1 Corinthians 15:35

THE RESURRECTION BODY

‘With what body do they come?’

1 Corinthians 15:35

The Prayer Book contains several phrases which express the Christian Faith as regard the future life: ‘I believe in the Resurrection of the body’ (Apostles’ Creed). ‘I look for the Resurrection of the dead’ (Nicene Creed). ‘Dost thou believe in the Resurrection of the flesh?’ (Baptismal Service). ‘All men shall rise again with their own bodies’ (Athanasian Creed). The resurrection of the body, the flesh, the dead—the coming again with their own bodies.

The general conclusion is, we believe not only in the life everlasting, but that men shall live again after this earthly life; that there shall be a revival of personal identity.

The early belief in the Resurrection was not a stupid credulity. The Corinthians were intellectual, the objections natural then and natural now. As we have stood by the open grave we have known their force, and often asked ourselves, ‘With what body do they come?’ Will the child rise a child? the old man an old man? the cripple maimed? the blind sightless? Will the resurrection body be of the same material and form, only reconstructed? Is this the Christian Faith? If not, ‘With what body do they come?’

The Apostle meets these objections by analogy.

I. ‘Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.’—There is no question, then, of regathering the particles of the dead body; ‘neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.’ Not one of the particles composing a human body seven years ago exist in that body to-day; they have passed into new combinations and forms. St. Paul points us to the analogy of the seed and the plant—a parable of wondrous force and beautiful simplicity. ‘With what manner of body do they come?’ Certainly not with the same body. The plant is entirely unlike the seed from which it sprang. The resurrection body will not be the body which we now possess. The seed is not identical with the plant; it is the parent of the organism, the form of which is determined by God. ‘So also is the resurrection of the dead.’

II. Yet the resurrection body will, in a real sense, be our own body.—When clothed with it we shall be the same persons that we are now. The Thames is the same river now that it was a hundred years ago, flowing from the same source, created by the same force, coursing in the same channel; it is still the Thames, though not a drop of its water to-day was there ten years ago. The old man to-day says, ‘I am the same person that I was twenty, fifty years ago; though not a single particle of my body is the same, yet I am the same.’ So in the resurrection, it will be our body, only the identity will not be that of form or of particles, but that of a permanent force and character which make it what it is and constitute its unity. ‘God giveth it a body,’ remember, not as it pleaseth Him, but ‘as it pleased Him’—according to a certain law, which is His eternal will, that, through whatever changes the seed or germ of life should pass, something there shall be which shall connect its latest with its earliest stage.

III. The resurrection body will be the manifested expression of ourselves.—This, then, will be the resurrection body—ourselves, essentially ourselves. We are perpetually judging men by what we have learned to call their ‘expression.’ We look into a face and say, ‘There is kindness, sympathy, tenderness’; or, ‘There is pride, temper, passion, avarice.’ But we often judge wrongly; for this self-expression is, as at present, imperfect; in the resurrection body it will be full, complete, the perfect expression of the inmost spirit. According to the lives we live now, we shall be hereafter. The character formed here will determine our future expression. Our very bodies will be our condemnation or our glory in that day. We shall then wear the garb of holiness, or the livery of sin; and every man shall know even as he is known.

Rev. Prebendary J. Storrs.