1 Corinthians 15:52

THE CHANGE

‘We shall be changed.’

1 Corinthians 15:52

These few but momentous words place before us a mystery, a profound mystery.

I. What saith the Scriptures?—Three passages there certainly are, all of them in the writings of St. Paul, in which the fact, and to some extent the circumstances, of the final change are more particularly specified.

(a) The first of these is that portion of the 1 Corinthians 15, from which the text has been taken. From this portion we derive the following great spiritual truth that the nature of the future body will be essentially different from that of the present earthly body, both in appearance and in substance.

(b) In 1 Thessalonians 4 the Apostle desired first to reassure his converts that those who had become Christians, and were now dead, would in no degree be in a worse position than those who might be alive at that coming of the Lord which these Thessalonian Christians thought to be very nigh at hand.

(c) In 2 Corinthians 5 the present earthly body is contrasted with the heavenly body; and the burdened Christian is represented as longing to be clothed upon (the expression is alike remarkable and suggestive) with the body which is from heaven.

These three passages seem to complete all that Scripture has directly revealed of the final change and its attendant circumstances; and they appear to justify us in believing—firstly, that all believers will rise with bodies utterly different as regards appearance and substance from the bodies they wore upon earth, and that, for the great mass of mankind, the time when this mighty change will be consummated will be at the Second Coming of our Lord; secondly, we seem warranted in believing that they who will then be alive on earth will pass through the mighty change in a moment of time, and will be caught up, in company with the risen dead, to meet the Lord in the air; thirdly, we seem justified in drawing this momentous conclusion, that existence in a bodily or unclothed state would appear to be repugnant to Christian feeling, as indicated by the Apostle St. Paul, and that thus we are permitted humbly to believe that in the waiting and intermediate world the soul will not exist in a state wholly unclothed or bodiless.

II. Two questions remain.

(a) The first relates to the time when the great change of the mortal putting on immortality will actually take place. Is it in every case to be restricted to the time of the Second Coming of the Lord? At that coming, Holy Scripture tells us that there will be mighty and cosmical changes in this earth, purifying fires and glorifying restorations, new heavens and a new earth, and in the forefront of all those changes the bodily resurrection of mankind. This is the general answer; but it must not be forgotten that we find in Scripture distinct allusion to a first resurrection, and the mention of an interval of time between it and the later and general resurrection. We thus have scriptural warrant for the belief that, prior to the Advent and all its momentous issues, the elect and specially chosen will be clothed with the resurrection body, and form a part of the blessed and holy company that will be with their Lord and reign with Him till the end come. Such a belief will be found to throw a sidelight on many a passage of Scripture which to the general reader may seem dark and difficult fully to understand.

(b) The second question is, What is the relation between the changing and mortal body of the present and the changeless and glorified body of the future? Is there any connection at all, and, if so, what is it? All that we really know is this—that this earthly body and the spiritual or heavenly body with which we shall hereafter be clothed will be garments of the same soul at two different periods of our existence; but when we think of the one that we know, and of the other that, in the case of believers, is to be fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body, all idea of any real connection between the two seems beyond our powers to grasp.

Union with Christ is that which seals and certifies to us the resurrection of the body, and all the circumstances and truths on which we have been dwelling this morning.

—Bishop Ellicott.

Illustration

‘When writers as early and as famous as Justin Martyr could assert that cripples would rise as cripples, though after their rising they would be restored—or when teachers as conspicuous as Jerome, and even (though less strongly) as Augustine contended for the reappearance of the very hairs on the head, we see plainly enough how the instructive analogy of the Apostle was completely ignored and forgotten in the anxious desire to maintain an absolute identity in appearance and substance between the body that now is and the body which shall be hereafter.’