Mark 9:10

THE RISING OF THE DEAD

‘Questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean.’

Mark 9:10

The resurrection from the dead was not realised by even the very chiefest of the Apostles. Their difficulty was substantially the same with that which was afterwards felt by some of the Corinthian Christians, and to a certain extent is now felt by many and many a Christian of our own days. The difficulty lies centred, not in the conception of a continued existence after death, but in the conception of a bodily existence when our present bodily existence—which observe, makes up the sum total of all that we know of such a form of existence—has come utterly to an end.

I. The teaching of Scripture.—In respect of all such questions even Scripture is either silent or reserved. Holy Scripture mentions only the blessed facts of the future, but gives no indication of the manner it which they will take place. It teaches us plainly and clearly that we shall rise again with our own bodies; and it teaches us this by the great object-lesson that is ministered by God’s book of Nature, by the seed that is placed in the earth, and the plant that rises out of it. This resurrection parable shows:—

(a) That the perishing of our mortal body is like the perishing of the grain of corn that is put into the earth: it sets free the germ that is designed to become the body of the future. So with our mortal bodies. No eye can ever see it; but we cannot doubt that it is here, in the body of each one of us, and that death will set it free to become, how, we know not, the body of glory or the body of shame.

(b) That as the plant differs from the seed from which it sprang, so widely will the body that is to be differ from the earthly body.

But on these deep mysteries we do not presume to speculate. All that it is right for to know, we know. We shall all be changed, but we shall all be ourselves.

II. The appeal to fact and truth.—The doctrine of the resurrection of the body is easy when viewed in connection with the Resurrection of the Lord, We here appeal to no parable; we appeal to a fact—the Resurrection of Christ; and to a truth—that ‘Christ is the firstfruits of them that slept.’

—Bishop Ellicott.

Illustration

‘For Christians the belief in another life rests on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He came to show man what God is, but also to show what man himself is, and should be, and shall be. He is spoken of as the firstfruits of the dead, which means that all mankind shall rise some day as He rose. Further, the power which raised Him will raise us, and the change which passed over His body is the change which will pass over ours. St. Paul rests his teaching of the life of the world to come very plainly on the actual fact of our Lord’s Resurrection, which he describes in a very solemn way as having been specially “received” by him. Furthermore, we are to believe, not merely in the immortality of the soul, but in the resurrection of the body. We do not regard our bodies as evil things to be thrown off some day as a snake casts its slough, but as destined to share in our future. As He ascended with our whole nature to heaven, so our whole nature, body, soul, and spirit is to be redeemed. The spirit of which we always think as associated with our body is not in that other world to be left naked, but to be “clothed upon,” to have, as it were, a dwelling-place, a body, which body, though in wholly changed condition, will yet have some mysterious relation to the bodies which we have now.’