presence.
But those who are not called by God and who do not turn to Jesus, who refuse to accept his offer of mercy, will be cast into the lake of fire, where joy will never be, where tears will always flow, where sorrows will reign, and all will suffer unto the ever-present heat of the Lord’s righteous wrath, separated from his love forevermore.
The day of resurrection is coming, and the hour of judgment follows close behind. So what is your resurrection hope? Is it in the victory of Christ, or is it in your human sinfulness and in Satan and all the world’s power which Jesus has already defeated?
He is risen! And because he is risen, we too shall rise. Amen.
Please stand and let us say what we believe using Paul’s words from Philippians chapter 2:
‘If there be any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfill ye my joy that ye be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.
Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men.
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.’
Our closing hymn is the…