Resurrection: What Is It? - GraceLife Church of Pineville

Introduction: A Season of Celebration

I am giving this sermon at the convergence of two significant holidays: Thanksgiving (which we celebrate this coming week) and Christmas (which will be upon us when we gather next, as it will be December 1 and the start of the Advent season).

In this sermon, we continue our lessons on resurrection from the dead. No, we’re not confused: We do know the difference between Christmas and Easter. But we’re wrapping up a series on resurrection from the dead because of our larger study of what the book of Hebrews calls the “elementary principles of the oracles of God” (that is, foundational instructions regarding what God has said). Resurrection is the fifth of those sixth principles.¹

Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving: It is the unique position of the Christian to be in a state of perpetual celebration of all of these things. Scripture tells us, “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18).

Rejoice always: Forever rejoicing in the Messiah who has come—that is the message of Christmas.

Unending prayer: Access to the throne is the privilege of the believer because of the permanent priesthood of Jesus, who obtained eternal redemption through His blood at Easter.

And in everything, meaning any and every week, we are to give thanks, especially for those things.

We can think of Christmas as the reminder of what God has done for us in the past. Easter is a reminder of what God will do for us in the future. And Thanksgiving is a reminder of what our ever-present posture is to be before God.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I offer this prayer:

Father, we thank you for your great provision; for the blessings of freedom and prosperity you have bestowed upon this country, the United States of America; for the wisdom and courage You instilled in our earliest settlers; for men like William Bradford who lauded “the simplicity of the gospel”² and sought to advance Your kingdom in remote parts of the world; for men like George Washington who asked us to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey Your will, to be grateful for Your benefits, and to humbly implore Your protection and favor. We acknowledge, as he did, that You are the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and we ask that You pardon our national transgressions. For Abraham Lincoln and William Seward, who remind us that You are “the Most High God,”³ the giver of gracious gifts, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, has nevertheless remembered mercy. Lord, grant us grace and peace and sweet fellowship with our families and friends this week. Give us safe travels as we move across this great land You’ve allowed us to prosper in. May we close 2024 in a spirit of gratitude, grateful for what you’ve accomplished and moved by bright hope for tomorrow. Amen.

What Is Resurrection?

This sermon’s title is straight to the point: What is resurrection?

In my previous sermon, we saw many straight-to-the-point predictions from Jesus about what must happen to the Son of Man: from His trials in front of Jewish and Gentile authorities, to His mockery and scourging and crucifixion, to His predicted resurrection three days later. But we’re told also that the disciples didn’t understand His statement; they were afraid to ask what it meant; and the small group who witnessed His transfiguration specifically wrestled with what it meant to rise from the dead. Can you imagine their wonder and amazement as they saw Christ transfigured in glory before them in dazzling light? And yet, these men didn’t seem to know what exactly resurrection meant.

[Despite] many straight-to-the-point predictions from Jesus about what must happen to the Son of Man … [His closest disciples] didn’t seem to know what exactly resurrection meant.

Perhaps their chief hangup was on the concept of a Messiah that dies. The Messiah was to deliver the decisive military victory over Rome and establish an everlasting kingdom. Nothing about suffering Roman crucifixion looks like that. Now, those kinds of assumptions probably aren’t keeping you from fully understanding resurrection, but perhaps there are other areas of confusion regarding the nature of resurrection that we need to let the Scriptures clarify.

As resurrection is the foundational doctrine of our faith, let’s take time to ask the right questions and answer them well.

Now that we’ve discussed The (capital T) resurrection that gives relevance (and existence) to any other resurrection—the resurrection of Jesus—we need to discuss exactly what is meant by the term. There are misconceptions among Christians of what it means to be resurrected. Most of these misconceptions can be erased if we keep two principles in mind. The first of those principles is our focus in this sermon: Resurrection is a bodily event.

A Bodily Event

Let’s look at a scene in Luke 24, which tells the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Cleopas and the other disciple had just come back to meet with the rest of the disciples following their walk. They’re telling the story of what happened (and how they had recognized Jesus), when Luke tells us:

While they were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be to you.” But they were startled and frightened and thought that they were seeing a spirit. And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.While they still could not believe it because of their joy and amazement, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; and He took it and ate it before them.

Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:36–44)

As I said in an earlier sermon, if these men were making up a story, the idea of a spiritual resurrection would have been an easier hoax to pull off. But it’s very clear that the resurrection of Jesus is (was) a bodily event, and the disciples themselves did not immediately conclude “physical resurrection” even upon seeing Jesus.

As noted in the previous sermon, dead people have a tendency to stay dead. The assumption being made is that, if you encounter “someone” after that someone dies, you must be seeing a spirit, a ghost. But notice that Christ rules that out, inviting even physical inspection:

Look with your eyes; and if you think your eyes deceive you, touch with your hands. Notice how it is that He describes His composed nature, “flesh and bone,” which is uniquely, a physical description.
In the text, Jesus states explicitly that He is not a spirit.
He even interacts with the physical world in a way that satisfied sufficiently those who were present that He was doing something spirits wouldn’t or couldn’t do (i.e., making food disappear as He ate it).

Here is why the nature of resurrection—whatever it is—is significant for you: If you’re a believer in Christ, you will experience the same kind of resurrection that Jesus did. If you’ve never thought of it in that manner, I invite you to fully embrace this thought:

You will experience the same kind of resurrection that Jesus did.

That is the whole point of His redeeming you. He has redeemed a people. If you trust in Him for eternal life, you are, to use the language that Scripture uses over and over, in Christ. And by virtue of being in Christ, the Son of God, you experience the benefits of being His child (just as Christ did).

Many of us are familiar with Ephesians 2:8–9 and even be able to quote it,⁴ but we may not remember the context of these verses. Here are the four preceding verses:

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4–7)

By virtue of our being in Christ, we will be resurrected as Christ was.

By virtue of our being in Christ, we will be resurrected as Christ was.

So let’s further ground this concept of our resurrection being like that of Christ. There are two things that I want grounded:

The fact that God will raise us from the dead just like He did for Jesus.
The nature of our resurrection is like that which Jesus experienced.

The Fact of Resurrection

At the end of 1 Corinthians 6:13,⁵ Paul reminds the Corinthians, “Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.” He then goes on to say this:

Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. (1 Corinthians 6:14)

This verse establishes the fact of resurrection. Paul then goes on to teach that this action of resurrection is based on a transaction, in which the physical body plays an important role:

Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:18–20)

Notice, especially, verse 20: For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. What Christ gained, or purchased, by His death and resurrection, He purchased for us. What He gained for Himself (the resurrection of the body), we will also gain. This is why we talk of “dying with Christ” and being “raised with Christ.” Just as He was raised bodily, we, too, will be raised bodily. This is the beauty of the gospel: Jesus took on a body like ours so that we ultimately could take on a body like His.

Jesus took on a body like ours so that we ultimately could take on a body like His.

Let’s look at a passage that teaches us that the nature of our resurrection is, in fact, like that which Jesus experienced:⁶

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who 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. (Philippians 3:20–21)

From these verses, we see that the resurrection of the dead is indeed a physical resurrection. Your body—the one you have now—will come back to life; but—good news!—it will be transformed. (So eat that extra dessert after your Thanksgiving meal; it’ll be okay.)

To summarize, then: Our physical bodies will be resurrected, but they will be transformed. We will have a body that is in conformity with the body of the glory of Jesus (that’s pretty awesome, if you really stop to consider it). What kind of body will that be? What will it look like? What will it feel like? What kind of powers might we have? We will devote future sermon time to discussing the characteristics of the resurrection body. For now, know that there are foundational elements that are far more important than just wondering whether you, too, like the resurrected Jesus, can disappear and pass through walls and eat fish for breakfast. (Personally, I’m pretty excited about the prospect of fishing in the next life.)

First, though, let’s discuss why the physicality of resurrection is so important.

The physicality of the resurrection is important because, if the body is not raised, then sin is not really defeated. Let me expound upon that principle further.

The physicality of the resurrection is important because, if the body is not raised, then sin is not really defeated.

The Physicality of Resurrection

There’s an important detail in Philippians 3:21 that we must not gloss over. Notice, the verse says that the transformation of the body into a glorified body is done be means of God’s power to subject everything to Himself. Hold on to that concept of “subjecting all things to Himself” (which would include death itself) as we look at some verses in 1 Corinthians 15 (you’ll see the phrase again):

For He must reign until He has put all⁷ His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. … But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” (1 Corinthians 15:25–26, 54, italics mine)

This chapter of 1 Corinthians began with Paul reminding us that if there’s no resurrection from the dead, then this is all a sad waste of time—we are “of all men most to be pitied” if we’ve hoped for Christ only in this life (1 Corinthians 15:19). Without resurrection of the body, sin is not completely defeated because it still lays claim to a certain victory: death.

But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about 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. (1 Corinthians 15:54–57)

Too many believers have an incomplete view of humanity. In fact, too many people grant a victory to sin that we should not grant. As people redeemed of God, we sometimes have too low a view of the body. We end up with a theology that says that the body doesn’t matter.

As people redeemed of God, we sometimes have too low a view of the body.

Death Reversed

I’m reminded of the three men who attended the funeral of their friend. The trio stood watching the visitors file through and pay their respects at the casket. The friends begin to wonder what it will be like when they die, and they contemplate what they’d like people to say at their caskets/funeral when death comes for them (as it does for all of us, inevitably). The first of the three guys focuses on family, saying he hopes that they would say, “He sure was a great family man—a devoted husband, a loving father.” The second focuses on the good deeds he did, hoping the mourners will say, “He did so much good in the world; so many people were helped over the course of his life.” The last guy thinks about it and says, “I hope they say, ‘Look, he’s moving!’”

The promise of the resurrection really is, “Look, he’s moving.” The resurrection is a bodily promise.

Certainly, in this fallen world, there are greater worries than the body, but the promise of the gospel is that we are being redeemed from this fallen world, and the victory of God will not be partial. The promise of resurrection is not the promise merely that death will be no more. It is the promise that death will be reversed.

The promise of resurrection is not the promise merely that death will be no more. It is the promise that death will be reversed.

Of Philippians 3:21, N.T. Wright observes, “This is indeed the defeat of death, not a compromise in which death is allowed to have the body while some other aspect of the human being (the soul? the spirit?) goes marching on.”⁸ Wright also writes:

The common idea that, when the early Christians said, “Jesus was raised from the dead”, they meant something like “He is alive in a spiritual, non-bodily sense, and we give him our allegiance as our lord” is historically impossible. Not only … did the words simply not mean that; one might as well say that “Jesus was crucified by the Romans” meant neither more nor less than “As I think of Jesus, I experience a sense of the crushing power of pagan empire.”⁹

No, as we have shown, He really was killed by Rome; He really was dead. And death really was reversed. He really raised from the dead … bodily. And that promise is for us, too, if we believe in Christ.

There’s more to be said on this matter (e.g., about the timing of our bodily resurrection—after all, when we go to funerals, bodies are in fact present). But first, let’s pause to talk about the value of the body.

The Value of the Body

I think an underappreciated aspect of resurrection theology is the value that it places upon the human body.

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body helps us understand what it means to be a human being. Specifically, it helps us understand:

What it means to be a whole human being
What it means to be a broken human being
Who God is by virtue of His actions when something goes wrong with human nature

What does it mean to be human? Some pertinent questions are these:

Who are we?
What are we?
Why are we?
Where are we?
When are we?

God answers all of these questions to some extent in the first two chapters of the Bible. If you want to know what it means to be resurrected from the dead, then you have to know what “dead” means, what counts as “death” for humans, why or how something might be dead; and to answer these questions is impossible apart from knowing the answers to these vital questions (who, what, why, where, and when).

The answers can all be found in these verses of Genesis 1 and 2.

What It Means to Be Human: 5 Vital Questions

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26–28)

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)

Who are we?
We’re relational image-bearers of God.

What are we?
We’re both material and immaterial (corporeal, incorporeal), visible and invisible, body and soul/spirit, matter and form. We’re not just spirit, nor are we just matter/body/physical. The material and immaterial are joined together in us.

Why are we? (This is a question about cause.)
To borrow the language of Aristotle:

We have an efficient cause. To use less philosophical terms, we are because God gives us being and sustains our being; this physical dust of the ground and this immaterial breath of life come together to form this living being in us, a being that is created and sustained by our Maker.
We have a final cause. We’re created to be co-rulers with God over creation.
We have a material cause. We have a physical body.
We have a formal cause. We have a soul or spirit (not just a body).

Where are we? Where am I?
This is the kind of question we ponder at a funeral: Where is a person? Can we still call a body in a casket a person? What does it mean to be me? To get philosophical again, can I even say there is a me, distinctly? (There is a lot of bad philosophy that says there is no you distinctly; that’s one reason I keep referencing philosophy.) The Scriptures clearly say:

I’m not you, and you’re not me; Adam was not Eve, and Eve was not Adam, but there was similarity between them.
I’m not God, but I come from Him.
I’m not the dust, but I do come from it.
Thus, under normal conditions, I am where my body is. It’s this material distinction that differentiates us from one another, and it differentiates what sort of “me” I am. (For example: I’m me, not you; I’m male, not female; I’m this tall, not that tall, etc.)
The Scripture says we’re spatially located in a world created by God for my enjoyment and flourishing—that’s where we are. (You’ll see in a moment how this becomes important.)

When are we?
We might modify this question to, “When are we alive?” The answer is that we are alive as long as the body and soul are united. It wasn’t just the dust of the ground—even though God had formed it—that was the man; it wasn’t just this breath of life either. Rather, it was the combination, the union, of the material and immaterial, the body and soul, that constitutes life. So we are alive when the body and the soul are united.

So, what is death? It’s a “separation” of the body and the soul. It’s not annihilation; it doesn’t mean non-existence. When someone dies, it doesn’t mean he or she ceases to exist. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. While death doesn’t mean nonexistence, it does mean a lesser existence. It is not good. It’s why we (rightly) grieve when someone dies. Now, because of the promise to be with the Lord, there’s a sense in which that experience is certainly greater, and because of the greatness of who God is, then that is in some sense (as Paul says) preferable. But it’s not in the greatest sense preferable, because for us as humans, what is preferable in the greatest sense is to live as unbroken and whole humans; and human beings are by nature both physical and nonphysical, body and soul.

What is death? It’s a “separation” of the body and the soul. It’s not annihilation … [or] nonexistence. … [It’s] a lesser existence.

There’s a theological answer to the question When are we? (i.e., When am I most alive?). I am most alive when I am in obedience to God. I’m most alive when I am united to my Maker. I’m most alive when I’m united to the image which I bear—this is why Adam and Eve experienced a death prior to the physical death that they went through. They had separated themselves from God, and existence apart from the Author, Giver, and Sustainer of Life is death. Why? Because He is Life itself (hence the call of Scripture to “walk in newness of life”¹⁰).

How Resurrection Illuminates the 5 Vital Questions

Here’s how the resurrection from the dead further illuminates the questions about what it means to be human. These same questions we just looked at are answered ultimately by resurrection. The answers are the same, but much better. (Much like our resurrection bodies—the same but much better.)

Who are we?
We’re still relational image-bearers of God, but now we’re recreated in the image of Christ.

What are we?
We’re still both body and soul, but glorified. We’ll enjoy a glorified human existence.

Why are we? (Again, the question about cause.)
We still are because God gives us being and sustains our being, and we will be co-rulers with God over creation. But now, our material cause and formal cause are placed back in proper union: body and soul, united.

Where are we? Where am I?
In Genesis, we were spatially located in a world created by God for our enjoyment and flourishing. In the resurrection from the dead, we will be spatially located in an environment that is, again, created by God for our enjoyment and flourishing.

When are we?
The message of the gospel is that we are eternal.

What We Learn from Bodily Resurrection

The fact that Christ will redeem the body teaches me:

To love God, from whom I got my body.
To love my neighbor and myself.
That I can differentiate between my neighbor and myself because we have different bodies. At the same time, I am by nature the same as my neighbor, and therefore I have no right to judge him on the basis of any perceived physical shortcoming because human nature is more than that. If my neighbor is diseased, deformed, or of a different race, these are secondary, nonessential matters. Disease will go away. Deformity will go away. Race (to the extent that it even is such a thing) will persist, but what goes away in that case is your misinformed racism. You see, there are so many cultural confusions that resurrection clears.

That Christ will redeem the body further teaches me:

To honor the biological realities of male and female.
To honor the fact that life is more than just the visible; and so the tiniest of lives—even those that I cannot see, those in the womb—exist as distinct from the mother and exist as human beings by virtue of their unique image-bearing souls from day one.
That the material world is not inherently evil, nor my body evil, nor anyone else’s body evil.
Not to give myself over to corruption of either the body or the soul.
That I don’t have to fear any physical shortcomings in my body—ones that I was born with, ones that I inherited, ones that I brought upon myself, ones that someone else perpetrated against me.

We’ve now covered grounding principle no. 1: resurrection is a bodily event. Grounding principle no. 2 is that resurrection is a future event. And it’s also a future topic, to be covered in the next sermon.

Table of Contents